( xxix )
use, all unanimously depose, viz. That before the times of Christianity all these parts of Europe worshipped Odin and the Gods of the Edda.
Nevertheless, if it were necessary to answer an objection, which the bare perusal of the Edda alone, and the Remarks I have added, will sufficiently obviate; the reader need only cast his eyes over some Fragments of Poetry of the ancient northern Scalds, which I have translated at the end of this book: He will there find, throughout, the same Mythology that is set forth in the Edda; although the authors of these pieces lived in very different times and places from those in which Soemund and Snorro flourished.
These doubts being removed, it only remains to clear up such as may arise concerning the fidelity of these different translations. I freely confess my imperfect knowledge of the language in which the Edda is written. It is to the modern Danish or Swedish languages, what the dialect of Ville-hardouin, or the Sire de Joinville is to modern French[1]. I should have been frequently at a loss, if it had not been for
- ↑ i. e. As the language of Chaucer or Pierce Plowman, compared to modern English. T.
