Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/133

Rh the sword invokes the help of God in order to make an end to the bloodshed.

In addition to the mythic and heroic ballads there is a large group of songs, the original elements of which must also be sought in pre-Christian times. They are songs of and of, in which we do not find any direct reminiscences of ancient poetry, but rather all that demonology which, under the influence of Christianity, was created on the basis of the heathen religion. The transition from heathendom to Christianity was by no means a sudden and abrupt one. Many traits of the old religion found their way, in a more or less modified form, into the new faith, and it was particularly difficult to get rid of all those beings with which the myth had peopled nature, though the priests put forth every effort to accomplish this end. These beings continued their lives in legends and songs, though under essentially modified conditions; nay, the development of new myths continued on the basis handed down from the heathen times. In the Christian faith nature appeared fallen and corrupted. Accordingly the beings connected with nature must share her fate and be conceived as evil powers, hostile to the salvation of human souls, no matter how good and beneficent the heathen faith might have represented them. The groups and the individual divinities were in the main accepted as the myth-creating fancy had produced them, but they were all relegated to the realm of the devil as beings that a good Christian must under all circumstances shun, and that would cause his perdition if he had any dealings with them. The gods whose memory had been preserved became wild, damned spirits, the friendly and luminous forms of the elves became wanton, faithless beings, celebrating their nightly dances and stealing the senses of any knight who might chance to be a spectator. They make him oblivious to everything, and he forfeits his own soul. But the ingenious dwarfs which, in the olden time had been conceived as beings of an inferior order, but still upon the