Viktor Rydberg - Teutonic Mythology

MEMBER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY; AUTHOR OF THE "THE LAST ATHENIAN" AND OTHER WORKS.

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH

BY

RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D., EX-UNITED STATES MINISTER TO DENMARK; AUTHOR OF "NORSE MYTHOLOGY," "VIKING TALES," ETC.

HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D., Ph.D., EDITOR IN CHIEF. J. W. BUEL, Ph.D., MANAGING EDITOR.

VOL. I.

IDUN, HEIMDAL, LOKE, AND BRAGE.
(From an etching by Lorenz Frlich.)
Idun was the beautiful goddess who in Asgard was keeper
of the apples which the gods ate to preserve eternal youth.
She is most generally regarded as the wife of Brage.
Heimdal, the son of nine mothers, was guardian against the
giants of the bridge of the gods, Bifrst. With a trumpet he
summoned all the gods together at Ragnarok when he and Loke
slew each other. He was the god of light.
Loke though beautiful in form was like Lucifer in character
and was hence called the god of destruction. By the giantess
Angerboda he had three offspring, viz: the Midgard serpent,
the Fenris-wolf, and Hela, the latter becoming goddess of Hel.
Brage was the son of Odin and being represented as the chief skald in Valhalla he is called the god of poetry.

Stockholm

Hon. Rasmus B. Anderson ,
United States Minister,
Copenhagen, Denmark.

Dear Sir ,

It gives me pleasure to authorise you to translate into English my work entitled "Researches in Teutonic Mythology," being convinced that no one could be found better qualified for this task than yourself. Certainly no one has taken a deeper interest than you in spreading among our Anglo-Saxon kinsmen, not only a knowledge of our common antiquity, but also of what modern Scandinavia is contributing to the advancement of culture a work in which England and the United States of America are taking so large a share.

Yours faithfully,
VIKTOR RYDBERG.

INTRODUCTION.

A. THE ANCIENT ARYANS.

THE WORDS GERMAN AND GERMANIC.

Already at the beginning of the Christian era the name Germans was applied by the Romans and Gauls to the many clans of people whose main habitation was the extensive territory east of the Rhine, and north of the forest-clad Hercynian Mountains. That these clans constituted one race was evident to the Romans, for they all had a striking similarity in type of body; moreover, a closer acquaintance revealed that their numerous dialects were all variations of the same parent language, and finally, they resembled each other in customs, traditions, and religion. The characteristic features of the physical type of the Germans were light hair, blue eyes, light complexion, and tallness of stature as compared with the Romans.

Even the saga-men, from whom the Roman historian Tacitus gathered the facts for his Germania an invaluable work for the history of civilisation knew that in

Semitic languages are separated therefrom by a chasm so broad and deep that it is hardly possible to bridge it.

This language-group of ours has been named in various ways. It has been called the Indo-Germanic, the Indo-European, and the Aryan family of tongues. I have adopted the last designation. The Armenians, Iranians, and Hindoos I call the Asiatic Aryans; all the rest I call the European Aryans.

Certain it is that these sister-languages have had a common mother, the ancient Aryan speech, and that this has had a geographical centre from which it has radiated. (By such an ancient Aryan language cannot, of course, be meant a tongue stereotyped in all its inflections, like the literary languages of later times, but simply the unity of those dialects which were spoken by the clans dwelling around this centre of radiation.) By comparing the grammatical structure of all the daughters of this ancient mother, and by the aid of the laws hitherto discovered in regard to the transition of sounds from one language to another, attempts have been made to restore this original tongue which many thousand years ago ceased to vibrate. These attempts cannot, of course, in any sense claim to reproduce an image corresponding to the lost original as regards syntax and inflections. Such a task would be as impossible as to reconstruct, on the basis of all the now spoken languages derived from the Latin, the dialect used in Latium. The purpose is simply to present as faithful an idea of the ancient tongue as the existing means permit.

In the most ancient historical times Aryan-speaking people were found only in Asia and Europe. In seeking for the centre and the earliest conquests of the ancient Aryan language, the scholar may therefore keep within the limits of these two continents, and in Asia he may leave all the eastern and the most of the southern portion out of consideration, since these extensive regions have from prehistoric times been inhabited by Mongolian and allied tribes, and may for the present be regarded as the cradle of these races. It may not be necessary to remind the reader that the question of the original home of the ancient Aryan tongue is not the same as the question in regard to the cradle of the Caucasian race. The white race may have existed, and may have been spread over a considerable portion of the old world, before a language possessing the peculiarities belonging to the Aryan had appeared; and it is a known fact that southern portions of Europe, such as the Greek and Italian peninsulas, were inhabited by white people before they were conquered by Aryans.