Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/280

 258 Reviews.

be no tolerance for weakness, and an infant who showed any lack of vigour would be left to die. To the Norse mind this was in no sense murder, since the child only received its full life and a share in the family hamingja, or luck, when the father admitted it into his clan by naming it after some ancestor, whose life was supposed to pass into the child and thus attain rebirth. In the case of one born of a thrall-mother even more was necessary. Only after an elaborate ceremony of acceptance into a freeborn family could it be said of him, in the words of an old Swedish writer, that he had " received a whole soul and a past."

This inclusion of the past in the present is another characteristic of the highly-unified view of life upon which the author insists so strongly. A true life, — the full-souled life of the freeborn, — was not limited to a single individual, or even to ojie generation. It was essentially the life of the clan : the life of remote ancestors, revived again in every worthy descendant, and strengthened by every union with other freeborn families. It was a pre-eminently aristocratic conception, and involved, among other things, a great fearlessness in the face of death ; for death could not end life for him who left kinsmen to avenge him and to revive his name and memory. The true enemy to be feared was the oblivion which awaited the niding.

In Hellighed og Helligdom the same unified life-spirit of the clan is described as embodied in its material possessions. The root- meaning of the word hellig, " wholeness," must be kept in mind if we are to realize the quality of essential vitality which was the real object of reverence in sacred things.

No man could handle an object without imparting to it some- thing of his ow]i life and will, which clung to the thing itself even when it had passed out of his possession. Under these circum- stances a gift became a serious matter, since the recipient must admit into his own life, for good or ill, so much of the spirit of the giver as had been assimilated into the gift. Cases are quoted where gifts were feared, and if possible avoided, as placing the recipient in the power of the giver. On the other hand, gifts became the great binding power in social compacts, such as marriage, and were considered necessary as a ratification of every good wish. " What will you give me ? " was the natural reply to