CHAPTER III.
NORSE MYTHOLOGY COMPARED WITH THE GREEK.
Dr. Dasent says the Norse mythology may hold
its own against any other in the world. The fact
that it is the religion of our forefathers ought to be
enough to commend it to our attention; but it may be
pardonable in us to harbor even a sense of pride, if we
find, for instance, that the mythology of our Gothic
ancestors suffers nothing, but rather is the gainer in
many respects by a comparison with that world-famed
paganism of the ancient Greeks. We would therefore
invite the attention of the reader to a brief comparison
between the Norse and Greek systems of mythology.
A comparison between the two systems is both interesting and important. They are the two grandest systems of cosmogony and theogony of which we have record, but the reader will generously pardon the writer if he ventures the statement already at the outset, that of the two the Norse system is the grander. These two, the Greek and the Norse, have, to a greater extent than all other systems of mythology combined, influenced the civilization, determined the destinies, socially and politically, of the European nations, and shaped their polite literature. In literature it might indeed seem that the Greek mythology has played a more important part. We admit that it has acted a more conspicuous part, but we imagine that there exists a wonderful blindness,
