

SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY, &.-MINOR 



SUPERSTITIONS. 



ALL polytheistic religions have their great 

 features the same, and even in minute 

 particulars, the coincidences are numerous and 

 striking. This led to the opinion, very prevalent 

 at one time, that all nations had borrowed their 

 religious systems one from the other, and that the 

 whole had had some one common source. Many 

 thought they saw that source in the revealed 

 religion of the Jewish Scriptures ; the doctrines 

 and rites of the patriarchal religion had, it was 

 conceived, been corrupted into heathenism, the 

 patriarchs themselves becoming the gods and 

 heroes of the systems. Such views are now 

 mostly given up. They cannot be made to accord 

 with the facts ; nor are any such hypotheses 

 necessary. Religious beliefs are natural pro- 

 ducts of the human mind, and may be expected 

 to resemble one another, however independently 

 they spring up, so long as man's nature and the 

 circumstances with which he is surrounded are 

 substantially the same. The great agencies and 

 elements of nature fill him with awe, and make 

 him feel his dependence ; and conceiving them 

 to be actuated by conscious minds like his own, he 

 seeks to propitiate their favour. The vivifying 

 Sun, the all-producing Earth, the terrible and 

 destructive Thunder and Lightning, the refreshing 

 and fertilising Spring or River gods unmistak- 

 ably representing these and similar agencies are 

 found in the pantheons of all nations : of the 

 Indians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, 

 even the islanders of the Pacific, and the 

 Mexicans and Peruvians of the New World. 

 Different groupings of attributes and qualities 

 would naturally arise, according to the different 

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speculative tendencies of the peoples, but the 

 foundation was in all the same. 



Before the spread of Christianity, the various 

 races that peopled Europe had each a system of 

 religious belief and worship ; the best known of 

 these ancient European mythologies are those of 

 Greece and Rome. These two resemble each 

 other so closely, that they are generally considered 

 as one. They have also a striking family like- 

 ness to the most ancient mythology of the Hindus; 

 besides that general resemblance common to all 

 mythologies, there are numerous points of coinci- 

 dence, which can be accounted for only by sup- 

 posing the peoples to have been originally con- 

 nected. The same is true of the Scandinavian. 

 From the affinities of language, it had already 

 been inferred that all the nations of Europe, 

 together with the ancient Persians and Hindus, 

 had originally sprung from some mother-nation, 

 which had died in giving them birth. A com- 

 parison of their mythologies leads to the same 

 conclusion. In the HISTORY OF GREECE, a short 

 sketch is given of classic mythology ; and in 

 order to save space for what is less generally 

 known, we shall pass it over here, and content 

 ourselves with referring the reader to that number 

 (No. 58;. 



SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. 



Of the other ancient European mythologies, the 

 only one of which we possess a connected ac- 

 count is the Norse or Scandinavian. Owing to 

 the remote situation of Denmark, Norway, and 

 Sweden, Christianity was long in penetrating 



