Northern mythology

X
PREFACE.
the later Edda of Suorri their corruption is, in several
instances, glaringly evident, some of them there appearing
in a guise closely bordering on the ludicrous ^ ; a
circumstance, perhaps, ascribable, at least in part, to the
zeal and sagacity
of the Christian missionaries and early
converts, who not unwisely considered ridicule
one of the
most efficacious methods of extirpating the heathenism
that still lingered among the great mass of the people.
But the myths of the Odinic faith were doomed to
undergo a yet greater debasement; their next and final
degradation being into a middle-age fiction or a nursery
talc, in which new dress they are hardly recognizable. A
few instances of such metamorphoses will be found in the
course of the work, and more are to be met with in the
popular tales of Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands
and Italy ^.
But besides these, and apparently of equal if not higher
antiquity, there are many traditions and superstitions
which cannot be connected ^\dth what we know of the
Odinic faith. These, it may not unreasonably be conjectured,
are relics of the mythology of the Fins and other
primitive inhabitants of Scandinavia, who were driven
northwards or into the mountain-recesses by Odin and
his followers, and in whom and in their posterity we are
to look for the giants (jotnar, jsetter, jiitulcr, etc.), the
dwarfs and the elves, with whom the superstition of later
1
See Thor's visit to Utgarda-Loki (p. 56), and Loki's pranks to make
Skadi laugh (p. 45).
2 See Faye's Norske Sagn ; Thicle, Danmarks Folkesagn ; Afzelius'
Svenska Folkets Sago-lliifder ;
Grimm's Kinder und llausmarchen ; Wolf's
Niederlaudische Sagen ; the Pentameroue of Basile, etc. etc.