Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/52

 selves in the countries north of the Baltic were undoubtedly of Asiatic origin. The date of this inundation may have been 400 years before or 400 years after the Christian era (antiquaries have their theories, for both periods), or there may have been different Odins, or the name may have been generic and applied to all great conquerors; and the causes, as well as the dates of this vast movement, are lost in the night of antiquity. The fact itself admits of no doubt; for it rests not only on the concurrent traditions and religious belief of the people, but upon customs retained by them to a period far within the pale of written history, and which could only have arisen in the country from which they came, not in that to which they had come. The use, for instance, of horse-flesh could never have been an original indigenous Scandinavian custom, because the horse there is an animal too valuable and scarce ever to have been an article of food, as on the plains of Asia; but down to the end of the 11th century the eating of horse-flesh at the religious feasts, as commemorative of their original country, prevailed, and was the distinctive token of adhering to the religion of Odin: and those who ate horse-flesh were punished with death by Saint Olaf. A plurality of wives also, in which the most Christian of their kings indulged even so late as the 12th century, was not a custom which, in a poor country like Scandinavia, was likely to prevail, and appears more probably of Asiatic origin. But what could have induced a migrating population from the Tanais (the Don), on which traditionary history fixes their original seat, after reaching the southern coasts of the Baltic, to have turned to the north and crossed the sea to establish themselves on the bleak inhospitable rocks, and in the severe climate of Scandinavia, instead of overspreading the finer countries on the south side of the Baltic? The political causes from preoccupation,