powers are due to magic, the Sovereign Law-Giver, and the Warrior God. Thus Jupiter, at first the Sky God, seems to have developed into the Terrible Sovereign, and remains to some extent in opposition to the warrior Mars.
This is so wide a subject that to dwell on it further would be to defer the main purpose of the book. We have to consider the kind of heritage which our forefathers have left us, and we must decide on its nature before we attempt to see it in the light of other mythologies. It is necessary however to realize that such world patterns in religion exist. When we are studying the myths of our own race, there may be parallels in the myths of other peoples which will help us to understand our own more clearly. The realization of this is perhaps the most exciting recent discovery in the history of religions. It helps us to see the myths of the past as man’s attempt to embody his intuitive ideas about the human mind and its environment, to express truths dimly perceived which have roots in his innermost being. Thus the myths may lead us to discover more about our spiritual heritage, and perhaps to realize some of the defects in the spiritual development of the modern world. The study of mythology need no longer be looked on as an escape from reality into the fantasies of primitive peoples, but as a search for the deeper understanding of the human mind. In reaching out to explore the distant hills where the gods dwell and the deeps where the monsters are lurking, we are perhaps discovering the way home.
Chapter 1 - The World of the Northern Gods
I am the child of the Earth and starry Heaven, but my origin is of Heaven alone.
Orphic Grave Tablet
1.
Christianity was firmly established in north-western Europe in the twelfth century, but there was still interest in the heathen legends of the gods. By then men were secure enough in their faith not to fear a resurgence of the ancient paganism, and felt new stirrings of affection for the old tales, never forgotten by the northern poets. The complex, sophisticated verses of the skaldic poets were very fashionable at the courts of kings and in the halls of cultured men, and these poets relied on the myths as their main source of imagery. Their poetry was filled with allusions to the old stories, some of them mere cliches, some neat and witty, and some retaining real poetic fire. In seventeenth-century England the poet Milton enriched his picture of a Biblical Eden by reference to such legends as the descent of Proserpine to Hades, and he could expect an instant response from readers trained in classical lore. In the same way a medieval Icelandic poet could refer to poetry as the ship of the dwarfs, to gold as the tears of Freyja or the cushion of the dragon Fafnir, and to a sword as the fire of the Valkyries: his audience would comprehend his meaning from their knowledge of the myths. He could do this whether he were praising a loved woman, describing adventures in battle, or expressing his enthusiasm for the cause of Christ, and be confident that his hearers would seize on the imaginative implications of his images.
By the twelfth century it was growing more difficult to do this. The old myths were fading from men’s minds: the churchmen sometimes condemned them as evil, and cultured young men were reared in the new Christian learning instead of the heathen traditions. It therefore occurred to a gifted Icelandic scholar, Snorri Sturluson, that it would be worth while to write a book about these matters before they were utterly lost. Snorri was a man of extraordinary gifts: chieftain, politician, historian, saga-writer, and poet. He planned his work as a handbook for poets and intellectuals, a guide to poetic imagery. Since he was a brilliant stylist, writing in his native Icelandic, it was no dry antiquarian treatise; he told the old tales of the gods with wit, irony, and a lively delight in their imaginative beauty. He called his book the
There is little doubt that on the whole Snorri has given us a faithful picture of heathen mythology as he found it in the poets. Sometimes he quotes from poems which we still possess, and we can see what he is about; sometimes he gives us stanzas from lost poems, or tells stories which seem to be summaries of narrative poems now vanished; sometimes it is obvious that he is quoting statements which he himself does not understand. He was a fine scholar and literary artist, and was able on the whole to resist the temptation to alter his sources so as to rationalize them or to point a Christian moral. But he was primarily a literary artist, not an anthropologist or religious historian, and he was writing in the thirteenth century, not the heathen period. Much of his material came from poets who themselves had written in a Christian age. The question has to be raised then how far in his book we are dealing with an artificial world of myth, far removed from the living faith of the heathen period. For the moment however, provided we remember his limitations, there seems no better introduction to the mythology of the north than that which Snorri gives us.
2.
Snorri began from a Christian standpoint, but a wise and tolerant one. When men by their sins broke away from God, he explained in his preface, they lost true understanding of him, and had to begin again from the beginning. As they looked at the wonderful living world around them and the heavens above, they felt that these must have been formed by an almighty creator, one who ruled the stars and existed before them. When certain great heroes came into their world, they believed that these must be the gods, and gave them worship. In this way Snorri explained the existence of the old legends, firmly rejecting the idea that the ancient divinities were devils. He knew that there were many gods and goddesses, and suggested that they came first from Troy, and that Thor was perhaps a grandson of King Priam, thus linking the north to the ancient world. Among the sons of Thor he placed Odin the Wise, who shared with his wife Frigg great powers of magic. Odin and Frigg moved northwards to Germany, and then to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, leaving one of their sons to rule each kingdom. In Sweden in particular Odin set up chiefs and a code of laws ‘after the pattern of Troy’, and here was the centre of his rule. His descendants were known as the Aesir.
After this admirably objective introduction, Snorri presented the main body of his material, an account of the gods and their world. The first section of his book was called
Now if you find more questions to ask, I don’t know how you will set about it, for I have never heard anyone tell more of the story of the world than this. Make what you can of it!
In this way Snorri skilfully avoids responsibility for the material which he is presenting. It is not he who speaks, as in the preface, but three doubtful characters who, you may think, were merely having sport with a naive and inquisitive Swedish king. All men knew that the cunning old Aesir were past masters at spells to deceive the eyes and the mind. But Snorri guessed that most readers would be won by the persuasive tongues of the Great Three to listen for a while to their account of the vanished world of the gods.
This world had for its centre a great tree, a mighty ash called Yggdrasill. So huge was this tree that its
