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168 RELIGION OF THE NOETHMEN.
tion of the aboriginal iniabitaiits of the country by
in-wandering strangers.
There were other heathen religion^ in which no
such preestablished mysteriousness found a place ; the
order of priesthood was not distinctly set apart from
the people, and the difference between priest and
layman was in^ reality only the usual difference between
the more and the less enlightened. This
relative condition generally gives evidence .
of a
spiritual independefice united with temporal freedom
among the whole people.
To the latter class of religions the Asa-faith un-
questionably belonged. Ever;)* religion has its-mys-
teries, which, in reality, could never become univer-
sally comprehensible ; and this was in some degree
the case with the one now under consideration.
But these mysteries, it is certain, were ilot many, and
therefore no great mysteriousness nor consequent
^stinct separation of the Asa priests was recog-
nized. Kings and chieftains were at the same time
priests of the Gods, and they universally per-
formed, the rites of divine worship in large pop-
ular assemblies, in the most public manner ;—one
proof among many that the Asa-faith was not, as
many have supposed, introduced among the Northmen,
or forced upon them by a colony of foreign
priests long after the people had separated from
kindred races as an independent nation, but that in
its germs it was carried along with the people them-
selves from former places of abode, and was afterward
freely developed among them in their new
home.
Snorri's accoimt, in the first thirteen chapters