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PREFACE
The present work on the Religion of the Northmen
is a translation of " NoEDM^NDEiras Keligions-
FOEFATNiNG I Hedbndommeu," by the learned ProiRBssor
Keyser, of Christiania. It was written by
him in order to give a more extended publicity to- a
series of lectures on the Popular Life of the ]^orthmen
in Heathendom, which he delivered before the
University of Norway, and is properly the first of a
series upon that subject. In his Preface the Pro-
fessor says
" Not only the growing general interest in our
Patherland's Antiquity, but also the student's
demand for a guide to the early history of the
Northmen in some measure adapted to his wants,
has at length induced me to publish in a wider
circle, what for a series of years I have delivered to
a limited one. I have made a beginning with an
Exposition of the Peligious System of the Northmen
in Heathendom, both because this forms the
natural back-ground in the delineation of the popu-
lar life of the Northmen in Antiquity, and because
the greatest peculiarities of that popular life are
connected with their heathen Faitli, which extended