A Book of Myths
"Of me the gods are sprung;
And all that is to come I know, but lock
In my own breast, and have to none reveal'd."
Matthew Arnold.
Thus she came to be pictured crowned with heron plumes, the symbol of
silence--the silence of the lonely marshes where the heron stands in
mutest contemplation--a tall, very stately, very queenly, wholly
beautiful woman, with a bunch of keys at her girdle--symbol of her
protection of the Northern housewife--sometimes clad in snow-white
robes, sometimes in robes of sombre black. And because her care was
for the anxious, weary housewife, for the mother and her new-born
babe, for the storm-tossed mariner, fighting the billows of a hungry
sea, for those whose true and pure love had suffered the crucifixion
of death, and for the glorious dead on the field of battle, it is very
easy to see Freya as her worshippers saw her--an ideal of perfect
womanhood.
But the gods of the Norsemen were never wholly gods. Always they, like
the gods of Greece, endeared themselves to humanity by possessing some
little, or big, human weakness. And Freya is none the less lovable to
the descendants of her worshippers because she possessed the so-called
"feminine weakness" of love of dress. Jewels, too, she loved, and
knowing the wondrous skill of the dwarfs in fashioning exquisite
ornaments, she broke off a piece of gold from the statue of Odin, her
husband, and gave it to them to make into a necklace--the marvellous
jewelled necklace Brisingamen, that in time to come was possessed by
Beowulf. It was so exquisite a thing that it made her beauty twice
more perfect, and Odin loved her doubly much because of it. But when
he discovered that his statue had been tampered with, his wrath was
very great, and furiously he summoned the dwarfs--they who dealt
always with fine metal--and demanded of them which of them had done
him this grievous wrong. But the dwarfs loved Freya, and from them he
got no answer.
Then he placed the statue above the temple gate, and laboured with
guile to devise runes that might give it the power of speech, so that
it might shout aloud the name of the impious robber as the robber went
by. Freya, no longer an omnipotent goddess, but a frightened wife,
trembled before his wrath, and begged the dwarfs to help her. And when
one of them--the most hideous of all--promised that he would prevent
the statue from speaking if Freya would but deign to smile upon him,
the queen of the gods, who had no dread of ugly things, and whose
heart was full of love and of pity, smiled her gentle smile on the
piteous little creature who had never known looks of anything but
horror and disgust from any of the deathless gods. It was for him a
wondrous moment, and the payment was worth Death itself. That night a
deep sleep fell on the guards of Odin's statue, and, while they slept,
the statue was pulled down from its pedestal and smashed into pieces.
The dwarf had fulfilled his part of the bargain.
When Odin next morning discovered the sacrilege, great was his anger,
and when no inquiry could find for him the criminal, he quitted Asgard
in furious wrath. For seven months he stayed away, and in that time
the Ice Giants invaded his realm, and all the land was covered with a
pall of snow, viciously pinched by black frosts, chilled by clinging,
deadening, impenetrable mists. But at the end of seven dreary months
Odin returned, and with him came the blessings of light and of
sunshine, and the Ice Giants in terror fled away.
Well was it for woman or for warrior to gain the favour of Freya, the
Beloved, who knew how to rule even Odin, the All Father, himself. The
Winilers who were warring with the Vandals once sought her aid, and
gained her promise of help. From Hlidskialf, the mighty watch-tower,
highest point in Asgard, from whence Odin and his queen could look
down and behold what was happening all the world over, amongst gods
and men, dwarfs, elves, and giants, and all creatures of their
kingdom, Freya watched the Vandals and the Winilers making ready for
the battle which was to decide forever which people should rule the
other.
Night was descending, but in the evening light the two gods beheld the
glitter of spears, the gleam of brass helmets and of swords, and heard
from afar the hoarse shouts of the warriors as they made ready for the
great fight on the morrow. Knowing well that her lord favoured the
Vandals, Freya asked him to tell her which army was to gain the
victory. "The army upon which my eyes shall first rest when I awake at
the dawning," said Odin, full well knowing that his couch was so
placed that he could not fail to see the Vandals when he woke. Well
pleased with his own astuteness, he then retired to rest, and soon
sleep lay heavy on his eyelids. But, while he slept, Freya gently
moved the couch upon which he lay, so that he must open his eyes not
on the army who had won his favour, but on the army that owned hers.
To the Winilers, she gave command to dress up their women as men, and
let them meet the gaze of Odin in the dawning, in full battle array.
"Take thou thy women-folk,
Maidens and wives;
Over your ankles
Lace on the white war-hose;
Over your bosoms
Link up the hard mail-nets;
Over your lips
Plait long tresses with cunning;--
So war beasts full-bearded
King Odin shall deem you,
When off the grey sea-beach
At sunrise ye greet him."
Charles Kingsley.
When the sun sent its first pale green light next morning over grey
sky and sea, Odin awoke, and gazed from his watch-tower at the army on
the beach. And, with great amazement, "What Longbeards are those?" he
cried.
"They are Winilers!" said Freya, in joyous triumph, "but you have
given them a new name. Now must you also give them a gift! Let it be
the victory, I pray you, dear lord of mine."
And Odin, seeing himself outwitted and knowing that honour bade him
follow the Northern custom and give the people he had named a gift,
bestowed on the Longbeards and their men the victory that Freya
craved. Nor was the gift of Odin one for that day alone, for to him
the _Langobarden_ attributed the many victories that led them at last
to find a home in the sunny land of Italy, where beautiful Lombardy
still commemorates by its name the stratagem of Freya, the queen.
With the coming of Christianity, Freya, the Beloved, was cast out
along with all the other old forgotten gods. The people who had loved
and worshipped her were taught that she was an evil thing and that to
worship her was sin. Thus she was banished to the lonely peaks of the
mountains of Norway and of Sweden and to the Brocken in Germany, no
longer a goddess to be loved, but transformed into a malignant power,
full of horror and of wickedness. On Walpurgis Night she led the
witches' revels on the Brocken, and the cats who were said to draw her
car while still she was regarded as a beneficent protectress of the
weak and needy, ceased to be the gentle creatures of Freya the Good,
and came under the ban of religion as the satanic companions of
witches by habit and repute.
One gentle thing only was her memory allowed to keep. When, not as an
omnipotent goddess but as a heart-broken mother, she wept the death of
her dearly-loved son, Baldur the Beautiful, the tears that she shed
were turned, as they fell, into pure gold that is found in the beds of
lonely mountain streams. And we who claim descent from the peoples who
worshipped her--
"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we"--
can surely cleanse her memory from all the ugly impurities of
superstition and remember only the pure gold of the fact that our
warrior ancestors did not only pray to a fierce and mighty god of
battles, but to a woman who was "loving and giving"--the little
child's deification of the mother whom it loves and who holds it very
dear.
THE DEATH OF BALDUR
"I heard a voice, that cried,
'Baldur the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!'
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes."
Longfellow.
Among the gods of Greece we find gods and goddesses who do unworthy
deeds, but none to act the permanent part of villain of the play. In
the mythology of the Norsemen we have a god who is wholly treacherous
and evil, ever the villain of the piece, cunning, malicious,
vindictive, and cruel--the god Loki. And as his foil, and his victim,
we have Baldur, best of all gods, most beautiful, most greatly
beloved. Baldur was the Galahad of the court of Odin the king, his
father.
"My strength is of the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure."
No impure thing was to be found in his dwelling; none could impugn his
courage, yet ever he counselled peace, ever was gentle and infinitely
wise, and his beauty was as the beauty of the whitest of all the
flowers of the Northland, called after him _Baldrsbra_. The god of the
Norsemen was essentially a god of battles, and we are told by great
authorities that Baldur was originally a hero who fought on the
earth, and who, in time, came to be deified. Even if it be so, it is
good to think that a race of warriors could worship one whose chief
qualities were wisdom, purity, and love.
In perfect happiness, loving and beloved, Baldur lived in Asgard with
his wife Nanna, until a night when his sleep was assailed by horrible
dreams of evil omen. In the morning he told the gods that he had
dreamed that Death, a thing till then unknown in Asgard, had come and
cruelly taken his life away. Solemnly the gods debated how this ill
happening might be averted, and Freya, his mother, fear for her best
beloved hanging heavy over her heart, took upon herself the task of
laying under oath fire and water, iron and all other metals, trees and
shrubs, birds, beasts and creeping things, to do no harm to Baldur.
With eager haste she went from place to place, nor did she fail to
exact the oath from anything in all nature, animate or inanimate, save
one only.
"A twig of mistletoe, tender and fair, grew high above the field," and
such a little thing it was, with its dainty green leaves and waxen
white berries, nestling for protection under the strong arm of a great
oak, that the goddess passed it by. Assuredly no scathe could come to
Baldur the Beautiful from a creature so insignificant, and Freya
returned to Asgard well pleased with her quest.
Then indeed was there joy and laughter amongst the gods, for each one
tried how he might slay Baldur, but neither sword nor stone, hammer
nor battle-axe could work him any ill.
Odin alone remained unsatisfied. Mounted on his eight-footed grey
steed, Sleipnir, he galloped off in haste to consult the giant
prophetess Angrbotha, who was dead and had to be followed to Niflheim,
the chilly underworld that lies far north from the world of men, and
where the sun never comes. Hel, the daughter of Loki and of Angrbotha,
was queen of this dark domain.
"There, in a bitterly cold place, she received the souls
of all who died of sickness or old age; care was her
bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls
were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge; 'Half
blue was her skin, and half the colour of human flesh. A
goddess easy to know, and in all things very stern and
grim.'"
Dasent.
In her kingdom no soul that passed away in glorious battle was
received, nor any that fought out the last of life in a fierce combat
with the angry waves of the sea. Only those who died ingloriously were
her guests.
When he had reached the realm of Hel, Odin found that a feast was
being prepared, and the couches were spread, as for an honoured guest,