The religious conceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of civilisation. We are told by Dr. WÄgner, in his work "Asgard and the Gods," of the traditions of our northern ancestors, the story of the myths and legends of Norse antiquity. The first of their heroes was Odin, the god of battles, armed with his war spear, followed by the Walkyries, who consecrate the fallen heroes with a kiss, and bear them away to the halls of the gods, where they enjoy the feasts of the blessed. Later, Odin invents the Runes, through which he gains the power of understanding and ruling all things. He thus becomes the spirit of nature, the all-father. Then the ash tree, "Yggdrasil," grew up; the tree of the universe, of time, and life. The boughs stretched out to heaven, and over-shadowed Walhalla, the hall of the heroes. This world-tree was evergreen, watered daily by the fateful Norns, and could not wither until the last battle should be fought, where life, time, and the world were all to pass away. This was related by a skald, the northern bard, to the warriors while resting from the fatigue of fighting, by tables of mead.

The myths were founded on the belief of the Norse people, regarding the creation of the world, gods, and men, and thus we find them preserved in the songs of the "Edda. The vague notion of a Deity who created and ruled over all things had its rise in the impression made upon the human mind by the unity of nature. The sun, moon, and stars, clouds and mists, storms and tempests, appeared to be higher powers, and took distinct forms in the mind of man. The sun was first regarded as a fiery bird which flew across the sky, then as a horse, and afterwards as a chariot and horses; the clouds were cows, from whose udders the fruitful rain poured down. The storm-wind appeared as a great eagle that stirred the air by the flapping of his enormous wings. These signs of nature seemed to resemble animals. On further consideration it was found that man was gifted with the higher mental powers. It was then acknowledged that the figure of an animal was an improper representation of a divine being. They thus inverted the words of Holy writ, that "God created man in his own image," and men now made the gods in their own likeness, but still regarded them as greater, more beautiful, and more ideal than themselves.

From the titles of these pagan gods we derive the names of our days of the week, and thus we continue to perpetuate in our daily life the story of Norse mythology. The first day of the week was dedicated to the worship of the sun. The second day to that of the moon. The third day was sacred to Tyr, the god of war. The fourth day was sacred to Wodin, or Odin, the chief deity. The fifth day was sacred to Thor, the god of thunder. The sixth day of the week, Friday, was sacred to Frigga, the wife of the great Odin. The seventh or last day of the week was dedicated by the Romans to Saturn, one of the planets, their god of agriculture, whose annual festival was a time of unrestrained enjoyment.

The "Eddas" were two Scandinavian books, the earlier a collection of mythological and heroic songs, and the other a prose composition of old and venerable traditions. These books were meant for the instruction of the Norse skalds and bards. It is believed that the learned Icelander, Saemund, the Wise, compiled the older Edda in 1056 from oral traditions, and partly from runic writings. The younger Edda is supposed to have been compiled by Bishop Snorri Sturlason in 1178, and this collection goes by the name of Snorra-Edda. The language was developed by means of the sagas and songs which had been handed down among the people from generation to generation.

The Norns were the three fatal sisters, who used to watch over the springs of water, and appeared by the cradle of many a royal infant to give it presents. On such occasions two of them were generally friendly to the child, while the third prophesied evil concerning it. In the pretty story of the "Sleeping Beauty" these Norns appear as the fairies.

Mythical Gods.

Bragi was the son of the wave maidens and the god of poetry. He was married to the blooming Induna, who accompanied him to Asgard, where she gave the gods every morning the apples of eternal youth.

Tyr, the god of war, was tall, slender as a pine, and bravely defended the gods from the terrible Fenris-Wolf. In doing so he lost his hand, and was held in high honour by the people. Baldur, the holy one, and the giver of all good, was the son of Odin. His mother Frigga entreated all creatures to spare the well-beloved, but she overlooked the weak mistletoe bough. The gods in boisterous play threw their weapons at Baldur, and the dart made of the fatal bough was thrown by the blind HÖdur with deadly effect.

Forseti, the son of Baldur, resembled his father in holiness and righteousness, was the upholder of eternal law. The myth shows him seated on a throne teaching the Norsemen the benefits of the law, surrounded by his twelve judges.

Loki, the crafty god, was the father of the Fenris-Wolf, and the snake. He was the god of warmth and household fire, and was held to be the corrupter of gods, and the spirit of evil. It was Loki who formed the fatal dart, which he placed in the hands of the blind HÖdur, which caused the death of Baldur. After the murder of Baldur, Loki conceals himself on a distant mountain, and hides himself under a waterfall. Here the avengers catch him in a peculiar net which he had invented for the destruction of others. They bind him to a rock, where a snake drops poison upon his face, which makes him yell with pain. His faithful wife, Sigyn, catches the poison in a cup; but still it drops upon him whenever the vessel is full. From this myth it is supposed that Shakspere derived the story of his greatest drama and tragedy, "Hamlet," of the Prince of Denmark. Our forefathers notion of the last battle, the single combats of the strong, the burning of the world, are all to be read in ancient traditions, and we find them described in the poems of the Skalds. The Norse mythology makes amends for the tragic end of the divine drama by concluding with a description of the renewal of the world. The earth rises fresh and green out of its ruin, as soon as it has been cleansed from sin, refined and restored by fire. The gods assemble on the plains of Ida, and the sons of Thor bring with them their father's storm-hammer, a weapon no longer used for fighting, but only for consecrating what is right and holy. They are joined by Baldur and HÖdur, reconciled and united in brotherly love. Uller is recorded in the Edda as the cheery and sturdy god of winter, who cared nothing for wind and snowstorm, who used to go about on long journeys on his skates or snow-shoes. These shoes were compared to a shield, and thus the shield is called Uller's Ship in many places. When the god Uller skated over the ice he carried with him his shield, and deadly arrows and bow made from the yew-tree. He lived in the Palace Ydalir, the yew vale. As he protected plants and seeds from the severe frosts of the north, by covering the ground with a coating of snow, he was regarded as the benefactor of mortal men, and was called the friend of Baldur, the giver of every blessing and joy. Uller meant divine glory, as Vulder, the Anglo-Saxon god, was also characterised. This was probably because the glory of the northern winter night, which is often brilliantly lighted by the snow, the dazzling ice, and the Aurora-borealis, the great northern light. The myths exist in the present like the stately ruins of a past time, which are no longer suitable for the use of man. Generations come and go, their views, actions, and modes of thought change:

Thousands of years ago our ancestors prayed to Waruna, the father in heaven; thousands of years later the Romans entered their temple and worshipped Jupiter, the father in heaven, while the Teutonic races worshipped the All-father. After the lapse of centuries now we turn in all our sorrow and adversities to our Father which is in heaven. In the thousands of years which may pass we shall not have grown beyond this central point of religion.

In his masterly work on "Hero-Worship," Carlyle traces the growth of the "Hero as Divinity" from the Norse Mythology in the following words: "How the man Odin came to be considered a god, the chief god? His people knew no limits to their admiration of him; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart's love of some greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought.

Then consider what mere Time will do in such cases; how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead.

What an enormous 'camera-obscura' magnifier is Tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or document, no book, no Arundel marble: only here and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why! in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow 'mythic,' the contemporaries who had seen him, being once all dead: enough for us to discern far in the uttermost distance some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of that enormous camera-obscura image: to discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something.

This light kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse mind, dark but living, waiting only for the light, this is to me the centre of the whole. How such light will then shine out, and with wondrous thousand-fold expansion spread itself in forms and colours, depends not on it, so much as in the National Mind recipient of it. Who knows to what unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan fables owe their shape! The number twelve, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number, this was enough to determine the Signs of the Zodiac, the number of Odin's sons, and innumerable other twelves.

Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. Runes, and the miracles of "magic" he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandinavian alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor of letters as well as "magic" among that people. It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first.

You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atahaulpa the Peruvian king; how he made the Spanish soldier, who was guarding him, scratch Dios on his thumb nail, that he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought letters among his people, he might work magic enough! Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen; not a Phoenician alphabet, but a Scandinavian one.

Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented poetry; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it.

Transport yourself into the early childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance, as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning to think,—to be!

This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great universe, and man's life here, and utter a great word about it. And now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls, first awakened with thinking, have made of him! The rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that obscure element. But he was as a light kindled in it, a light of intellect, rude nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet: he had to shine there, and make his obscure element a little lighter, as is still the task of us all.

We will fancy him to be the type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom that race had yet produced. He is as a root of many great things; the fruit of him is found growing, from deep thousands of years, over the whole field of Teutonic life. Our own Wednesday, is it not still Odin's day? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into England too, these are still the leaves from that root. He was the chief god to all the Teutonic peoples; their pattern Norsemen.

The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible powers, visibly seen at work in the world around him.

Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. Amid all that fantastic congeries of associations and traditions in their musical mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have was of an inflexible destiny, of the valkyrs and the hall of Odin, and that the one thing needful for a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs are choosers of the slain, who lead the brave to a heavenly hall of Odin: only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhere, into the realms of Hela, the Death goddess. This was the soul of the whole Norse Belief. Valour is still valour. The first duty of a man is still that of subduing Fear. Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if a natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings about to die had their body laid into a ship, the ship sent forth with sail set and slow fire burning in it; that once out at sea, it might blaze up into flame, and in such a manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean."

THE DESCENT OF ODIN.
(From the Norse Tongue.)
By Thomas Gray.