Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/384

 372 CHKONICLE OF THE NOTES. Sigurd the Crusader, with Eystein and Olaf, his brothers - - - - 27 years. Magnus the Blind - - - - 5 — We have here eight reigns, averaging 13| years each; and in the 272 years between the accession of Harald Haarfager in 863, and the mutilation and deposition of Magnus the Blind in 1135, we have sixteen reigns, averaging seventeen years. Now Harald Haarfager, accoi^ding to Torfaeus and Schoning, was born in 853, and was the twenty-sixth in descent from Odin. If we apply this reasonable measure of seventeen years as the average duration of reigns in the my- thological period immediately before, as it is in the historical period immediately after Harald Haarfager, whose reign began in 863, we bring Odin to 442 years before his reign, that is, to the year 421 of our gera. If we apply the same measure to the Saxon genealogies of Cerdic, Ida, and Ella, who in the years 495, 547, and 560, were reckoned the 9th, 10th, and 11th in descent respectively from Woden, w^e bring the Saxon Woden to the year 342, or 377, or 373 ; that is, to within the span of a man's life of from 44 to 7 9 years of the date of the Scandinavian Odin. It appears to have been some kind of antiquarian vanity that led the early northern antiqua- ries to place Odin or Woden as far back as possible among the mists of antiquity, and to reject every reasonable measure of the length of reigns, or of human Hfe, that brought him within the Christian aera. The religion of Odin itself bears strong internal evidence of having borrowed doctrines, institutions, and ceremonies from Christianity, — of having been impressed by some rude notions adopted from the Christian church. In Haar the High, Jafnhaar the Equal to the High, and Thredde the Third, we find a rude idea of the Trinity in the Edda. Adam of Bremen, who lived about the time of the introduction of Christianity into Sweden, and wrote in the year 1075, de- scribes the temple at Upsal as exhibiting this rude idea of the Trinity. It had three idols, he says, of which that of Thor was in the middle and on the highest throne, and those of Odin and Fryggia on either side. Odin himself, an incarna- tion of divine power, and one of this trinity, attended by hi^ twelve companions or godars, and establishing a religion and religious government, is a coincidence with our Saviour and