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320 KELIGION OF THE NOETHMEN.
of another religion and other customs. Many re-
turned to their homes with contempt at heart for
the faith of their fathers, and as free-thinkers who
had become accustomed to rely upon their own
powers alone. For every new generation that grew
up in that wild Viking-life the faith became more
powerless and insignificant. They persisted in their
warrior-ferocity from habit and by the force of
example, but no longer directly* impelled by a
longing for the society of the jEsir and the joys of
Valhalla. And though they did not yet give up
the faith entirely, still it was only the exterior, the
sensuous form, to which they paid attention. It
was in idols and sacrifices, divination and sorcery,
that they placed confidence, and it was the grossest
superstition that formed the counterpart to the free-
thinking. That wild life, agitated by all manner of
passions, which also transferred itself to their
homes, and toward the close of heathendom gained
the ascendency everywhere in the North, could nfflt
be favorable to any weU-regulated system of reli-
gion whatever, and the foundations of the Asa-faith
were thus undermined by the very spirit which it
had helped to awaken, and which it had itself
strongly supported.
In this condition, then, we find the Asa-faith at
the period when history first properly makes us
acquainted with it—^in its last stage of existence.
It is free-thinking and abject superstition which
we find here presented as the counterpart of each
other. While the Northmen on one hand wor-
shiped stick and stone, animals and dead men, and