ibuted
to that Scandinavian System of Thought; in ever-new elaboration and
addition, it is the combined work of them all. What history it had,
how it changed from shape to shape, by one thinker's contribution after
another, till it got to the full final shape we see it under in the
Edda, no man will now ever know: _its_ Councils of Trebizond, Councils
of Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo in the
dark night! Only that it had such a history we can all know. Wheresover
a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought of was a contribution,
accession, a change or revolution made. Alas, the grandest "revolution"
of all, the one made by the man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for
us like the rest! Of Odin what history? Strange rather to reflect that
he _had_ a history! That this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his
wild beard and eyes, his rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us;
with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one
as we: and did such a work! But the work, much of it, has perished; the
worker, all to the name. "_Wednesday_," men will say to-morrow; Odin's
day! Of Odin there exists no history; no document of it; no guess about
it worth repeating.

Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business style,
writes down, in his _Heimskringla_, how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the
Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened for
room. How he led these _Asen_ (Asiatics) of his out of Asia; settled
them in the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented
Letters, Poetry and so forth,--and came by and by to be worshipped as
Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Twelve
Sons of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo
Grammaticus, a very curious Northman of that same century, is still
more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every
individual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event in Denmark
or elsewhere. Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries later,
assigns by calculation a _date_ for it: Odin, he says, came into Europe
about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere
uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far,
very far beyond the Year 70! Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial
history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever into unknown
thousands of years.

Nay Grimm, the Ger