Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/190

 182 CHRONICLE OF THE saga vii. the name of Magnus. The next morning, when the king awoke and had dressed himself, the circumstance was told him. He ordered Sigvat to be called, and said, " How earnest thou to be so bold as to have my child baptized before I knew any thing about it?" Sio-vat replies, " Because I would rather give two men to God than one to the devil." The king — " What meanest thou? " Sio-yat " The child was near death, and must have been the devil's if it had died as a heathen, and now it is God's. And I knew besides that if thou shouldst be so angry on this account that it affected my life, I would be God's also." The king asked, "But why didst thou call him Magnus, which is not a name of our race ?" Sigvat — "I called him after King Carl Magnus, who, I knew, had been the best man in the world."* the first antiquary of our times, in his " Runamo," page 103., held, in common with the Druids and Brahmins, the doctrine of transmigration, or rather reincarnation of souls. They believed that by giving a child the name of a distinguished man, especially of his own forefathers, the soul of the name-father was transfused into the child. Saint Olaf was named by his foster-father Rane after his ancestor King Olaf Geir- stad-Alf, who was popular in his time ; and the people believed that this Olaf Geirstad-Alf was born again in Saint Olaf. Saint Olaf himself was pleased with his son being named after Charlemagne. This pagan belief accounts for the giving a name at baptism being to this day reckoned in the Northern Christian churches an essential part in baptism, although in reality it is no part of that sacrament at all, but merely a pagan usage, attached, and very conveniently and properly, to the adoption by baptism into the Christian faith. This pagan belief also, on which Finn Magnu- sen is too deeply versed in the Northern mythology to be under any mistake, removes the difficulty in the ordinary view given us of the Odin religion, and of its Valhalla. We find that heroes, or men slain in battle, or distinguished by warlike deeds during a long life, were alone admitted into their Valhalla; and what, according to their belief, became of ordinary souls, of the souls of the many and of the females, does not appear. They had no part in Valhalla. But this pagan belief in a reincarnation, if Finn Magnusen be correct, removes this difficulty in understanding the Odin paganism, and makes the system intelligible as something embracing all, and not merely the few heroes who die in battle.
 * The pagan Northmen, according to the learned Finn Magnusen,