Northern mythology

NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY. 131
earth^s fertility, nor Saga, the muse of historj^, as these
beings are represented in the Eddas, either have reference
to, or stand in connection with the course of the sun,
with the division of the year.
With respect to the arithmetic of the Scandinavians, we
find here, as among all ancient people, a frequent recurrence
of certain sacred numbers, as 3, 7, 9, 4, 8^ ; but to
this their whole arithmetic seems limited ;
or
and if a solitary
instance occurs of something that may have a more recondite
allusion, as, for instance, the 540 gates of ValhalF,
from each of which 800 Einheriar could ride abreast, such
matter can, at the utmost, only be regarded as remnants
of older traditions, whose original connection is lost.
multiplying 540 by 800, we get a number identical with
an Indian period; but is not this identity purely accidental
? It is impossible to conceive what connection can
subsist between an Indian period of time and the doors of
Valhall and the number of Einheriar.
Every religion of Antiquity embraces not only the
strictly religious elements, such as belief in the supernatural,
and the influence of this belief on the actions of
men, but, in general, all that knowledge which is now
called science. The priests engrossed all the learning.
Knowledge of nature, of language, of man^s whole intellectual
being and culture, of the historic origin of the state,
and of the chief races, was clad in a poetic, often a mythic,
garb, propagated by song and oral tradition, and, at a later
period, among the most cultivated of the people,
By
particularly
certain families, by writing. These disseminated,
among the great mass of the community, whatever seemed
to them most appropriate to the time and place. Such is
1
For the predilection entertained by the Saxons for the number 8, see
Lappenberg's ' England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,' i. 17.
2 Page 19.