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108 EELIGION OF THE NOETHMElf.
SO important to their Skaldic minstrelsy—sncli a
turn that, without offense to Christianity, it might
be kept in remembrance and made use of by the
Skalds. Snorri Sturlason's influence opened the
w^y for this interpretation among the historians
of the eighteenth century, who did not, however,
content themselves with one historical Odin, but
assumed three or four successive ones, and considered
the -i^sir sometimes as a tribe of people, some-
times as an order of 'priesthood, who wandered into
the JSTorth from the banks of the Tana'is. A stricter
criticism of the sources of our ancient history has,
in latter times, revealed these errors and thereby
given a death-blow to the purely historical interpre-
tation of the Asa doctrine. In its stead, the physi-
cal interpretation of the Asa myths has become the
prevailing one, and it seems indeed to present
itself to every unprejudiced mind. Even the
mythic names point distinctly in this direction.
The Asa doctrine expresses the conception which a
powerful and imaginative, though uncultivated
people formed of divinity through its diversified
activity in l^ature,—^its conception of the super-
sensual in a bodily and human form.
Finally, as to the third theory : it seems to lie in
the character of a greater part of the Asa myths,
that they are not allegories representing ideas clear
to the mind which first set them forth, and were
clothed in a dress perceptible to the senses merely
to be made intelligible to the mass ;—consequently
we cannot pursue the figure to the utmost in order
to seek in it a real significance. The figure may