hall survive;
neither the flood nor Surtur's fire shall harm them. They shall dwell on
the plain of Ida _where Asgard formerly stood_.... Baldur and Hoedur
shall also repair thither from the abode of death. There they shall sit
and converse together, and call to mind their former knowledge and the
perils they underwent.'[9]

The similarity between the higher doctrines of the northern faith and
the religion of ancient Persia is at once accounted for by the tradition
of the Odin migration from the East. A writer the reverse of credulous
expresses himself thus on that subject: 'We know that the Scandinavians
came from some country of Asia.... This doctrine was in many respects
the same with that of the Magi. Zoroaster had taught that the conflict
between Ormuzd and Ahriman (_i.e._ light and darkness, the Good and Evil
Principle) should continue to the last day; and that then the Good
Principle should be reunited to the Supreme God, from whom it had first
issued; the Evil should be overcome and subdued; darkness should be
destroyed; and the world, purified by a universal conflagration, should
become a luminous and shining abode, into which evil should never be
permitted to enter.'[10] The same writer continues thus: 'Odin and the
AEsir may be compared to Ormuzd and the Amshaspands; Loki and his evil
progeny, the Wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent, together with the
giants and monsters of Joetunheim and Hvergelmir, to Ahriman and the
Devs.[11] ... We will not deny that some of these doctrines may have
been handed down by oral tradition to the pontiff-chieftains of the
Scandinavian tribes, and that the Skalds who composed the mythic poems
of the elder Edda may have had an obscure and imperfect knowledge of
them. Be this as it may, we must not forget that the higher doctrines of
the Scandinavian system were confined to the few, whereas those of the
Zendavesta were the religious belief of the whole nation.[12] ... The
Persian system was calculated to form an energetic, intellectual and
highly moral people; the Scandinavian a semi-barbarous troop of crafty
and remorseless warriors.... Yet, such as they were, these
Scandinavians seemed to have been destined by the inscrutable designs of
Providence to invigorate at least one of the nations of which they were
for centuries the scourge, in order, as we previously had occasion to
observe, that the genial blending of cognate tribes might form a people
the most capable of carrying on