oportion along the east coast; and greatest of
all, as I find, in the North Country. From the Humber upwards, all over
Scotland, the Speech of the common people is still in a singular degree
Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are
"Normans," Northmen,--if that be any great beauty--!

Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so
much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is:
a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal
Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the
infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this
ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something
very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so
very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism,
distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine
Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about
them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the
first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful
lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely
truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses
itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear
smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods "brewing ale" to
hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jotun; sending out Thor to get
the caldron for them in the Jotun country; Thor, after many adventures,
clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with
it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels!
A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterizes that
Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking
helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary
mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a
Giant made by "warm wind," and much confused work, out of the conflict
of Frost and Fire,--determined on constructing a world with him. His
blood made the Sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones; of
his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods'-dwelling; his skull was the
great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds.
What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike,
enormous;--to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness