1880
The Contemporary View, no. 38

Dr. Alfred Corning Clark's authorized translation of Roman Days, from the Swedish of Viktor Rydberg. We take blame to ourselves for not having till now drawn attention to one of the brightest works of a class we might characterize as "History in Marble," illustrative of the biography of the Caesars, as studied collaterally from history and statuary; and this especially because Rydberg, the original writer, is a Swedish professor, born in 1829, and a native of the same province as Liunasus and Christina Nilsson ; a protege of Bishop Tegner, and, though a self-made man, a professor of the Swedish Academy, and an Honorary Ph.D. of Upsala, for the 400th anuiversary of which he wrote the festival hymn. Not to extend his biography, it may be summarized that ho is proved by his writings a thinker, artist, and poet, his Last Athenian, a popular work rated very highly in his own country, showing the more indirect proof of the last gift, seeing that, tinlike Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii it had not the inspiration of the admonitus locoram. In 1873, however, he spent the best part of a year in Italy, and so well employed his time, his aesthetic sense, and his descriptive and critical faculties of observation, that the volume called lioman Doijs might, of itself, serve the classical tourist as a companion to his Murray or Baedeker, and aid the stay-at-home student to compare the impressions ho has formed of the Caesars, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, from Merivale and the French historians withal. There are other very notable portions of this striking book of which it is not within our scope or space to speak; for example wo cannot distil the nice perception of the author's exhaustive.history of the so-called Aphrodite of Melos, or La Venus de Milo at the Louvre, pp. 148-187; and without a very careful analysis it would be as vain as unfair to expect any reader .with V. Rydberg to see in the Aphrodite of Melos " a monument of Hellenic Love of Liberty mated with Hellenic sense of Beauty" (p. 187). Neither can we so much as even momentarily digress to the clever and mixt popular and artistic traditions of St. Paul and St. Peter (pp. 211-288), or the pencil sketches in Rome which finish the volume. Enough to say that, so far as our study of this volume goes, a most competent and brilliant as well as well-read and learned travelling fellow might be found, for a proper equivalent from the Swedish Academy, to do the work of Hellenic or Roman archeology on the time-hallowed scenes of remote classical antiquity.

We have been remarkably struck no less with the style than with the penetrative insight of the professor's criticisms. Tuns he opens by bidding us not expect to see Julius Coesar in the Capitol, as Sulla's " carelessly belted boy." Left or right in the Hall of the Emperors, or in the arcade of the Conservatore's palace, bust and colossal statues show no trace of curled and persuasive young patrician, but the hardvisagod emjDeror, bony, elderly, bald, not affable nor maguanimous. Achilles' tender spot, he says, was the heel; that of Julius Caesar the crown. Of his heir, a fine bust in Parian marble, excavated early in this century, fresh as from the master's studio, preserves the vraisemblable likeness of the young Octavius. The results of a shrewd scrutiny leave the impressions of a clear brow, a fine smile, a kindly judgment, a tout ensemble of features suggesting Horace's " aurea mediocritas." So little foppish was Caesar's heir that, sober and simple in dress, he grudged so much the tonsorial tedium, that he would divide the task between two tonsors, beginning each at a respective ear, while he read some book, and did not note whether his operators wrought in concert. Augustus's best portrait as a mature man was dug up in the Campagna in 1803, and now stands in the Bracchio Nuovo in the Vatican. In the d6bris of the magnificent villa of Livia, his wife, was found, not a score of years ago, the most beautiful statue of Augustus extant. It lay in fragments, pieced almost imperceptibly by Tenerani, and confirms Suetonius's praise of an uncommonly fine figure, in pleasing attitude, with face and action stamped with gentlest majesty. Rydberg seems unequal to averting the suspicions of poisoning and demoniacal plotting which mar the fame of Livia; but we sympathize to the full with his fair and temperate rehabilitation of Augustus, a practical mass of testimony being adduced to qualify, if not wholly to dispel, the charges of falseness, hypocrisy, villany, which Gibbon and Ampere have laid against him in brief or in detail. Neither extant statues nor the contemporary monuments and traditions of Augustus bewray aught worse than shrewdness and quiet cheerful bearing; and if, says Rydberg, his love of the Republic was Platonic, he may be excused for seeing that the time was past for restoring it, and that his more worthy rule and part was to breathe life into the State institutions and strive to raise morality, and depauperize the people. And though, of course, his detractors ascribed this to hypocrisy, it is matter of history that Augustus twice offered to abdicate. Apropos of bis survey of the statues of Tiberius, Victor Rydberg vindicates the principle of " natural selection" in the Hall ol the Emperors in the Capitoline Gallery. There is, he notes, a fine rodl tee, more or less, in the Julian race; a coarser, tall-offi'—""Muld about Ua ^dynasty ; in the race of the Antonines a spirit)'-' ■ their feats V>g " a striving after higher form of life—an ethical form—to escape death" (p. 30). When he compares the hust of young Octavius, found at Ostia, with those of young Tiberius in the Lateran Gallery and the Museum at Naples, the Swedish critic sees the hint which has led many to suspect a nearer connection than step-son and step-sire between them; though in the one the expression grows darker, harder, more artificial with years, in the other more illumined with peace and clemency. And an interesting train of thought is opened by tho contemplation of such statues of Tiberius as the colossal head found at Veii in 1811, and another now in the same'gallery (the Museo Chiaramonti). tracing, as he puts it, the advance or progress of Augustus' heir through the Valley of the Shadow of Death till he sinks in Acheron. This helps Rydberg to accept in part Ampere's criticism, that there is more repose in Tiberius' brow than in that of Augustus. It is so far true, but attributable to the former exhibiting more working of mind, observation, and study of character, the latter more brooding of thought. Still Rydberg does warm justice to Tiberius' talents as a great commander, and points out m extenuation of his faults the grave excuses for a growth of distrust and suspicion which became gradually fixed : his reasonable suspicions of his mother Livia; his bitter exchange of his first wife's love, for State reasons, for the embraces of Julia, who betrayed his honour; his abundant grounds for a faith in Sejanus' self-devotion, and yet the palpable and. bare-faced treason of that very Sejanus. It is of one of those instances, the second, that Rydberg's translator writes thus, in p. 38, and it may serve as a type of his average style:— " From the circle that surrounded him with cold calculations and insidious snares, he broke loose in his love for his first wife. State reasons snatched her from his embrace and bound him to Julia, the daughter of Augustus, who violated the proud man's honour. Years after the separation, as Tiberius was one day walking in one of the streets of Rome, chance willed that he and his first wife should meet. As they passed each other, he stood still and gazed after her; the mocking look vanished; the hard features softened; and he who reckoned emotion a shame and least of all would bare his feelings to the crowd, burst into tears. He had seen the happiness of his life go by him."

As V. Rydberg has clearly seen, and rightly taken Stars for a warning, no historian can hope entirely to rehabilitate Tiberius, still it is possible to make much of his faults, foibles, and good points, and in the result to depict one of the " mightiest figures in the gloomy style that history knows." When we pass, under Rydberg's guidance, from Tiberius to Caligula, it is to learn his secret, too, in marble. His busts disclose a dwarfed mental growth through aping of Tiberius, whom he accompanied to Capri. And this corresponds with the judgment of Tacitus. But, as Rydberg observes, there was this fundamental difference between Caligula and his model—that while Tiberius was sly and calculating in his cruelty, Caligula was thoughtless and naughty. The clue to his inner world was his faith in his strength of will, and his fancied firmness consisted with signal cowardice. Had we space, we might dive into the succeeding reigns of Claudius and Nero for even more curious, lively, and stirring anecdote and research, calculated to commend our English scholars to a comparison of the Roman Emperors of Victor Rydberg with our own Merivale. But enough may have been done to kindle a zeal of inquiry, and we commend heartily to our readers the interesting Roman Days which Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. have done so much to present fitly and pleasantly before English readers.   

1880 Lloyd Charles Sanders
Celebrities of the Century

Rydberg, Viktor [b. 1829), Swedish man of letters, was born at Jonkoping, and educated at the college of Wexia and the University of Lund. He began to study the law, but was compelled by the scantiness of his means to betake himself to journalism, and in 1854 became co-editor of the Gothenburg Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, an appointment he held as late as 1879. He sat in tho Swedish Parliament from 1870 to 1872 ; in 1876 was appointed lecturer on philosophy and history to the town of Gothenburg, and in 1877 was elected to the Swedish Academy. In the same year he received his Doctor's degree at the jubilee of the University of Upsala. His chief works, which have won him the position of the first of Swedish men of letters, are:—Singoalla, a gipsy romance (1857); The Last Athenian, a novel (1859), which has been translated into English; Magic in the Middle Ages (1864), translated 1879; What the Bible Teaches concerning Christ (1862); The Venus of Milo, an aesthetic study (1874); and Roman Days (1875-7), psychological studies on the busts of the Roman emperors, translated 1879. He has also published an admirable translation of Faust. A collected edition of his Poems began to appear in 1882.
H. A. W. Lindebn, Sketch of Rydberg, prefixed to the translation of Roman Days.

1881
The Chataquan Vol. I

A new attack has been made upon the religion of the Norse by Prof. Sophus Bugge and A. Chr Bang, and others, who have labored to prove that the Eddas are not of Teutonic origin, but arc borrowed from Greek, Latin, Celtic, Jewish and Christian sources. We do not think that this effort has been successful. We Believe that we have in the Eddas the real faith of the Norse. It is a faith which is manly. brave, stern, rugged—sometimes stupendous. We have inherited from our Teutonic fathers more than from all other sources, our energy and our freedom. We have neglected too much the study of Norse mythology. It is as fruitful as classic mythology, and we may drink deep and often from Mimer's fount. The attention of the reading public as well as the scholar is being turned to the Eddas. Prof. Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin, has given us several valuable volume, and now comes another from another author which is perhaps better adapted to the general reader. The title, "Tales from the Norse Grandmother," maybe misleading. It contains no "grandmother" stories but the myths, marvels and religions ideas of our Norse ancestors. These have been preserved to us in the two Eddas. "Edda" means, wherever used in the Elder Edda, "greatgrandmother," hence the appropriate title of the present volume. The derivation of the word has been the subject of much learned discussion.
 

         “The great battle as to the origin of the Northern Mythology rages on two wings. Prof. S. Bugge asserts that the Northern God-tales were chiefly manufactured by Norse Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries, they having picked up Classical and Christian stories in Ireland and developed them in their own way. On the other hand, Dr. Bang in Christiania has contended, that the great heathen myth-song, Voluspa, was chiefly a kind of copy from the Sibylline books, as known to us in their Christian dress. Against this last theory, the Swedish savant, Dr. Viktor Rydberg, of Gotenburg, has written a brilliant paper in the two first numbers of Nordisk Tidskrift for 1881." It is not too much to say, that a more crushing and masterly reply was never penned. This instructive and sparkling paper should appear in an English dress.”

 1882 The Literary Review, Aug 26

This excerpt refers to the forthcoming study on mythology promised by Rydberg. Originally conceived as a treatise on Völuspá, it was finally realized in 1886 as Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi, Vol. I. 

"We are authorized to announce that a third work from Rydberg on this interesting subject will appear shortly. It will be a large work on Völuspá, containing a synopsis and interpretation of the poem ; a discussion on the character of the Vala, or Prophetess; the texts in the Codex Regius, Hauks-bök, and the Upsala manuscripts; the restored text; text-criticism; the history of the text; and an estimate of the age of the poem. Chapters will be added on the age of the Balder myth, and on other questions germane to an exhaustive treatise on the Voluspá. It will unquestionably be a work of great importance to all students of mythology and of Norse literature."

 1882 Samuel R. Crocker, Edward Abbott, et al.
The Literary World - p. 283

Mr. Bugge claims that Balder of the Edda is Christ; that the blind Hoder, who throws the mistletoe at Balder, ... To this hypothesis Viktor Rydberg has just published a reply : Astrologien och Merlin (Astrology and Merlin), ...

            Viktor Rydberg. If you ask a Scandinavian scholar to name the four most distinguished living writers in Scandinavia, he may hesitate as to the order in which he would name them, but the four would certainly be Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Henrik Ibsen, Georg Brandes, and Viktor Rydberg. The first two belong to Norway; Brandes to Denmark; and Viktor Rydberg stands head and shoulders above all his contemporaries in Sweden. This writer was born in Jonkoping, a small Swedish town, December 18, 1829, and is therefore now in the full vigor of manhood. After preparation at the Vexio Gymnasium, he entered the Lund University in 1848. His life has been devoted to journalism, poetry, the writing of fiction, and religious controversies. It would be difficult to determine in which of these he has most excelled. His brilliant and scholarly theological discussions are largely embraced in his Bib/ens lara om Kristus (The Doctrine of the Bible in regard to Christ), an attack on the state-church and on hierarchy; in Jehovahljensten hos Hebraerne fore Babyloniska fangenskapen (The Jehovah-worship of the Hebrews before the Babylonian Captivity); and in Medeltidens Magi (The Magic of the Middle Ages). His weapons he finds in the arsenal of the Tubingen school of biblical criticism, and he hurls them with telling effect, whatever one may think of the cause in which he is engaged. At a conference of the Swedish church in 186S, Mr. Rydberg was admitted as the lay representative for Gothenburg, where he resides; this gave him an opportunity of defending his views in regard to the incompatibility of many of the teachings of the church with true religion, and he pleaded his cause with so much eloquence as to make a favorable impression upon his most eminent official opponents. The agitation which he called forth made his name known throughout Sweden, and in 1870 he was elected a member of parliament, where he boldly advocated democratic principles. Rydberg is the leader of the young democracy in Sweden, just as Bjornson is the standard-bearer of the same element in Norway. As a scholar, Rydberg has reaped about all the honors that a Swede can attain; he has been created Doctor by the Upsala University, and is one of the eighteen members of the Swedish Academy. The highest honor attainable in Sweden is to become en af de aderton (one of the eighteen). One of Rydberg's novels, Romerska Dagar (Roman Days), has recently been translated into English and published in this country.* It is a series of striking pictures from the Roman Empire, based on the monuments of art remaining from that time—a fascinating work, rich with the spoils of art and history, while the style is exquisite. His other novels are: Fribytaren pa Ostersjon (The Viking on the Baltic), Den siste Athenaren (The Last Athenian), and Singoalla. "The Last Athenian" is Rydberg's most famous work. Here, as in all the author's books, we find evidence of broad learning. Although, as the title indicates, the story deals with a time that is eighteen centuries old, the author is apparently as familiar with his material and bis ground as the writer of a modern society romance with the people and scenes of today. Then there is a beauty and purity in his style that have secured to Rydberg the rank of Sweden's finest prose-writer — a rank which he has fully sustained by all his later works. It is true that the work is controversial; its tendency is to break down obscurantism and blind faith in authority, but artistic values are not thereby sacrificed. One of Rydberg's greatest triumphs in the field of a pure and elevated style is his Swedish translation of Goethe's Faust, for the second part of which he has written a suggestive commentary. His poems are not very numerous. They are thoroughly classic in form, and, as a writer of verse, his admirers do not hesitate to rank him next to Runeberg and Tegner. Viktor Rydberg is, as has been said, a controversialist. Two recent works from his pen serve to indicate a field in which he has won distinction. About eighteen months ago, a Norwegian scholar, Dr. Anthon Christian Bang, published a small pamphlet entitled Völuspaa og de Sibyllinske Orakler (The Vala's Prophecy and the Sibylline Oracles), in which he attempted to show that the Voluspa poem in the Old Norse Elder Edda was a plagiarism from the Sibylline oracles of the middle ages. The little pamphlet made quite a sensation, largely, however, because of general ignorance concerning the Sibylline oracles, while Mr. Bang was understood to have the support of Norway's greatest mythologist, Sophus Bugge. Subsequently Mr. Bugge defined his position, and is now publishing a work on the origin of Norse mythology, in which he tries to show that, during the last centuries of the viking heathendom, the Christian religion exercised a pronounced influence upon the primitive religion of the North. He claims that Christian and classic traditions were found in the British Isles by the Scandinavian bards, blended with their original religion, and that from this union came the mythology described in the Eddas. Mr. Bugge claims that Balder of the Edda is Christ; that the blind Hoder, who throws the mistletoe at Balder, is the blind Roman soldier Longinus, who, according to the Christian Hebrew legend, pierced Christ with his lance; that Loke is Lucifer, and so on. Doubtless he is right in claiming that Teutonic traditions have been more or less colored by South-European legendary lore, but his conclusions are too definite to pass unchallenged. In reply to Dr. Bang, Viktor Rydberg has published a small work called Sibyllinerna och Völuspa (The Sibylline Oracles and Voluspa), in which he shows on how weak a foundation the hypothesis was based; nay, he shows that there was no foundation whatever for Mr. Bang to build upon. It was this clever work that forced Professor Bugge to renounce Dr. Bang, and tell the world that he did not share his opinion that Voluspa was a Christian oracle based on the Sibylline books. In the 80 octavo pages of his book Rydberg argues conclusively that the author of Voluspa did not use the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles as his source and model; that Bang's characterization of the Sibylline books is not trustworthy ; and that Voluspa is not a Norse-Christian oracle. Dr. Bang, in spite of all the stir he made with his little pamphlet, may now be considered out of the saga. But Professor Bugge, in renouncing Bang's hypothesis, raised another question, the settlement of which he conceives to be of great importance to his theory: "Has the Voluspa been influenced by any of the Christian prophecies which were produced in the middle ages and circulated as Sibylline oracles?" He thinks he has found evidence that these later prophecies were modified indirectly by the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles, and that in this manner the Christian oracles may have transmitted some of their borrowed Asiatic-Egyptian color to the Voluspa. In support of this hypothesis, Professor Bugge cites the prophecies of Merlin in the Appendix to the Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, in which are described the great signs which are to appear in heaven and in the earth when the fate of England is foretold. Among these are several parallels to the description of the war among the stars, at the close of the fifth book of the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles. One of these parallels is so striking that Professor Bugge does not hesitate to maintain that Geoffrey must have utilized in some way at least a portion of those oracles. Now, all that the West of Europe, during the middle ages, knew of these Sibylline oracles was contributed by Lactantius and Augustinus. But, as these church-fathers do not give a single extract in regard to the war of trw stars, and as Geoffrey's Prophecy of Merlin does contain a parallel thereto, Geoffrey must, according to Bugge, be an exception to the accepted laws of Sibylline investigations. Hence he assumes that the knowledge which the Welsh enchanter appar ently shows of that fifth book must have come to him by way of Byzantium in a comparatively modern time. To this hypothesis Viktor Rydberg has just published a reply: Astrologien och Merlin (Astrology and Merlin), in which he demonstrates that Geoffrey was familiar with Lucanus. All the astrological elements in Merlin's prophecies are found in the Roman poets, particularly in the Pharsalia of Lucanus. The work closes with a detailed history and interpretation of the astronomy and astrology of the ancients. We are authorized to announce that a third work from Rydberg on this interesting subject will appear shortly. It will be a large work on Voluspa, containing a synopsis and interpretation of the poem; a discussion on the character of the Vala, or Prophetess; the texts in the Codex Regius, Hauks bok, and the Upsala manuscripts; the restored text; text-criticism; the history of the text; and an estimate of the age of the poem. Chapters will be added on the age of the Balder myth, and on other questions germane to an exhaustive treatise on the Voluspa. It will unquestionably be a work of great importance to all students of mythology and of Norse literature.

 

1883 Frederik Winkel Horn (tr. by Rasmus Anderson)
History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North

One of the most prominent Swedish writers of modern times is Viktor Rydberg (born 1829), and particularly his novels, " Den siste Atenaren,*' "Fribytaren på Ostersjön," and " Singoalla," have received the highest praise and been widely read. The first of these is a very important work, which gives a graphic and striking picture of those dark and restless times, when paganism and Christianity were still at war with each other. Rydberg is the champion of liberal ideas in every direction, but more especially in the religious field. The author himself calls " The Last Athenian" a polemical book, and this epithet may also be applied to his other aesthetical works, for in all of them he deliberately attacks obscurantism and blind faith in authorities. But the poetic effect of bis novels suffers in no way either from this or from the thorough historical study of the times which be describes. A result of his comprehensive historical investigations is the "Romerska Dagar" (Roman Days), a series of splendidly executed pictures from the times of Imperial Rome. This volume, which stands unrivalled in point of style, is based on the artistic monuments preserved from the old Roman days. His poems are not numerous, but their masterly form and wealth of thought give them rank among the best poetry in Swedish literature

1883
The Literary World Dec 29

Sweden.

The story of Swedish literature for 1883, at least that part of it which is of interest in these columns, is briefly told. Viktor Rydberg's great work on the Eddas and the sibylline books of the Middle Ages is not yet out, nor has there been published any novel, poem, or drama that requires mention in these pages.

 1885 Samuel R. Crocker, Edward Abbott, et al.
The Literary World – p. 499 

         He belongs to the more modern school, but neither he nor Af Wirsén is to be compared with Carl Snoilsky or Viktor Rydberg. The latter has written no poems of late, nor has he given us any more of his charming novels. He is at present engaged upon an elaborate study of the antiquities of the Teutons, and we may soon expect from him an entirely new and original work on the ancient Teutonic religion. Indeed he has already published a small introductory volume called "Segersvardet" (The Sword of Victory). He is sifting thoroughly all ancient Gothic or Teutonic documents, and it is expected that he will revolutionize all the old theories in regard to our views of the middle ages. All the old myths and traditions will receive special attention, and our Scandinavian mythologies will have to be revised.

1884 Geijer, Reinhold 
Ny Svensk Tidskrift  1884-1885
Segersvärdet
Äventyr ur Germanfolkens mytologiska epos 
by Viktor Rydberg.  

1885 The Unitarian Review, Vol. 17  

Viktor Rydberg, in a volume called the Sibylline Books and the Voluspa, has thoroughly refuted the theory of Prof. Bang, that the latter is but a paraphrase of the former.    


 Nov 1885
Scandinavica  

Prof Bugge tried in 1879 to demonstrate that the old Northern myths are of Christian and Greek-Roman origin, and that the motives were obtained in Ireland and Brittany in the eighth century. According to Dr. Bang, Voluspa might have been derived from the Roman story of Sibylla. Recently Victor Rydberg has shown that they were not known in Ireland. Bugge can merely quote from Wales " Historia Regum Britannica" Gotfrid of Monmouth (of 1135). Rydberg admits that Merlin's prophecy is derived from Lucanus Pharsali. Karl Milllenhof, the German author, agrees with Rydberg that Voluspa originated in Norway in the ninth century.  

 1885  F. H. B. McDowell
 Scandinavia, April 1884, p. 186

        "Prof. Bugge tried in 1879 to demonstrate that the old Northern myths are of Christian and Greek-Roman origin, and that the motives were obtained in Ireland and Brittany in the eighth century. According to Dr. Bang, Voluspa might have been derived from the Roman story of Sibylla. Recently Victor Rydberg has shown that they were not known in Ireland. Bugge can merely quote from Wales "Historia Regum Britannica" Gotfrid of Monmouth (of 1135). Rydberg admits that Merlin's prophecy is derived from Lucanus Pharsali. Karl Mülllenhof, the German author, agrees with Rydberg that Voluspa originated in Norway in the ninth century."

 
1887 Johann Jakob Herzog, Encyclopedia of Living Divines and Christian Workers of All Demonminations, Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia.
 

RYDBERG, Abraham Viktor, D.D. (Upsala, 1876); b. at Jonkoping, Province of Smaland, Sweden, Dec. 18, 1829; studied philosophy at the University of Lund, 1848-52; was literary editor of Göteborgs Handelstidning ("The Gothenburg Daily Commercial"), 1855-76; lay representative at the Church Congress of the Swedish State Church, 1868; member of the lower house of the Swedish Parliament as representative of the city of Gothenburg, 1870-72; has been professor at the high school of Stockholm since 1884. He was elected as member of the Swedish Academy in 1877; made knight of the Order of the North Star in 1879. Nominally a Lutheran, he is in reality Unitarian. He is the author (in Swedish) of "Romantic Stories," Gothenburg. 1856, 2d ed. Gene, 1865; "The Freebooter on the Baltic," Gothenburg, 1857, 2d ed. Gene, 1866; " The Last Athenian," Gothenburg, 1859, 2d ed. Stockholm, 1866, 3d ed. 1876 (trans, into English [Philadelphia, 1879] Danish, and German); " The Doctrine of the Bible on Christ," Gothenburg," 1862,4th ed. 1880; "The Jehovah Worship among the Hebrews before the Babylonian Captivity," Gothenburg, 1864, 2d ed. Gene, 1869; " Magic of the Middle Ages," Stockholm, 1865 (English trans., New York, 1879); "On the Pre-existence of Man," Stockholm, 1868; "Genealogy of the Patriarchs in Genesis and the Chronology of the LXX." Gothenburg, 1873; "Adventure of Little Vigg on Christmas Eve," Gothenburg, 1874, 2d ed. 1875; " Roman Legends about St. Paul and St. Peter," Stockholm, 1874; "Roman Days," Stockholm, 1875 (English trans., London, 1879); "Translation of Goethe's Faust," Stockholm, 1876; "On Eschatology," Stockholm, 1880; numerous pamphlets.

1887 James John Garth Wilkinson
The Book of Edda called Völuspá

136. Other mythologies corroborate our account. "Clipping the nails is regarded as especially important. The Aryan races both Asiatic and European believed that neglect of the dead in this particular breeds mischief for the world, and favours the designs of the world's enemies. According to Persian tradition, demons and sorcerers are eager to get possession of nails whether of living or dead men, and can work harm with them if holy formulas have not been read over them. According to German belief the nails of the dead, if they have not been clipped (and blest?), before burial, are carried to Lyngveholm by demons, who there build of such nails the ship Naglfar ; which when the destruction of the world is at hand will be ready to carry Loki and the sons of Muspell to the battle plain of Ragnarok." (Victor Rydberg, Undersokningar i. Germanisk Mythologi, Vol. II. p. 141.)

147. "Then comes the great son of the Father of battles, Vidar, to wage with the beast for the slain. He makes his sword stand and stand from mouth to heart in the giant's Son. Then is the Father avenged." Vidar in Voluspd was begotten by Odin for vengeance sake, full grown and weaponed, and slew Hoder, Baldur's murderer, when he Vidar was one night old. Here he avenges Odin, his Father. Let me interrupt more silent things with a paragraph from Victor Rydberg concerning this notable god.

148. "Vidar the silent was not at the Althing. On his own ground, the lonely and grassy wide estate of Vide, he saddled his horse, and put on his armour for the field. On his left foot he bound a remarkable shoe, upon which unseen hands had worked for centuries. With this shoe it falls out thus. The forefathers have laid down as a law, that when a shoe is made, a bit of the leather shall be cut off beside the toe and heel, and kept as poor man's own. He that does this gives an unseen element to the shoe, which shall save Vidar's foot when he plants it in the open jaws of Fenrir. On the strength of the shoe, proof against Fenrir's teeth, poison, and venom, depends the issue, whether Vidar shall go with life from the combat, or not. The least act of loving kindness is thus set down to the good account of the gods in the reckoning of the last day." Fadernas Gudasaga, p. 195.

1887 HANS HILDEBRAND
VIKTOR RYDBERG OCH DEN NORDISKA MYTOLOGIEN.
Nordisk tidskrift för vetenskap, konst och industri,
Volume 10

 

     "...Ej håller kan jag här inlåta mig på att underkasta Viktor Rydbergs åsigter kritisk behandling. Att söka utreda, huruvida det af honom framhållna sammanhanget eger i alla punkter rum, eller med andra ord, huruvida hans tolkningar af ord och mening i alt böra anses afgörande, — att taga i öfvervägande, huruvida det genomgående sammanhanget, därest vi finna oss böra erkänna det, tillkommit de mytiska berättelserna altifrån deras första uppträdande, eller om, och då i hvilken mån, myterna, som på grund af skiftande uppfattning, framkallad genom den fortgående utvecklingen, fått något nytt i sig inskjutet, måhända just med tillhjälp af detta nya, under den senare tid, då man började reflektera öfver myterna, läto sig ordnas till ett helt, — detta vore uppgifter, som skulle kräfva utförlig behandling. När min uppfattning icke faller samman med den ärade författarens, har jag ej velat framlägga ett naket motpåstående utan tillfälle till motivering.

       "Professor Rydbergs arbete är synnerligen märkligt. Genom det myckna nya, som det innehåller, med det lockande, som ligger i hans af skaldens uppfattning mättade gruppering af myterna, bör hans nya arbete väcka till lif det hos oss altför länge slumrande intresset för myterna och mana till nya undersökningar af dem. De lemna så rikliga bidrag till studiet af våra fäders själslif under perioder, som annars äro föga kända, att vi icke hafva rättighet att försumma dem."

 1887 Elard Hugo Meyer
Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum
"Rydberg Undersökningar i Germanisk Mytologi"
[See Link]

Jan 1 1887
Athenaeum #3088
Arvid Ahnfelt

 SWEDEN: Amongst scientific works I should mention in the first place Victor Rydberg's  Undersokningar i Germanisk Mytologi' ('Researches in German Mythology'), acute and ingenious as all that this highly esteemed author writes.

 
1887  Fredrik Sander 
Nordisk mythologi: Gullveig eller Hjalmters och Ölvers saga i ... - p. 160 
 

När Viktor Rydberg egnade sig åt studiet af de gamla mytherna, tillförde han denna forskning en kraft, som icke kan nog högt uppskattas. Kunskapsrik, fördomsfri och ihärdig arbetare på detta vida fält, der man har att söka våra förfäders uppfattning af lifvets och dödens gåtor, och der vandraren efter många mödor äfven med beundran finner den konstskapande andens spår i ovanskliga skönheter, har han uppdagat många hittills förborgade sanningar och belyst flera förut obemärkta ämnen. Detta kan inhemtas af hans stora arbete: Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi. Rydbergs starka sida är att nr hällskrifternas ofta dnnkla och tvetydiga uttryck och genom jemförelser af sammanhangets olika delar läsa ut mythföreställningarnas betydelse. Han har mer än en gång på sådan väg kommit till resultat, hvilka jag funnit bekräftade å helt annan väg, t. ex. i gullhornens eller hällristningarnas bildskrifter. Med honom delar jag uppfattningen af fornmythernas ålder och ursprung från långt flydda tidehvarf, likaså i fråga om grundåskådningen af det hela.

 Men i afseende på en mängd detaljer, särskildt s. k. identiteter eller förklädnadsnamn, under hvilka man har att söka samma eller olika väsenden, har jag kommit till ganska andra åsigter, dem jag icke kan förneka eller dölja. Dessa afvikelser äro hvarken få eller obetydande, och jag vill här anteckna några till andras granskning och pröfning, ty motsägelserna begära en lösning för vidare framsteg. Jag har ingenting emot att blifva vederlagd, den grundsatsen har jag längesedan uttalat. Men om och i hvad jag kan hafva rätt, lärer jag af ven få rätt. Derom må andra döma!

 Se här till en början några olika resultat, olika meningar!

 1. Rydberg: Skef, gossen i båten, är identisk med Heimdall, en personifikation för gnidelden och germanernas förste urpatriark.

 Sander: Skef, gossen i båten, är identisk med Njord, icke med Heimdall, hvars mythsubstrat, är vinden.

 2. B.: Sköld, Skyld Skefing, är son af Skef-Heimdall, icke af Oden.

 S.: Sköld är icke son af Skef eller af Heimdall, utan af Oden (Bur), hvilken också i angelsaxiska sagor har epitetet Skef eller Seskef.

 R.: Jätten Allvalde 1. Ölvalde, son af vanaguden Njord, är identisk med Ivalde. Allvaldes söner Thjasse, Ide och Gång äro identiska med Ivaldes söner Völund, Egil och Slagfinn.

 S.: Jätten Allvalde är icke son af vanaguden Njord, utan tvärtom denne senare sonson af den förre. Allvalde är lika litet identisk med Ivalde som solen är identisk med månen. Thjasse, Ide och Gång, Allvaldes söner, äro icke identiska med Völund, Egil och Slagfinn, hvilka dessutom icke äro Ivaldes söner, utan Finnalf-Heimdalls.

 4. E.: Saxos konung Gram är identisk med mythernas Mann, Borgar eller Halfdan, germanernas tredje patriark.

 S.: Saxos konung Gram är icke identisk med Mann, Borgar eller Halfdan, utan med Allvalde-Skölds son Thjasse.

 5. M.: Saxos Svipdag är identisk med Od, Fröjas make.

 S.: Saxos Svipdag är identisk med Thjasses andre broder Ide, som är Ods fader. Äfven Od kallar sig Svipdag i Eddans Fjölsvinnsmål. Namnformen Svipdav hos Saxo (I, 379) betecknar solen eller solguden vid sidan af Gegat (månen).

 6. E.: Saxos konung Hadding (Hadingus) är Halfdans son.

 S.: Saxos konung Hading (Hadingus) ej Haddiny, är icke identisk med Halfdans son, utan med Njord, hvars historia, väsende, handlingar och slägtförhållanden här ganska fullständigt omskrifvas.

 7. E.: Balder och Höd äro bröder.

 S.: Balder och Höd äro icke bröder, utan Höd är Tyrs son, men Balder Odens. Så också i de mythkällor, der de framträda såsom handlande personer '.

 1 Härom varder mycket att säga. Nu blott några ord. Sedan Rydberg (Segersvärdet, danska nppl. sid. 224) sökt nnder sex synpunkter framhålla, att Balder och Höd äro bröder, tillägger han: 7) »För päståendet, att Balder och Höd icke äro bröder, tinnes icke ett enda stöd».

 Låtom oss se! Höd kallas Odens son pä 3 ställen i Sn. Edda ed. AM, nemligen I, 266; I, 554, och II, 636.

 Den arnemagnseanska upplagan af Snorres Edda, som följt Codex regins såsom den bästa handskriften, säger I. 266: »Hvernig skal kenna Höd? Sva, ät kalla hann blinda-ås, Baldrs bana, skjotauda mistilteins, son Odins, Heljar-sinna, Vala-dolg». Men i en not upplyses, att man här ändrat textens ord: sons Odins Heljar-tiana till Son Odin», Heljar-sinna. I förra fallet kallas Höd »Odens sons (d. v. s. Balders) följeslagare hos Hel», men i det senare »Odens son, Hels följeslagare». Det är en väsendtlig skilnad, som ej kan förtigas. Jemför härmed, att Balder, Sn. Ed. I, 260, kallas diilgr Hädar (Höds fiende). Ett besynnerligt epitet, om de vore bröder! 

Vidare: Sn. Ed. I, 554 upplyser i en not, att namnet llöd är tillagdt, men ej finnes i texten af Cod. regins.

 8. K: Ebur, Ebbe (Ebbo) är identisk med Ide eller Egil; Other Ebbesson med Od; Syrith med Fröja.

 S.: Ebur eller Ebbe är identisk med eller rättare ett allmänt furklädnadsnamn för såväl Ides broder Gång eller Gymer som för Tyr; Other Ebbesson är en omskrifning för Höd, och Syrith för Nanna.

 9. R.: Mimer är underjordens gudomlighet eller herskare. Han kallas Odens vän.

 S.: Mimer är grnndläggare af så väl det underjordiska som det jordiska Jättenhem; men han är utdrifven ur underjorden. Han kallas Odens vän. Sant! Men hufvudkällan för detta uttryck är Egil Skallagrimssons berömda sång >Sonartorrek>, hvaruti skalden klagar öfver, att Oden är honom obevågen. Han kallar då Mimer »Odens vän» (i obevågenheten mot Egil!) derföre att Mimer låtit hans son Bodvar drunkna i hafvet (Mimers brunn).

 Mimer var förbunden med Oden i urdagarna, men de blefvo fiender. Loke var också Odens fosterbroder i urdagarna; men var Loke sedermera Odens vän?

 10. B.: Mimer är identisk med Gudmund (broder till Geruthus) och herskar öfver Glansfälten.

 S.: Gudmund är identisk med Vagnhöfde och andre son af Mimer. Någon broder till Mimer känner mythläran icke.

 Slutligen: i Sn. Ed. II, 636 kallas nöd Odens son. Men detta fragment innehar samma ståndpunkt som sena historierade kristna sagor, i hvilka man, under forklädnaden af Balder och Höd, gjort Kristen och hedning till — bröder i Kristo! Och huru? Höd var son af Skuld och Tyr; men sedermera tog Bur (Oden) Skuld till sig, och hennes son Höd kallas då också Odens son, nemligen styfson, hvilken på detta sätt gjordes till broder åt Odens andra söner. Ett annat exempel härpå är lika upplysande: äfven Mimers och Bsslas (Lanfeys) son Rungner (Vagnhöfde) kallas Odens son (styfson), emedan Bur (Oden) tog till sig Basla och hade söner med henne. På sådant sätt usträckas slägtfbrbindelserna i sensagorna mycket långt.

 Att åter på grund af Solsångens str. 10—14 om Svafad och Skartheden göra Balder och Höd till bröder, derför finnes i denna sång intet stöd. Men stöd för motsatsen har jag funnit i flera mythkällor, der Balder och Höd eller Höd och Tyr uppträda i handling.

Balder framträder genom sina prototyper såsom en nrpersonlighet f5r det oskapade Mnspelshems ljus, men Höd likaledes för Nifelhems mörker, och de fortlefva i en förmedlad dualism efter ragnarök!

11. B.: Valan Heid är identisk med Gullveig, dessutom med Angurboda, med Örboda, med Hyrrokin, med Leikn och med »den gamla i jernskogen».

S.: Heid är icke identisk med Gullveig, men väl med Örboda, Leikn och »den gamla i jernskogen». Gullveig är deremot identisk med Angurboda och Hyrrokin, hvilken sistnämnda såsom bränd och återfödd äfven kallas Svivör. .

12. Såsom några exempel i afseende på aktsamheten vid urskiljande af s. k. »känningar» och förklädnadsnamn skall jag här påpeka:

B.: Brag (hos Saxo Brache, bragr) är en omskrifning för Thor.

S.: Brag är icke en omskrifning för Thor, utan för tredje brodern i trilogien, Tyr (Härmod), men äfven Gymer, såsom färjeman eller färdeman. Också heter det hos Saxo I, 34, att när Gothorm-Äger och Hading-Njord, Gram-Thjasses unga söner, anförtroddes till värd åt jättarne Vagnhöfde och Hafle, så fördes de till dem af sin lärare Brag skeppsledes (per educatorem suum Brache näve Svetiam deportati).

Thor omskrifves med Asa-bragr. Jfr härmed: Hängatyr är Oden, icke Tyr.

13. B.: Saxos Liser, med hvilken Hadingus (Hadding) slöt fosterbrödralag, är en omskrifning för Heimdall.

S.: Saxos Liser, med hvilken Hadingus (Njord, handelns och sjöfartens gud) ingick fosterbrödralag, är en omskrifning för Höner (elementet vattnet), och Saxo tillägger omedelbart, att de två fosterbröderna gingo att bekriga Lokerus (Locker, Loke. Jfr Saxo I påg. 40).

Heimdall åter omskrifvea i Njords saga med namnet Hvirvil (Huyrvillus), nemligen i Saxos fjerde bok. Njord kallas der Fridlev snarc, som bekrigar Hvirvil och de med honom förbundna Broddc (Fröbegreppet), Biide (Ull), Buggc (Höd), Faning (Balder) och Gundholm (Tyr), hvilka då sägas vara söner af Fyn (fynn, fönn, vintersnön). Äfven här finnes således Heimdalls mythsubstrat vara vinden.

14. Rydberg har i kap. 89 ff. af sitt arbete: Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, framlagt sin uppfattning af den vigtiga mjödmythen. Det åligger mig att erkänna, att, om denna hans uppfattning är riktig, min allmänna framställning af Bragareedurs berättelse om skaldskapets tillkomst är oriktig.

Men tyvärr kan jag icke biträda Rydbergs uttalade åsigter, icke heller frångå min förra mening. De stora skiljaktigheterna skola här påpekas.

I min framställning af Bragaraedurs innehåll (Eddastudier sid. l—23) ville jag främst visa den isländska sagodiktningens inklädande och allegoriserande art. Jag ville visa, att Bragar.edurs författare gjort häntydning på det nordiska skaldskapets historiska sammanhang med det klassiska, med en häntydning på sjelfve Apollon såsom en drunknande jätte Gilling! Ja, jag antydde, att de gamla nordiska versslagen i allmänhet vore att anse såsom en upplöst hexameter. Alltför djerf torde denna tanke icke kunna synas, ty jag finner, att redan Ch. R. Rask uttalat den '. Och jag bör tillägga, att en dansk tonkonstnär längesedan funnit klaven till de nordiska folkvisornas gamla melodier i de helleniska.

 Men väl såg jag redan för fyra år sedan, då mina Eddastudier utgåfvos såsom ett program, att de i mjödmythen handlande hufvudpersonerna, till sin rent mythiska eller natursymboliska karakter, äro insatta i den nordiska mythläran, såsom om de alldeles icke haft någon härledning från ett allmänt historiskt sammanhang.

 Nåväl! Jag vill nu betrakta denna sida af saken. Vi kunna utbyta Apollon-Grilling emot Balder eller Sköld-Gilling. Grundåskådningen förblifver densamma.

 Nu olikheterna.

 Rydberg: »Hvad prosaiska Eddan (Bragaraedur) berättar derom (mjödmythen) måste jag tillsvidare lemna helt och hållet åsido, för att icke undersökningen skall förvillas och resultatet förfalskas.»

 »Hufvudkällorna äro Havamal str. 104—110 samt str. 13, 14. Bikällor äro Grimnersmal 50 och Ynglingatal 15. Dertill kommer en halfstrof af Eyvind Skaldaspiller, Skaldskap. k. 2.»

 1 Han säger i öfrigt sjelf i Anvisning till Isländskan eller Nordiska fornspråket, Sthlm 1818, sid. 262: »Denna intressanta anmärkning är mig meddelad af Prof. Finn Magnussen».

 »Hufvudkällans uppgifter hafva märkvärdigt nog förblifvit i det allra närmaste ouppmärksammade, emedan mythologerna hållit sig till Bragartedurs senare, med dem oförenliga, och i mythologiskt afsende värre än värdelösa framställning af förloppet.»

 Vidare säges sid. 495, att Surtr eller Sökkmimer har »en son, som betecknas med synonymen Suttungr, Fjalarr, Mjödvitner (Mitritner). Suttung har en son, som faller för Oden, när denne beröfvar honom skaldemjödet, samt en dotter Gunnlöd».

Sander: Bragarscdurs berättelse står icke i strid med de uppgifna källorna i Hävamäl, i Grimnismål och i Eyvinds halfstrof.

Den angifna källan i Ynglingatal 15 eller rättare Ynglingasagan kap. 15, med en och en half strof af Thjodolf af Hvin, hörer icke till mjödmythen, utan har afseende på Svegder-Ulls bergtagning, då han gick att uppsöka den gamle Oden. Det var mycket annat, som skedde hos Sökkmimer, än livad som rörde mjödmythen allena.

För att göra Suttung till Surts son och vidare identisk med Fjalar, måste man naturligtvis förneka Bragarsedur, som säger, att dvergarna Fjalar och Galär dränkte jätten Gilling, men af Gillings son Suttung sattes på ett skär i hafvet. Detta kunde ju icke sägas, om Suttung och Fjalar vore samma person. Och dock skulle Snorre Sturlason eller Olof Thordsson hvitaskald låtit något sådant inflyta i den yngre Eddan? För min del dristar jag icke jäfva eller förneka dem i denna sak, och det behöfs icke heller. Ty —

Suttung är icke Surts son.

Suttung är icke identisk, vare sig med Fjalar eller Mjöövitner. Jag vågar påstå, att enligt sammanstämmande källor

a) Mjödvitner mjödulfven (Bragaraedurs Gilling) är identisk med jätten Sköld-Allvalde (solen), som mäktade dricka ut både floder och sjöar och alltså var en verklig stordrickare;

b) Suttung är hans son, vinterjätten Thjasse;

c) Suttunrgs dotter Gunnlöd är identisk med Skade, hvarom mera annorstädes. Den frändeförlust hon här hade att begråta var icke en älskares eller sons, utan förlusten af fadern Thjasse, hvars död följde omedelbart;

d) Fjalar är identisk med Od.

Det lör nog löna mödan, att i sinom tid framdraga de sagor, der nämnda personer uppträda i handling.

(continued)

 
"The Seven Sons of Mimir"
 
1888 The Literary World Vol. 13

Viktor Rydberg is, as has been said, a controversialist. Two recent works from his pen serve to indicate a field in which he has won distinction. About eighteen months ago, a Norwegian scholar, Dr. Anthon Christian Bang, published a small pamphlet entitled Völuspaa og de Sibyllinska Orakler (The Vala's Prophecy and the Sibylline Oracles), in which he attempted to show that the Völuspa poem in the Old Norse Elder Edda was a plagiarism from the Sibylline oracles of the middle ages. The little pamphlet made quite a sensation, largely, however, because of general ignorance concerning the Sibylline oracles, while Mr. Bang was understood to have the support of Norway's greatest mythologist, Sophus Bugge. Subsequently Mr. Bugge defined his position, and is now publishing a work on the origin of Norse mythology, in which he tries to show that, during the last centuries of the viking heathendom, the Christian religion exercised a pronounced influence upon the primitive religion of the North. He claims that Christian and classic traditions were found in the British Isles by the Scandinavian bards, blended with their original religion, and that from this union came the mythology described in the Eddas. Mr. Bugge claims that Balder of the Edda is Christ; that the blind Hoder, who throws the mistletoe at Balder, is the blind Roman soldier Longinus, who, according to the Christian Hebrew legend, pierced Christ with his lance; that Luke is Lucifer, and so on. Doubtless he is right in claiming that Teutonic traditions have been more or less colored by South-European legendary lore, but his conclusions are too definite to pass unchallenged. In reply to Dr. Bang, Viktor Rydberg has published a small work called Sibyllinerna och Voluspa (The Sibylline Oracles and Voluspa), in which he shows on how weak a foundation the hypothesis was based; nay, he shows that there was no foundation whatever for Mr. Bang to build upon. It was this clever work that forced Professor Bugge to renounce Dr. Bang, and tell the world that he did not share his opinion that Völuspá was a Christian oracle based on the Sibylline books. In the 80 octavo pages of his book Rydberg argues conclusively that the author of Völuspá did not use the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles as his source and model; that Bang's characterization of the Sibylline books is not trustworthy ; and that Voluspa is not a Norse-Christian oracle. Dr. Bang, in spite of all the stir he made with his little pamphlet, may now be considered out of the saga. But Professor Bugge, in renouncing Bang's hypothesis, raised another question, the settlement of which he conceives to be of great importance to his theory: "Has the Völuspá been influenced by any of the Christian prophecies which were produced in the middle ages and circulated as Sibylline oracles?" He thinks he has found evidence that these later prophecies were modified indirectly by the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles, and that in this manner the Christian oracles may have transmitted some of their borrowed Asiatic-Egyptian color to the Völuspá. In support of this hypothesis, Professor Bugge cites the prophecies of Merlin in the Appendix to the Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, in which are described the great signs which are to appear in heaven and in the earth when the fate of England is foretold. Among these are several parallels to the description of the war among the stars, at the close of the fifth book of the Asiatic-Egyptian Sibylline oracles. One of these parallels is so striking that Professor Bugge does not hesitate to maintain that Geoffrey must have utilized in some way at least a portion of those oracles. Now, all that the West of Europe, during the middle ages, knew of these Sibylline oracles was contributed by Lactantius and Augustinus. But, as these church-fathers do not give a single extract in regard to the war of the stars, and as Geoffrey's Prophecy of Merlin does contain a parallel thereto, Geoffrey must, according to Bugge, be an exception to the accepted laws of Sibylline investigations. Hence he assumes that the knowledge which the Welsh enchanter appar ently shows of that fifth book must have come to him by way of Byzantium in a comparatively modern time. To this hypothesis Viktor Rydberg has just published a reply: Astrologien och Merlin (Astrology and Merlin), in which he demonstrates that Geoffrey was familiar with Lucanus. All the astrological elements in Merlin's prophecies are found in the Roman poets, particularly in the Pharsalia of Lucanus. The work closes with a detailed history and interpretation of the astronomy and astrology of the ancients. We are authorized to announce that a third work from Rydberg on this interesting subject will appear shortly. It will be a large work on Völuspá, containing a synopsis and interpretation of the poem; a discussion on the character of the Vala, or Prophetess; the texts in the Codex Regius, Hauks-bók, and the Upsala manuscripts; the restored text; text-criticism; the history of the text; and an estimate of the age of the poem. Chapters will be added on the age of the Balder myth, and on other questions germane to an exhaustive treatise on the Völuspá. It will unquestionably be a work of great importance to all students of mythology and of Norse literature.

     
1889 Encyclopedia Brittanica

RYDBERG, Abraham Victor, Swedish author, was born at Jonkoping, Smaland, Sweden, Dec. 18, 1829. He graduated at the University of Lund in 1852, and became literary editor of a daily paper at Gothenburg in 1855. He published numerous romances which have been translated into English, and also various works relating to the Bible, in which he shows extreme rationalistic views. In 1870 he was elected to the Swedish Parliament from Gothenburg. In 1884 he was made professor in the high-school at Stockholm. Among his romances are Freebooter of the Baltic (1857); The Last Athenian (1859); Adventures of Little Vigo (1874); Roman Legends (1874). Among his other Books are Doctrine of the Bible on Christ (1862); Jehovah Worship among the Hebrews (1864); Pre-existence of Man (1868); Eschatology (1880). He has also translated Goethe's Faust into Swedish and published Poems (1882) and Investigations in German Mythology (1886).

1889 E. H. Meyer
Myth, Ritual and Religion Vol. II. pp. 181—2.
 Voluspa, eine Untersuchung

 The close relationship of Baldr and Had is not so evident, though Mr. Rydberg holds that the forest maidens apparently exert a witchery over Had, to render him an enemy of Baldr, as had occurred in their Indo-Persian analogues. M. Rydberg finds also that the etymological signification of the name Had leads back to Castor, through the Sanscrit Catra, as also between Baldr, Phol, Falr, in which he sees a connexion with the Roman Pol in Pollux or Polydeukes.

This likeness between the Asiatic Dioskuroi myth and the Greek and German is further illustrated by a careful enumeration of the similarities in their mythical peculiarities; in their positions and relations as divine persons. It is, however, to be noted that Mr. Rydberg overlooks, pretty much, the totally different characters in which Baldr and Had appear, in the Edda and in Saxo. It cannot, however, be denied that Mr. Rydberg finds a great number of correspondences between the successive twin mythological personages, that he brings before us, although at the same time, these similarities have in his case been rather carefully prepared beforehand, and the differences have been overlooked. If, as Prof. Bugge shows, in the Saxo delineation of them, Baldr derives much of his character from Achilles, and Had from Paris, it surely cannot be said that Baldr is less warlike than Had. On the contrary, Baldr is depicted as the aggressor, Had. as when he retires to Sweden, as the more peaceful of the two. ¹

1 Rydberg's Undersokningar ss. 203—216.

 In the examination of the Baldr myth, M. Rydberg next proceeds to notice the evil dreams which threaten the life of Baldr as narrated in the Snorra-Edda, and the precautions which the gods of Valhalla took, against the threatened dangers, by striving to induce all things to take an oath not to harm Baldr. Here again we are taken back to the Vedas. We have already given some references from Dr Schwarz, as to certain plants and flowers which possess mysterious powers, for the preservation or the destruction of those who are assailed by danger. Mr. Rydberg cites from Zimmer's Altind. Leben 66, as to plants with similar properties. He, however, will hardly venture to regard these representations as identical with those, that appear in the Baldr myth. In the Vedas, those plants of a parasitical kind are brought in for preservation; while in the Baldr myth, the omission to ask an oath of the mistletoe leads to Baldr's destruction. From this we are led to formulas of adjuration, Indian and Germanic, in regard to dislocated joints, in which in the Germanic, the injured joint of Baldr's horse is to be restored by the so-called Mersburg formula. It is curious that a paper was published not long ago in which, in a similar adjuration, the name of Arthur, the Keltic King, is introduced instead of Oðin. Mr. Rydberg justly remarks upon the close similarity of the two formulas, Indian and German, even verbally. Finally, Mr. Rydberg cites from the Atharvaveda a formula of adjuration, which should be used to ward off evil and destructive influences, just as the Aesir used a similar adjuration upon all things to ward off evil from Baldr.

 Mr. Rydberg takes us next to Tacitus, where he discovers a mysterious sacred grove among the Nahanarvalos, where a priest officiates in a woman's dress, and where the gods are like Castor and Pollux. Further, he finds in the concluding syllable of Nahanarvali, -valu or valr; here is Mimir's grove, where, like the Indo-Iranian hero-twins, Baldr and Had are to await Ragnarok!

 The next point which Mr. Rydberg takes up is against Prof. Bugge's view, — that Baldr was a specially Scandinavian, if not purely Icelandic god, and that he was little known, if at all, in Germany and equally in England, though the name Bealdor equivalent to Lord, appears to have originated there. Fol, mentioned in the so-called Mersburg formula together with Odin, Prof. Bugge regards in name as derived from Apollo, and as having some bad points in his character corresponding to Loki, as, addicted to overdriving horses, more especially if they did not belong to himself, as in the formula —

,,Fol ende Uuodan
,,vuoron zi holza,
,,du uuart demo Balderes volon
,,sin vuos birenkit;"

Phol and Odin
Rode to wood
Then Baldr's foal got
A dislocated foot, etc.

 The first view of this, is that though Baldr's name is introduced into the formula, it may be to help out the alliteration, that the horse that got. really injured was Odin's, and that he, by reason of his well known magical and other arts, was sufficiently well versed in the medicinal power of his formulas, that he was fully capable of taking care of his own horse. Prof. Bugge gives a recent Swedish formula, which however differs from the Mersburg. and has, therefore, force of demonstration in regard to this matter. Mr. Rydberg prefers, to Prof. Bugge's, an older version also belonging to Sweden, and known as Dr Ludvig Larson's, which has the advantage of being made more like the Mersburg. Dr Larson's goes further in the way of proving that Phol was one and the same with Baldr, although we confess that it is not clear to us. It is extracted from Sorbygdens dombok for the year 1672, and is communicated by Carl Ohlson Arcadius, in an academical treatise, "Concerning Bohuslan's incorporation with Sweden", printed in Stockholm in 1883, page 118, note. It runs, ,,Our Lord Jesus Christ and St Peter went or rode over Brattebro;

St. Peter's horse got we eller skre l Our Lord dismounted from His horse, blessed (signa, Aasen) St. Peter's horse vre eller skre; blood to blood, sinew to sinew, so received St. Peters's horse healing (bot, Aasen) in three names etc. etc.

We shall not enter into the process by which M. Rydberg shows that Phol must be referred to, and that thus, Baldr is something more than a Scandinavian god. We have previously referred to n version of the formula, in which King Arthur is the second person; and there is a version still, or lately current in the Shetland Islands, in which the name of our Lord is found alone.

The Lord rade (rode)
And the foal slade (slipped)
He lighted (dismounted)
And He righted
Set joint to joint
Bone to bone,
And sinew to sinew.
Heal (— bot) iu the Holy Ghost's name2.

M. Rydberg sums up in conclusion in ten reasons, to prove that Baldr is identical with Stephanus, from the Stephanus legends in the Acta Sanctorum, either ironically, or as showing that Baldr, like, Stephanus, was known in Germany. Hereupon, he sums up similarly in ten reasons, to prove that Baldr is identical with Phol or Fair; and the final result of all, is, to translate M. Rydberg's own words, that the ,,last result of these researches is that Baldr and Had are pan-germanic gods, with an ancestry from the (ancient) Aryan common 3 times:',

1 Mishandled or slipped.
2 Statistical Account of the Shetland Islands, p. 141, note.
3 Rydberg's Undersokningar. Andra Delen, ss. 222—251.

 Neither Prof. Bugge's nor M. Rydberg's researches are ancient history, the former dating from 1881 to 1889; M. Rydberg's second volume dates also from 1889. But the Baldr myth has. notwithstanding, a history since then. Prof. Bugge's researches excited attention in a variety of quarters. In England, an ingenious and thoughtful writer, who has occupied himself a good deal, as we understand, with mythological subjects, Mr Charles Francis Keary endeavoured, as far back as 1882, shortly after the first sheets of Prof. Bugge's work appeared, to show that the mythology of the Teutons presented a definite world-conception, and that it was impossible that Prof. Bugge's views could harmonise with that definite world-conception; and that consequently, they must in their judgment, concerning the semi-pagan, semi-Christian accretional growth of the Eddaic myths, be wrong and unfounded l. We do not know whether Mr Keary has published on the subject, since Prof. Bugge's ..Studies" appeared in their more completed form; but we fancy that he would be a bold man to support the same thesis, since the subsequent light which has been thrown on the subject by the very able mythologist. E. H. Meyer, in his Voluspa. not to speak of others. 

 1889  Joseph Mazzini Wheeler
Dictionary of Freethinkers of all Ages and Nations - p. 287

Rydberg (Abraham Viktor), Swedish man of Letters, b. Jönkoping, 18 Dec. 1829. He has written many works of which we mention The Last Athenian, Roman Days, and The Magic of the Middle Ages, which have been translated into English.

1888 American Folklore Society
Journal of American Folklore - p. 245

Teutonic Mythology. By Viktor Rydberg, Ph. D., Member of the Swedish Academy ; author of "The Last Athenian," "Roman Days," and other works. Authorized translation from the Swedish by Rasmus B. Anderson, LL. D., United States Minister to Denmark, author of "Norse Mythology," "Viking Tales of the North," etc. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., Paternoster Square. 1889. 8vo, pp. xii., 706.

"This is intended to make the first volume of an extended work. The English title suggests comparison with the great work of Grimm, translated under the same appellation. Rydberg's book, however, is not like Grimm's, an encyclopedia of popular belief, ancient and modern, but on the contrary a critical and reconstructive discussion of Norse poems and sagas. The scope of the undertaking would therefore have been better indicated, had the original designation been retained, namely, "Investigations in Germanic Mythology, Part I.," under which title it appeared at Stockholm in 1886. Not, however, that there is any objection to the substitution of "Teutonic" for "Germanic."

"The peculiar position of the author is indicated in two introductory chapters entitled, "The Ancient Aryans," and " Mediaeval Migration Sagas." Wherever may have been the cradle of the Aryan race, he considers that in the stone age there must have been, in Central or Northern Europe, a common home of the Aryan European people, then consisting of several tribes, of whom the Teutons lived farthest to the north. This ancient Teutondom, he thinks, had its seat in Scandinavia, where the original racetype is best preserved. Memories of this origin he finds preserved in migration legends, and in the creation-myth, according to which the Asa-gods created the original human pair from trees. That this myth is localized in the south of the peninsula indicates the primitive centre. From legends he constructs an account of origins ; the first ancestor, the Scyld of Beowulf, Heimdal of the Norse poems, rather Aryan than German, represents the primeval age of gold ; his grandson, Halfdan, Rydberg identifies with the Mannus of Tacitus, as the forefather of the Teutons. The paradisaical period is interfered with; Loke (as Rydberg spells the name), foe of the gods, contrives to excite enmity between these and the sons of Ivalde, a mythical race of semi-divine artificers, resembling the Ribhus of the Rigveda, impersonations of the natural generative forces. This quarrel has for its result a disastrous period of cold and deadly winters. With this period of cold are connected the Teutonic migration myths; the writer seems, though he does not expressely say so, to regard the legend as representative of an actual cosmic fact. The Asa-gods are thus banished from their original dwelling; after a time the myth represents an attempt as made to recover the primitive Teutonic home from the powers of frost who had possessed it, and this is expressed in a war between two divine races, the Asas and the Vans, to which corresponds, in the human sphere, a struggle between East and West Teutons, represented as the sons of Mannus or Halfdan.

 "This mention of the manner of procedure of the writer will be enough to show that the book belongs to the class of essays, and not to that of collections. The assumption underlying the discussion is a bold one. To sup pose that the mythology of the Teutonic races, as they existed presumably thousands of years before the dawn of history, can be reconstructed from songs and stories recorded (in Iceland) in the twelfth century, none of which songs and stories, in their present form, are older than the ninth century, is to adopt an hypothesis which presents the strongest a priori improbabilities. Moreover, the doctrine of the author, that resemblances of tradition of widely-separated Aryan races are to be referred to the remote prehistoric time of their original connection, is not in accordance with the views now generally adopted, that diffusion from historical centres has much more to do with such similarity.

 "It is somewhat surprising that Rydberg should make no allusion to the existence of opinions inconsistent with his premises. The distinguished editor and student of old Norse literature, Sophus Bugge, in his Studies on the origin of Norse legends relative to gods and heroes (Untersokingar, etc., Christiania, 1881), has set forth views altogether inconsistent with those of the volume under consideration. While admitting the antiquity of some of the mythic characters, he nevertheless considers that the Norse poems and sagas, as they now exist, are essentially a work of the Middle Ages, produced under the influence of classical literature as well as of Christian monasticism. Loki himself, to Rydberg the prehistoric foe of the Asas, to Bugge, is neither more nor less than Lucifer written short. The only possible explanation of the silence of the author is that he intends to discuss these doctrines in the course of his work; but the translator, one would have thought, would have considered an introductory note as essential.

 "While, therefore, as will be easily gathered from what has been said, the work of Rydberg is not to be regarded as a manual, but rather as setting forth individual views, it will present many suggestions to scholars, who will read it with profit.

 "The translation is admirably done into clear and vigorous English. The form, type, and paper of the large volume is charming, and does the greatest credit to the taste and judgment of the house of Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., distinguished by their activity in publishing works relating to mythology and folk-lore.

 W. W. N.

SUBSCRIBERS' PROSPECTUS
Publication to be made in February, 1889.

TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY
By VIKTOR RYDBERG

Translated from the Swedish, with the Author's consent, by
RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D.,
Author of 'Norse Mythology,' Editor of 'Heimskringla,' 'The Younger Edda,' 4c.
2 vols. 8vo. cloth extra, to be published at not less than 21s.

 SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, 15s., upon receipt of which Subscriptions will be entered and the Books sent, carriage free, before regular publication is effected.

This work, now offered to the English and American public, contains the results of extensive and painstaking research carried on for many years by the distinguished scholar Viktor Rydberg. In this last work from his pen he has restored Teutonic mythology to the form in which it existed among our ancestors daring the centuries immediately preceding the introduction of Christianity, that is, to the form which it had before conflict with Christianity caused the Odinic religion to decay.

The author draws a sharp line of distinction between mythogony and mythology in the more limited sense of these words. He does not occupy himself directly with the question of the origin of myths (which properly belong, to ethnic psychology), and so does not make any special attempt to define the limits drawn by folk-lorists under the distinguished leadership of Mr. Andrew Lang in regard to the correctness of the mythogonic hypothesis presented by Professor Max Miiller and other philologists. In this volume Mr. Rydberg confines himself to a presentation of the fully-developed Teutonic polytheism, with its personified gods, its established religion and code of morals, and to showing how the sagas concerning ancient heroes and race-patriarchs, to which the cult of the dead gave rise, became blended with the myths of the gods, and, thus united, formed a grand Teutonic epic.

These questions have not heretofore been thoroughly and systematically examined. Mr. Rydberg, having for the first time gathered and compared all the materials, has carefully separated that which dates from a heathen age from that which comes to us through Christian hands. The latter kind of materials cannot be u-ed in the reconstruction of the heathen mythology before the Christian perversions and additions have been eliminated by a thorough and critical sifting. How necessary such a sifting is the author fully demonstrates in the case of the Younger Edda, which hitherto has been looked upon as the principal source and interpreter of Teutonic heathendom. While scholars have been accustomed to look upon the Younger Edda as a key to the dark enigmas of the Elder Edda, Viktor Rydberg shows conclusively that it is a most unreliable record of the Odinic religion, and that its chief service to mythological science consists in its having rescued from oblivion a number of poetic fragments not found elsewhere. He also analyzes for the first time the precious mythic fragments to be found in the Old Norse poetic literature outside of the Elder Edda.

The Mythological materials extant in a more or less changed form have been largely augmented by Mr. Rydberg, particularly by his subjecting the mythic portions of the ' Historia Danica ' of Saxo Orammaticus to a most painstaking and scholarly analysis. He has, in fact, found the key to Saxo's method of turning myths and traditions into history, and by this discovery—for it is nothing less—he has secured many new and important contributions to the religion of our heathen ancestors; but in every case the author subjects the original myth thus restored to a most rigid scrutiny in the light of purely heathen record;.

 The Work discusses the following subjects:—

 (1) Mediaeval migration-sagas.

(2) The myths concerning the earliest period and the emigrations from the north.

(3) The myths concerning the world-war.

(4) The myths of the lower world.

(5) The Ivalde race.

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. Paternoster-square, E.C

1889 W. J. Mutch
New Englander and Yale Review, Volume 51

The remaining sagas making in all sixteen bring the history in a fairly complete form down to the year 1184. In connection with each king there is a clear, comprehensive and pleasing account of his times, the employments at which himself, his warriors and his people were engaged, their prosperity or failure, the conquests or defeats of his earls, their marriages and relations with neighboring earls, and many valuable allusions to the neighboring countries. It deals with the political councils and Things or legislative assemblies, by whom called, their purpose and result, all religious movements of the times and especially in connection with the introduction of Christianity into the various districts including Iceland and Greenland.

The frequent mention which is made of women, the influence which they have in the councils of the men and their great activity in all proper affairs show that they held a position relatively to men, much higher than was common among other peoples of the time. Slaves in the eleventh century were allowed to hold property, cultivate land on their own account and buy their freedom—a favorable contrast with the Anglo-Saxon custom.Of the old religion there is but little said. We read of Olaf 's entering temples on his missionary expeditions and smashing images of Thor, and also of sacrifices of horse-flesh being made to Odin. Laing finds in this fact an indication of the eastern origin of the race because the practice is too expensive in the north to spring spontaneously from the people of that region, but Dr. Penka in his " Herkunft der Arier " and Viktor Rydberg in his " Researches in Teutonic Mythology" (translated by Dr. Anderson) are finding in this very religion a reason for believing that Scandinavia was the primitive Aryan home.

1889 Sophus Bugge
The Home of the Eddic Poems: with especial reference to the Helgi-lays,  p.143

 Many resemblances between the two stories are pointed out by Rydberg, Undersokningar, I, 136-140; but some of his resemblances are, in my opinion, based on wrong interpretations. Nor can I agree with Rydberg that Gram is identical with Helgi Hundingsbani, or that ' Halfdan's youthful exploits provided material which was freely worked over in the two Helgi-lays.' These seem to me, on the contrary, older than the Gram-story as we find it in Saxo.

 p. 338

 Viktor Rydberg (Undersökningar, n, 252-264} holds the view that Helgi Hjor. is the god Baldr transformed into a hero, that Helgi's brother Heðinn (dat. Heðin) is Hoðr (dat. Heði) as a hero, and that Olaf Geirstadaalf also is Baldr transformed. I cannot agree with Rydberg's view; but still I regard it as possible that there are certain points of contact between the story of Helgi and Hethin and the story of Baldr and Hoðr. In this connection it may be mentioned that Hotherus in Saxo (ed. Muller, p. 122), after having been conquered by Baldr, wanders, like Hethin, tired of life alone in deserted paths.

 1889 The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist:
A Quarterly Journal, Volume 3

 Teutonic Mythology. By Viktor Rydberg. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 8vo., pp. xii., 706. Dr. Anderson, the United States Minister to Denmark, is to be congratulated on giving us the authorised translation from the Swedish of the important work of Dr. Rydberg. The Hon. Rasmus B. Anderson is already known as the author of Viking Tales of the North, and other works of a kindred character, but this is his most solid and valuable contribution to this class of literature. These researches into Teutonic Mythology, proving the common antiquity of the Norse and Anglo-Saxon, are full of interest, and are a monument of scholarly and methodical inquiry. In a necessarily brief notice it is positively embarrassing to decide as to which of its riches just a flavour shall be presented. The cynic has said that the reviewer has but to cut the leaves of the volume entrusted to him and smell the paper knife, when a competent knowledge of the work is at once conveyed to his brain. But on this occasion a different use shall be made of the leaf-cutter. Using it by way of lot, it is inserted in the closed volume, and then withdrawn and re-inserted. The result is that pages 60 and 214 are thus marked out for notice.

At the first of these places, the legend is told, the origin of which may be traced to Italy, that when the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, she had in one place to cross a brook. A tree was thrown across to make a bridge, but the wise Queen refused to use it, and waded across the stream, for in a prophetic vision she had seen that of this beam would the Cross of Calvary eventually be made. The legend came also to Germany, but here it has the addition that the Queen was rewarded for this piety by being freed from a deformity whilst wading through the brook, one of her feet having previously been shaped like a swan or some water-bird. Medieval church sculpture sometimes represents the Queen of Sheba thus deformed. Now comes in the interesting explanation of how in the north this curious addition has become grafted on to the Italian legend. During the Middle Ages the Queen of Sheba was called Queen Seba, on account of the Vulgate rendering Jiegina Seba, and Seba was thought to be her name. This name in the north suggested her identity with Sibba or Sif, the swan-guise wife of Thor.

At page 214, we find ourselves in the midst of a long section dealing with myths of visits to the lower world. Here is a powerful bit of translation, proving that Dr. Anderson, whilst not concealing his American origin, possesses a vigorous hold on the English tongue.

"The land which they now entered was the home of terrors. They had not gone very far before they discovered before them a city, which seemed to be built of dark mists. Human heads were raised on stakes which surrounded the bulwarks of the city. Wild dogs, whose rage Thorkillus, however, knew how to calm, kept watch outside of the gates. The gates were located high up in the bulwarks, and it was necessary to climb up on ladders in order to get to them. Within the city was a crowd of beings horrible to look at and hear, and filth and rottenness and a terrible stench were everywhere. Further in was a sort of mountain fastness. When they had reached its entrance the travellers were overpowered by its awful aspect, but Thorkillus inspired them with courage. All that sight and soul can conceive as terrible and loathsome was gathered within this rocky citadel. The door frames were covered with the soot of centuries, the walls were draped with filth, the roofs were composed of sharp stings, the floors were made of serpents incased in foulness. At the threshold crowds of monsters acted as door keepers, and were very noisy. On iron benches, surrounded by a hurdlework of lead, there lay giant monsters which looked like lifeless images. Higher up in a rocky niche sat the aged Geruthus, with his body pierced and nailed to the rock, and there lay also three women with their backs broken. Thorkillus explained that it was this Geruthus whom the god Thor had pierced with a red hot iron ; the women had also received their punishment from the same god."

Nothing so interesting of the kind has been given to English readers since Mr. Joseph Anderson published the Orkneyinga Saga in 1873.

 
TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY

 Dr. Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology, which Mr. Anderson, the American Minister at Copenhagen, and a well-known Norse scholar, has translated into English, is work of the first importance but portentous size. The learned will. Ml doubt, be grateful to Mr. Anderson for the heavy labour of translating it, but, having done so much, it is a pity that he did not make his work complete bf supplying some sort of guide or introduction to the vast mass of printed matter which he has placed before the public. None could be more competent for such a task. The author has furnished n: description himself of the scope and nature of his inquiries, and the conclusions he is seeking to establish, and the reader is left to gather these as best he may from the perusal of 800 large and closely printed pages.

Dr. Rydberg's main object appears to be to distinguish the original elements of the Teutonic mythology from the subsequent accretions which it has received, especially in its Scandinavian branches. He first sets himself to show that the sagas, as to the Trojan descent of the Teutons, and the immigration of Odin and his Asia-men into Saxland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsular, which are found in the 'Younger Edda' and the ' Heimskringla,' do not belong to Teutonic heathendom at all, but took their rise in Christian times among Teutons converted to Christianity, and were, in fact, the work of Latin scholars in the Middle Ages. So far as the Eastern origin of the Aryan race depends upon the testimony of these sagas, it must be dismissed altogether. On the contrary, as Dr. Rydberg goes on to show, the old genuine Teutonic migration sagas all point to the movement taking place, not from the East, but from the North. In proof of this he cites, among other things, the traditions of the Burgundians, Lombardians, Anglo-Saxons, &c., and the testimony of the ' Germania' of Tacitus.

The Norse-Icelandic school which accepted the story of the immigration of Odin and his Asia-men is responsible, he thinks, for the real Teutonic myth being thrust aside and forgotten. His present work may be described as an attempt to restore the old myth as far as possible, and account for the accretion of elements entirely foreign to it In all the Ttutonic tribes Dr. Rydberg finds traces of the tradition, that their migration from the North was caused by the fimbul winter in Borgar's time that followed on the struggle of the primaeval artists and the gods. This divine war between the Asas and the Vans was accompanied by a world war, in which Halfdan, and after him his son Hadding, fought against bis step-son, Svipdag. Hadding, Dr. Rydberg holds, is identical with the Dieierich of the German sagas. German and Scandinavian traditions both agree in representing Hadding or Dieterich as having been driven out, and as afterwards returning victoriously from the East.

 As to Dr. Rydberg's view that the legend of the coming of Odin and his Asiamen was invented in the convent libraries, it is one that requires consideration, and many of the steps through which he traces the growth of the myth are of a highly fanciful and conjectural character. More than five hundred years before the ' Younger Edda' was written, he points out, a Teutonic people, the Franks, had been told by a chronicler named Fredegar that they were of the same blood as the Romans, and, like the Romans, had emigrated from Troy. The sources of information he cited were not their own sagas, but Virgil and Jerome. Then the Saxons, too, came to believe that they were Trojans; and so the belief gradually spread and firmly established itself in Iceland, where the 'Edda' was written. The passage in Virgil on which the whole fable rests, Dr. Rydberg thinks, is to be found in the account, in the first book of the Aeneid,'of Antenor's escape from Troy to Illyria. Dr. Rydberg has more difficulty in explaining how Odin came to be substituted for Antenor; but he does it to his own satisfaction, though we cannot say to ours. As regards the Trojan descent of the Teutons, no one has ever doubted that it was an invention of Christian times. What Dr. Rydberg undertakes to do is to show that Odin's immigration is also a Christian invention. We could wish he had done so more clearly, for that assumption is the very foundation of his theories.

It would be idle to attempt to follow Dr. Rydberg into his examination of the sagas, and his attempt to show what they have in common, and how they came to differ from one another. We may notice, however, that he traces the story of Hamlet to the Svipdag saga.

The Hamlet Saga.

 Memories of the Svipdag-myth have also been preserved in the story about Hamlet, Saxo's Amelthns, son of Horvendillus. In the .medieval story Hamlet's father, like Svipdag's father in the mythology, was slain by the same man, who marries the wife of the slain man, and, like Svipdag in the myth, Hamlet •of the medieval saga becomes the avenger of his fathpr Horvendillus and the slayer of his stepfather. On more than one occasion the idea occurs in the Norse sagas that a lad whose stepfather bad slain his father broods over his duty of avenging the latter, and then plays insane or half idiot to avoid the suspicion that he may become dangerous to the murderer. Svipdag, Orvandel's son, is reared in his stepfather's house amid all the circumstances that might justify or explain such a hypocrisy. Therefore he has as a lad received the epithet Amdlothi, the meaning of which is “insane” and the myth having at the same time described him as highly-gifted, clever, and sharp-witted, we have in the words which the mythology has attributed to his lips the key to the ambiguous words which make the cleverness, which is veiled under a stupid exterior, gleam forth. These features of the mythic account of Svipdag have been transferred to the middle-age saga anent Hamlet —a saga which already in Saxo's time bad been developed into an independent narrative.

Nearly 300 pages of this vast work are taken up with an examination of the myth in regard to the lower world which fills so large a space in the old sagas. Dr. Rydberg endeavours to compare, classify, and systematise their different ways of dealing with the subject. His learning is great, his industry immense, and he has made a most important contribution to the study of Teutonic mythology. In its present form however his book is only suitable for professed students, and even they will find some difficulty in following him.

Rydberg (Fädernas Gudasaga s, 133) mener, at der har været et Æble fra hver af Æserne. At den tolvte Asa Balder paa denne Tid  var död, viser sig deraf, at Skirne efter Æblerne böd Gerd Ringen Draupne som havde været paa Ligbaalet med Balder.

Teutonic Mythology. By Viktor Rydberg. Translated from the Swedish by Rasmus B. Anderson. (Sonnenschein & Co.) Although we have misgivings as to the soundness of certain not unimportant portions of the author's method of investigation, there is no doubt that this book is one of the most original and valuable contributions to the study of Teutonic mythology that have appeared since the great work of Grimm. Dr. Rydberg's conclusions are often startlingly novel, yet they are the results of patient and methodical reasoning, not of any striving after paradox; and their general tendency is to confirm and supplement, not to overthrow, the system established by the labours of Grimm and Müllenhoff. A most remarkable feature of the work is the author's rigorous abstinence from all polemic against the views advocated by other writers.
The revolutionary theories of Bang and Bugge are not even referred to, though the positive arguments advanced may fairly be regarded as a continued refutation of those brilliant but erratic speculations. The name of Prof. Bugge is, indeed, frequently mentioned, but only in connexion with points on which the author is able to accept that distinguished scholar's guidance.
The opening chapter contains a review of the results of recent investigation with regard to the primitive history of the Aryan-speaking peoples. On the question whether the original Aryan home was in Europe or in Asia Dr. Rydberg does not find it necessary for his purpose to express an opinion. The one important conclusion which he regards as established, and which he takes as the basis of his mythological inquiries, is that the European Aryans, whether they were aborigines or immigrants, at one time formed a homogeneous whole, and that their division into Teutons, Celts, Slavs, and Greco-Italians (sic) took place on European soil. Various arguments are adduced to show that the earliest Aryan domain in Europe consisted of its central and northern portions, especial stress being laid on the testimony of prehistoric archaeology that the inhabitants of this region during the stone age were, so far as can be discovered, people of the same physical type as the present Aryan-speaking population of the Baltic coasts. Dr. Rydberg lays it down as a priori probable that within the area indicated the several branches of the Aryan people occupied the same relative geographical position as did their descendants in the earliest historic times; and from this general consideration, reinforced by arguments from mythology and language, he infers that the original home of the Teutons was in the neighbourhood of the Baltic. In the course of the work much use is made of this conclusion in explaining many specific features of Teutonic mythology, and especially the peculiar forms assumed by those portions of it which appear to be originally derived from a primitive Aryan source.
Although scholars have long been agreed that the story of the Odinic migration from Asia is purely a learned fabrication, having no more basis in popular tradition than has the story of the settlement of Britain by Brutus, it has been reserved for Dr. Rydberg to trace out in exhaustive detail the process by which this story, as we have it in the 'Heimskringla,' was evolved. The curious pedantic craze which induced the scholars of mediaeval Europe to seek to trace the origin of their several nations to one or other of the heroes of Troy appears first in the Frankish historians of the seventh century. The Scandinavian story is shown by Dr. Rydberg to be simply a direct imitation of that told by Fredegar respecting the origin of the Frankish nation, the elements in it which are not either classical or of Frankish invention being merely euhemerized divine myth. In the course of the discussion of this subject the author makes several incidental suggestions which are both interesting and novel. The selection of An tenor in preference to any other Trojan hero, as the supposed founder of the Frankish nation, is convincingly shown to be due to a combination of Virgil's statements respecting Antenor with the opinion of Gregory of Tours that the Franks came from Fannonia. Another feature of mediaeval legend which is ingeniously accounted for is the notion that the Queen of Sheba had a webbed foot like a water-bird. As she was called in Latin regina Seba, Seba was supposed to be her name, and this was confused with Sibba (Sif), the name of Thor's wife, whom learned fancy had already identified with the Sibyl. The webbed foot which is given to the Queen of Sheba in legend and in ecclesiastical sculpture is, according to Dr. Rydberg, a reminiscence of the "swan-guise " of the Teutonic goddess. The Odinic trinity, "The High, the Equally-high, and the Third," who collectively are Odin, the author regards as being no part of the genuine mythical tradition, but a fancy of Christian times; and he conjectures (very ingeniously, though not quite convincingly) that the notion was suggested by the name Hermes Trismegistus, which was taken to imply that the " ancient sorcerer" Hermes or Odin had parodied the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in order to obtain reverence for himself as a god.
The genuine popular traditions of the Teutonic peoples—of the Goths, Herules, Lombards, and (as Dr. Rydberg proves) also of the Franks, Burgunds, Alamans, Saxons, and Swabians—unanimously derive the origin of their race not from the East, but from the extreme North, and in most cases explicitly from Scandinavia. But Dr. Rydberg does not regard this mass of concurrent tradition as possessing any real historical value. He believes that it originated not in any memories of actual fact, but in considerations purely mythological. If the Teutons placed the origin of the human race, and therefore of their own people, in a mysterious land divided from them by the ocean, the notion is easily accounted for, without ascribing to it any historic basis; and assuming the existence of this belief, it follows as a matter of course that when their knowledge of geography became extended they would identify the mythic cradle of their race with Scandinavia. Actual migrations from Scandinavia to the European mainland may of course have taken place, and Dr. Rydberg admits the abstract possibility that incidents belonging to these migrations may have been incorporated in the mass of originally mythic tradition; but he finds no trustworthy evidence that such was really the case. This attitude is that which is demanded by scientific prudence, though it is not uncommonly thought that to assume an historical basis for such traditions shows more sobriety of judgment than to relegate them to mythology.
The documentary materials for the study of Teutonic mythology are of two kinds: first, the statements which professedly relate to superhuman beings, or which, though euhemeristic, are concerned with persons whose divine character is attested by external evidence; and, secondly, those heroic and quasi-historical legends which may on purely internal grounds be inferred to have originated in divine myth. Dr. Rydberg's work, which does not profess to be a system of Teutonic mythology, but only a collection of special investigations, is much less concerned with the former class of materials than with the latter. The author has, however, a good deal to say that is novel and interesting even with, regard to those portions of the mythology which tradition distinctly asserts to relate to the gods. In particular, the question whether we have evidence of a "common Aryan mythology" receives some new light of considerable importance. Especially striking is the parallel drawn between the Teutonic Heimdall and the Vedic Agni. Some of the points of comparison may be pressed too far, but when it is shown that Heimdall and the fire-god of the Vedas may both be described as "the white god, with golden teeth, the son of many mothers, the originator of the useful arts, the father of human children, and the founder of the 'castes ' into -which men are divided"—every point in the description being expressly vouched for by the unequivocal statements of the Norse and the Vedic texts—it is hard indeed to think that such coincidences are merely accidental. The argument is not weakened, but greatly strengthened, by the fact that the special character of "fire-god," which in the case of Agni explains all his other attributes, is in Heimdall altogether wanting. Among other noteworthy comparisons of a similar kind we may mention that between the Teutonic myths of the creation of mankind from trees, and of the "fimbul-winter" and Mimer's grove, and the corresponding myths recorded in the 'Avesta.'
That a large portion of the Teutonic heroic legend is in its origin divine myth, and not mere romance or historical tradition, is a conclusion scarcely to be resisted by any one who, for instance, has attempted to compare the narratives of Saxo with the corresponding stories in Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and early German literature. But the mythological investigation of this material is a task beset with endless perils. The theories of Dr. Rydberg are fascinating in their plausibility and in the wonderful constructive power which they display; but it is impossible not to feel that the evidence on which they rest is often extremely precarious. The weakest point of the author's method is that he does not make sufficient allowance for the facility with which stories originally related of one hero may be transferred to another. Hence, when he has proved, which he often does with startling completeness, that the history of one legendary person is largely a copy of that of another, he considers himself entitled to treat the two as absolutely identical, and to combine their biographies into a mythic unity. It may be conceded that the unquestionably polyonymous character of Teutonic mythology affords ground for believing that this mode of procedure may sometimes, perhaps often, lead to true results; but the conclusions reached by such means can only seldom possess the demonstrative certainty which the author is accustomed to ascribe to them.
It is impossible in a brief review to furnish a complete analysis of a book which contains some striking and ingeniously supported novelty almost on every page, but a few examples may be given to show the author's method of dealing with the mythic material contained in the pseudo-history of Saxo and in the epic traditions. The Sceaf of 'Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon genealogies, who is on reasonable grounds regarded as a common Teutonic " culture hero," is maintained by Dr. Rydberg to be identical with the god Heimdall. His son Scyld (Skjoldr) is the same person with Saxo's Borcarus (Borgar), the founder of a line of mythical Danish kings, and with the Berchter, Berchtung of German legend. Scyld, or Borgar, was the father of Halfdan, who appears in 'Beowulf ' as a Danish king, while in Saxo and the Scandinavian sources he is split up into several distinct quasi-historic personages —Halfdan son of Borgar, Halfdan son of Skjold, Halfdan Berggram, Gram, and Helge Hundingsbane. This Halfdan, whose conflicts are interpreted in part as symbolizing the struggle of man with the hostile powers of nature, is regarded by Dr. Rydberg as the mythic half-divine ancestor of the Teutonic race, and in this character he is identified with the god Mannus mentioned by Tacitus. In order to justify this identification it is necessary to show that the three sons of Mannus—the progenitors of the Ingævones, the Herminones, and the Istævones, the three great divisions of the Teutonic race—have their counterparts in the family of Halfdan. Dr. Rydberg, following earlier scholars, identifies the Istævones with the Haddings, the descendants of Halfdan's son Hadding (the Hartung of German story). The Herminones he connects with Halfdan's son Gudhorm, and the Ingævones with his "stepson" Svipdag, who, he maintains, bore also the name Yngve, which belonged originally to his ancestor the god Heimdall. Hadding, who is an important figure both in Scandinavian and German tradition, is supposed by the author to have received the epithet Theudariks, "people-ruler," and to be the original hero of the adventures attributed by tradition to his namesake the historical Theodoric the Ostrogoth. In like manner the epithet Ermanariks ("world-ruler," "high ruler"?) applied to Gudhorm has caused him to be confounded with the historical Ermanaric, the "Gothic Alexander" of the fourth century. Svipdag, from whom the Ingævones are supposed to have claimed descent, differs from the other two "Teutonic patriarchs" in that some of the traditions represent him with little disguise as a divine being. His name marks him as the personification of the morning twilight, and his father is the star-hero Orvandel. By Dr. Rydberg Svipdag is identified with Odr the husband of Freyja, with the god Skirner, with Saxo's "Eric the eloquent," with Eirikr Viðsförli, and with the Heremod (Hermóðr) of 'Beowulf' and the Icelandic poetry. It is further argued that Svipdag and his father were in later tradition confounded, so that the world-wide travels, which form the best-known portion of the myth of Orvandel, really belong to the story of his son. The mythic history of Svipdag, it is maintained, is the source of the legend of Hamlet, while Toki, the original hero of the exploit assigned to William Tell, is identical with Egill the archer and with Orvandel.
It would lead us too far to attempt any discussion of the value of this ingenious mythological reconstruction. "We are firmly convinced that as a whole it will not be generally accepted by scholars; but there are innumerable points of detail with regard to which Dr. Rydberg appears to have made genuine discoveries. On the portion of the work dealing with Teutonic cosmology and the beliefs respecting the lower world we have not been able to touch; but many of the novel conclusions which it contains seem to be conclusively established. It may with confidence be said that the book is one which no future investigator of the subject can afford to neglect. The promised second part, dealing especially with the Baldr myth, will be looked for with great interest.
A few words must be said respecting the translation. Mr. Anderson has unquestionably an intimate knowledge of the subject, and he writes English with fluency and vigour; but his idiom is in many passages that of a foreigner. This is less apparent in the later chapters, which possibly may have undergone revision from some other hand; but in the earlier part there are many sentences which the ordinary English reader will find almost unintelligible. One confusing peculiarity is the constant use of the perfect tense where an Englishman would use the simple past. Another frequent solecism is the misuse of the inflected genitive, as in "Beowulf's poem," "Heimskringla's story." The treatment of proper names also is often puzzling. Matthew of Westminster (a writer whom foreign scholars have a curious fondness for quoting in preference to more original authorities) appears as "Matthæus Monasteriensis." Geoffrey of Monmouth is variously called Galfrid and Galfred, and the index-maker has divided him into two persons. In speaking of the goddesses Earth and Night the translator has whimsically enough retained the Swedish words Jord and Nat(t), which he found in his original. The most serious fault of the English edition, however, is the inadequacy of the index, which is a bare list of proper names with the numbers of the pages on which they occur.

A BOOK on Teutonic Mythology, or on any mythology, which is not only learned, but judicious, not only erudite, but full of caution, which is ingenious without being wildly conjectural, deserves welcome. Dr. Rydberg's work, very well Englished by Dr. Anderson, American Minister at Copenhagen, treats chiefly of Scandinavian tradition. The book is long, perhaps it might have been more clearly arranged, and certainly it might have more graciously and easily lent itself to the reading. It is a ponderous book; the scientific examination of most complicated evidence is not too searching, but is, perhaps, too visibly laborious. Dr. Rydberg speaks somewhere of the conclusion “to which I am struggling on.” As we follow we feel like the fairy princes before whom the enchanted hedges did not open of their own accord. We also have to struggle through the thorns and brakes of very arduous country. We cannot but think that Dr. Rydberg might have smoothed the way, first, by a short, compendious, and luminous statement of the principal myths ; then by a tabulated account of the authorities, with their dates. His method, though thorough, borders on the tedious; but against this must be set the common sense and power of estimating evidence, which are such rare qualities in mythological writers.
Of these good elements in Dr. Rydberg’s work we may offer a few examples. One of the difficulties of the Northern mythologist is to trace the same character under his many titles, most of which are either “honour-giving names," or names bestowed in memory of some adventure, or periphrases invented according to the taste of Scandinavian poetry. Thus we find, mentioned once, and once only, an important creative being called Modsogner. Is this a real name, or a skald‘s epithet, as [Greek], for example, is the epithet of Odysseus? Well, Egillson, in his Lexikon, translates the name “ Mead-drinker," and this leads us to Mimer, who kept the well of enchanted mead. The ordinary mythologist would ask no more—nay, he would be happy with much less; and he would identify Modsogner with Mimer. But Dr. Rydberg says, “Still nothing can be built simply on the definition of a name, even if it is correct beyond a doubt.’ Nothing can be built simply on the definition of a name! And yet towering edifices of cloudy theory have been created on names—on “Daphne,” “Athene,” and so forth—even when their definitions were absolutely uncertain.
To take another example of Dr. Rydberg’s common sense. The question arises, Are the resemblances between Indian, Persian, and Teutonic myths derived from an age of common habitations before the Aryan wandering of the peoples? Many a mythologist would say so instantly; do they not derive the little dog of the Sleeping Beauty from the same source as the Sanskrit Hound of Dawn? But Dr. Rydberg writes thus. The passage is valuable, and can easily be detached from the context:

The similarity between the Teutonic and Iranian traditions is so conspicuous that the question is irresistible—Whether it is not originally, from the standpoint of historical descent, one and the same my1th, which, but little affected by time, has been preserved by the Teutonic Aryans around the Baltic, and by the Iranian Aryans in Baktria and Persia? But the answer to the question requires the greatest caution. The psychological similarity of races may, on account of the limitations of the human fancy , and in the midst of similar conditions and environments, create myths which resemble each other, although they were produced spontaneously by different races in different parts of the earth. This may happen in the same manner as primitive implements, tools, and dwellings which resemble each other may have been invented and used by races far separated from each other, not by the one learning from the other how these things were to be made, nor on account of a common descent in antiquity. The similarity is the result of similar circumstances. It was the same want which was to be satisfied; the same human logic found the manner of satisfying the want; the same materials offered themselves for the accomplishment of the end, and the same universal conceptions of form were active in the development of the problems. Comparative mythology will never become .a science in the strict sense of this word before it ceases to build hypothases on a solitary similarity, or even on several or many resemblances between mythological systems geographically separated, unless these resemblances unite themselves and form a whole, a mythical unity, and unless it appears ‘that this mythical unity in turn enters as an element into a greater complexity, which is similar in fundamental structure and similar in its characteristic details. Especially should this rule be strictly observed when we compare the myths of peoples who neither by race nor language can be traced back to a prehistoric unity. But it is best not to relax the severity of the rules even when we compare the myths of peoples who, like the Teutons, the Iranians, and the Rigveda-Aryans, have the same origin and same language; who through centuries, and even long after their separation, have handed down from generation to generation similar mythological conceptions and mythical traditions.

On this whole question, the common Aryan home of some myths, Dr. Rydberg’s book leaves us in the uncertainty where it found us. The example of Jima’s home, in Zend, where the fairest men and things dwell, surviving the winter of the world, is curiously like the paradise of Gudmund in medieval sagas, and like Mimer’s ve, where certain “living folk” survive the world's ruin. His place, again, is like the Homeric Elysium, whither Helen and Odysseus are to be translated without tasting death. The passages are alike; but did the ideas arise in a home common to the ancestors of Scandinavians and Iranians?

This is a question which we really cannot pretend to answer. All the Scandinavian religion rests on the belief in an early world war, which brought disunion, misery, division among gods and men. The deeds done in that war have still to be avenged, and avenged they will be in “a wolf-age, a war-age, an axe-age, a sword-age.” Then comes the twilight of the gods, the fimbul winter, a new glacial period, and then again are things restored and reformed. Balder succeeds Odin, and a happier mankind is born from the dwellers in Mimer’s grove. Now this is, in essence, the theory of Kalpas, and of destructions and reconstructions of the world. The idea is most familiar in the Deluge Legend, but even the Australian blacks have their wind-age, and fire-age, periods of ruin, as well as their flood. The Aztecs had similar periods, and the gods who died in one destruction were magically revived in another “dispensation." It is clear, then, that a hypothesis of alternate ruins and revivals of the world by natural agencies may arise among widely scattered and unconnected peoples. The question is, Could this example of a destruction by winter, with a new world provided for by keeping some persons and plants and beasts in a guarded paradise, arise only among men of one race? Dr. Rydberg sums up his own conclusions thus :—What the Aryan-Asiatic myth here given has in common with the Teutonic one concerning the subterranean persons in Mimer’s grove can be summarized in the following words:

The lower world has a ruler, who does not belong to the group of immortal celestial beings, but enjoys the most friendly relations with the godhead, and is the possessor of great wisdom. In his kingdom flow inexhaustible fountains, and a tree grown out of its soil spreads its foliage over his dwelling, where he serves the mead of inspiration, which the gods are fond of and which he was the first to prepare. A terrible winter threatened to destroy everything on the surface of the earth. Than the ruler of the lower world built on his domain a well-fortified citadel, within which neither destructive storms, nor physical ills, nor moral evil, nor sickness, nor aging, nor death can come. Thither he transferred the best and fairest human beings to be found on earth, and decorated the enclosed garden with the most beautiful and useful trees and plants. The purpose of this garden is not simply to protect the beings collected there during the great winter; they are to remain there through all historical ages. When these come to an end, there comes a great conflagration and then a regeneration of the world. The renewed earth is to be filled with the beings who have been protected by the subterranean citadel. The people who live there have an instructor in the pure worship of the gods and in the precepts of morality, and in accordance with these precepts they are to live for ever a just and happy life.

It should be added that the two beings whom the Iranian ruler of the lower world is said to have honoured are found or have equivalents in the Teutonic mythology. Both are there put in theogonic connection with Mimer.

We should add that the name of Mimer, the owner of the Scandinavian sanctuary, is by some connected with the Indian Mann. The reader may draw his own conclusions as to whether the Zend and the Northern myths are of separate origin; we confess that we only reach suspense of judgment. To take another case, the whole fable of Odin’s theft of Suttung's mead is of the same order as the Indian theft of Soma. But then the distant Thlinkeets have their fable of the theft of water from the magic well by Yehl, wearing raven's feathers in his flight. Is there any connexion of race or transmission of story here? Once more, only the mistletoe can wound Balder. But only the bulrush can wound one of the two antagonistic brothers in the Iroquois cosmogonic myth. There is here no probability of similar origin, and little chance of transmission. The elements, in fact the atoms, of mythical fancy are perhaps universally distributed. Is there a point where the complexity of their combination into similar patterns justifies us in holding that the resemblances cannot have been independently evolved, that they must be common traditions of Iranians, say, and Scandinavians? An interesting example is in the fire-legends of Agni and Heimdal (p. 399-405). On the other hand, the well-known resemblances of Ymir and Purusha, the giants out of whose bodies the world is made, have their companions in the Babylonian legends of Omorca, and fragments of similar faiths occur in Egypt, among the Iroquois, the Tinnehs, and other very distant peoples. We cannot profess to have reached a definite opinion, though the close parallels of Scandinavia and Iran certainly seem to suggest community of origin.

Among the many interesting passages of Dr. Rydberg's book is a comparison of the old and heathen migration legends of the North with the learned medieval theory, by which the Teutonic races came from Troy. Trojans were to the middle ages what the Lost Tribes are to the Anglo-Israelites. Dr. Rydberg's most penetrating and ingenious criticism discovers how the learned men of the middle ages combined the old native legend with the borrowed classical material. Even more important is his analysis of the Gylfaginning, showing how Christian theorists worked over and perverted the heathen cosmography and theory of the next world. Dr. Rydberg demolishes the usual notions about Hel, and the theory that “a straw-death ” meant exclusion from the joys of the blessed. The cleverness of his use of some songs in the saga of Egil Skalagrimm’s son is particularly notable. In fact, here we have a mythologist with a full knowledge of his sources and with an astonishing skill in cross-examining them, as it were, in disengaging the heathen data from the more or less Christianized medieval versions. The task is most difficult and laborious, the process of comparing and disentangling is occasionally even tedious, but it is always, we think, judiciously, if not very divertingly, done. Many of the old stories from Saxo and other mediaeval authors are entertaining, and have almost the peculiar cachet of the Celtic fancy, as here:

During his wanderings in the forests of the East Hadding wonderful adventures and passed through great trials. Saxo tells one of these adventures. He and Hardgrep, Vagnhofde's daughter, came late one evening to a dwelling where they got lodgings for the night. The husband was dead, but not yet buried. For the purpose of learning Hadding's destiny, Hardgrep engraved speech-runes (see No. 70) on a piece of wood, and asked Hadding to place it under the tongue of the dead one. The latter would in this wise recover the power of speech and prophecy. So it came to pass. But what the dead one sang in an awe-inspiring voice was a curse on Hardgrep, who had compelled him to return from life in the lower world to life on earth, and a prediction that an avenging Niflheim demon would inflict punishment on her for what she had done. A following night, when Hadding and Hardgrep had sought shelter in a bower of twigs and branches, which they had gathered, there appeared a gigantic hand groping under the ceiling of the bower. The frightened Hadding waked Hardgrep. She then rose in all her giant strength, seized the mysterious hand, and bade Hadding cut it off with his sword. He has had attempted to do this, but from the wounds he inflicted on the ghost's hand there issued matter or venom more than blood, and the hand seized Hardgrep with its iron claws and tore her into pieces.

Here is another example:

Thence the woman brought him to a plain which glittered as in sunshine (loca aprica, translation of “The Glittering Plains"), and there grew the plants which she had shown him. This was one side of the river. On the other side there was bustle and activity. There Hadding saw two armies engaged in battle. They were, his fair guide explained to him, the souls of warriors who had fallen in battle, and now imitated the sword games they had played on earth. Continuing their journey, they reached a place surrounded y a wall, which was difficult to pass through or to surmount. Nor did the woman make any effort to enter there, either alone or with him : “ It would not have been possible for the smallest or thinnest physical being.” They therefore returned the way they had come. But before this, and while they stood near the wall, the woman demonstrated to Hadding by an experiment that the walled place had a strange nature. She jerked the head of a chicken she had taken with her, and threw it over the wall, but the head came back to the neck of the chicken, and with a distinct crow it announced “that it had regained its life and breath.”

Did space permit, we would willingly extract the whole passage on Northern heathen morality and retribution (p. 349). Dr. Rydberg establishes the existence, as in Egypt, of a judgment after death. But we have probably said enough to prove that Dr. Anderson’s translation is an indispensable part of the mythological library. The book is intended for students; it does not pretend to be popular, and students who neglect it will do so to their own blame and loss. We might object to a few phrases, as where Tacitus is said to have “interviewed” a witness; but why take tithe of mint and cumin? The book is a solid piece of hard work, and has a very good index.