II. (continued 2)

The character of the anthropomorphosed Odin, who is lawgiver and king, as represented in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda, is only in part based on native northern traditions concerning the heathen god Odin, the ruler of heaven. This younger Odin, constructed by Christian authors, has received his chief features from documents found in the convent libraries. When the Prose Edda tells that the chief who proceeded from Asgard to Saxland and Scandinavia did not really bear the name Odin, but had assumed this name after the elder and deified Odin-Priam of Troy, to make people believe that he was a god, then this was no new idea. Virgil's commentator, Servius, remarks that ancient kings very frequently assumed names which by right belonged only to the gods, and he blames Virgil for making Saturnus come from the heavenly Olympus to found a golden age in Italy. This Saturnus, says Servius, was not a god from above, but a mortal king from Crete who had taken the god Saturnus' name. The manner in which Saturnus, on his arrival in Italy and the vicinity of Rome, was received by Janus, the king ruling there, reminds us of the manner in which Odin, on his arrival in Svithiod, was received by king Gylfe. Janus is unpretentious enough to leave a portion of his territory and his royal power to Saturnus, and Gylfe makes the same concessions to Odin. Saturnus thereupon introduces a higher culture among the people of Latium, and Odin brings a higher culture to the inhabitants of Scandinavia. The Church father Lactantius, like Servius, speaks of kings who tried to appropriate the name and worship of the gods, and condemns them as foes of truth and violators of the doctrines of the true God.

In regard to one of them, the Persian Mithra, who, in the middle age, was confounded with Zoroaster, Tertulianus relates that he (Mithra), who knew in advance that Christianity would come, resolved to anticipate the true faith by introducing some of its customs. Thus, for example, Mithra, according to Tertulianus, introduced the custom of blessing by laying the hands on the head or the brow of those to whom he wished to insure prosperity, and he also adopted among his mysteries a practice resembling the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist. So far as the blessing by the laying on of hands is concerned, Mithra especially used it in giving courage to the men whom he sent out as soldiers to war. With these words of Tertulianus it is interesting to compare the following passage in regard to Odin in the Heimskringla: "It was his custom when he sent his men to war, or on some errand, to lay his hands on their heads and give them bjannak." Bjannak is not a Norse word, not even Teutonic, and there has been uncertainty in regard to its significance. The well-known Icelandic philologist, Vigfusson, has, as I believe, given the correct definition of the word, having referred it to the Scottish word bannock and the Gaelic banagh, which means bread. Presumably the author of Heimskringla has chosen this foreign word in order not to wound the religious feelings of readers with a native term, for if bjannak really means bread, and if the author of Heimskringla desired in this way to indicate that Odin, by the aid of sacred usages, practised in the Christian cult—that is, by the laying on of hands and the breaking of bread—had given his warriors assurance of victory, then it lay near at hand to modify, by the aid of a foreign word for bread, the impression of the disagreeable similarity between the heathen and Christian usages. But at the same time the complete harmony between what Tertulianus tells about Mithra and Heimskringla about Odin is manifest.

What Heimskringla tells about Odin, that his spirit could leave the body and go to far-off regions, and that his body lay in the meantime as if asleep or dead, is told, in the middle age, of Zoroaster and of Hermes-Mercurius.

New Platonian works had told much about an originally Egyptian god, whom they associated with the Greek Hermes and called Hermes-Trismegistus—that is, the thrice greatest and highest. The name Hermes-Trismegistus became known through Latin authors even to the scholars in the middle age convents, and, as a matter of course, those who believed that Odin was identical with Hermes also regarded him as identical with Hermes-Trismegistus. When Gylfe sought Odin and his men he came to a citadel which, according to the statement of the gatekeeper, belonged to king Odin, but when he had entered the hall he there saw not one throne, but three thrones, the one above the other, and upon each of the thrones a chief. When Gylfe asked the names of these chiefs, he received an answer that indicates that none of the three alone was Odin, but that Odin the sorcerer, who was able to turn men's vision, was present in them all. One of the three, says the doorkeeper, is named Hár, the second, Jafnhár, and the one on the highest throne is Thridi. It seems to me probable that what gave rise to this story was the surname "the thrice-highest," which in the middle age was ascribed to Mercury, and, consequently, was regarded as one of the epithets which Odin assumed. The names Third and High seem to point to the phrase "the thrice-highest." It was accordingly taken for granted that Odin had appropriated this name in order to anticipate Christianity with a sort of idea of trinity, just as Zoroaster, his progenitor, had, under the name Mithra, in advance imitated the Christian usages.

The rest that Heimskringla and the Younger Edda tell about the king Odin who immigrated to Europe is mainly taken from the stories embodied in the mythological songs and traditions in regard to the god Odin who ruled in the celestial Valhal. Here belongs what is told about the war of Odin and the Asiatics with the Vans. In the myth, this war was waged around the walls built by a giant around the heavenly Asgard (Völusp., 25). The citadel in which Gylfe finds the triple Odin is decorated in harmony with the Valhal described by the heathen skalds. The men who drink and present exercises in arms are the einherjes of the myth. Gylfe himself is taken from the mythology, but, to all appearances, he did not play the part of a king, but of a giant, dwelling in Jotunheim. The Fornmanna sagas make him a descendant of Fornjótr, who, with his sons, Hlér, Logi, and Kári, and his descendants, Jökull, Snær, Geitir, &c., doubtless belong to Jotunheim. When Odin and the Asas had been made immigrants to the North, it was quite natural that the giants were made a historical people, and as such were regarded as the aborigines of the North—an hypothesis which, in connection with the fable about the Asiatic emigration, was accepted for centuries, and still has its defenders. The story that Odin, when he perceived death drawing near, marked himself with the point of a spear, has its origin in the words which a heathen song lays on Odin's lips: "I know that I hung on the wind-tossed tree nine nights, by my spear wounded, given to Odin, myself given to myself" (Havam., 138).

14.

THE RESULT OF THE FOREGOING INVESTIGATIONS.

Herewith I close the examination of the sagas in regard to the Trojan descent of the Teutons, and in regard to the immigration of Odin and his Asiamen to Saxland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula. I have pointed out the seed from which the sagas grew, the soil in which the seed could be developed, and how it gradually grew to be what we find these sagas to be in Heimskringla and the Younger Edda. I have shown that they do not belong to the Teutonic heathendom, but that they were born, as it were of necessity, in a Christian time, among Teutons converted to Christianity, and that they are throughout the work of the Latin scholars in the middle age. The assumption that they concealed within themselves a tradition preserved for centuries among the Teutons themselves of an ancient emigration from Asia is altogether improbable, and is completely refuted by the genuine migration sagas of Teutonic origin which were rescued from oblivion, and of which I shall give an account below. In my opinion, these old and genuine Teutonic migration sagas have, from a purely historical standpoint, but little more claim than the fables of the Christian age in regard to Odin's emigration from Asia to be looked upon as containing a kernel of reality. This must in each case be carefully considered. But that of which they furnish evidence is, how entirely foreign to the Teutonic heathens was the idea of an immigration from Troy or Asia, and besides, they are of great interest on account of their connection with what the myths have to say in regard to the oldest dwelling-places, history, and diffusion of the human race, or at least of the Teutonic part of it.

As a rule, all the old migration sagas, no matter from what race they spring, should be treated with the utmost caution. Large portions of the earth's surface may have been appropriated by various races, not by the sudden influx of large masses, but by a gradual increase of the population and consequent moving of their boundaries, and there need not have been very remarkable or memorable events in connection therewith. Such an expansion of the territory may take place, and be so little remarked by the people living around the centre, that they actually do not need to be aware of it, and much less do they need to remember it in sagas and songs. That a few new settlers year by year extend the boundaries of a race has no influence on the imagination, and it can continue generation after generation, and produce as its final result an immense expansion, and yet the separate generations may scarcely have been conscious of the change in progress. A people's spreading over new territory may be compared with the movement of the hour-hand on a clock. It is not perceptible to the eye, and is only realized by continued observation.

In many instances, however, immigrations have taken place in large masses, who have left their old abodes to seek new homes. Such undertakings are of themselves worthy of being remembered, and they are attended by results that easily cling to the memory. But even in such cases it is surprising how soon the real historical events either are utterly forgotten or blended with fables, which gradually, since they appeal more to the fancy, monopolise the interest. The conquest and settlement of England by Saxon and Scandinavian tribes—and that, too, in a time when the art of writing was known—is a most remarkable instance of this. Hengist, under whose command the Saxons, according to their own immigration saga, are said to have planted their feet on British soil, is a saga-figure taken from mythology, and there we shall find him later on (see No. 123). No wonder, then, if we discover in mythology those heroes under whose leadership the Longobardians and Goths believed they had emigrated from their original Teutonic homes.