ot_.

With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _Edda_, I will
remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that most probably they
must have been of much newer date; most probably, even from the first,
were comparatively idle for the old Norsemen, and as it were a kind of
Poetic sport. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot
be religious Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory
enough will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. The Norse
Faith, I can well suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while
it lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about
itself, still less to sing.

Among those shadowy _Edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries
of assertions, and traditions, in their musical Mythologies, the main
practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this:
of the _Valkyrs_ and the _Hall of Odin_; of an inflexible _Destiny_; and
that the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_. The _Valkyrs_
are Choosers of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless
trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was
a fundamental point for the Norse believer;--as indeed it is for all
earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It
lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which
his whole system of thought is woven. The _Valkyrs_; and then that these
_Choosers_ lead the brave to a heavenly _Hall of Odin_; only the base
and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the
Death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse
Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be
brave; that Odin would have no favor for them, but despise and thrust
them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not
something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in
that, the duty of being brave. _Valor_ is still _value_. The first duty
for a man is still that of subduing _Fear_. We must get rid of Fear;
we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but
specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and
coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin's creed, if we
disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall
and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a
man,--trusting imperturbably in the appointment an