wholly left ere they enter history. Judging from universal
analogy, the religion of which record remains to us was just what
might be looked for at the particular stage of advancement the
Northmen had reached. Of course something may have been gained
from contact with other peoples -- from the Greeks during the
long years in which the northern races pressed upon their
frontier; from the Irish during the existence of the western
viking-kingdoms; but what I particularly warn young students
against is the constant effort of a certain order of minds to
wrest facts into agreement with their pet theories of religion or
what not. The whole tendency of the more modern investigation
shows that the period of myth-transmission is long over ere
history begins. The same confusion of different stages of myth-
making is to be found in the Greek religion, and indeed in those
of all peoples; similar conditions of mind produce similar
practices, apart from all borrowing of ideas and manners; in
Greece we find snake-dances, bear-dances, swimming with sacred
pigs, leaping about in imitation of wolves, dog-feasts, and
offering of dogs' flesh to the gods -- all of them practices
dating from crude savagery, mingled with ideas of exalted and
noble beauty, but none now, save a bigot, would think of accusing
the Greeks of having stolen all their higher beliefs. Even were
some part of the matter of their myths taken from others, yet the
Norsemen have given their gods a noble, upright, great spirit,
and placed them upon a high level that is all their own. (8)
From the prose Edda the following all too brief statement of the
salient points of Norse belief is made up: -- "The first and
eldest of gods is hight Allfather; he lives from all ages, and
rules over all his realm, and sways all things great and small;
he smithied heaven and earth, and the lift, and all that belongs