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ding their blood in battle. These, thus received into the residence of the gods, were still exercised in all the operations of war, in order to keep them in breath, ready against the last great conflict. This was the great end to which all their pleasures and employments were directed. As to cowardly or inactive persons, what could the gods have done with them, when they were thus threatened with an attack as sudden as dangerous? They gave them up to the custody of Death, who was to punish their weakness with languor and pain. All this has nothing to do with that eternal hell and elysium which we shall see sketched out in the Edda with much more force and dignity; and where nothing will be regarded but fidelity, chastity, integrity and justice *.

[w] Tacitus informs us that the Germans had no other physicians but their women. They followed the armies to staunch and suck the wounds of their husbands. In like manner, all the histories and romances of the north always represent the females, and often princesses, charged with this care. The same thing may be observed of almost all nations in their infancy.

[x] The travels of goddesses and fairies through the air are very common in all the poems and fables of the ancient inhabitants of the north, and most of the nations in Europe have thought in this respect along with them. When in process of time Christianity became prevalent, what had been formerly looked upon as a precious gift and signal mark of divine favour was now regarded as the effect only of diabolic arts. The assemblies of ecclesiastics made very severe prohibitions, and denounced their anathemas against all those who should travel through the air in the night-time. In the ancient law of Norway, called "Gulathings Lagen," c. i., we find this regulation, "Let the king and the bishop, with all possible care, make inquiry after those who exercise Pagan superstitions; who make use of magic arts; who adore the genii of particular places, or of tombs, or rivers; and who, by a diabolic manner of travelling, are transported from place to place through the air," &c. A council held at Rouen contains a prohibition of the same

nature.

[r] The Edda never loses sight of the destruction of the world. It was owing to this expectation that the inferior gods received with pleasure warriors of approved valour, and such as they could depend on at the last times.

[z] This description of the palace of Odin is a natural picture of the manners of the ancient Scandinavians and Germans. Prompted by the wants of their climate, and the impulse of their own temperament, they, form to themselves a delicious paradise in their own way; where they were to eat and drink, and fight. The women, to whom they assign a place there, are introduced for no other purpose but to fill their cups. One wild boar furnishes out the whole of this celestial banquet: for, not very nice, they were only solicitous about the quantity of their food. The flesh of this animal, as well as that of the hog, was formerly the favourite meat of all these nations. The ancient Franks were no less fond of it; a herd of swine was, in their eyes, an affair of such importance that the second chapter of the Salic Law consisting of twenty articles, is wholly taken up in inflicting penalties on those who stole them. In Gregory of Tours, Queen Fredegond, in order to

* See our remarks on the 53rd chapter of the Prose Edda, page 497.-ED.

L J

alienate the mind of the king from one Nectarius, blackens him with the erime of having stolen a great many gammons or hams from the place where King Chilperic laid up his provisions. The king did not consider this at all as a laughing matter, but took it in a very grave and serious light. [AA] Wine was very scarce in those times, and almost unknown. Beer was, perhaps, a liquor too vulgar for the heroes; the Edda, therefore, makes them drink hydromel, or mead, a beverage in great esteem among all the German nations. The ancient Franks made great use of it. Gregory of Tours, speaking of a certain lord who generally drank it, adds, Ut mos barbarorum habet.-Greg. Turon. L. 8. c. 3.

[BB] From this passage of the Edda we may form to ourselves an idea of the amusements of the ancient Teutonic nations. When they were not engaged in any real war, they endeavoured, by the representation of battles, to gratify that fierce disposition which made them fond of the profession of arms. To this custom we may ascribe the rise and establishment of joustings and tournaments.

[co] To conceive the force of this raillery, the reader must remember that Thor is represented of gigantic size, and as the stoutest and strongest of the gods. The Hercules of the northern nations.-P.

[DD] Our modern bacchanals will here observe that punishing by a bumper is not an invention of these degenerate days. The ancient Scandinavians were great topers. The drinking vessels of the northern nations were the horns of animals, of their natural length, only tipped with silver, &e. In York minster is preserved one of these ancient drinking vessels, composed of a large elephant's tooth, of its natural dimensions, ornamented with sculpture.-P.

[EE] We see plainly in the above fable the origin of those vulgar opinions entertained in the north, and which Pontoppidan has recorded concerning the craken and that monstrous serpent described in his History of Norway.-P.

[FF] Baldur, not having the good fortune to be slain in battle, was obliged to go, like all those that died of diseases, to the abode of Death. Saxo Grammaticus relates the same adventure, with some different circumstances.

[GG] Loki having at length tired out the patience of the gods, they seize and punish him. This idea, at the bottom, has prevailed among almost all the ancient nations; but they have each of them embellished it after their own manner. One cannot doubt but our Scandinavians brought with them from Asia this belief, which appears to have been very widely established there from the earliest antiquity. In the book of the pretended prophecy of Enoch, we find many particulars very much resembling these of the Edda. The rebel angels causing incessantly a thousand disorders, God commanded the archangel Raphael to bind hand and foot one of the principal among them, named Azael, and cast him into an obscure place in a desert, there to keep him bound upon sharp-pointed stones to the last day. One may also safely conjecture that the fables of Prometheus, Typhon, and Enceladus are derived from the same origin.

[HH] What we have been reading is, for the most part, nothing else but the doctrine of Zeno and the Stoics. This remarkable resemblance has never been properly considered, and highly deserves a discussion. The ancients

universally assure us, that the Stoic philosophy established the existence of an eternal divinity, diffused through and pervading all nature; and being as it were, the soul and primum mobile of matter. From this divinity proceeded, as emanations from his essence, together with the world, certain intelligences ordained to govern under his directions, and who were to undergo the same revolutions as the world itself until the day appointed for the renovation of this universe. The fires concealed in the veins of the earth never cease to dry up the moisure contained therein, and will, in the end, set it all on flames: "A time will come," says Seneca, "when the world, ripe for a renovation, shall be wrapt in flames; when the opposite powers shall in conflict mutually destroy each other; when the constellations shall dash together; and when the whole universe, plunged in the same common fire, shall be consumed to ashes." (Senec. Consol. ad Marciam. cap. ult.) This general destruction was to be preceded by an inundation: and in this respect the Edda perfectly agrees with Zeno. Seneca treats this subject of a future deluge at large, in his Quæst. Natural. lib. iii. c. 29, which he asserts must contribute to purify and prepare the earth for a new race of inhabitants more innocent and virtuous than the present.

But the consummation of the world by fire was the point most strongly insisted on by the Stoics. These verses of Seneca's kinsman, Lucan, are well known:

"Hos populos si nunc non usserit Ignis,

Uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti;
Communis Mundo superest Rogus."

But the strongest proof of the agreement between these two systems is this, that the destruction of the world will involve in it that of the gods; that is to say all those created, or inferior divinities. This is expressed by Seneca, the tragedian, in most clear and precise terms, in those remarkable

verses:

"Jamjam legibus obrutis

Mundo cum veniet dies:
Australis polus obruet,
Quidquid per Lybyam jacet
Et sparsus Garamas tenet;
Arctous polus obruet,
Quidquid subjacet axibus,
Et siccus boreas ferit.

Amisso trepidus polo,
Titan excutiet diem;
Coeli regia concidens

Ortus atque obitus trahet;
Atque omnes pariter Deos
Perdet mors aliqua, et chaos."
Hercul. Oet. v. 1103.

In another place Seneca explains what he means by this death of the gods. They were not to be absolutely annihilated; but to be once more reunited, by dissolution, to the soul of the world; being resolved and melted into that intelligence of fire, into that eternal and universal principle, from which they had originally been emanations. It was, without doubt, in this sense also that our northern philosophers understood the matter. We may, from analogy, supply this circumstance with the greater confidence, as the poets have been ever more attentive to adorn and embellish the received doctrines, than to deliver them with precision. But, lastly, what must render this parallel more complete and striking, is, that according to the school of Zeno, no less than in the Icelandic prophecies, this tremendous scene is succeeded by a new creation, evidently drawn in the same colours by both.

"The world," says Seneca," being melted and re-entered into the bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time totally concentered in himself, and remains concealed, as it were, wholly immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas; afterwards we see a new world spring from him, perfect in all its parts; animals are produced anew; an innocent race of men are formed under more favourable auspices, in order to people this earth, the worthy abode of virtue. In short, the whole face of nature becomes more pleasing and lovely." (Senec. Epist. 9. and Quæst. Nat. L. 3. c. ult.) The Edda gives us the same descriptions in other words. occur in the poem of the Völuspá above alluded to.

They likewise

The distance between Scandinavia and those countries where the Stoic philosophy prevailed, is certainly great, and must have been greater still in former ages than the present, when commerce and books lend wings to opinions, and diffuse them in a short time through the world. On the other hand, the system now under consideration is not such as all men would arrive at by mere dint of reflection. It appears then probable that all those who adopted it must have had it from the same hands; namely, from the eastern philosophers, and more particularly from the Persians. And history affords a sanction to this conjecture. We know that the Scandinavians came from some country of Asia. Zeno, who was born in Cyprus, of Phoenician parents, borrowed, in all probability, the principal tenets of his doctrine from the philosophers of the East. 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 till the last day and that then the Good Principle should be reunited to the supreme God, from whom it had first issued: the Evi should be overcome and subdued; darkness should be destroyed, and tne world, purified by a universal conflagration, should become a luminous and shining abode, into which Evil should never more be permitted to enter.

Some of the points of doctrine, which I have been displaying after the Edda, have been consecrated by revelation. See, for instance, 2 Pet. ch. 3, v. 7, 10, 13; Mat. ch. 24, v. 10, 12; Mark, ch. 13, v. 24, 25; Luke, ch. 21. v. 25, 26; Rev. ch. 6, v. 12, 13, 14; ch. 12, v. 1, 2, 4; ch. 21, v. 1, 4, 18, 23, 27.

In the new earth, which was to succeed that which we inhabit, there were to be again subaltern divinities to govern it; and men to people it. This, in general, is what the Edda means to tell us: although the circumstances of the relation are darkly and allegorically delivered: yet not so obscurely, but that one easily sees it was the idea of the northern philosophers, as well as of the Stoics, that the world was to be renovated, and spring forth again more perfect and more beautiful. This is what is expressed here with regard to the sun and moon. Lif signifies life; which is a farther proof, that by the fable of these two human beings who are to survive the destruction of the world, these northern philosophers meant to say that there still existed in the earth a vivifying principle, and seed proper to repair the loss of the former inhabitants.

ABSTRACT

OF THE

EYRBYGGJA-SAGA;

BEING THE EARLY ANNALS OF THAT DISTRICT OF ICELAND LYING AROUND THE PROMONTORY CALLED SNÆFELLS *.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Or the various records of Icelandic history and literature, there is none more interesting than the Eyrbyggja-Saga, composed (as has been conjectured by the learned Thorkelin) before the year 1264, when Iceland was still subject to the dominion of Norway +. The name of the author is unknown, but the simplicity of his annals seems a sufficient warrant for their fidelity. They contain the history of a particular territory of the Island of Iceland, lying around the promontory called Snæfells, from its first settlement by emigrants from Norway: and the chronicle details, at great length, the feuds which took place among the families by whom the land was occupied, the advances which they made towards a more regular state of society, their habits, their superstitions, and their domestic laws and customs. If the events which are commemorated in these provincial annals are not in themselves of great importance, the reader may, in recompense, derive, from the minuteness with which they are detailed, an acquaintance with the manners of the northern nations, not to be acquired from the perusal of more general history. It is, therefore, presumed, that an abstract of the more interesting parts of the Eyrbyggja-Saga may be acceptable to the readers of the Northern Antiquities. The learned Thorkelin published a correct edition of this history in 1787, executed at the expense of Suhm, the illustrious and munificent patron of northern literature. A Latin version, supplied by the well-known accuracy of the editor, assists the difficulties of those who are imperfectly acquainted with the original Icelandic.

In the year of God 883, a Norwegian nobleman, named Biorn, having been declared an exile by Harold, King of Norway, had recourse to the

*This abstract of the Eyrbyggja Saga, is printed verbatim from the "Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1 vol. 4to. Edinb. 1814.-ED.

+ This must be a lapsus calami of our great novelist, for it was in the year 1264 that Iceland became "subject to the dominion of Norway." See page 297.-Ed.

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