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all hearts when he sat among his friends; but
he appeared terrible to his foes. He was eloquent,
so that all he said was believed to be true, and all
his discourse wore the garb of poetry. He first
practised and taught the art of song, the mystery
of the Runes, and the knowledge of divination. For
the rest, his human character is pourtrayed not
dissimilarly to his mythological; he is at once god,
hero, poet, lawgiver, and the Asiatic Shaman or
magician, frequently transforming his outward
shape. In Sweden he established the same law
which had been observed by the Asæ. He
enjoined that the bodies of the dead should be
consumed with fire; the more property was heaped
with them upon the funeral pile, the richer should
they arrive in Valhalla. In memory of
distinguished men, sepulchral mounds, now called by
the people kin-barrows (ätte högar), were to be
erected; and memorial stones (bauta-stenar)
besides, to every man who had shown himself valiant.
Three sacrifices yearly he commanded them to
offer; one towards winter for a good and prosperous
year, a second at mid-winter for the harvest,
the third towards summer for victory. Over all
Suithiod the folk paid tribute to Odin, for which
he was bound to defend the land from hostile
assault, and to sacrifice for a good harvest. Odin
died a natural death in Suithiod, and on his
deathbed he caused himself to be gashed with
spear-points. Afterwards, to do this was called to give
oneself to Odin, or mark oneself for him. With
that he devoted to himself all men falling in battle,
and said that he would repair to the land of the gods,
and there entertain his friends. But the Swedes
supposed that he had gone to Asgard of ancient
days, and would there live for ever. They believed
in him and sacrificed to him, and often when war
impended, Odin, as they deemed, revealed himself,
dispensing victory to some, and calling home others
to himself; both seemed to them a good and
happy lot.
After Odin, Niord assumed dominion, and maintained
the sacrifices. He was born in the land of
the Vaners on the Tanais, and before the journey
to the north had been received with his children
among the Asæ. During his sway there were
happy times, so that the people believed him to be
the dispenser of prosperity to men. In his days most
of the gods died. Niord too died a natural death,
and caused himself to be marked for Odin. The
Swedes burned his body and lamented over his
grave.
Frey his son obtained the supreme power after
him, and was, like his father, rich in friends and
the gifts of the year. He erected the great temple
in Upsala, under which he deposited all his
property, and chose this place to be his chief town.
Thence arose the Upsala estate (Upsala öde), first
a possession of the temple, then of the Swedish
kings [1]. In Frey’s time was peace, when in all
lands the years were plenteous. The Swedes looked
upon Frey as the author of their felicity [2], and
worshipped him on that account more than other
gods. Frey fell sick. Then his men erected a great
barrow, and when he died, they placed him secretly
within it, but they told the Swedes during three
years that he was alive, and they bore the yearly
tributes to the mound. Peace and prosperity
nevertheless continued. When at length it became
known to the Swedes that Frey was dead, and yet
the times of abundance did not cease, they believed
that it would always continue so, while Frey
remained in Suithiod. For that reason they would
not burn his body, but called him the god of the
world, and sacrificed to him for peace and the
blessings of the year. Among other names given
to him is that of Yngve, which became a poetical
appellation for king in general, and hence, in after
times, the oldest Swedish dynasty was styled the
Ynglings. Freya, his sister, who survived him,
and superintended the sacrifices, was the last of
the deities.
Fiolner, son of Yngve Frey, is the first Yngling.
We have seen that in the chronicles as well as in
the mythology, on the establishment of the power
of the gods a period of prosperity ensues. This,
however, ends under Fiolner, the first purely mortal
ruler, and two daughters of the giants are again the
cause of its interruption, as the younger Edda adds.
Being female slaves in the house of the Danish
king Frode, they sung in the mill, and the burden
of their strain was of gold, and peace, and
happiness. But when the king urged them too harshly
to labour, they sang of war [3], and turned the
millstones about so swiftly that they broke in pieces.
War came; the king fell; and so ended the peace
of Frey. But Fiolner, before the happy time
departed, had closed his days in the lap of abundance.
At a feast with king Frode, he fell, in his
drunkenness, into a vat of mead, and met his death “in
the windless lake,” as the old poet sings.
According to an ode of Thiodolf, the court-scald
of king Harald the Fair-haired, in which the
ancestors of that monarch to the thirtieth degree are
celebrated, the Ynglingasaga, whence we have
taken the preceding sketch, was written in Iceland.
Snorro Sturleson placed it at the head of the old
chronicles, and augmented it, as he states, by the
relations of intelligent men. The poem contains
short accounts of the Swedish kings of this race,
corroborated for the most part by the citation of the
scald’s own words. We give in an appendix its
catalogue of kings, but can by no means venture to
make a record in which truth and fiction are so
closely intermingled, the foundation of a chronology.
As in all mythical systems, the regal stock is traced
by the poet to the gods; it is also clear from the
sequel that the older sagas, from which he borrowed
his account, formed a kind of poetic whole.
Again we perceive the same theme which the
heroic lays of the north delight to commemorate,
the fall of a famous dynasty from inborn discords,
foredoomed by a curse denounced of old. This
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