Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
We now come to the gods of the system. Odin is in the Eddas the founder of the world as now constituted. He has displaced the old formless race of gods, and is the leader of a new and vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old scholars rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a migration from Asia to Norway in early times.
Thus, while the ash bears no fruit, the Eddas describe the stars as the fruit of Yggdrasil." Mr. Thorpe, again, considers it identical with the "Robur Jovis," or sacred oak of Geismar, destroyed by Boniface, and the Irminsul of the Saxons, the Columna Universalis, "the terrestrial tree of offerings, an emblem of the whole world."
The tertiary system of Polytheism is the soil out of which the mythology of the Eddas sprang, though through it each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which admit of no mistake as to its origin.
There so the Eddas say are the chosen heroes, who are forever fighting all day, and feasting all night. Thus, instead of a Bible, young Thule studied wild fairy-tales; yet, for all his heathenish training, he had some noble traits, which a Christian lad might imitate. He lived with his widowed mother at the edge of a forest.
Ling, who also belonged to this society, was a fervent admirer of the Eddas and Sagas, of the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore. Tegnér, despite his classical education and Hellenic turn of mind, was an ardent Norseman in feeling and instinct. "Go to Greece for beauty of form," he would say, "but to the North for depth of feeling and thought."
What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century! to substitute in rude, savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
It is their profession; they live in it. No one can read Beowulf or the Eddas without being struck by the great resemblance between Grendel, the hideous, semi-human night prowler, and the Kewahqu', a precisely similar monster, who rises from the depths of waters to wantonly murder man. I do not recall any two beings in any other two disconnected mythologies so strangely similar.
The Icelandic Eddas are the only vernacular record of Germanic heathendom as it developed during the four centuries which in England saw the destruction of nearly all traces of the heathen system.
There is another rapprochement in Babylonian lore and a third in the Eddas, where it is related that to Sigurd the secret of the runes was sung.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking