Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/95

 appear to have been composed as hand-books to assist in understanding the names of the gods, and the allusions to them in the poetry of the scalds; not to illustrate the doctrine of the religion of Odin. The absurd and the rational are consequently mingled. Many sublime conceptions, and many apparently borrowed by Sæmund and Snorro from Christianity,—as for instance the Trinity with which Gangler converses,—are mixed with fictions almost as puerile as those of the classical mythology. The genius of Snorro Sturleson shines even in these fables. In the grave humour with which the most extravagantly gigantic feats of Thor at Utgaard are related and explained, Swift himself is not more happy; and one would almost believe that Swift had the adventures of Thor and the giant Utgaard Loke before him when he wrote of Brobdignac. The practical forms or modes of worship in the religion of Odin are not to be discovered from the Eddas, nor from the sagas which the two Eddas were intended to illustrate. It is probable that much has been altered to suit the ideas of the age in which they were committed to writing, and of the scribes who compiled them. Christianity in Scandinavia seems, in the 11th century, to have consisted merely in the ceremony of baptism, without any instruction in its doctrines. The wholesale conversion of whole districts by Olaf Tryggvesson, and King Olaf the Saint, was evidently the mere ceremony of baptism. On the eve of the battle of Stiklestad the mere acceptance and performance of that ceremony, without any instruction, was considered by Saint Olaf himself a sufficient Christianising of the pagan robbers, whose assistance he refused unless they would consent to be Christians. From the high importance attached to the mere ceremony without reference to its meaning, it is not improbable that the Christian transcribers, or relators of the historical sagas, may have thought it decent to