Short Biographies.—A Clairvoyant among the Gods.—A Bright God.—Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.—The Hospital at the Walhalla.—Why was Odin one-eyed?—The Three Norns.—Mimer the Sage.—A Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.—The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the God with the Golden Teeth.
We have no intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous deities of the North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin’s messenger and man of business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence, a dumb person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear the noise of his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the excellent skater, who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what the poet Klopstock says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity, whose name must never be uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why not? Odin alone knows the reason.
Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he had nine mothers—eight more than had ever been known before him. He is the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants should one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the Bifrost bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace; neither the eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass Heimdall in vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him developed to a perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in the meadows and the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of the world he sees a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more than that, he sees distinctly the different joints in its feet and the black or brown spots with which its wings are dotted. In the midst of the darkest night and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest, he sees an atom moving and watches the marriage of monads. There is nothing in the whole universe hid from him.
But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the handsomest and the most virtuous—Balder, the Bright God, by eminence. Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love in the widest and noblest sense of the word,—Love, in fine, in its Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty, affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall but too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we cannot well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of intrepidity and loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his imprudent confidence in the other gods. The latter, having one day met the wolf Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The wolf, always voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the Ases, pretending to fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the way home, insisted upon leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging their word as gods, however, that they would set him free upon going to table.
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Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are, consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the good faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth. Tyr agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of such lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, however, did behave faithlessly and kept Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf claimed the fulfillment of the pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into his mouth, coolly bit it off up to the wrist. Hence that particular joint has ever since been called the wolf’s joint, in memory of this inartistic amputation.
Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long been presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means the only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the golden teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the god of silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name must not be pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain god, called Herblinde, who was not only blind but—actually dead! We poor mortals generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter of course, but it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages. Herblinde, for instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead also, and yet he attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote in their counsels. Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted among its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind gods, was, as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact recalls forcibly the old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
But why had Odin but one eye?
Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god; the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye—consequently Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is deaf-mute.
The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of the most secret mysteries.
Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than his travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and warm the earth which had so long been in the hands of’ the giants of the frost.
Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up and down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking of the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he had added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the earth had begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was asking himself whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed to him fully enough to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great offices. He had quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels of Kvasir, but Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
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As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with each other by significative glances.
He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, and in their place there appeared three beautiful women, representing three different stages of life.
They were the Norns.
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The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw the Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by minute, and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered up the departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the third, the Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with her far-seeing eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to foretell with unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their occurrence.
Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the amiable and learned Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest to some of my readers.
It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to recognize in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because they were three and because they were women; at least I can see no other reason. Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful as the three ParcÆ—Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos—were ugly. Besides, their duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men, but they were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is the opinion of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees in them nothing more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing, Shakespeare chose these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish the three hideous, unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters, who called out to Macbeth, “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!”
Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church against the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some time with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It was thus and by their aid that he gained experience.
But even Experience, added to the precious gifts of Eloquence, Poetry, and Logic, is not able to supply Wisdom.
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He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it, if needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor which made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had eight legs and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle and his vulture, his squirrel and his two ravens. Then he went to Mimer, the wisest man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and attended his lectures like the most humble and zealous of students. When he had mastered the subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at last, he paid the philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own eyes, in order thus to show him the high value he set upon the service which had been rendered to him by Mimer.
This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too honorable to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
Then he turned to the earth.
Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to satisfy the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among them that great, primitive law which constitutes the whole code of laws among barbarians—the right of the stronger.
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“TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION.”
The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and the springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by force and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not give a title to possession. He determined to establish the right of property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most powerful chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent, with presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land. The chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
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Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her four sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion induced her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked the boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was the first piece of property inaugurated, by purchase, by labor, and under the protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband, represented Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the hard-working family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat of their brow.
Soon people began to imitate Gefione’s example, and in all directions land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the boundary lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held sacred.
In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point every morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and thus to cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their labors.
The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and then cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired pieces of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted notion that lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as the fifteenth century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and at Mayence, to cast Thor’s hammer upon the piece of land that had become a fief, in order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society stable and flourishing,—the nations of the earth longed for a hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the time.
By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post as guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey across the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut, where the Great-grandmother lived. Here he remained three days and three nights.
The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world, black-skinned, broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful arms. They called it Thrall, the serf.
Thrall’s natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in mines and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the Grandmother’s house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing that was useful.
Here he remained three days and three nights.
The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called Karl, the free man. Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this mansion, the Mother, also received him with great delight and tried to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother’s and at the Great-grandmother’s, so he remained here only three days and three nights.
A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks, long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called him Jarl, the noble.
Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the prow and the rudder of ships are decorated—in all cases precautionary measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable, hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in Europe.
Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of eight-horse power. Could we express it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this coincidence would seem to prove?
Jarl’s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes, kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and great-grandmother are illegitimate. Still, whether acknowledged by the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights secured for the future.
I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians, whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged, that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians invaded the continent in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of invading their country.
After having thus established the right of property and a certain social hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and finally courts of justice.
But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out to him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts, Odin had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that other world.
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We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
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