A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Popular Tales from the Norse

S >> Sir George Webbe Dasent >> Popular Tales from the Norse




In all mythologies, the trait of all others which most commonly
occurs, is that of the descent of the Gods to earth, where, in human
form, they mix among mortals, and occupy themselves with their
affairs, either out of a spirit of adventure, or to try the hearts of
men. Such a conception is shocking to the Christian notion of the
omnipotence and omnipresence of God, but we question if there be not
times when the most pious and perfect Christian may not find comfort
and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less
enlightened creeds, and over which the apostle, writing to the
Hebrews, throws the sanction of his authority, so far as angels are
concerned. [Heb., xiii, 1: 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not
forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained
angels unawares.']

Nor could he have forgotten those words of the men of Lystra, 'The
Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men'; and how they called
'Barnabas Jupiter', and himself Mercury, 'because he was the chief
speaker.' Classical mythology is full of such stories. These
wanderings of the Gods are mentioned in the Odyssey, and the sanctity
of the rites of hospitality, and the dread of turning a stranger from
the door, took its origin from a fear lest the wayfaring man should
be a Divinity in disguise. According to the Greek story, Orion owed
his birth to the fact that the childless Hyrieus, his reputed father,
had once received unawares Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes, or, to call
them by their Latin names, Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury. In the
beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis, Jupiter and Mercury reward
the aged couple who had so hospitably received them by warning them
of the approaching deluge. The fables of Phaedrus and Aesop represent
Mercury and Demeter as wandering and enjoying the hospitality of men.
In India it is Brahma and Vishnu who generally wander. In the Edda,
Odin, Loki, and Hoenir thus roam about, or Thor, Thialfi, and Loki.
Sometimes Odin appears alone as a horseman, who turns in at night to
the smith's house, and gets him to shoe his horse, a legend which
reminds us at once of the Master-smith. [14] Sometimes it is Thor
with his great hammer who wanders thus alone.

Now, let us turn from heathen to Christian times, and look at some of
these old legends of wandering gods in a new dress. Throughout the
Middle Age, it is our blessed Lord and St Peter that thus wander, and
here we see that half-digested heathendom to which we have alluded.
Those who may be shocked at such tales in this collection as 'the
Master-Smith' and 'Gertrude's Bird', must just remember that these
are almost purely heathen traditions, in which the names alone are
Christian; and if it be any consolation to any to know the fact, we
may as well state at once that this adaptation of new names to old
beliefs is not peculiar to the Norsemen, but is found in all the
popular tales of Europe. Germany was full of them, and there St Peter
often appears in a snappish ludicrous guise, which reminds the reader
versed in Norse mythology of the tricks and pranks of the shifty
Loki. In the Norse tales he thoroughly preserves his saintly
character.

Nor was it only gods that walked among men. In the Norse mythology,
Frigga, Odin's wife, who knew beforehand all that was to happen, and
Freyja, the goddess of love and plenty, were prominent figures, and
often trod the earth; the three Norns or Fates, who sway the wierds
of men, and spin their destinies at Mimirs' well of knowledge, were
awful venerable powers, to whom the heathen world looked up with love
and adoration and awe. To that love and adoration and awe, throughout
the middle age, one woman, transfigured into a divine shape,
succeeded by a sort of natural right, and round the Virgin Mary's
blessed head a halo of lovely tales of divine help, beams with soft
radiance as a crown bequeathed to her by the ancient goddesses. She
appears as divine mother, spinner, and helpful virgin (vierge
sécourable). Flowers and plants bear her name. In England one of our
commonest and prettiest insects is still called after her, but which
belonged to Freyja, the heathen 'Lady', long before the western
nations had learned to adore the name of the mother of Jesus. [15]
[15] Footnote: So also Orion's Belt was called by the Norsemen,
Frigga's spindle or _rock, Friggjar rock_. In modern Swedish,
_Friggerock_, where the old goddess holds her own; but in
Danish, _Mariaerock_, Our Lady's rock or spindle. Thus, too,
_Karlavagn_, the 'car of men', or heroes, who rode with Odin,
which we call 'Charles' Wain', thus keeping something, at least, of
the old name, though none of its meaning, became in Scotland
'Peter's-pleugh', from the Christian saint, just as Orion's sword
became 'Peter's-staff'. But what do 'Lady Landers' and 'Lady Ellison'
mean, as applied to the 'Lady-Bird' in Scotland?

The reader of these Tales will meet, in that of 'the Lassie and her
Godmother', No. xxvii, with the Virgin Mary in a truly mythic
character, as the majestic guardian of sun, moon and stars, combined
with that of a helpful, kindly woman, who, while she knows how to
punish a fault, knows also how to reconcile and forgive.

The Norseman's god was a god of battles, and victory his greatest
gift to men; but this was not the only aspect under which the Great
Father was revered. Not victory in the fight alone, but every other
good gift came down from him and the Aesir. Odin's supreme will was
that treasure-house of bounty towards which, in one shape or the
other, all mortal desires turned, and out of its abundance showers of
mercy and streams of divine favour constantly poured down to refresh
the weary race of men. All these blessings and mercies, nay, their
very source itself, the ancient language bound up in a single word,
which, however expressive it may still be, has lost much of the
fulness of its meaning in its descent to these later times. This word
was 'Wish', which originally meant the perfect ideal, the actual
fruition of all joy and desire, and not, as now, the empty longing
for the object of our desires. From this original abstract meaning,
it was but a step to pass to the concrete, to personify the idea, to
make it an immortal essence, an attribute of the divinity, another
name for the greatest of all Gods himself. And so we find a host of
passages in early writers, [_D. M._, p. 126 fol., where they are
cited at length.] in every one of which 'God' or 'Odin' might be
substituted for 'Wish' with perfect propriety. Here we read how 'The
Wish' has hands, feet, power, sight, toil, and art. How he works and
labours, shapes and masters, inclines his ear, thinks, swears,
curses, and rejoices, adopts children, and takes men into his house;
behaves, in short, as a being of boundless power and infinite free-
will. Still more, he rejoices in his own works as in a child, and
thus appears in a thoroughly patriarchal point of view, as the Lord
of creation, glorying in his handiwork, as the father of a family in
early times was glad at heart when he reckoned his children as arrows
in his quiver, and beheld his house full of a long line of retainers
and dependants. For this attribute of the Great Father, for Odin as
the God of Wish, the Edda uses the word 'Oski' which literally
expresses the masculine personification of 'Wish', and it passed on
and added the _works_ wish, as a prefix to a number of others,
to signify that they stood in a peculiar relation to the great giver
of all good. Thus we have _oska-steinn_, wishing-stone, i.e. a
stone which plays the part of a divining rod, and reveals secrets and
hidden treasure; _oska-byrr_, a fair wind, a wind as fair as
man's heart could wish it; _osk-barn_ and _oska-barn_, a child
after one's own heart, an adopted child, as when the younger
Edda tells us that all those who die in battle are Odin's _choice-
bairns_, his adopted children, those on whom he has set his heart,
an expression which, in their turn, was taken by the Icelandic
Christian writers to express the relation existing between God and
the baptized; and, though last, not least, _oska-maer_, wish-
maidens, another name for the Valkyries--Odin's corse-choosers--who
picked out the dead for him on the field of battle, and waited on the
heroes in Valhalla. Again, the Edda is filled with 'choice things',
possessing some mysterious power of their own, some 'virtue', as our
older English would express it, which belong to this or that god, and
are occasionally lent or lost. Thus, Odin himself had a spear which
gave victory to those on whose side it was hurled; Thor, a hammer
which destroyed the Giants, hallowed vows, and returned of itself to
his hand. He had a strength-belt, too, which, when he girded it on,
his god-strength waxed one-half; Freyr had a sword which wielded
itself; Freyja a necklace which, like the cestus of Venus, inspired
all hearts with love; Freyr, again, had a ship called _Skithblathnir_.

She is so great, that all the Aesir, with their weapons and war
gear, may find room on board her; and as soon as the sail is set,
she has a fair wind whither she shall go; and when there is no need
of faring on the sea in her, she is made of so many things, and
with so much craft, that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth,
and keep her in his bag.
[Snorro's _Edda_, Stockholm, 1842, translated by the writer.]

Of this kind, too, was the ring 'Dropper' which Odin had, and from
which twelve other rings dropped every night; the apples which Idun,
one of the goddesses, had, and of which, so soon as the Aesir ate,
they became young again; the helm which Oegir, the sea giant had,
which struck terror into all antagonists like the Aegis of Athene;
and that wonderful mill which the mythical Frodi owned, of which we
shall shortly speak.

Now, let us see what traces of this great god 'Wish' and his choice-
bairns and wishing-things we can find in these Tales, faint echoes of
a mighty heathen voice, which once proclaimed the goodness of the
great Father in the blessings which he bestowed on his chosen sons.
We shall not have long to seek. In tale No. xx, when Shortshanks
meets those three old crookbacked hags who have only one eye, which
he snaps up, and gets first a sword 'that puts a whole army to
flight, be it ever so great', we have the 'one-eyed Odin',
degenerated into an old hag, or rather--by no uncommon process--we
have an old witch fused by popular tradition into a mixture of Odin
and the three Nornir. Again, when he gets that wondrous ship 'which
can sail over fresh water and salt water, and over high hills and
deep dales,' and which is so small that he can put it into his
pocket, and yet, when he came to use it, could hold five hundred men,
we have plainly the Skith-blathnir of the Edda to the very life. So
also in the Best Wish, No. xxxvi, the whole groundwork of this story
rests on this old belief; and when we meet that pair of old scissors
which cuts all manner of fine clothes out of the air, that tablecloth
which covers itself with the best dishes you could think of, as soon
as it was spread out, and that tap which, as soon as it was turned,
poured out the best of mead and wine, we have plainly another form of
Frodi's wishing-quern--another recollection of those things of choice
about which the old mythology has so much to tell. Of the same kind
are the tablecloth, the ram, and the stick in 'the Lad who went to
the North Wind', No. xxxiv, and the rings in 'the Three Princesses of
Whiteland', No. xxvi, and in 'Soria Moria Castle', No. lvi. In the
first of those stories, too, we find those 'three brothers' who have
stood on a moor 'these hundred years fighting about a hat, a cloak,
and a pair of boots', which had the virtue of making him who wore
them invisible; choice things which will again remind the reader of
the _Nibelungen Lied_, of the way in which Siegfried became
possessed of the famous hoard of gold, and how he got that 'cap of
darkness' which was so useful to him in his remaining exploits. So
again in 'the Blue Belt', No. xxii, what is that belt which, when the
boy girded it on, 'he felt as strong as if he could lift the whole
hill', but Thor's 'choice-belt'; and what is the daring boy himself,
who overcomes the Troll, but Thor himself, as engaged in one of his
adventures with the Giants? So, too, in 'Little Annie the Goose-
girl', No. lix, the stone which tells the Prince all the secrets of
his brides is plainly the old Oskastein, or 'wishing-stone'. These
instances will suffice to show the prolonged faith in 'Wish', and his
choice things; a belief which, though so deeply rooted in the North,
we have already traced to its home in the East, whence it stretches
itself from pole to pole, and reappears in every race. We recognize
it in the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the
cornucopia of the Romans; in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks; in
the wishing-cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos; in the pumpkin-tree
of the West Indian Ananzi stories; in the cow of the Servian legends,
who spins yarn out of her ear; in the Sampo of the Finns; and in all
those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords,
seized by some bold spirit in the midst of a fairy revel, or earned
by some kind deed rendered by mortal hand to one of the 'good folk'
in her hour of need, and with which the '_luck_' [See the well-
known story of 'The Luck of Eden Hall'.] of that mortal's house was
ever afterwards bound up; stories with which the local traditions of
all lands are full, but which all pay unconscious homage to the
worship of that great God, to whom so many heathen hearts so often
turned as the divine realizer of their prayers, and the giver of all
good things, until they come at last to make an idol out of their
hopes and prayers, and to immortalize the very 'Wish' itself.

Again, of all beliefs, that in which man has, at all times of his
history, been most prone to set faith, is that of a golden age of
peace and plenty, which had passed away, but which might be expected
to return. Such a period was looked for when Augustus closed the
temple of Janus, and peace, though perhaps not plenty, reigned over
what the proud Roman called the habitable world. Such a period the
early Christian expected when the Saviour was born, in the reign of
that very Augustus; and such a period some, whose thoughts are more
set on earth than heaven, have hoped for ever since, with a hope
which, though deferred for eighteen centuries, has not made their
hearts sick. Such a period of peace and plenty, such a golden time,
the Norseman could tell of in his mythic Frodi's reign, when gold or
_Frodi's meal_, as it was called, was so plentiful that golden
armlets lay untouched from year's end to year's end on the king's
highway, and the fields bore crops unsown. Here, in England, the
Anglo-Saxon Bede [Hist., ii, 16.] knew how to tell the same story of
Edwin, the Northumbrian King, and when Alfred came to be mythic, the
same legend was passed on from Edwin to the West Saxon monarch. The
remembrance of 'the bountiful Frodi' echoed in the songs of German
poets long after the story which made him so bountiful had been
forgotten; but the Norse Skalds could tell not only the story of
Frodi's wealth and bounty, but also of his downfall and ruin. In
Frodi's house were two maidens of that old giant race, Fenja and
Menja. These daughters of the giant he had bought as slaves, and he
made them grind his quern or hand-mill, Grotti, out of which he used
to grind peace and gold. Even in that golden age one sees there were
slaves, and Frodi, however bountiful to his thanes and people, was a
hard task-master to his giant hand-maidens. He kept them to the mill,
nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted, or they
could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything
that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but
gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their
piteous tale in a strain worthy of Aeschylus as the other worked--
they prayed for rest and pity, but Frodi was deaf. Then they turned
in giant mood, and ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and
war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very night came
Mysing the Sea-rover, and slew Frodi and all his men, and carried off
the quern; and so Frodi's peace ended. The maidens the sea-rover took
with him, and when he got on the high seas he bade them grind salt.
So they ground; and at midnight they asked if he had not salt enough,
but he bade them still grind on. So they ground till the ship was
full and sank, Mysing, maids, and mill, and all, and that's why the
sea is salt [nor. _Ed. Skaldsk._, ch. 43.]. Perhaps of all the
tales in this volume, none could be selected as better proving the
toughness of a traditional belief than No. ii, which tells 'Why the
Sea is Salt'.

The notion of the Arch-enemy of God and man, of a fallen angel, to
whom power was permitted at certain times for an all-wise purpose by
the Great Ruler of the universe, was as foreign to the heathendom of
our ancestors as his name was outlandish and strange to their tongue.
This notion Christianity brought with it from the East; and though it
is a plant which has struck deep roots, grown distorted and awry, and
borne a bitter crop of superstition, it required all the authority of
the Church to prepare the soil at first for its reception. To the
notion of good necessarily follows that of evil. The Eastern mind,
with its Ormuzd and Ahriman, is full of such dualism, and from that
hour, when a more than mortal eye saw Satan falling like lightning
from heaven [St Luke, x, 18.], the kingdom of darkness, the abode of
Satan and his bad spirits, was established in direct opposition to
the kingdom of the Saviour and his angels. The North had its own
notion on this point. Its mythology was not without its own dark
powers; but though they too were ejected and dispossessed, they,
according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them
belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by
the younger race of Odin and Aesir; and though this upstart dynasty,
as the Frost Giants in Promethean phrase would have called it, well
knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all
mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of
Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds. There, in a bitterly cold
place, she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age;
care was her bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls
were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge; 'Half blue was her
skin, and half the colour of human flesh. A goddess easy to know, and
in all things very stern and grim.' [Snor. _Edda,_ ch. 34, Engl.
Transl.]

But though severe, she was not an evil spirit. She only received
those who died as no Norseman wished to die. For those who fell on
the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Valhalla was
prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin. Those went to Hel,
who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died before they could
be killed. But when Christianity came in and ejected Odin and his
crew of false divinities, declaring them to be lying gods and demons,
then Hel fell with the rest; but fulfilling her fate, outlived them.
From a person she became a place, and all the Northern nations, from
the Goth to the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the abode of
the devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared from the
beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned. One curious
fact connected with this explanation of Hell's origin will not escape
the reader's attention. The Christian notion of Hell is that of a
place of heat, for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is
often an intolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything
that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dweller in the North,
heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without
fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over
those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round,
and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla, for the brave and
beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under
Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the
cold uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fire
abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame.

Still, popular tradition is tough, and even after centuries of
Christian teaching, the Norse peasant, in his popular tales, can
still tell of Hell as a place where fire-wood is wanted at Christmas,
and over which a certain air of comfort breathes, though, as in the
goddess Hel's halls, meat is scarce. The following passage from 'Why
the Sea is Salt', No. ii, will sufficiently prove this:

'Well, here is the flitch', said the rich brother, 'and now go
straight to Hell.'

'What I have given my word to do, I must stick to' said the other;
so he took the flitch and set off. He walked the whole day, and at
dusk he came to a place where he saw a very bright light.

'Maybe this is the place' said the man to himself. So he turned
aside, and the first thing he saw was an old, old man, with a long
white beard, who stood in an outhouse, hewing wood for the
Christmas fire.

'Good even,' said the man with the flitch.

'The same to you; whither are you going so late?' said the man.

'Oh! I'm going to Hell, if I only knew the right way,' answered the
poor man.

'Well, you're not far wrong, for this is Hell,' said the old man;
'When you get inside they will be all for buying your flitch, for
meat is scarce in Hell; but mind you don't sell it unless you get
the hand-quern which stands behind the door for it. When you come
out, I'll teach you how to handle the quern, for it's good to grind
almost anything.'

This, too, is the proper place to explain the conclusion of that
intensely heathen tale, 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi. We have already
seen how the Saviour and St Peter supply, in its beginning, the place
of Odin and some other heathen god. But when the Smith sets out with
the feeling that he has done a silly thing in quarrelling with the
Devil, having already lost his hope of heaven, this tale assumes a
still more heathen shape. According to the old notion, those who were
not Odin's guests went either to Thor's house, who had all the
thralls, or to Freyja, who even claimed a third part of the slain on
every battle-field with Odin, or to Hel, the cold comfortless goddess
already mentioned, who was still no tormentor, though she ruled over
nine worlds, and though her walls were high, and her bolts and bars
huge; traits which come out in 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi, when the
Devil, who here assumes Hel's place, orders the watch to go back and
lock up _all the nine locks on the gates of Hell_--a lock for
each of the goddesses _nine_ worlds--and to put a padlock on
besides. In the twilight between heathendom and Christianity, in that
half Christian half heathen consciousness, which this tale reveals,
heaven is the preferable abode, as Valhalla was of yore, but rather
than be without a house to one's head after death, Hell was not to be
despised; though, having behaved ill to the ruler of one, and
actually quarrelled with the master of the other, the Smith was
naturally anxious on the matter. This notion of different abodes in
another world, not necessarily places of torment, comes out too in
'Not a Pin to choose between them', No. xxiv, where Peter, the second
husband of the silly Goody, goes about begging from house to house in
Paradise.

For the rest, whenever the Devil appears in these tales, it is not at
all as the Arch-enemy, as the subtle spirit of the Christian's faith,
but rather as one of the old Giants, supernatural and hostile indeed
to man, but simple and easily deceived by a cunning reprobate, whose
superior intelligence he learns to dread, for whom he feels himself
no match, and whom, finally, he will receive in Hell at no price. We
shall have to notice some other characteristics of this race of
giants a little further on, but certainly no greater proof can be
given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the
Norse mind, than the heathen aspect under which he constantly
appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted.

We have seen how our Lord and the saints succeeded to Odin and his
children in the stories which told of their wanderings on earth, to
warn the wicked, or to help the good; we have seen how the kindliness
and helpfulness of the ancient goddesses fell like a royal mantle
round the form of the Virgin Mary. We have seen, too, on the other
hand, how the procession of the Almighty God degenerated into the
infernal midnight hunt. We have now to see what became of the rest of
the power of the goddesses, of all that might which was not absorbed
into the glory of the blessed Virgin. We shall not have far to seek.
No reader of early medieval chronicles and sermons, can fail to have
been struck with many passages which ascribe majesty and power to
beings of woman's sex. Now it is a heathen goddess as _Diana_;
now some half-historical character as _Bertha_; now a mythical
being as _Holda_; now _Herodias_; now _Satia_; now _Domina Abundia_,
or _Dame Habonde_ [16].

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.