The reviews of books and articles in various periodicals, with which the rest of the volume is occupied, do not call for any remark, except for the purpose of drawing attention to their methodical arrangement and the careful criticism they contain. This part of the volume forms an admirable guide for students to the literature of all sociological subjects published during the period to which it relates.
Much recent speculation on the origins of those pagan beliefs which survive in the Edda has taken the form of a fantastically ingenious endeavour to prove that the stories there given, instead of deriving from Northern paganism, are in the main literary perversion of borrowed material, or of heroic legend. Dr. Olrik does not belong to this school, and his inquiry into the Ragnarok myth presents a genuine and scholarly arraying of parallels, together with deductions drawn therefrom as to the origin of the Doom of the Gods.
Ragnarok, by popular etymology translated the Dusk, but more correctly the Destruction or Doom of the Gods, is the pivot of the mythical system given in the Edda and in such historical poems as the dirges of Eirik Bloodaxe and Hakon the Good. That system, in all probability the growth of the Viking age, is at once a glorification of a life of warfare and an explanation of the misfortune that overtakes the brave. All things must end, the good is short-lived and quickly passing, valour meets disaster: that is the Northman's faith, as read in legend, lay, and saga; and that a man should live while life lasts and fall fighting at the end is its outcome in practical experience. As a fate too strong thus shadows human life, so that necessity with which not even the Gods may strive waits for the higher powers: known to the silent
science. My opinion on the relation of magic and religion was expressed in my review of The Golden Bough in Man, 1901.
