NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY NORTHERN WAR. 



255 



yet we find them to be the beautiful maids of 

 Odin, with helmet arid mail, and mounted on swift 

 horses. Heroes long for their arrival, enamoured 

 of their charms. They conducted the heroes to 

 Valhalla. 



The residence of the gods is Asgard, a fortress of 

 heaven, whence the bridge Bifrost leads to the earth. 

 Asgard contained the palaces of the gods. There 

 was Valaskialf, the silver palace of Odin, with all 

 the above-mentioned divinities. In the centre of 

 Asgard, in the valley of Ida, was the place of meet- 

 ing, where the gods administered justice. This place 

 was the most highly ornamented of all. Here was 

 Gladheim, the hall of joy; Wingolf, the palace of 

 friendship and love ; and Glasor, the forest of golden 

 trees. Valhalla was a separate palace, with groves 

 and beautiful environs : in it was the dwelling of 

 heroes who had fallen in battle. Here life is passed 

 in bloody war and riotous revelry. But all wounds 

 here received in battle are healed as soon as the 

 trumpet sounds for the feast ; and then the heroes 

 quaff the oil of Enherium, and the beautiful Valkyrias 

 fill their cups. 



The number of heroes is immense, and will increase 

 indefinitely ; yet the gods will wish that it were still 

 greater when the wolf Fenris comes. This leads us 

 to throw a glance at the wicked Loke. Loke, the 

 son of the giant Farbaute and of Laufeya, is, if not 

 a god, yet a superhuman being, beautiful of body, 

 but malignant of spirit. By the giantess Angerbode 

 (Messenger of Evil) he had Hela, the goddess of the 

 lower regions, half blue and half flesh colour, and 

 with a terrible figure, the wolf Fenris, and the ter- 

 rible serpent of Midgard, Jormungandur, which sur- 

 rounds the whole earth. Hela rules in Niflheim. 

 Her hall is called Elidnir (Grief) ; her bed Kor (Dis- 

 ease) ; her table Hungr (Hunger) ; her servants are 

 Ganglati and GanghoT (Lethargy and Delay). All 

 who died of sickness and old age descended to her 

 dark mansion. Thus Niflheim and Asgard are op- 

 posed to each other as existence and non-existence, 

 and the scalds imagined that destruction would finally 

 be victorious over every thing that is : hence their 

 idea of the end of the world. Three terrible winters, 

 and again three more, will succeed each other : snow 

 will rush in from all sides : the cold will be severe, 

 the storms violent, the sun covered, and bloody wars 

 will distract the whole world. This is the sign that 

 the destruction of the world, and the great " twilight 

 of the gods" (thus the end of the world is called) is 

 nigh. The wolf Fenris a monster which, when it 

 opens its jaws, touches the skies with the upper, and, 

 with the lower, the primeval abyss devours the 

 world, while the inhabitants of Musspellheim, under 

 the command of Surtur, make an attack upon As- 

 gard. Heaven is stormed by these giants, and 

 heaven's bridge falls when they ride over it. For 

 this reason, Heimdall is placed there as a watch, and 

 the gods look with pleasure upon the numerous com- 

 batants of Valhalla. But all precaution is vain : the 

 gods must perish, even the all-powerful Odin and the 

 mighty Thor. A new sun will then illumine the 

 earth, and Lift and Liftrasor a human pair saved 

 from the destruction, and nourished on morning 

 dew will renew the human race. There will be 

 new dwellings for the just and unjust, for reward 

 and punishment Gimle (a splendid residence towards 

 the southern end of heaven) and Nastrand. Widar 

 (the Conqueror) and Wale (the Powerful) will live in 

 the dwellings of the gods, after the flame of Surtur 

 is quenched. Mode (Mental Power) and Magne 

 (Strength) will receive the crushing hammer, after 

 Thor, exhausted by the struggle, has perished, and 

 Widar tears the jaws of the wolf asunder. 



These mythuses have been preserved in the Edda 



and the Sagas (See Miiller's Sagabibliothek des Scan- 

 dinavischen Alterthums , Berlin, 1816), by Procopius 

 of Caesarea, Jornandes, Paulus Diaconus (son of 

 Warnefried) Ermoldus, Nigellus, Adam of Bremen, 

 Saxo Grammaticus. Schlozer, Adelung, Delius, 

 Mallet, Nyerup, Grater, and Riihs, entertain very 

 different, sometimes contradictory, opinions respect- 

 ing their historical value. (See Edda.) The subject 

 cannot, however, be considered as completely exam- 

 ined. Another question has been started, whether 

 this northern mythology was also Germanic. At all 

 events, those Scandinavians are connected by origin 

 with the Germanic tribes, and, as Germanic tribes 

 passed the Rhine, so other tribes pressed in from the 

 North and East, and Goths and Saxons brought this 

 mythology to Germany. See Nyerup's Dictionary 

 of Scandinavian Mythology (Copenhagen, 1816, in 

 German) ; Kattenfeld's Dissertations on the Doctrine 

 of the j4sas, and its Application (in the I sis of 1819, 

 in German) ; Mone's history of Paganism in Nor- 

 thern Europe (in German); bishop Miinter's Eccle- 

 siastical History of Denmark and Norway (the first 

 book of vol. i. treats of the Scandinavian paganism 

 of Odin ; Leipsic, 1823, in German) ; and Vulpius's 

 Dictionary of the Mythology of the German and the 

 kindred Tribes, and the Northern Nations in (Ger- 

 man) ; see, also, vol. i. of Geijer's History of Sweden 

 (in Swedish and in German, Salzburg, 1826), and 

 Edda Samunder hins Froda (part iii. Copenhagen, 

 1828), containing the Foluspd, Kdvamdl and Rigs- 

 mdl, with a Dictionary of the Ancient Northern 

 Mythology, by professor Magnussen. 



NORTHERN WAR, from 1700 to 1721. The 

 northern war (so called), in the north and east of 

 Europe, was contemporary with the Spanish war of 

 succession in the west. The king of Poland, Au- 

 gustus II., elector of Saxony, the czar Peter of Rus- 

 sia, and the king of Denmark, secretly united against 

 the king of Sweden, Charles XII. (q. v.), 1698, then 

 only sixteen years old, to regain the provinces ceded 

 to Sweden, by the treaties of Copenhagen, 1660, of 

 Oliva (q. v.), 1660, of Kardis, 1661 . A Danish army, 

 therefore, invaded the states of the duke of Holstein- 

 Gottorp, the brother-in-law of Charles XII., to en - 

 force Denmark's claim to the sovereignty of Sleswic, 

 and a Saxon army invaded Livonia. But Charles 

 XII., who had gained the naval powers (England 

 and Holland) to assist his cause, by a treaty con- 

 cluded at the Hague (1700), landed in Zealand, and 

 the allied Swedish, Dutch, and British fleets bom- 

 barded Copenhagen. This compelled the king of 

 Denmark, Frederic IV. to separate from the league, 

 at the peace of Traventhal (August 18, 1700), and to 

 acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Gottorp 

 over Sleswic. Charles now advanced against the 

 Russian army, which besieged Narva, in Esthonia, 

 and completely defeated it, November 30, 1700. 

 Upon this he compelled the Saxons to evacuate 

 Livonia in 1701, and proceeded towards Warsaw, 

 when the party of Sapieha, in Poland, declared 

 themselves against king Augustus. He defeated 

 the Polish-Saxon army at Clissow (July 20, 1702), 

 then the Saxons at Pultusk (May 1, 1703), and 

 effected the dethronement of king Augustus at the 

 diet of Warsaw (February 14, 1704), as also the 

 election of the palatine of Possen, Stanislaus Leczin- 

 ski (July 12), to the throne of Poland. Lastly, he 

 obliged king Augustus, after the defeat of the Saxon 

 general Schulenburg, at Punitz (November 9, 1704), 

 and at Fraustadt (February 13, 1706), by his march 

 into Saxony, to sign the peace of Altranstadt, (q. v.), 

 September 24, 1706. In the mean time the Rus- 

 sians, commanded by general Scheremeteff, had de- 

 feated the Swedish general Schlippenbach, in Livonia 

 (January 11, 1702); they had captured Marienburg, 



