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It is the voice of the northern sibyl, in the prophecy
of Vala, to which we have chiefly listened throughout
the foregoing exposition. But this receives manifold
confirmation from the ancient odes, as well as from
the characteristics and types of the Scaldic poesy.
Such is an outline of that old religion of the
north, which may well be left to its own witness.
In esoteric force, in depth and significancy, it is
inferior to no theory of human origin on the
beginning and end of things which found acceptation
in the world of antiquity. To some of these the
present approximates, for such systems have
generally much that is common, but on no one is
originality of character more clearly stamped.
Those who are acquainted with the oriental
mythology, can hardly doubt that this lore was derived
from the east; nor can we fail to observe that the
adoration of nature, which it expresses, agrees with
that ascribed by Tacitus to the ancient Germans.
Here, as with them [1], this nature-worship is
peculiar in its kind, penetrating with prophetic vision
into the inner mystery of the perishableness of this
sensible world. Hence that notion of immortality
so deeply rooted in the minds of our forefathers,
which the Greeks and Romans ascribed equally to
all the northern races, “happy in their error,” as
a Roman poet professed to think [2]. Without doubt
the most recondite and essential feature of this
creed was its defiance of annihilation, even in the
worship of a transitory universe, and of gods whose
reign was not to be eternal. Thus is explained
the freedom asserted by the inhabitant of the
north, even towards his deities, and that principle
of tragic irony which pervades this whole mythical
scheme. That gloom and terror which lies at the
core of every form of heathenism, even when
concealed, as with the Greeks, under a blooming
exterior, in the north stalks forward undisguised, and
breaks out every where, in its heroic poetry as well
as its divine. As this concludes with the ruin of
the gods, in conflict with the insurgent powers of
universal nature, so does that celebrate in all its
manifold shapes but one master theme, the deeds,
the crimes, and the fall of famous chiefs, and
kingly dynasties. We refer here chiefly to the
heroic songs of the old Edda, those fragments,
petrified as it were by time, of a gigantic poesy,
each a hieroglyph, revealing to us from the bygone
times of the north the heroic deeds, recollections,
and manners of the great migrations in the
full energy of primeval paganism. The period to
which they belong is discovered even by the
multitude of national names which find a place in them.
For just as the old mythic songs afford but one
general appellation, which denotes both the people
of the gods and the Goths [3], so in the heroic songs,
on the other hand, the names of many races occur,
Swedes, Norsemen, Danes, Franks, Saxons, Lombards,
Burgundians, Goths, Huns, Finns. Of
their own destiny these songs predict that ‘they
will endure in all lands,’ and that, by comparison
with the fates they celebrate, “every man’s heart
shall be lightened; every sorrow of woman shall
be assuaged.”
Their antiquity is also declared by the fashion
in which they expound the northern mythology.
That peculiar adoration of nature which was its
basis, the form it first assumed, and preserved at
all times by preference in the popular belief, is
much more distinctly set forth in these old
hero-songs, than in the scalds of a later age of
heathendom. The sun, the day, the godlike powers of
light, the night, and the many-nourishing earth as
the daughter of night, sacred waters, stones, and
birds, are invoked together with the Asæ and
Asyns [4], and are the objects of vows, prayers, or
worship. To die is beautifully called “to pass
away to another light.” The transmigration of
souls appears as an older doctrine that once
obtained belief [5]. We find Odin reappearing in more
than one age, a conception probably founded upon
that doctrine.
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