companied
him to the district whither he was travelling, and there displayed the
shrine of Freya, taking care to hide the injuries which the goddess had
received in the brawl. The champion came in for a share of a gainful
trade driven by the priestess, besides appropriating to himself most of
the treasures which the sanctuary had formerly contained. Neither does
it appear that Freya, having, perhaps, a sensible recollection of the
power of the axe, ever again ventured to appear in person for the
purpose of calling her false stewards to account.

The national estimation of deities, concerning whom such stories could
be told and believed, was, of course, of no deep or respectful
character. The Icelanders abandoned Odin, Freya, Thor, and their whole
pagan mythology, in consideration of a single disputation between the
heathen priests and the Christian missionaries. The priests threatened
the island with a desolating eruption of the volcano called Hecla, as
the necessary consequence of the vengeance of their deities. Snorro, the
same who advised the inquest against the ghosts, had become a convert to
the Christian religion, and was present on the occasion, and as the
conference was held on the surface of what had been a stream of lava,
now covered with vegetable substances, he answered the priests with much
readiness, "To what was the indignation of the gods owing when the
substance on which we stand was fluid and scorching? Believe me, men of
Iceland, the eruption of the volcano depends on natural circumstances
now as it did then, and is not the engine of vengeance intrusted to Thor
and Odin." It is evident that men who reasoned with so much accuracy
concerning the imbecility of Odin and Thor were well prepared, on
abandoning their worship, to consider their former deities, of whom they
believed so much that was impious, in the light of evil demons.

But there were some particulars of the Northern creed in which it
corresponded so exactly with that of the classics as leaves room to
doubt whether the original Asae, or Asiatics, the founders of the
Scandinavian system, had, before their migration from Asia, derived them
from some common source with those of the Greeks and Romans; or whether,
on the other hand, the same proneness of the human mind to superstition
has caused that similar ideas are adopted in different regions, as the
same plants are found in distant countries without the one, as far as
can be discovered, havi