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/90

 Odin, Thor, and Balder. They find in the Norse cosmogony, in a somewhat mutilated and interpolated condition, the Scripture theory of the creation, preservation, destruction and regeneration of the world. Ygdrasil is the tree of life in the garden of Eden; Ask and Embla, the first human pair, are Adam and Eve; the blood of the slain giant Ymer, in which the whole race of frost-giants was drowned, (excepting one pair, who were saved, and from whom a new giant race descended,) is the flood of Noah, the deluge; the citadel called Midgard is the tower of Babel; in the death of Balder, by Hoder, who was instigated by Loke, they find the crucifixion of Christ by Judas, instigated by the devil, etc.; displaying a vast amount of erudition, profoundness and ingenuity, that might have been applied to some good purpose. We refrain from giving more of the results of their learned and erudite investigations, from fear of seducing ourselves or our readers into the adoption of their absurdities.

Other scholars (Snorre Sturleson, Saxo Grammaticus, Suhm, Rask, and others,) give us what is called an historical interpretation, asserting that Odin, Thor, Balder, and the other deities that figure in the Norse mythology, are veritable ancestors of the Norsemen,—men and women who have lived in the remote past; and as distance lends enchantment to the view, so the ordinary kings and priests of pre-historic times have been magnified into gods. Odin and the other divinities are in Snorre Sturleson's Heimskringla represented as having come to Norseland from the great Svithiod, a country lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. According to the historical interpretation the mythical worlds are real countries that can be pointed out on the map. This was the prevailing view taken during the last two centuries,