t the spirit
of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is
still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still
worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all
Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think
Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other.
It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of
Europe till the eleventh century: eight hundred years ago the Norwegians
were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of
our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless
we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that,
while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse
creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is
another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they
have been preserved so well.

In that strange island Iceland,--burst up, the geologists say, by
fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava;
swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild
gleaming beauty in summertime; towering up there, stern and grim, in
the North Ocean with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and
horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost
and Fire;--where of all places we least looked for Literature or written
memorials, the record of these things was written down. On the seabord
of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist,
and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they
were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered
musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst
up from the sea, not been discovered by the Northmen! The old Norse
Poets were many of them natives of Iceland.

Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a
lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan
songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a mythic,
prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse
critics call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of uncertain
etymology, is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro Sturleson, an
Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this
Saemund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century after