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Traditions concerning the Migration of 



[April 



He extended his power far and wide, and constituted his sons vice- 

 roys in Saxony, Denmark and Norway. He even returned several 

 times to his native country to fight against the Romans. 



When Odin had firmly established his power in the countries subject 

 to him, many Asiatics emigrated thither. A number of Swedes seems 

 to have withdrawn from his authority and to have fled to Finland, and 

 still farther to the north, whither Odin did not penetrate. These people 

 were called Lappes,* i. e. fugitives. But they called themselves Same 

 or Sabni. 



His tomb and the tombs of his wife, Freia or Frigga, and of twenty 

 of his successors, are still to be seen near Gamla Upsala. The north- 

 ern nations came every year to the temple of Upsala, where they sacri- 

 ficed, burned children, and hanged men. Until this day the peasants 

 make pilgrimages to a spring, about a mile distant from Upsala, and 

 memorable through ancient traditions. They drink of the water of 

 that spring and pronounce prayers. Another tradition affirms that 

 Odin concluded his active life at Odensee, one of the most ancient towns 

 in Denmark. Thus far the Icelandic historians. 



A tradition from quite a different and unsuspected source, remarkably 

 coincides in the main point with these narrations of the Icelanders. It 

 is one preserved by Tacitus, who says in the third chapter of his Ger- 

 mania: " Some imagine that Ulysses, in the course of his long and 

 fabulous wanderings, was driven into this ocean, and landed in Ger- 

 many ; and that Ascipurgium, a place situated near the Rhine, was 

 founded by him and named kaKnrvp^iov. These allegadons I shall 

 neither attempt to confirm nor to refute : let every one believe concern- 

 ing them as he is disposed." 



Who was this Ulysses? — We know that the original seat of the 

 Pali and Sanscrit dialects, the language of the Buddhists and of the 

 ancient Brachmanes, is to be sought in the Himalaya range, or more 

 generally speaking, in the mountainous countries of middle Asia, from 

 whence various tribes must have, in different ages, descended into the 

 plains of India, and likewise emigrated towards the north and the west; 

 — we know, likewise, that the ground-work of the Greek, Latin and 

 German languages is Pali, Sanscrit or Pracrit; and it is a most re- 

 markable fact that the very same day of the week, which theTamulians 



call Buden-kiilamei [HP 60tSl£S5) LD 0 r Buddhu's day), is denominat- 

 ed by the Teutonic nations, IVoda?is-day } (in English, Wednesday). 

 This coincidence cannot have its origin in mere accident ! Moreover, 

 Ulysses certainly never came to Germany; but when the Germans re- 

 lated to Tacitus, or to some other inquiring Roman, that a certain Odin 



* Luufen in high German, and lopen in the nether Saxon dialect, means to run, to flee>—- 

 Ixcnce the English word elope. 



