Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for etymology's sake, that
Sea-tempest is the Jotun _Aegir_, a very dangerous Jotun;--and now to this
day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the
River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl
it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; they cry out, "Have a care,
there is the _Eager_ coming!" Curious; that word surviving, like the peak
of a submerged world! The _oldest_ Nottingham bargemen had believed in the
God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in good part is Danish, Norse; or
rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a
superficial one,--as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over
our Island we are mingled largely with Danes proper,--from the incessant
invasions there were: and this, of course, in a greater proportion along
the east coast; and greatest of all, as I find, in the North Country. From
the Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the common people is
still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar
Norse tinge. They too are "Normans," Northmen,--if that be any great
beauty!--

Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so much;
what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a
recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal
Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant
Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous
Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very
great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from
the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this
Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude,
earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and
heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the first characteristic of all