Read Ebook: Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland Vol. 1 by Rydberg Viktor Anderson Rasmus Bj Rn Translator

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For ten years afterwards the Trojans or Franks lived undisturbed by Roman tax-collectors; but after that the Roman emperor demanded that they should pay tribute. This they refused, and slew the tax-collectors sent to them. Then the emperor collected a large army under the command of Aristarcus, and strengthened it with auxiliary forces from many lands, and attacked the Franks, who were defeated by the superior force, lost their leader Priam, and had to take flight. They now proceeded under their leaders Markomir, Priam's son, and Sunno, son of Antenor, away from Sicambria through Germany to the Rhine, and located there. Thus this chronicle.

"When the walls of Troy in ashes were laid, And the Greeks exceedingly glad were made, Then fled from flames on the Trojan strand The race that settled old Denmark's land; And in honour of the old Trojan reigns, The people called themselves the Danes."

In fact, a great part of the lands subject to the Roman sceptre were in ancient literature in some way connected with the Trojan war and its consequences: Macedonia and Epirus through the Trojan emigrant Helenus; Illyria and Venetia through the Trojan emigrant Antenor; Rhetia and Vindelicia through the Amazons, allies of the Trojans, from whom the inhabitants of these provinces were said to be descended ; Etruria through Dardanus, who was said to have emigrated from there to Troy; Latium and Campania through the AEneids; Sicily, the very home of the AEnean traditions, through the relation between the royal families of Troy and Sicily; Sardinia ; Gaul ; Carthage through the visit of AEneas to Dido; and of course all of Asia Minor. This was not all. According to the lost Argive History by Anaxikrates, Scamandrius, son of Hektor and Andromache, came with emigrants to Scythia and settled on the banks of the Tanais; and scarcely had Germany become known to the Romans, before it, too, became drawn into the cycle of Trojan stories, at least so far as to make this country visited by Ulysses on his many journeys and adventures . Every educated Greek and Roman person's fancy was filled from his earliest school-days with Troy, and traces of Dardanians and Danaians were found everywhere, just as the English in our time think they have found traces of the ten lost tribes of Israel both in the old and in the new world.

THE ORIGIN OF THE STORY IN REGARD TO THE TROJAN DESCENT OF THE FRANKS.

"Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis, Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus Regna Liburnorum, et fontem superare Timavi: Unde per ora novem vasto cum murmere montis It mare proruptum, et pelago premit arva sonanti. Hic tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit Teucrorum."

"Antenor having escaped from amidst the Greeks, could with safety penetrate the Illyrian Gulf and the inmost realms of Liburnia, and overpass the springs of Timavus, whence, through nine months, with loud echoing from the mountain, it bursts away, a sea impetuous, and sweeps the fields with a roaring deluge. Yet there he built the city of Padua and established a Trojan settlement."

The nearest proof at hand, that this is really the passage which was interpreted as referring to the ancient history of the Franks, is based on the following circumstances:

Gregorius of Tours had found in the history of Sulpicius Alexander accounts of violent conflicts, on the west bank of the Rhine, between the Romans and Franks, the latter led by the chiefs Markomir and Sunno .

But how did it come to be regarded as an evidence?

Virgil also says that Antenor extended his journeys to the Liburnian kingdoms . From Servius' commentary on this passage, the middle age knew that the Liburnian kingdoms were Rhetia and Vindelicia . Rhetia and Vindelicia separate Pannonia from the Rhine. Antenor, accordingly, takes the same route toward the West as the Franks must have taken if they came from Pannonia to the Rhine.

We must pardon the Frankish scribes for taking this river to be the Rhine; for if a water-course is to be looked for in Europe west of the land of the Liburnians, which answers to the Virgilian description, then this must be the Rhine, on whose banks the ancestors of the Franks for the first time appear in history.

Thus it appears that the Franks were supposed to have migrated to the Rhine under the leadership of Antenor. The first Frankish chiefs recorded, after their appearance there, are Markomir and Sunno. From this the conclusion was drawn that Sunno was Antenor's son; and as Markomir ought to be the son of some celebrated Trojan chief, he was made the son of Priam. Thus we have explained Fredegar's statement that Virgil is his authority for the Trojan descent of these Franks. This seemed to be established for all time.

Thus we have exhibited the seed out of which the fable about the Trojan descent of the Franks grew into a tree spreading its branches over all Teutonic Europe, in the same manner as the earlier fable, which was at least developed if not born in Sicily, in regard to the Trojan descent of the Romans had grown into a tree overshadowing all the lands around the Mediterranean, and extending one of its branches across Gaul to Britain and Ireland. The first son of the Britons, "Brutus," was, according to Galfred, great-grandson of AEneas, and migrated from Alba Longa to Ireland.

WHY ODIN WAS GIVEN ANTENOR'S PLACE AS LEADER OF THE TROJAN EMIGRATION.

As Christianity was gradually introduced among the Teutonic peoples, the question confronted them, what manner of beings those gods had been in whom they and their ancestors so long had believed. Their Christian teachers had two answers, and both were easily reconcilable. The common answer, and that usually given to the converted masses, was that the gods of their ancestors were demons, evil spirits, who ensnared men in superstition in order to become worshipped as divine beings. The other answer, which was better calculated to please the noble-born Teutonic families, who thought themselves descended from the gods, was that these divinities were originally human persons--kings, chiefs, legislators, who, endowed with higher wisdom and secret knowledge, made use of these to make people believe that they were gods, and worship them as such. Both answers could, as stated, easily be reconciled with each other, for it was evident that when these proud and deceitful rulers died, their unhappy spirits joined the ranks of evil demons, and as demons they continued to deceive the people, in order to maintain through all ages a worship hostile to the true religion. Both sides of this view we find current among the Teutonic races through the whole middle age. The one which particularly presents the old gods as evil demons is found in popular traditions from this epoch. The other, which presents the old gods as mortals, as chiefs and lawmakers with magic power, is more commonly reflected in the Teutonic chronicles, and was regarded among the scholars as the scientific view.

Thus it followed of necessity that Odin, the chief of the Teutonic gods, and from whom their royal houses were fond of tracing their descent, also must have been a wise king of antiquity and skilled in the magic arts, and information was of course sought with the greatest interest in regard to the place where he had reigned, and in regard to his origin. There were two sources of investigation in reference to this matter. One source was the treasure of mythic songs and traditions of their own race. But what might be history in these seemed to the students so involved in superstition and fancy, that not much information seemed obtainable from them. But there was also another source, which in regard to historical trustworthiness seemed incomparably better, and that was the Latin literature to be found in the libraries of the convents.

The evidence of the correctness of identifying Odin with Mercury and Hermes the scholars might have found in Tacitus' work on Germany, where it is stated in the ninth chapter that the chief god of the Germans is the same as Mercury among the Romans. But Tacitus was almost unknown in the convents and schools of this period of the middle age. They could not use this proof, but they had another and completely compensating evidence of the assertion.

Originally the Romans did not divide time into weeks of seven days. Instead, they had weeks of eight days, and the farmer worked the seven days and went on the eighth to the market. But the week of seven days had been in existence for a very long time among certain Semitic peoples, and already in the time of the Roman republic many Jews lived in Rome and in Italy. Through them the week of seven days became generally known. The Jewish custom of observing the sacredness of the Sabbath, the first day of the week, by abstaining from all labour, could not fail to be noticed by the strangers among whom they dwelt. The Jews had, however, no special name for each day of the week. But the Oriental, Egyptian, and Greek astrologers and astronomers, who in large numbers sought their fortunes in Rome, did more than the Jews to introduce the week of seven days among all classes of the metropolis, and the astrologers had special names for each of the seven days of the week. Saturday was the planet's and the planet-god Saturnus' day; Sunday, the sun's; Monday, the moon's; Tuesday, Mars'; Wednesday, Mercury's; Thursday, Jupiter's; Friday, Venus' day. Already in the beginning of the empire these names of the days were quite common in Italy. The astrological almanacs, which were circulated in the name of the Egyptian Petosiris among all families who had the means to buy them contributed much to bring this about. From Italy both the taste for astrology and the adoption of the week of seven days, with the above-mentioned names, spread not only into Spain and Gaul, but also into those parts of Germany that were incorporated with the Roman Empire, Germania superior and inferior, where the Romanising of the people, with Cologne as the centre, made great progress. Teutons who had served as officers and soldiers in the Roman armies, and were familiar with the everyday customs of the Romans, were to be found in various parts of the independent Teutonic territory, and it is therefore not strange if the week of seven days, with a separate name given to each day, was known and in use more or less extensively throughout Teutondom even before Christianity had taken root east of the Rhine, and long before Rome itself was converted to Christianity. But from this introduction of the seven-day week did not follow the adoption of the Roman names of the days. The Teutons translated the names into their own language, and in so doing chose among their own divinities those which most nearly corresponded to the Roman. The translation of the names is made with a discrimination which seems to show that it was made in the Teutonic border country, governed by the Romans, by people who were as familiar with the Roman gods as with their own. In that border land there must have been persons of Teutonic birth who officiated as priests before Roman altars. The days of the sun and moon were permitted to retain their names. They were called Sunday and Monday. The day of the war-god Mars became the day of the war-god Tyr, Tuesday. The day of Mercury became Odin's day, Wednesday. The day of the lightning-armed Jupiter became the day of the thundering Thor, Thursday. The day of the goddess of love Venus became that of the goddess of love Freyja, Friday. Saturnus, who in astrology is a watery star, and has his house in the sign of the waterman, was among the Romans, and before them among the Greeks and Chaldaeans, the lord of the seventh day. Among the North Teutons, or at least, among a part of them, his day got its name from laug, which means a bath, and it is worthy of notice in this connection that the author of the Prose Edda's Foreword identifies Saturnus with the sea-god Njord.

Here the Latin scholars had what seemed to them a complete proof that the Odin of which their stories of the past had so much to tell was--and was so recognised by their heathen ancestors--the same historical person as the Romans worshipped by the name Mercury.

To the scholars this must have been an additional proof that this, in their eyes, historical chief, whom the Romans called Mercury and the Teutons Odin, had been one and the same human person, who had lived in a distant past, and had alike induced Greeks, Romans, and Goths to worship him as a god. To get additional and more reliable information in regard to this Odin-Mercury than what the Teutonic heathen traditions could impart, it was only necessary to study and interpret correctly what Roman history had to say about Mercury.

As is known, some mysterious documents called the Sibylline books were preserved in Jupiter's temple, on the Capitoline Hill, in Rome. The Roman State was the possessor, and kept the strictest watch over them, so that their contents remained a secret to all excepting those whose position entitled them to read them. A college of priests, men in high standing, were appointed to guard them and to consult them when circumstances demanded it. The common opinion that the Roman State consulted them for information in regard to the future is incorrect. They were consulted only to find out by what ceremonies of penance and propitiation the wrath of the higher powers might be averted at times when Rome was in trouble, or when prodigies of one kind or another had excited the people and caused fears of impending misfortune. Then the Sibylline books were produced by the properly-appointed persons, and in some line or passage they found which divinity was angry and ought to be propitiated. This done, they published their interpretation of the passage, but did not make known the words or phrases of the passage, for the text of the Sibylline books must not be known to the public. The books were written in the Greek tongue.

The story telling how these books came into the possession of the Roman State through a woman who sold them to Tarquin--according to one version Tarquin the Elder, according to another Tarquin the Younger--is found in Roman authors who were well known and read throughout the whole middle age. The woman was a Sibylla, according to Varro the Erythreian, so called from a Greek city in Asia Minor; according to Virgil the Cumaean, a prophetess from Cumae in southern Italy. Both versions could easily be harmonised, for Cumae was a Greek colony from Asia Minor; and we read in Servius' commentaries on Virgil's poems that the Erythreian Sibylla was by many regarded as identical with the Cumaean. From Asia Minor she was supposed to have come to Cumae.

In western Europe the people of the middle age claimed that there were twelve Sibyllas: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphian, the Cimmerinean, the Erythreian, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontian or Trojan, the Phrygian and Tiburtinian, and also the Sibylla Europa and the Sibylla Agrippa. Authorities for the first ten of these were the Church father Lactantius and the West Gothic historian Isodorus of Sevilla. The last two, Europa and Agrippa, were simply added in order to make the number of Sibyllas equal to that of the prophets and the apostles.

But the scholars of the middle ages also knew from Servius that the Cumaean Sibylla was, in fact, the same as the Erythreian; and from the Church father Lactantius, who was extensively read in the middle ages, they also learned that the Erythreian was identical with the Trojan. Thanks to Lactantius, they also thought they could determine precisely where the Trojan Sibylla was born. Her birthplace was the town Marpessus, near the Trojan Mount Ida. From the same Church father they learned that the real contents of the Sibylline books had consisted of narrations concerning Trojan events, of lives of the Trojan kings, &c., and also of prophecies concerning the fall of Troy and other coming events, and that the poet Homer in his works was a mere plagiator, who had found a copy of the books of the Sibylla, had recast and falsified it, and published it in his own name in the form of heroic poems concerning Troy.

In our critical century all this may seem like mere fancies. But careful examinations have shown that an historical kernel is not wanting in these representations. And the historical fact which lies back of all this is that the Sibylline books which were preserved in Rome actually were written in Asia Minor in the ancient Trojan territory; or, in other words, that the oldest known collection of so-called Sibylline oracles was made in Marpessus, near the Trojan mountain Ida, in the time of Solon. From Marpessus the collection came to the neighbouring city Gergis, and was preserved in the Apollo temple there; from Gergis it came to Cumae, and from Cumae to Rome in the time of the kings. How it came there is not known. The story about the Cumaean woman and Tarquin is an invention, and occurs in various forms. It is also demonstrably an invention that the Sibylline books in Rome contained accounts of the heroes in the Trojan war. On the other hand, it is absolutely certain that they referred to gods and to a worship which in the main were unknown to the Romans before the Sibylline books were introduced there, and that to these books must chiefly be attributed the remarkable change which took place in Roman mythology during the republican centuries. The Roman mythology, which from the beginning had but few gods of clear identity with the Greek, was especially during this epoch enlarged, and received gods and goddesses who were worshipped in Greece and in the Greek and Hellenised part of Asia Minor where the Sibylline books originated. The way this happened was that whenever the Romans in trouble or distress consulted the Sibylline books they received the answer that this or that Greek-Asiatic god or goddess was angry and must be propitiated. In connection with the propitiation ceremonies the god or goddess was received in the Roman pantheon, and sooner or later a temple was built to him; and thus it did not take long before the Romans appropriated the myths that were current in Greece concerning these borrowed divinities. This explains why the Roman mythology, which in its oldest sources is so original and so unlike the Greek, in the golden period of Roman literature comes to us in an almost wholly Greek attire; this explains why Roman and Greek mythology at that time might be regarded as almost identical. Nevertheless the Romans were able even in the later period of antiquity to discriminate between their native gods and those introduced by the Sibylline books. The former were worshipped according to a Roman ritual, the latter according to a Greek. To the latter belonged Apollo, Artemis, Latona, Ceres, Hermes, Mercury, Proserpina, Cybile, Venus, and Esculapius; and that the Sibylline books were a Greek-Trojan work, whose original home was Asia Minor and the Trojan territory, was well known to the Romans. When the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter was burned down eighty-four years before Christ, the Sibylline books were lost. But the State could not spare them. A new collection had to be made, and this was mainly done by gathering the oracles which could be found one by one in those places which the Trojan or Erythreian Sibylla had visited, that is to say, in Asia Minor, especially in Erythrae, and in Ilium, the ancient Troy.

So far as Hermes-Mercury is concerned, the Roman annals inform us that he got his first lectisternium in the year 399 before Christ by order from the Sibylline books. Lectisternium was a sacrifice: the image of the god was laid on a bed with a pillow under the left arm, and beside the image was placed a table and a meal, which as a sacrifice was offered to the god. About one hundreds years before that time, Hermes-Mercury had received his first temple in Rome.

Hermes-Mercury seemed, therefore, like Apollo, Venus, Esculapius, and others, to have been a god originally unknown to the Romans, the worship of whom the Trojan Sibylla had recommended to the Romans.

This was known to the scholars of the middle age. Now, we must bear in mind that it was as certain to them as an undoubted scientific fact that the gods were originally men, chiefs, and heroes, and that the deified chief whom the Romans worshipped as Mercury, and the Greeks as Hermes, was the same as the Teutons called Odin, and from whom distinguished Teutonic families traced their descent. We must also remember that the Sibylla who was supposed to have recommended the Romans to worship the old king Odin-Mercurius was believed to have been a Trojan woman, and that her books were thought to have contained stories about Troy's heroes, in addition to various prophecies, and so this manner of reasoning led to the conclusion that the gods who were introduced in Rome through the Sibylline books were celebrated Trojans who had lived and fought at a time preceding the fall of Troy. Another inevitable and logical conclusion was that Odin had been a Trojan chief, and when he appears in Teutonic mythology as the chief of gods, it seemed most probable that he was identical with the Trojan king Priam, and that Priam was identical with Hermes-Mercury.

Now, as the ancestors of the Romans were supposed to have emigrated from Troy to Italy under the leadership of AEneas, it was necessary to assume that the Romans were not the only Trojan emigrants, for, since the Teutons worshipped Odin-Priamus-Hermes as their chief god, and since a number of Teutonic families traced their descent from this Odin, the Teutons, too, must have emigrated from Troy. But, inasmuch as the Teutonic dialects differed greatly from the Roman language, the Trojan Romans and the Trojan Teutons must have been separated a very long time.

They must have parted company immediately after the fall of Troy and gone in different directions, and as the Romans had taken a southern course on their way to Europe, the Teutons must have taken a northern. It was also apparent to the scholars that the Romans had landed in Europe many centuries earlier than the Teutons, for Rome had been founded already in 754 or 753 before Christ, but of the Teutons not a word is to be found in the annals before the period immediately preceding the birth of Christ. Consequently, the Teutons must have made a halt somewhere on their journey to the North. This halt must have been of several centuries' duration, and, of course, like the Romans, they must have founded a city, and from it ruled a territory in commemoration of their fallen city Troy. In that age very little was known of Asia, where this Teutonic-Trojan colony was supposed to have been situated, but, both from Orosius and, later, from Gregorius of Tours, it was known that our world is divided into three large divisions--Asia, Europe, and Africa--and that Asia and Europe are divided by a river called Tanais. And having learned from Gregorius of Tours that the Teutonic Franks were said to have lived in Pannonia in ancient times, and having likewise learned that the Moeotian marshes lie east of Pannonia, and that the Tanais empties into these marshes, they had the course marked out by which the Teutons had come to Europe--that is, by way of Tanais and the Moeotian marshes. Not knowing anything at all of importance in regard to Asia beyond Tanais, it was natural that they should locate the colony of the Teutonic Trojans on the banks of this river.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the Trojan migration saga, as born and developed in antiquity, does not indicate by a single word that Europe was peopled later than Asia, or that it received its population from Asia. The immigration of the Trojans to Europe was looked upon as a return to their original homes. Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was regarded as the leader of an emigration from Etruria to Asia . As a rule the European peoples regarded themselves in antiquity as autochthones if they did not look upon themselves as immigrants from regions within Europe to the territories they inhabited in historic times.

THE MATERIALS OF THE ICELANDIC TROY SAGA.

We trust the facts presented above have convinced the reader that the saga concerning the immigration of Odin and the Asas to Europe is throughout a product of the convent learning of the middle ages. That it was born and developed independently of the traditions of the Teutonic heathendom shall be made still more apparent by the additional proofs that are accessible in regard to this subject. It may, however, be of some interest to first dwell on some of the details in the Heimskringla and in the Younger Edda and point out their source.

It should be borne in mind that, according to the Younger Edda, it was Zoroaster who first thought of building the Tower of Babel, and that in this undertaking he was assisted by seventy-two master-masons. Zoroaster is, as is well known, another form for the Bactrian or Iranian name Zarathustra, the name of the prophet and religious reformer who is praised on every page of Avesta's holy books, and who in a prehistoric age founded the religion which far down in our own era has been confessed by the Persians, and is still confessed by their descendants in India, and is marked by a most serious and moral view of the world. In the Persian and in the classical literatures this Zoroaster has naught to do with Babel, still less with the Tower of Babel. But already in the first century of Christianity, if not earlier, traditions became current which made Zoroaster the founder of all sorcery, magic, and astrology ; and as astrology particularly was supposed to have had its centre and base in Babylon, it was natural to assume that Babel had been the scene of Zoroaster's activity. The Greek-Roman chronicler Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century after Christ, still knows that Zoroaster was a man from Bactria, not from Babylon, but he already has formed the opinion that Zoroaster had gotten much of his wisdom from the writings of the Babylonians. In the Church fathers the saga is developed in this direction, and from the Church fathers it got into the Latin chronicles. The Christian historian Orosius also knows that Zoroaster was from Bactria, but he already connects Zoroaster with the history of Nineveh and Babylon, and makes Ninus make war against him and conquer him. Orosius speaks of him as the inventor of sorcery and the magic arts. Gregorius of Tours told in his time that Zoroaster was identical with Noah's grandson, with Chus, the son of Ham, that this Chus went to the Persians, and that the Persians called him Zoroaster, a name supposed to mean "the living star." Gregorius also relates that this Zoroaster was the first person who taught men the arts of sorcery and led them astray into idolatry, and as he knew the art of making stars and fire fall from heaven, men paid him divine worship. At that time, Gregorius continues, men desired to build a tower which should reach to heaven. But God confused their tongues and brought their project to naught. Nimrod, who was supposed to have built Babel, was, according to Gregorius, a son of Zoroaster.

The genealogy found in the Edda, according to which the Trojan king Priam, supposed to be the oldest and the proper Odin, was descended in the sixth generation from Jupiter, is taken from Latin chronicles. Herikon of the Edda, grandson of Jupiter, is the Roman-Greek Erichtonius; the Edda's Lamedon is Laomedon. Then the Edda has the difficult task of continuing the genealogy through the dark centuries between the burning of Troy and the younger Odin's immigration to Europe. Here the Latin sources naturally fail it entirely, and it is obliged to seek other aid. It first considers the native sources. There it finds that Thor is also called Lorride, Indride, and Vingthor, and that he had two sons, Mode and Magne; but it also finds a genealogy made about the twelfth century, in which these different names of Thor are applied to different persons, so that Lorride is the son of Thor, Indride the son of Lorride, Vingthor the son of Indride, &c. This mode of making genealogies was current in Iceland in the twelfth century, and before that time among the Christian Anglo-Saxons. Thereupon the Edda continues its genealogy with the names Bedvig, Atra, Itrman, Heremod, Skjaldun or Skold, Bjaef, Jat, Gudolf, Fjarlaf or Fridleif, and finally Odin, that is to say, the younger Odin, who had adopted this name after his deified progenitor Hermes-Priam. This whole genealogy is taken from a Saxon source, and can be found in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle name for name. From Odin the genealogy divides itself into two branches, one from Odin's son, Veggdegg, and another from Odin's son, Beldegg or Balder. The one branch has the names Veggdegg, Vitrgils, Ritta, Heingest. These names are found arranged into a genealogy by the English Church historian Beda, by the English chronicler Nennius, and in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. From one of these three sources the Edda has taken them, and the only difference is that the Edda must have made a slip in one place and changed the name Vitta to Ritta. The other branch, which begins with Balder or Beldegg, embraces eight names, which are found in precisely the same order in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.

In regard to Balder, the Edda says that Odin appointed him king in Westphalia. This statement is based on the tradition that Balder was known among the heathen Germans and Scandinavians by the name Fal , with its variation Fol. In an age when it was believed that Sweden got its name from a king Sven, G?taland from a king G?t, Danmark from a king Dan, Angeln from a king Angul, the Franks from a duke Francio, it might be expected that Falen had been named after a king Fal. That this name was recognised as belonging to Balder not only in Germany, but also in Scandinavia, I shall give further proof of in No. 92.

In the Norse mythology several goddesses or dises have, as we know, feather-guises, with which they fly through space. Freyja has a falcon-guise; several dises have swan-guises . Among these swan-maids was Sif . Sif could therefore present herself now in human form, and again in the guise of the most beautiful swimming bird, the swan.

A legend, the origin of which may be traced to Italy, tells that when the queen of Saba visited king Solomon, she was in one place to cross a brook. A tree or beam was thrown across as a bridge. The wise queen stopped, and would not let her foot touch the beam. She preferred to wade across the brook, and when she was asked the reason for this, she answered that in a prophetic vision she had seen that the time would come when this tree would be made into a cross on which the Saviour of the world was to suffer.

The legend came also to Germany, but here it appears with the addition that the queen of Saba was rewarded for this piety, and was freed while wading across the brook from a bad blemish. One of her feet, so says the German addition, was of human form, but the other like the foot of a water-bird up to the moment when she took it out of the brook. Church sculpture sometimes in the middle age represented the queen of Saba as a woman well formed, except that she had one foot like that of a water-bird. How the Germans came to represent her with this blemish, foreign to the Italian legend, has not heretofore been explained, although the influence of the Greek-Roman mythology on the legends of the Romance peoples, and that of the Teutonic mythology on the Teutonic legends, has been traced in numerous instances.

The character of the anthropomorphosed Odin, who is lawgiver and king, as represented in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda, is only in part based on native northern traditions concerning the heathen god Odin, the ruler of heaven. This younger Odin, constructed by Christian authors, has received his chief features from documents found in the convent libraries. When the Prose Edda tells that the chief who proceeded from Asgard to Saxland and Scandinavia did not really bear the name Odin, but had assumed this name after the elder and deified Odin-Priam of Troy, to make people believe that he was a god, then this was no new idea. Virgil's commentator, Servius, remarks that ancient kings very frequently assumed names which by right belonged only to the gods, and he blames Virgil for making Saturnus come from the heavenly Olympus to found a golden age in Italy. This Saturnus, says Servius, was not a god from above, but a mortal king from Crete who had taken the god Saturnus' name. The manner in which Saturnus, on his arrival in Italy and the vicinity of Rome, was received by Janus, the king ruling there, reminds us of the manner in which Odin, on his arrival in Svithiod, was received by king Gylfe. Janus is unpretentious enough to leave a portion of his territory and his royal power to Saturnus, and Gylfe makes the same concessions to Odin. Saturnus thereupon introduces a higher culture among the people of Latium, and Odin brings a higher culture to the inhabitants of Scandinavia. The Church father Lactantius, like Servius, speaks of kings who tried to appropriate the name and worship of the gods, and condemns them as foes of truth and violators of the doctrines of the true God.

What Heimskringla tells about Odin, that his spirit could leave the body and go to far-off regions, and that his body lay in the meantime as if asleep or dead, is told, in the middle age, of Zoroaster and of Hermes-Mercurius.

THE RESULT OF THE FOREGOING INVESTIGATIONS.

Herewith I close the examination of the sagas in regard to the Trojan descent of the Teutons, and in regard to the immigration of Odin and his Asiamen to Saxland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula. I have pointed out the seed from which the sagas grew, the soil in which the seed could be developed, and how it gradually grew to be what we find these sagas to be in Heimskringla and the Younger Edda. I have shown that they do not belong to the Teutonic heathendom, but that they were born, as it were of necessity, in a Christian time, among Teutons converted to Christianity, and that they are throughout the work of the Latin scholars in the middle age. The assumption that they concealed within themselves a tradition preserved for centuries among the Teutons themselves of an ancient emigration from Asia is altogether improbable, and is completely refuted by the genuine migration sagas of Teutonic origin which were rescued from oblivion, and of which I shall give an account below. In my opinion, these old and genuine Teutonic migration sagas have, from a purely historical standpoint, but little more claim than the fables of the Christian age in regard to Odin's emigration from Asia to be looked upon as containing a kernel of reality. This must in each case be carefully considered. But that of which they furnish evidence is, how entirely foreign to the Teutonic heathens was the idea of an immigration from Troy or Asia, and besides, they are of great interest on account of their connection with what the myths have to say in regard to the oldest dwelling-places, history, and diffusion of the human race, or at least of the Teutonic part of it.

As a rule, all the old migration sagas, no matter from what race they spring, should be treated with the utmost caution. Large portions of the earth's surface may have been appropriated by various races, not by the sudden influx of large masses, but by a gradual increase of the population and consequent moving of their boundaries, and there need not have been very remarkable or memorable events in connection therewith. Such an expansion of the territory may take place, and be so little remarked by the people living around the centre, that they actually do not need to be aware of it, and much less do they need to remember it in sagas and songs. That a few new settlers year by year extend the boundaries of a race has no influence on the imagination, and it can continue generation after generation, and produce as its final result an immense expansion, and yet the separate generations may scarcely have been conscious of the change in progress. A people's spreading over new territory may be compared with the movement of the hour-hand on a clock. It is not perceptible to the eye, and is only realized by continued observation.

In many instances, however, immigrations have taken place in large masses, who have left their old abodes to seek new homes. Such undertakings are of themselves worthy of being remembered, and they are attended by results that easily cling to the memory. But even in such cases it is surprising how soon the real historical events either are utterly forgotten or blended with fables, which gradually, since they appeal more to the fancy, monopolise the interest. The conquest and settlement of England by Saxon and Scandinavian tribes--and that, too, in a time when the art of writing was known--is a most remarkable instance of this. Hengist, under whose command the Saxons, according to their own immigration saga, are said to have planted their feet on British soil, is a saga-figure taken from mythology, and there we shall find him later on . No wonder, then, if we discover in mythology those heroes under whose leadership the Longobardians and Goths believed they had emigrated from their original Teutonic homes.

B. REMINISCENCES IN THE POPULAR TRADITIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE HEATHEN MIGRATION SAGA.

THE LONGOBARDIAN MIGRATION SAGA.

What there still remains of migration sagas from the middle ages, taken from the saga-treasure of the Teutons themselves, is, alas! but little. Among the Franks the stream of national traditions early dried up, at least among the class possessing Latin culture. Among the Longobardians it fared better, and among them Christianity was introduced later. Within the ken of Roman history they appear in the first century after Christ, when Tiberius invaded their boundaries.

In the days of Charlemagne the Longobardians got a historian by name Paulus Diaconus, a monk in the convent Monte Cassino, and he was himself a Longobardian by birth. Of the earliest history of his people he relates the following: The Vinnilians or Longobardians, who ruled successfully in Italy, are of Teutonic descent, and came originally from the island Scandinavia. Then he says that he has talked with persons who had been in Scandinavia, and from their reports he gives some facts, from which it is evident that his informants had reference to Scania with its extensive coast of lowlands and shallow water. Then he continues: "When the population on this island had increased beyond the ability of the island to support them, they were divided into three parts, and it was determined by lot which part should emigrate from the native land and seek new homes. The part whose destiny it became to leave their native land chose as their leaders the brothers Ibor and Ajo, who were in the bloom of manhood and were distinguished above the rest. Then they bade farewell to their friends and to their country, and went to seek a land in which they might settle. The mother of these two leaders was called Gambara, who was distinguished among her people for her keen understanding and shrewd advice, and great reliance was placed on her prudence in difficult circumstances." Paulus makes a digression to discuss many remarkable things to be seen in Scandinavia: the light summer nights and the long winter nights, a maelstrom which in its vortex swallows vessels and sometimes throws them up again, an animal resembling a deer hunted by the neighbours of the Scandinavians, the Scritobinians , and a cave in a rock where seven men in Roman clothes have slept for centuries . Then he relates that the Vinnilians left Scandinavia and came to a country called Scoringia, and there was fought the aforesaid battle, in which, thanks to Frigg's help, the Vinnilians conquered the Vandals, who demanded tribute from them.

The story is then told how this occurred, and how the Vinnilians got the name Longobardians in a manner corresponding with the source already quoted, with the one addition, that it was Odin's custom when he awoke to look out of the window, which was open, to the east toward the rising sun. Paulus Diaconus finds this Longobardian folk-saga ludicrous, not in itself, but because Odin was, in the first place, he says, a man, not a god. In the second place, Odin did not live among the Teutons, but among the Greeks, for he is the same as the one called by the Romans Mercury. In the third place, Odin-Mercury did not live at the time when the Longobardians emigrated from Scandinavia, but much earlier. According to Paulus, there were only five generations between the emigration of the Longobardians and the time of Odoacer. Thus we find in Paulus Diaconus the ideas in regard to Odin-Mercury which I have already called attention to. Paulus thereupon relates the adventures which happened to the Longobardians after the battle with the Vandals. I shall refer to these adventures later on. They belong to the Teutonic mythology, and reappear in mythic sources , but in a more original form, and as events which took place in the beginning of time in a conflict between the Asas and Vans on the one hand, and lower beings on the other hand; lower, indeed, but unavoidable in connection with the well-being of nature and man. This conflict resulted in a terrible winter and consequent famine throughout the North. In this mythological description we shall find Ajo and Ibor, under whose leadership the Longobardians emigrated, and Hengist, under whom the Saxons landed in Britain.

It is proper to show what form the story about the Longobardian emigration had assumed toward the close of the twelfth century in the writings of the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. The emigration took place, he says, at a time when a Danish king, by name Sn?, ruled, and when there occurred a terrible famine. First, those starving had resolved to kill all the aged and all children, but this awful resolve was not carried out, thanks to a good and wise woman, by name Gambaruc, who advised that a part of the people should emigrate. This was done under the leadership of her sons Aggo and Ebbo. The emigrants came first to Blekingia , then they sailed past Moringia and came to Gutland, where they had a contest with the Vandals, and by the aid of the goddess Frigg they won the victory, and got the name Longobardians. From Gutland they sailed to Rugen, and thence to the German continent, and thus after many adventures they at length became masters of a large part of Italy.

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