distance in the Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does not
at all stand so in the reality. It stands rather at all manner of
distances and depths, of successive generations since the Belief first
began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed to
that Scandinavian System of Thought; in ever-new elaboration and addition,
it is the combined work of them all. What history it had, how it changed
from shape to shape, by one thinker's contribution after another, till it
got to the full final shape we see it under in the Edda, no man will now
ever know: _its_ Councils of Trebizond, Councils of Trent, Athanasiuses,
Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo in the dark night! Only that it had
such a history we can all know. Wheresover a thinker appeared, there in
the thing he thought of was a contribution, accession, a change or
revolution made. Alas, the grandest "revolution" of all, the one made by
the man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest! Of Odin
what history? Strange rather to reflect that he _had_ a history! That
this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his
rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us; with our sorrows, joys, with
our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one as we: and did such a work!
But the work, much of it, has perished; the worker, all to the name.
"_Wednesday_," men will say to-morrow; Odin's day! Of Odin there exists no
history; no document of it; no guess about it worth repeating.

Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business style,
writes down, in his _Heimskringla_, how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the
Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened for
room. How he led these _Asen_ (Asiatics) of his out of Asia; settled them
in the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented Letters, Poetry
and so forth,--and came by and by to be worshipped as Chief God by these
Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like
himself: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very curious