And We Must Remember That Whilst The Vigorous
Imagination Of The North Was Delighting Itself In Creating
A Stately Dreamland,
Where it strove to blend, in a grand
world-picture - always harmonious, though not always
consistent - the influences which sustain
Both the physical
and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of
sober Gothic common sense induced it - as a kind of protest
against the too material interpretation of the symbolism
it had employed - to wind up its religious scheme by
sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious
fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming - in the place of
the transient gods and perishable heaven of its
Asgaard - that One undivided Deity, at whose approach the
pillars of Walhalla were to fall, and Odin and his peers
to perish, with all the subtle machinery of their existence;
while man - himself immortal - was summoned to receive at
the hands of the Eternal All-Father the sentence that
waited upon his deeds. It is true this purer system
belonged only to the early ages. As in the case of every
false religion, the symbolism of the Scandinavian mythology
lost with each succeeding generation something of its
transparency, and at last degenerated into a gross
superstition. But traces still remained, even down to
the times of Christian ascendency, of the deep,
philosophical spirit in which it had been originally
conceived; and through its homely imagery there ran a
vein of tender humour, such as still characterises the
warm-hearted, laughter-loving northern races.
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