probable that during the latter half of the nineteenth century the literature of Scandinavia may become familiar to the English descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, and the mythology of the north may become as—well known as the mythology of ancient Greece and Pagan Rome—that Scandinavian mythology in which Odin was the Jove, Freya the Venus, and Thor the Mars, of the Norsemen; in which Niflheim—the dark and cold spirit-world, with its frozen rivers and gloomy vapours, situated in the extreme north—was deemed the abode of terrors; Muspelheim, situated in the extreme south, the world of fire; and the Valhalla, with its five hundred and forty gates, the resort of those warriors who had died in battle, or distinguished themselves by valiant deeds.
The strange wild tales of the Scandinavian mythology have been, and are still, frequently introduced into Danish poetry and romance.[1] The were sung of in the poems or historic tales of the Skalds, who, though of Icelandic origin, spread their productions over Sweden, Denmark, and Norway; and they were often alluded to in the Sagas,[2] or narrations, which were so much valued in these rude ages. A good specimen of the old Skaldic poems is the "Quida, or Death Song of Regnar Lodbrok," one of the earliest poets of Denmark, son of Sigurd Ring, king of that and the adjacent countries. Regnar was, at first, King of the Isles; afterwards, a celebrated sea-king, and for a long time the terror of the coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Flanders, as well as of those of Norway and Sweden. But his exploits at Norwich and Lindisfarn eventually were the cause of his being taken prisoner by Ella, king of Northumberland, and put to death in a cruel manner, by being shut up with vipers, worms, and other loathsome reptiles. His wife, or rather one of his wives—for Regnar’s matrimonial code was not unlike that of the Turks—was also famed for her poetical talents, as well as her beauty; and had Regnar listened to her prophetic warnings, he would not have fallen a victim to the barbarous revenge of the Northumbrian chief. There is a fanciful and pretty Norwegian tradition respecting this wife of Regnar Lodbrok, which is related by Torfæus, the learned Icelandic antiquary and historian, who was educated principally at Copenhagen, passed most of his life in Norway, and died about the beginning of the present century.
The legend says, that at Spangereid, an isthmus in Norway, a golden harp was one day cast, by the waves, on the shore of a small sheltered bay; and that in this gift of the ocean there was found a little girl of surpassing beauty. She was brought up to keep sheep by the peasants who found her; but the report of her loveliness having reached the ears of Regnar Lodbrok, then king of the Danish islands, he sought the place of her abode, and married her. She had two names—Aslauga and Kraaka. A hill near the home of her childhood is called Aslauga’s hill—a stream there, Kraakabecker, the rivulet of Kraaka—and the bay goes by the name of Gull-Siken, or Golden Bay. But in Möinichen’s "Danish Dictionary of the Gods, Heroes, Fables, and Traditions of the North," Aslauga’s history is somewhat differently given. She is there said to
- ↑ These are principally collected in the two Eddas, and the Voluspa, or oracle of the prophetess or sybil, Vola.
- ↑ Saga, in the northern mythology, was the name of a goddess who presided over History. She was a favourite of Odin, and was admitted to the honour of drinking with him from a golden cup.
