Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/91

 Rh In the Norse gods, then, \ve see the Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to struggle against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him on that dread day, the "twilight of the gods," when the wolf was to break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race of the Æsirs and their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife.

Such were the gods in whom the Norseman believed,—exaggerations of himself, of all his good and all his bad qualities. Their might and their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth: Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjötli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-maidens, henchmen and corsechoosers, now dead and gone, who sat round Odin's board in Valhalla; women whose beauty, woes, and sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can foster passion or beget revenge. Ill-assorted marriages; the right man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman; envyings, jealousies,