echo in the dark night! Only that it had such a history we can
all know. Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing he
thought-of was a contribution, accession, a change or revolution made.
Alas, the grandest 'revolution' of all, the one made by the man Odin
himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest! Of Odin what
history? Strange rather to reflect that he _had_ a history! That this
Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his
rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us; with our sorrows, joys,
with our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one as we: and did such a
work! But the work, much of it, has perished; the worker, all to the
name. "_Wednes_day," men will say to-morrow; Odin's day! Of Odin there
exists no history; no document of it; no guess about it worth
repeating.

Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business
style, writes down, in his _Heimskringla_, how Odin was a heroic
Prince, in the Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people
straitened for room. How he led these _Asen_ (Asiatics) of his out of
Asia; settled them in the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest;
invented Letters, Poetry and so forth,--and came by and by to be
worshipped as Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made
into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has no doubt of
this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very curious Northman of that same century,
is still more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact
in every individual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event
in Denmark or elsewhere. Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries
later, assigns by calculation a _date_ for it: Odin, he says, came
into Europe about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded
on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing.
Far, very far beyond the Year 70! Odin's date, adventures, whole
terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever
into unknown thousands of years.

Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man
Odin ever existed. He proves it by etymology. The word _Wuotan_, which
is the original form of _Odin_, a word spread, as name of their chief
Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which
connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin _vadere_, with the
English _wade_ and suchlike,--means primarily _Movement_, Source of
Movement, P