been woven into a song for our race, and we give our readers this full account of Odin from the Heimskringla in connection with the Foreword to Gylfe's Fooling, with the hope that among our readers there may be found some descendant of Odin, whose skaldic wings are but just fledged for the flights he hopes to take, who will take a draught, first from Mimer' s gushing fountain, then from Suttung' s mead, brought by Odin to Asgard, and consecrate himself and his talents to this legend with all the ardor of his soul. For, as William Morris so beautifully says of the Yolsung Saga, this is the great story of the Teutonic race, and should be to us what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks, and what the tale of Æneas was to the Romans, to all our race first and afterward, when the evolution of the world has made the Teutonic race nothing more than a name of what it has been; a story, too, then, should it be to the races that come after us, no less than the Iliad, and the Odyssey and the Æneid have been to us.[1] We sincerely trust that we shall see Odin wrought into a Teutonic epic, that will present in grand outline the contrast between the Eoman and the Teuton. And now we are prepared to give the Heimskringla account of the historical Odin. We have adopted Samuel Laing's translation, with a few verbal alterations where such seemed necessary.
It is said that the earth's circle (Heimskringla), which the human race inhabits, is torn across into many bights, so that great seas run into the land from the out-ocean. Thus it is known that a great
- ↑ Quoted from memory.
