was soon joined by all who were discontented with the change of dynasty, and although his enemies tried to ridicule his proceedings by calling him "The Woodcutter" (Tretelgia), his colony grew into a petty state of some importance. A scarcity however ensued, which the people attributed to the king having been remiss in his religious duties, meaning probably that he had not given them a sufficient number of sacrificial banquets. They accordingly surrounded Olaf's house, and burnt him in it, offering him as a sacrifice to Odin for a good harvest. The most enlightened amongst them saw, however, that the real cause of the famine was a surplus population, and that it would be a much wiser plan for them to rely on their own exertions, than to sit down and die of starvation in the vain expectation that Odin would supply their wants with crops of superabundant fertility. They therefore crossed the mountains to Norway, and having made Olaf's son, Halfdan Whitebone, their king, conquered Raumariki, Westfold, and other petty states in the southern part of that country. Halfdan was succeeded by his son Eystein, who was drowned at sea. His son and successor, Halfdan, enriched himself by successful Viking expeditions, and obtained the singular surname of "The Munificent and Food-sparing," because he gave his followers plenty of money, but nearly starved them to death. The son and successor of this sea-roving king was Gudreyd the Magnificent, at whose death, which is said to have taken place in the year 841, the kingdom of Westfold was divided between his two sons, Olaf and Halfdan the Black.

That Halfdan was a real historical personage, and the father of the celebrated Harald Hárfagra, of whom frequent mention will be made in this work, is unquestionable; and although the evidence is by no means conclusive, we should be inclined to admit that his ancestors, up to the Woodcutter, were also men of real thews and sinews, who played their parts, with more or less success, in the ever-varying drama of human existence. We have devoted more attention to the Ynglinga Saga than it probably deserves, as it will be frequently alluded to in the following chapters, and must remark in conclusion, that to throw discredit on the whole of Snorri's Heimskringla merely because the first book is little better than a legendary fiction, would be equally as absurd as

to impeach the veracity of Livy because he begins his Roman history by the legend of Romulus, which Niebuhr has shown to be equally as devoid of foundation as that of the historical Odin.]

CHAPTER IV.

A GENERAL IDEA OF THE PRIMITIVE WORSHIP OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS.

Ir is not easy to form an exact notion of the religion formerly professed in the north of Europe. What the Latin and Greek authors have written on this subject is commonly deficient in point of exactness. They had for many ages little or no intercourse with the inhabitants of these countries, whom they styled barbarians; they were ignorant of their language, and, as most of these nations made a scruple of unfolding the grounds of their religious doctrines to strangers, the latter, who were thereby reduced to be mere spectators of their outward forms of worship, could not easily enter into the spirit of it. And yet, if we bring together the few short sketches which these different writers have preserved of it, if we correct them by one another, if we compare their accounts with those of the ancient poets and historians of these nations themselves, I flatter myself, we shall throw light enough upon this subject to be able to distinguish the most important objects in it.

A few plain easy doctrines seem to have comprised the whole of religion known to the first inhabitants of Europe. The farther back we ascend to the era of the creation, the more plainly we discover traces of this conformity among the several nations of the earth; but in proportion as we see them dispersed to form distant settlements and colonies, they seem to swerve from their original ideas, and to assume new forms of religion. The nations, who settled in the southern countries, were they who altered it the first, and afterwards disfigured it the most. These people derive from their climate a lively, fruitful, and restless imagination, which makes them greedy of novelties and wonders: they have also ardent passions, which rarely suffer them to preserve a rational freedom of mind, or to see things coolly and impartially. Hence the

wild frenzies of the Egyptians, Syrians and Greeks in religious matters; and hence that chaos of extravagances, in some respects ingenious, known by the name of mythology; through which we can hardly discover any traces of the ancient doctrines. And yet we do discover them, and can make it appear, that those first doctrines, which the southern nations so much disguised, were the very same that were preserved in the north without any material alteration. There the rigour of the climate necessarily locks up the capricious desires, confines the imagination, lessens the number of the passions, as well as abates their violence, and by yielding only to painful and unremitted labour, wholly confines to material objects that activity of mind which produces among men levity and disquiet.

But whether these causes have not always operated with the same efficacy, or whether others more powerful have prevailed over them; the greatest part of these nations, after having, for some time, continued inviolably attached to the religion of their first fathers, suffered it at length to be corrupted by an intermixture of ceremonies, some of them ridiculous, others cruel; in which, by little and little, as it commonly happens, they came to place the whole essence of religion. It is not easy to mark the precise time when this alteration happened, as well for want of ancient monuments, as because it was introduced by imperceptible degrees, and at different times among different nations: but it is not therefore the less certain, that we ought to distinguish two different epochs or ages in this religion, and in each of these we should be careful not to confound the opinions of the sages with the fables or mythology of the poets. Without these distinctions it is difficult to reconcile the different accounts, often in appearance contradictory, which we find in ancient. authors. Yet I cannot promise to mark out precisely, what belongs to each of these classes in particular. The lights which guide us at intervals through these dark ages, are barely sufficient to show us some of the more striking objects; but the finer links which connect and join them together will generally escape us.

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Let us first of all examine this religion in its purity. It taught the being of a supreme God, master of the universe, to whom all things were submissive and obedient." Such,

according to Tacitus, was the supreme God of the Germans. The ancient Icelandic mythology calls him "the author of every thing that existeth; the eternal, the ancient, the living and awful Being, the searcher into concealed things, the Being that never changeth." This religion attributed to the Supreme Deity "an infinite power, a boundless knowledge, an incorruptible justice," and forbade its followers to represent him under any corporeal form. They were not even to think of confining him within the enclosure of walls, but were taught that it was only within woods and consecrated forests that they could serve him properly. There he seemed to reign in silence, and to make himself felt by the respect which he inspired. It was an injurious extravagance to attribute to this deity, a human figure, to erect statues to him, to suppose him of any sex, or to represent him by images. From this supreme God were sprung (as it were emanations of his divinity) an infinite number of subaltern deities and genii, of which every part of the visible world was the seat and temple. These intelligences did not barely reside in each part of nature; they directed its operations, it was the organ or instrument of their love or liberality to mankind. Each element was under the guidance of some being peculiar to it. The earth, the water, the fire, the air, the sun, moon, and stars had each their respective divinity. The trees, forests, rivers, mountains, rocks, winds, thunder and tempests had the same; and merited on that score a religious worship, which, at first, could not be directed to the visible object, but to the intelligence with which it was animated. The motive of this worship was the fear of a deity irritated by the sins of men, but who, at the same time, was merciful, and capable of being appeased by prayer and repentance. They looked up to him as to the active principle, which, by uniting with the earth or passive principle, had produced men, animals, plants, and all visible beings; they even believed that he was the only agent in nature, who preserves the several beings, and disposes of all events. To serve this divinity with sacrifices and prayers, to do no wrong to others, and to be brave and intrepid in themselves, were all the moral consequences they derived from these doctrines. Lastly, the belief of a future state cemented and completed the whole building. Cruel tortures were there reserved for such as despised these three funda

mental precepts of morality, and joys without number and without end awaited every religious, just, and valiant man.

These are the principal heads of that ancient religion which probably prevailed for many ages through the greatest part of the north of Europe, and doubtless among several nations of Asia. When it began to lose the most beautiful features of its original purity, and whether this change must be attributed to the natural inconstancy of mankind and their invincible proneness to whatever is marvellous, and strikes the senses, or was brought about by violence and conquest, is difficult to decide. The eye is lost and bewildered, when it endeavours to trace out events so remote and obscure. To unravel and distinguish the several causes, and to mark exactly the distinct influence of each, is what we can hardly do in the history of such ages as are the most enlightened and best known to us. Let us then confine ourselves within more narrow limits, and endeavour to sketch out a new picture of this same religion, as it was afterwards altered, and like a piece of cloth so profusely overcharged with false ornaments, as hardly to show the least glimpse of the original groundwork. This picture will take in a space of seven or eight centuries, which intervened between the time of Odin and the conversion of Denmark to the Christian faith. The Icelandic Edda, and some ancient pieces of poetry, wherein the same mythology is taught, are the sources whence I shall draw my information.

CHAPTER V.

OF THE RELIGION WHICH PREVAILED IN THE NORTH, AND PARTICULARLY IN SCANDINAVIA, AFTER THE PRIMITIVE WORSHIP HAD BEEN ALTERED.

THE most striking alteration in the doctrines of the primitive religion, was in the number of the gods who were to be worshipped. A capital point in the ancient dogmas, was that preeminence, I have been describing, of one only all-powerful and perfect being over all the other intelligences with which universal nature was peopled. But men becoming in all appearance