S. A. Dunham

“ She excelled in chastity, and was much worshipped, not in Scandinavia only, but among the Vends, and perhaps the Slavonians, as a personification of the summer-earth. Her greatest pride is her fair hair, which, like the hammer of Thor, and the magic ring possessed by Odin, was the work of the dwarfs. She is thus described by Ohlenschlager:
Sif, tall and fair with native grace,
To none in beauty need give place
Save her whom Odin called to light,
To make the erst dull world more bright. ”

“ Olaf, had accompanied Magnus into Norway; and such had been the aid she had procured him, that he gratefully settled her in his palace, showing her the utmost honour. But, at the same time, he sent for his mother Alfhilda, whom he treated with more affection but with less honour. Indignant at this distinction, she insisted on more than an equality, which Astrida being unwilling to grant, the two ladies could no longer reside in the same house. In his kingdom Magnus had more influence than in his palace, he effectually restored tranquillity, and became popular. ”

“ Let all persons, whether noble or ignoble, obtain their rights according to law, from which no deviation shall be allowed, either from fear of me, or through favour to the powerful, or for the purpose of supplying my treasury. I have no need of money raised by injustice. I am now on my road to Denmark, for the purpose of concluding peace with those nations, who, had it been in their power, would have deprived us both of our crown and our life. ”

“ On the other hand, Agner was among the giants or evil genii, and married to a woman of that hated race. Great, therefore, was the contrast between the fortunes of the two; and Odin one day, from the highest heaven, pointed it out in triumph to his goddess-queen. Frigga declared that Geirrod was undeserving of the good fortune; that he was a niggard who starved his dependents and guests. This the god refused to credit; and when she persisted in the charge, he assumed a mortal form to try the experiment. But what man can equal a woman, either god or goddess, in cunning? ”

“ Spring is always accompanied by joy and harmony,—by the song of birds, by the cheerful hum of men, by the gambols of animals, by the sportive winds: hence it is personified in Iduna: she is the wife of Braga, the god of poetry, of music, of song, of harmony. Thiasse, the giant, is the winter: Iduna flies from him in the shape of the swallow, which is everywhere the bird of spring. The destruction of the giant by the flames, denotes the season of winter killed by the heat of the spring.—That this explanation of the mythos is ingenious, as well as plausible, cannot be denied ”

“ Giants were more kindred with the Celtic than with the Gothic creed. By the latter, indeed, they were hated even more than feared. Whoever will peruse with attention those passages of the two Eddas where giants are mentioned, will probably arrive at the same conclusion with ourselves—that they were foreign to the genius of the Scythians. We may adore what we fear; but we never adore what we hate, still less what we despise. The same may be observed in regard to the magical rites of the two people. Of dark magic we read every where amongst the people of the former race. ”

“ Few were the regal pontiffs of Asia who did not boast of their descent from some god—some warrior king, whom after ages, admiring his success, had deified. Odin was not likely to neglect so useful an instrument for his designs. Then as he and the Vanir chiefs were unquestionably a much more civilised people than the natives of the north; as his talents, beyond all doubt, were of a commanding order; as the religious rites of which he was the superior hereditary pontiff, were celebrated with more pomp; as success attended all his measures, whether of war or of policy ”

“ The blood-thirsty character of the Northmen, which could not enjoy peace without cutting one another to pieces, has been justly exposed by historians. Still, however valour might be esteemed, we would not assert that it was the only virtue in the mind of the Scandinavians, or that heaven was closed to every other. There is, indeed, room to infer that this tenet was confined merely to a sect,—a caste,—the dominant one,—the immediate followers of Odin. ”

“ These three children of Loke were reared in Utgard by the mother. The fatal influence which they were to exercise over the universe, was not concealed from Vala, the mysterious prophetess of heaven, or from Skulda, the Norny of the future. The gods being warned, sent to secure them. Jormungandur, one of the most dreaded, was seized, and by Odin cast into the great sea that separates the human from the giant world. There so large did it become, that it surrounded the whole earth,—being condemned to hold its tail in its mouth, and thus to form a circle. ”

“ Freed from the cares which had so long distracted him, the king again turned his eyes towards Livonia. His former successes in that region had not corresponded with his preparations: the bishop of Riga was persecuted alike by the pagan inhabitants and the Greek Christians: the glory of vindicating the true faith was no slight one in his estimation; but the ambition of reigning over the whole maritime coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to Livonia, was a still greater inducement for undertaking a new expedition. Never had Denmark equipped so great an armament as that which now left her ports. ”

“ Thrym (sung) .—“I have the Thunderer’s hammer bound, Fathoms eight beneath the ground; With it shall no one homeward tread, Till he bring me Freyia to share my bed.” Away flew Loke; the wing’d robe sounds, Ere he has left the Jotunheim bounds, And ere he has reach’d the Asgard grounds. At Midgard Thor met crafty Loke, And this the first word that he spoke; “Have you your errand and labour done? Tell from aloft the course you run. For setting oft the story fails, And lying oft the lie prevails.”
Loke (sung) .—“My labour is past, mine errand I bring; Thrym has thine hammer, the giant king ”

“ The demise of Magnus immediately followed his successful expedition in Denmark to avenge the rebellion of Sweyn. The son of a saint could scarcely leave the world without some manifestation of divine favour. In a dream his father Olaf appeared to him, and ordered him to make his choice between two proposals—either to die, and join the deceased king in heaven, or to live the most powerful of monarchs, yet commit some crime for which he could hardly expect the divine forgiveness. ”

“ Swerker II., the son of Charles, was the next king, in virtue of the compact between the Goths and the Swedes. But every day more clearly evinced the dangers resulting from that compact: it daily widened the breach, not merely between the two royal families, but between the two great tribes which constituted the nation. Blood had been openly or treacherously spilt by both parties; and the deadly feud had descended to the chiefs of both. It was, from the first, the object of Swerker to exterminate the family of his rival; but one prince—Eric, the only son of the late king—escaped into Norway. ”

“ All things, however, are not to be destroyed: two individuals, a man and a woman, are to be saved, and made the progenitors of a new and fairer world. It should be observed, that in the Scandinavian as in the Greek and Roman superstition, superior sanctity is ascribed to the women. They alone knew the fates; even Odin had to consult them when he wished to look beyond the dark cloud that concealed the future from the gods no less than from mankind. ”

“ Adolf of Schawenburg, Albert duke of Saxony, the archbishop of Bremen, the prince of Werle—all had profited by the spoil, and all had troops ready to defend their usurpations. In great wrath Valdemar took the field; but his good fortune had left him for ever; and after many fruitless, however ruinous, efforts, he was compelled to make peace with his enemies, and to pay money for the ransom of his hostages. The loss of Lubeck and of all Dithmarsh grieved him more perhaps than the rest; for Lubeck was already a rich and a populous city, the centre of a large commerce. ”

“ The mysterious allusion to the assistance which he afforded Odin in the work of creation, is one great proof of his identification with the powers of evil: his relationship with the giants, on both sides, sufficiently accounts for his hostility towards the gods, with whom he associated that he might find an opportunity of triumphing over them. He is styled a coward, because his deeds will not bear the light—the inventor of deceit, of lies, of every thing base. The first of his offspring, the great serpent, is evidently a relic of the Celtic creed. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, is more hopeless than the attempt to restore these ancient pieces to the original fragmentary state in which they were left by the priests of Thor and of Odin. The scald has, by embellishing, concealed the priest; the fabulist concealed the philosophic theologian. All that we can safely assert is, that there is here a physical contest between heat and cold, between evaporation and congelation; that the sun (Thor) , having drunk up all the streams of the earth, now invades the dominions of frost and snow. ”

“ He decreed that whoever took any thing from a poor man’s hut without paying the value, should be visited with rigorous penalties. From his brother Valdemar he sustained some trouble; but he crushed the seeds of rebellion by imprisoning that restless prince. To support, with greater magnificence, the regal state, he obtained, from the gratitude of his people, a considerable augmentation of his resources. This augmentation consisted in certain returns from the mines, and from the great lakes of Sweden. Well did he merit this liberality; for never had the country a greater king. ”

“ Pecuniary fines—the basis of Germanic jurisprudence—were exerted with a rigour never before experienced. In all these measures the king was abundantly justified; but they gave not the less offence to men hardened by long impunity. Open mutiny or smothered discontent, loud menaces, or secret conspiracies, marked the greater part of his short reign. Even the rigour with which he suppressed piracy made him enemies; if it was agreeable to the great body of his people, it was hateful to the licentious nobles who had so long profited by it. ”

“ In Greenland, they called into existence a colony which subsisted above three hundred years. In Russia, they laid the foundation of the greatest empire which the world has yet seen. Even in North America, transient or unknown as were the results they produced, they exhibit a phenomenon as curious as it is interesting,—a handful of warlike shepherds, or adventurous mariners, traversing the wide Atlantic, and attempting to introduce their own institutions among the savages of another world. ”