Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/43

 only in Iceland that anything like a complete record of this ancient Teutonic mythology was put in writing and preserved; and this fact alone ought to be quite sufficient to lead us to cultivate a better acquaintance with the literature of Scandinavia. To use the words of that excellent Icelandic scholar, the Englishman George Webbe Dasent: It is well known, says he, that the Icelandic language, which has been preserved almost incorrupt in that remarkable island, has remained for many centuries the depository of literary treasures, the common property of all the Scandinavian and Teutonic races, which would otherwise have perished, as they have perished in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and England. There was a time when all these countries had a common mythology, when the royal race each of them traced its descent in varying genealogies up to Odin and the gods of Asgard. Of that mythology, which may hold its own against any other that the world has seen, all memory, as a systematic whole, has vanished from the mediæval literature of Teutonic Europe. With the introduction of Christianity, the ancient gods had been deposed and their places assigned to devils and witches. Here and there a tradition, a popular tale or a superstition bore testimony to what had been lost; and, though in this century the skill and wisdom of the Grimms and their school have shown the world what power of restoration and reconstruction abides in intelligent scholarship and laborious research, even the genius of the great master of that school of criticism would have lost nine-tenths of its power had not faithful Iceland preserved through the dark ages the two Eddas, which present to us, in features that cannot be mistaken, and in words which cannot die, the very form