Ultima CHAPTER V. SCANDINAVIA. PYTHEAS, a Greek navigator who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, sailed from the port of Massilia, now Marseilles, on a voyage of inquiry to Thule, which he made to be six days' sail beyond Britain. He brought home reports concerning lands which must have been a part of Scandinavia, but his reports were treated as untrustworthy by Polybius and Strabo. For the next twelve hundred years, until the time of King Alfred, little was known of the lands whence the ships of the Northmen came with crews of plunderers or settlers to the British shores. Those were the lands of Low German tribes quickened to energy by soil and climate, and by battle with the wild Atlantic in their search for bread. With high, free spirits, the Scandinavians were bold also in invention; long winter nights much favoured storytelling, and none but the old Greeks excelled them in the number and the beauty of their legendary tales. They personified the great forces of Nature until they had framed a wide and beautiful mythology; they developed their chiet heroes into mythical forms, half human, half divine; they preserved the glory of the deeds of their forefathers in family traditions that were cherished in the settlements of every valley. They shaped at last their god Odin, or Woden (aster whom we name our Wednesday) into an historical myth that accounted in their own way for the division of their tribes into Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes. When Pompey defeated Mithridates (B.c. 66), he overcame also Scythian tribes that Mithridates had armed against Rome. One of these tribes was said to have been headed by Sigga, son of Fridulf, who fled from the Romans to the north of Europe, and took the name of Odin, the chief god of the Teutons. His tribe had been the Æsir, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and the chief city of the Æsir was Asgard, a famous centre of worship. These were names of the gods and of their home, borrowed from myth for the making of history. Odin led his followers to northern conquest, and gave sons to rule kingdoms that he founded. Staying long in the pleasant island of Fünen, he there built the town of Odensee. Subduing the rest of Denmark, he made his son Skjöld its king. He passed to Sweden, where Gylfi, its king, paid him worship. There he established his authority, and left his son Yngvi as king, whence kings of Sweden were said to be of the race of the Ynglingar. Odin established in Sweden his form of worship, and went on to Norway, over which he gave the rule to his son Sæming. Then, assembling his friends, he gave himself nine lance-wounds in form of a circle, and many sword-cuts, whereof he died, declaring that he so returned to Asgard to sit at eternal banquet with the other gods, where he would receive with great honour all those who should die bravely, sword in hand. The northern chroniclers make this Odin the most persuasive of men, first teacher of poetry to the Scandinavians, and inventor of His skill in magic helped him to pass as a god, and his singing was so sweet that mountains opened with delight and ghosts were drawn out of their caves. In war he was as a wild wolf, biting his shield with rage, so that his enemies, by terror of his aspect, were struck blind and deaf. runes. Runes. Runes were the letters of the alphabets used by all the old Teutonic tribes. When the art of conveying sound by sight was new, it was a great marvel and a mystery known to few. This we have seen in the Gaelic Ogham letters; and among Germans and Scandinavians Rune was at once used as another word for secret conversation, private council. The letters were even considered magical, and cast into the air written separately upon chips or spills of wood, to fall as fate determined on a cloth, and then be read by the interpreters. So in our First English, "runian" was to whisper or speak secretly, runing was dealing in secrets, and, with the phonetic addition of a d after the n, (like that in "sound" and "thunder"), remained as "round" even to Shakespeare's time.* The writing of the runes was upon slips of wood, or upon stone when permanence was sought; they were set as charms also upon weapons, and the first sense of the word "write" was to cut or carve. In our First English Beowulf, the hero, in mortal battle with the dragon, wrote him in the middle with his deadly knife. The association of the runic letters with heathen mysteries and superstition caused the first Christian teachers to discourage, and, indeed, as far as possible, suppress their use. They were, therefore, superseded by the Latin alphabet, which in First English was supplemented by retention of two of the runes, named "thorn" and "wen," to represent sounds of "th" and "w," for which the Latin alphabet had no letters provided. Each rune was named after some object whose name began with the sound represented. The first letter was F, Feoh, money; the second U, Ur, a bull; the third Th, Thorn, a thorn; the fourth O, Os, the mouth; the fifth R, Rad, a saddle; the sixth C, Cen, a torch; and the six *"rounded in the ear By that same purpose changer."—King John. sounds being joined together make Futhorc, which is the name given to the runic A B C. On the 20th of July, 1639, a poor girl found in a field near Gallehus, in Denmark, a golden horn, apparently of the fourth century, with runes upon it signifying "Echlew made this horn for the most dread forest god." On the 21st of April, 1734, a second and shorter horn was found in the earth only a few paces from the spot where the first had been found. Its weight was eight pounds. Its finder was a poor cottier who was digging clay. He gave it to his lord, who gave it to the king, and the king sent two hundred dollars to the peasant. These golden horns of Gallehus were double horns, each with an outer case of purest gold over an inner horn made of silver and gold in equal parts. The larger horn had animal figures on it. Two casts had been made of them, but the casts were lost, and the mould had been destroyed as useless to those who had the very horns in their own keeping. But on the 4th of May, 1802, both horns were stolen from the Danish Museum, and they were, no doubt, finally sacrificed to the wood gods in a crucible over a charcoal fire. Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen, the chief student of Scandinavian and English runes, argues from their nature and distribution that there began Scandinavian with the first incoming of the Teutons a wide England. settlement of Scandinavians in this country, between Thames and Tweed. Indian gravemounds, from the iron age, have weapons, horse harness, and ornaments like those in barrows of the North. Tradition associates the first use of runes with iron-wielding clans of cavalry that swarmed over Scandinavia from the East. Did they bring them from India, or shape them first in Scandinavia? The intervening steppes are without stone; runes upon wood or iron would wear out. However that may be, the traces of the older futhorc, more copious and complex than the later, are to be found scattered about England and the northern lands. As old buildings are taken down and various diggings are made, runic stones are continually being found, but not one ever comes to light in any Saxon or German territory. Of the thousands of inscribed remains dug up in Germany, says Professor George Stephens, all are Roman tiles, altars and funeral stones, or other such. The region within which these runes are found, he says, is all Scandinavia from Lapland to the Eider, and all England from Kent to the Firth of Forth, and to his mind "there is no longer doubt that the old population of Danish, South and North Jutland, the old outflowing Anglic and Jutish and Frisic settlers, mixed with Norsk and Swensk adventurers who flocked to England in the third, fourth, and fifth, and following centuries, were chiefly Scandinavians, Northmen, not Saxons, still less Germans." That is to say, the North furnished the dominant type of the Low German people who united to make England. The north of England was chiefly peopled by the Northern Scandinavians who were most nearly opposite to them, the Midland by the Danes, and the energetic North had touched also and left its mark upon the Southern Frisians. "This runic brand," adds Professor Stephens, "this Broad Arrow, this outstanding mark of a peculiar culture and nationality, is not confined to one particular spot in each northern land. The runes meet us in Sweden from the north to the south, in Norway from the north to the south, in Denmark from the north to the south, in England from the north to the south; and everywhere from the oldest Northern days, and at one common period." But over all this common ground there were diversities of tribe and speech, dialects that ran into each other, and under different conditions were subjected to different degrees and rates of change. For record of the life and literature of our Scandi |