ecognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal
Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the
infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this
ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse System something
very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity,
so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek
Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the
genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the
things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the
things,--the first characteristic of all good Thought in all times.
Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a
certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude
sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful
Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse
Gods 'brewing ale' to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Joetun;
sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in the Joetun country;
Thor, after many adventures, clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge
hat, and walking off with it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot
reaching down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward
gianthood, characterises that Norse System; enormous force, as yet
altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides.
Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having
got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made by 'warm wind,' and much
confused work, out of the conflict of Frost and Fire,--determined on
constructing a world with him. His blood made the sea; his flesh was
the Land, the Rocks his bones; of his eyebrows they formed Asgard
their Gods'-dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity,
and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper-Brobdignagian
business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, enormous;--to be tamed in
due time into the compact greatness, not giant-like, but godlike and
stronger than gianthood, of the Shakspeares, the Goethes!--Spiritually
as well as bodily these men are our progenitors.

I like, too, that representation they have of the Tree Igdrasil. All
Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of
Existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death;
its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole
Universe: it is the Tree of Existe