BOOK 11. Odin as the Creator of Man. The end of the Æsir. self, and also the race of the gods or Æsir, the self-existent beings,' who dwell in Asgard or Aithêr, while the middle air, between the upper and under worlds, the aǹp of the Greeks on which Zeus looks down, is Vanaheim, the home of the Vanir, or spirits of the breathing wind. To this race belong Freyr and Freya, the deities of beauty and love, "the children of Mördur, the sea-god who dwells in the sea-city (Noatun), and whose spouse, Skadi (Elster?) is the daughter of the giant Thiassi, for he is indeed himself the shore." The idea of the composite nature of man must have preceded the rise of the myth which assigns the creation of the soul to Odin, of the mind to Hahnir, of the blood and outward complexion to Lodur. This Hahnir is probably the same word as hahn, the cock, "in its wider import the bird, the animal belonging to the air;" and thus possibly the framers of this theogony may have intended to set forth their belief that a Trinity, consisting of Ether, Air, and Fire, was concerned in the creation of man, Lodur being certainly fire, and in fact only another form of Loki, the shining god. But we approach the regions of pure mythology when we read that when Odur sets forth on his wanderings, his bride, the beautiful Freya," sheds gold-gleaming tears-" an image of the bright gleams shooting across the rugged morning sky." From these parents springs Hnossa, the jewel, the world under the aspect of beauty, while Frigga, as the wife of Odin, doubtless only another form of Odur, is the mother of Jörd, the earth, in the character of the nourishing Dêmêtêr. But all this visible Kosmos is doomed to undergo a catastrophe, the results of which will be not its destruction but its renovation. The whole world will be consumed by fire, kindled by Lodur (der Lodernde, the glowing god), the Loki who brought about the death place the four dwarfs-Nordri, Sudri, 1 From the root as, to be; the word 2 The original form of the word world of the light elves; Mannaheim, a name for Midgard, the world of man; and below the earth plain, Svartalfaheim, the land of the dark elves, and Helheim, the abode of Hel. Below all lies Niflheim, the dwelling of the serpent Nidhogr, who gnaws the worldtree Yggdrasil, Jötunheim lying beyond the ocean-stream which surrounds Midgard. Bunsen, God in History, ii. 487. ▲ Ibid. For the several changes through which the names Freyr and Freya have passed, see Grimm, D. M. 276, &c. Bunsen, God in History, ii. 491. IDEAS OF THE DIVINE WILL. of Baldur. The life or the reign of the Æsir themselves will come to an end, but a new earth rising from this second chaos will resemble that of the golden age in the Hesiodic tradition. Of this Teutonic theogony we may say without the least misgiving that it exhibits no sign of any Christian influence. It would be almost as reasonable to trace such an influence in the Hesiodic poems, where, if we could get over the insurmountable difficulties of chronology, such an attempt might be made with far greater plausibility. Nor can we charge Bunsen with speaking too strongly, when he says that we must be brought to this negative conclusion, unless "we are to set above facts a preconceived opinion, taken up at random on the slightest grounds, or indolently to decline scrutiny of those facts, or profound reflexions on what they indicate."" 191 CHAP. I. Wuotan. The idea which the Aryans of India sought to express under the The name names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe strove to signify by the name Wuotan. That idea centred in the conception of Will as a power which brought all things into being and preserves them in it, of a will which followed man wherever he could go and from which there was no escape, which was present alike in the heavens above and in the depths beneath, an energy incessantly operating and making itself felt in the multiplication as well as in the sustaining of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the physical world which more vividly answered to such a conception than the wind, as the breath of the great Ether, the moving power which purifies the air. Thus the Hindu Brahman denoted originally the active and propulsive force in creation, and this conception was still more strictly set forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of the GerAtman is thus the breathing, in other words, the self-existent being, the actual self of the universe; and the meaning thus assigned to the word was so impressed upon the minds of the Aryans of India that no mythology ever grew up round it. In Professor Müller's words "the idea of the Atman or self, like a pure crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed down to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it as the medium through which all is seen and in which all is reflected and known." The conception of the Teutonic Wuotan was at first not less exalted. Like Brahman and Atman, it is the moving strength and power of creation, and the word in Grimm's belief carries us to the Latin vad-ere, to go or move, the Bavarian wueteln, mans. 2 1 God in History, ii. 409. BOOK self, and also the race of the 11. Odin as the Creator of Man. The end of the Æsir. who dwell in Asgard or Aith The idea of the composite nan the rise of the myth which assigns t of the mind to Hahnir, of the bl Lodur. This Hahnir is probably th "in its wider import the bird, the and thus possibly the framers of this set forth their belief that a Trinity, co was concerned in the creation of and in fact only another form of approach the regions of pure mythic Odur sets forth on his wanderings, sheds gold-gleaming tears-" an imag across the rugged morning sky." Hnossa, the jewel, the world unde Frigga, as the wife of Odin, doubtles the mother of Jörd, the earth, in ti Dêmêtêr. But all this visible Kosmos is do the results of which will be not its The whole world will be consumed Lodernde, the glowing god), the Loki place the four dwarfs-Nordri, Sudri, 1 From the root as, to be; the word 2 The original form of the word I. the Irish localise in Blarney and which Grimm connects with CHAP. as the the the and pr strely 1 tan or angle eye of Odin points beyond all doubt to the sun, the The one- bec mate A beingsigned of Inde: Müller's The first sentence shows the train of The three posses- The very remark- was veiled In gloom profound, an ocean without The germ that still lay covered in the Burst forth, one nature from the fervent Then first came love upon it." On this passage Professor H. H. Wilson remarks, "The term 'love' here appears to us to convey a notion too transcendental to have had a place in the conception of the original author. The word is Kama, which scarcely indicates love in the sense in which it may here be understood, although not absolutely indefensible: but Kama means desire, wish, and it expresses here the wish, synonymous with the will, of the sole-existing Being to create."-Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1860, p. 384. Thus in Saxo he is " grandævus altero orbus oculo," and again "Armipotens uno semper contentus ocello." The reason assigned by the myth is that he was obliged to leave one eye in pledge when he wished to drink at the well of Mimir. BOOK to stir or grow. Thus Grimm remarks that of Wuotan it may be said as Lucan says of Jupiter Est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris, the pure spiritual deity. The word itself is therefore a participle of the old verb watan, whose cognate forms vata, ôd, account for the dialectical variations which converted it into the Saxon Wuodan, Wodan, Woden, Odin, the Frisian Wêda, the Norse Oðinn. But the ideas thus expressed by the name were necessarily lost when the Christian missionaries taught the people to look on Wuotan or Odin as the archfiend ruling over troops of malignant demons; nor is it improbable that the process may have begun at an earlier period. The name is connected closely with the German wuth, in which the notion of energy has been exaggerated into that of impulse uncontrolled by will. Such a limitation of meaning was quite in harmony with the tendency of all the German tribes to identify energy with vehement strife, and thus Wuotan became essentially the armed deity, the god of war and of battles, the father of victory. As such, he looks down on the earth from his heavenly home through a window, sitting on his throne with Freya by his side, as Hêrê sits by Zeus in Olympos. In the strange story which is to account for the change which converted the Winili into the Lombards, this attribute. of Wuotan is connected with the rising of the sun, the great eye of day. As the giver of victory, the greatest of all blessings in Teutonic eyes, he was necessarily the giver of all other good things, like the Hermes of the Greeks with whose name his own is identical in meaning. As such, he is Osci, Oski, the power of Wish or Will, so often exhibited in the mythology of northern Europe, the Wunsch to whom the poets of the thirteenth century assign hands, eyes, knowledge, blood, with all the appetites and passions of humanity. This power of Wuotan is seen in the oska-stein, or wishing stone,‘ Sigfadr, Siegfater, Grimm, ib. 122. Hence the phrases, Zu Oðinn fahren, Oðinnsheim suchen, denoted simply death. With the conversion to Christianity these expressions which spoke of men as going home to Odin became maledictions, consigning them to perdition. 2 This attribute of Wuotan, which Grimm discovers in the titles Gibicho, Kipicho, makes him δώτωρ ἐάων, i.ε. Hermes, whose name denotes simply the motion of the air. For a long series of passages in which Wunsch is clearly both a power and a person, see Grimm, D.M. 126-8. 3 The instruments of Wish generally run in triplets, as in the story of King Putraka (pp. 89, 93). In that of Cinderella, they are three nuts, containing each a splendid robe. In the story of The Pink, Wish assumes the Protean power of transformation; in that of Brother Lustig, it is a bag in which the possessor may see anything that he wishes to shut up in it, and by means of which he contrives, like the Master Smith, to find his way into heaven. In the tale of the Poor Man and the Rich Man, the three wishes which bring happiness here and hereafter to the former, bring only “vexation, troubling, |