terature remained a sealed book, however,
until the end of the eighteenth century, and very slowly since that
time it has been winning its way in the teeth of indifference, until
there are now signs that it will eventually come into its own. "To
know the old Faith," says Carlyle, "brings us into closer and clearer
relation with the Past--with our own possessions in the Past. For
the whole Past is the possession of the Present; the Past had always
something true, and is a precious possession."

The weighty words of William Morris regarding the Volsunga Saga
may also be fitly quoted as an introduction to the whole of this
collection of "Myths of the Norsemen": "This is the great story of
the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was
to the Greeks--to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change
of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has
been--a story too--then should it be to those that come after us no
less than the Tale of Troy has been to us."

CHAPTER I: THE BEGINNING

Myths of Creation

Although the Aryan inhabitants of Northern Europe are supposed by some
authorities to have come originally from the plateau of Iran, in the
heart of Asia, the climate and scenery of the countries where they
finally settled had great influence in shaping their early religious
beliefs, as well as in ordering their mode of living.

The grand and rugged landscapes of Northern Europe, the midnight
sun, the flashing rays of the aurora borealis, the ocean continually
lashing itself into fury against the great cliffs and icebergs of
the Arctic Circle, could not but impress the people as vividly as
the almost miraculous vegetation, the perpetual light, and the blue
seas and skies of their brief summer season. It is no great wonder,
therefore, that the Icelanders, for instance, to whom we owe the most
perfect records of this belief, fancied in looking about them that the
world was originally created from a strange mixture of fire and ice.

Northern mythology is grand and tragical. Its principal theme is the
perpetual struggle of the beneficent forces of Nature against the
injurious, and hence it is not graceful and idyllic in character,
like the religion of the sunny South, where the people could bask
in perpetual sunshine, and the fruits of the earth grew ready to
their hand.

It was very natural that the dangers incurred in hunting and fishing
under these inclement sk