Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/88

 was a real historical personage, it is impossible to fix, from the traditionary genealogies of those who claimed to be his descendants, at what period he lived. There are no fixed points in the history of the North before the middle of the 9th century, when, about 853 or 854, the birth of Harald Haarfager, who lived to 931, is determined from contemporary history. The scaldic genealogies make this king the twenty-eighth in descent from Odin. If we allow eleven years to each reign, which is the average length of the reigns in the Heptarchy, we must place Odin 550 years after the Christian era. If we take Sir Isaac Newton's computation of eighteen years as the average length of reigns, we bring Odin to the year 368 of our era. If we take lives instead of reigns, we must believe twenty-seven successive persons to have lived so long as to average thirty-five years each, in order to place this god called Odin seventy years before our era. When we turn to the Anglo-Saxon genealogies, we find it still more difficult to place Odin. King Alfred was born 849, or about four years before Harald Haarfager, and is only twenty-three generations from the Odin or Wodin of Hengist and Horsa. Offa, king of Mercia, who lived about 793, is only fifteen generations; Ida, king of Northumberland, who lived about 547, only nine generations; and Ella, king of Northumberland, who lived about 559, is eleven generations from Odin or Wodin. The reasonable view is that of Pinkerton, which has more recently been developed by Grimm and other German writers on Scandinavian mythology,—that Odin, Wodin, Godin, were names of the Supreme Divine Power among the Germanic race; and that Thor, Fryggia, &c. were merely impersonations of divine attributes; that none of these were ever human heroes, deified by their contemporaries or descendants. It may, indeed, be reasonably doubted whether, in any age or country,