Letters From High Latitudes [49]
cyclopean disorder, I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology, of whose mysteries the Icelanders were ever the natural guardians and interpreters, should have assumed that broad, massive simplicity which is its most beautiful characteristic. Amid the rugged features of such a country the refinements of Paganism would have been dwarfed into insignificance. How out of place would seem a Jove with his beard in ringlets--a trim Apollo--a sleek Bacchus--an ambrosial Venus--a slim Diana, and all their attendant groups of Oreads and Cupids--amid the ocean mists, and icebound torrents, the flame-scarred mountains, and four months' night--of a land which the opposing forces of heat and cold have selected for a battle-field!
The undeveloped reasoning faculty is prone to attach an undue value and meaning to the forms of things, and the infancy of a nation's mind is always more ready to worship the MANIFESTATIONS of a Power, than to look beyond them for a cause. Was it not natural then that these northerns, dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should fancy they could perceive a mysterious and independent energy in her operations, and at last come to confound the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical strife he finds around him, to see in the returning sun--fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled world--even more than a TYPE of that spiritual consciousness which alone can make the dead heart stir; to discover even more than an ANALOGY between the reign of cold, darkness, and desolation, and the still blanker ruin of a sin-perverted soul? But in that iron clime, amid such awful associations, the conflict going on was too terrible--the contending powers too visibly in presence of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse mind to be content with the puny godships of a Roman Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter were elements of felicity too mean for the nobler atmosphere of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and healthy minds,--invigorated and solemnized by the massive mould of the scenery around them,--Strength, Courage, Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice--naturally seemed more essential attributes of divinity than mere elegance and beauty. And we must remember that whilst the vigorous imagination of the north was delighting itself in creating a stately dreamland, where it strove to blend, in a grand world-picture--always harmonious, though not always consistent--the influences which sustain both the physical and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of sober Gothic common sense induced it--as a kind of protest against the too material interpretation of the symbolism it had employed--to wind up its religious scheme by sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming--in the place of the transient gods and perishable heaven of its Asgaard--that One undivided Deity, at whose approach the pillars of Walhalla were to fall, and Odin and his peers to perish, with all the subtle machinery of their existence; while man--himself immortal--was summoned to receive at the hands of the Eternal All-Father the sentence that waited upon his deeds. It is true this purer system belonged only to the early ages. As in the case of every false religion, the symbolism of the Scandinavian mythology lost with each succeeding generation something of its transparency, and at last degenerated into a gross superstition. But traces still remained, even down to the times of Christian ascendency, of the deep, philosophical spirit in which it had been originally conceived; and through its homely imagery there ran a vein of tender humour, such as still characterises the warm-hearted, laughter-loving northern races. Of this mixture of philosophy and fun, the following story is no bad specimen. [Footnote: The story of Thor's journey has been translated from the Edda both by the Howitts and Mr. Thorpe.]
Once on a time the two OEsir, Thor, the Thunder god, and his brother Lopt, attended by a servant, determined
The undeveloped reasoning faculty is prone to attach an undue value and meaning to the forms of things, and the infancy of a nation's mind is always more ready to worship the MANIFESTATIONS of a Power, than to look beyond them for a cause. Was it not natural then that these northerns, dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should fancy they could perceive a mysterious and independent energy in her operations, and at last come to confound the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical strife he finds around him, to see in the returning sun--fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled world--even more than a TYPE of that spiritual consciousness which alone can make the dead heart stir; to discover even more than an ANALOGY between the reign of cold, darkness, and desolation, and the still blanker ruin of a sin-perverted soul? But in that iron clime, amid such awful associations, the conflict going on was too terrible--the contending powers too visibly in presence of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse mind to be content with the puny godships of a Roman Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter were elements of felicity too mean for the nobler atmosphere of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and healthy minds,--invigorated and solemnized by the massive mould of the scenery around them,--Strength, Courage, Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice--naturally seemed more essential attributes of divinity than mere elegance and beauty. And we must remember that whilst the vigorous imagination of the north was delighting itself in creating a stately dreamland, where it strove to blend, in a grand world-picture--always harmonious, though not always consistent--the influences which sustain both the physical and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of sober Gothic common sense induced it--as a kind of protest against the too material interpretation of the symbolism it had employed--to wind up its religious scheme by sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming--in the place of the transient gods and perishable heaven of its Asgaard--that One undivided Deity, at whose approach the pillars of Walhalla were to fall, and Odin and his peers to perish, with all the subtle machinery of their existence; while man--himself immortal--was summoned to receive at the hands of the Eternal All-Father the sentence that waited upon his deeds. It is true this purer system belonged only to the early ages. As in the case of every false religion, the symbolism of the Scandinavian mythology lost with each succeeding generation something of its transparency, and at last degenerated into a gross superstition. But traces still remained, even down to the times of Christian ascendency, of the deep, philosophical spirit in which it had been originally conceived; and through its homely imagery there ran a vein of tender humour, such as still characterises the warm-hearted, laughter-loving northern races. Of this mixture of philosophy and fun, the following story is no bad specimen. [Footnote: The story of Thor's journey has been translated from the Edda both by the Howitts and Mr. Thorpe.]
Once on a time the two OEsir, Thor, the Thunder god, and his brother Lopt, attended by a servant, determined