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Norns meet to bless the new-born Helgi, the highest gift they 
promise for him is, that he should be a most famous prince and 
the greatest of all the warriors of his time. Various means were 
resorted to to give strength and courage to the young hero 
Bodily exercises of the fiercest kind gave his muscles the elasti- 
city and hardness of steel, and it was thought that vigour could 
be given to the spirit by feeding on the flesh of wild beasts and 
drinking their blood. On such food, it was imagined, Baldur 
attained that consummation of masculine beauty, which it was 
the first desire of every youth to emulate; and the heroic legends 
abound with stories of great warriors, whose young limbs were 
invigorated with the raw flesh and blood of animals. 
10. Never, probably, since the world began, save during one 
short century on the plains of Neinrea and Olympia, have men 
so perfect in vigour and shapeliness been seen on the surface of 
the globe as those who shot over the ice or galloped in frantic 
races over the hill-sides in the palmy days of pagan Scandinavia. 
We read in the Sagas of youths who could outstrip horses 
in running, who could swim and dive more nimbly than 
seals, or, like Olaf Tryggvesen, hew down men with a battle-axe 
in each hand. The exaggeration of a poetic narrative may have 
over-coloured these and similar statements, but it is impossible 
to deny that the universal testimony of early Northern literature 
proclaims the existence of a vigour and sturdy greatness in the 
ancient times of which the human race now knows nothing. 
The careful elimination of all elements of physical weakness, the 
unwearied and unsparing system of muscular training, the 
absence of those epidemic diseases that afterwards sapped the 
health of all Northern Europe, combined to produce a nation 
whose magnificent virility and well-balanced bodily perfection 
have hardly found a rival in the world’s history. 
11. A nation of athletes will be found to regulate itself by 
special and singular rules. Where the bodies of members of a 
community are mature and healthy, afflicted by none of the 
irritating maladies that attack the intelligence and the temper, 
a comparatively simple ethical code will regulate the public life. 
The outward existence may be one of turmoil and riot ; the 
inner life will remain simple and serene. The meaner vices 
find no resting-place in pure and vigorous bodies, and the 
complex crimes of modern civilized peoples are scarcely known 
to the primal and untainted races. On the other hand, the 
athletic race, like the athletic individual, has special dangers to 
which it may fall a prey, has special vices which a milder form 
of life makes it easy to ignore. Trained in the perfect exercise 
