XII.] ODIN AND HIS FAIADINS. 237 



In bygone ages, beyond the Scythian plains and the fens 

 of the Tanai's, in that land of the morning, to which neither 

 Grecian letters nor Roman arms had ever penetrated, there 

 was a great city called Asgaard. Of its founder, of its his- 

 tory, we know nothing ; but looming through the mists of 

 antiquity we can discern an heroic figure, whose superior 

 attainments won for him the lordship of his own generation, 

 and divine honours from those that succeeded. Whether 

 moved by an irresistible impulse, or impelled by more 

 powerful neighbours, it is impossible to say ; but certain it 

 is that at some period, not perhaps very long before the 

 Christian era, under the guidance of this personage, a 

 sun-nurtured people moved across the face of Europe, in a 

 north-westerly direction, and after leaving settlements along 

 the southern shores of the Baltic, finally established them- 

 selves in the forests and valleys of what has come to be 

 called the Scandinavian Peninsula. That children of the 

 South should have sought out so inclement a habitation 

 may excite surprise ; but it must always be remembered that 

 they were, probably, a comparatively scanty congregation, 

 and that the unoccupied valleys of Norway and Sweden, 

 teeming with fish and game, and rich in iron, were a prefer- 

 able region to lands only to be colonised after they had been 

 conquered. 



Thus, under the leadership of Odin and his twelve Pala- 

 dins, — to whom a grateful posterity afterwards conceded 

 thrones in the halls of their chief's Valhalla,— the new 

 emigrants spread themselves along the margin of the out- 

 ocean, and round about the gloomy fiords, and up and down 

 the deep valleys that fall away at right angles from the back- 

 bone, or keel, as the seafaring population soon learnt to call 

 the flat, snow-capped ridge that runs down the centre of 

 Norway. 



Amid the rude but not ungenial influences of its bracing 

 climate, was gradually fostered that gallant race which was 

 destined to give an imperial dynasty to Russia, a nobility to 

 England, and conquerors to every sea-board in Europe. 



