Northern Antiquities/Chapter 5

by Paul Henri Mallet

CHAPTER V.

A general idea of the ancient religion of the northern nations.

IT is not easy to form an exact notion of the religion formerly professed in the north of Europe. What the Latin and Greek authors have written on this subject is commonly deficient in point of exactness. They had for many ages little or no intercourse with the inhabitants of these countries, whom they styled Barbarians; they were ignorant of their language, and, as ‘most of these’ nations^[1] made a scruple of unfolding the grounds of their religious doctrines to strangers, the latter, who were thereby reduced to be meer spectators of their outward forms of worship, could not easily enter into the spirit of it. And yet if we bring together the few short sketches which these different writers have preserved of it, if we correct them by one another, if we compare their accounts with those of the ancient poets and historians of these nations themfelves, I flatter myself, we shall throw light enough upon this subject to be able to distinguish the most important objects in it.

The religion of the Scythians was, in the first ages, extremely simple. It taught a few plain easy doctrines, and these seem to have comprized the whole of religion known to the first inhabitants of Europe. The farther back we ascend to the aera of the creation, the more plainly we discover traces of this conformity among the several nations of the earth; but in proportion as we see them dispersed to form distant settlements and colonies, they seem to swerve from their original ideas, and to assume new forms of religion. The nations, who settled in the southern countries, were they who altered it the first, and afterwards disfigured it the most. These people derive from their climate a lively, fruitful, and restless imagination, which makes them greedy of novelties and wonders: they have also ardent passions, which rarely suffer them to preserve a rational freedom of mind, or to see things coolly and impartially. Hence the wild frenzies of the Egyptians, Syrians and Greeks in religious matters; and hence that chaos of extravagances, in some respects ingenious, known by the name of mythology: through which we can hardly discover any traces of the ancient doctrines. And yet we do discover them, and can make it appear, that those first doctrines, which the southern nations so much disguised, were the very same that composed for a long time after all the religion of the Scythians, and were preserved in the North without any material alteration. There the rigour of the climate necessarily locks up the capricious desires, confines the imagination, lessens the number of the passions, as well as abates their violence, and by yielding only to painful and unremitted labour, wholly confines to material objects, that activity of mind, which produces among men levity and disquiet.

But whether these causes have not always operated with the same efficacy, or whether others more powerful have prevailed over them; the greatest part of the Scythian nations after having, for some time, continued inviolably attached to the religion of their first fathers, suffered it at length to be corrupted by an intermixture of ceremonies, some of them ridiculous, others cruel; in which, by little and little, as it commonly happens, they came to place the whole essence of religion. It is not easy to mark the precise time when this alteration happened, as well for want of ancient monuments, as because it was introduced by imperceptible degrees, and at different times among different nations: but it is not therefore the less certain, that we ought to distinguish two different epoques or ages in the religion of this people: and in each of these we should be careful not to confound the opinions of the sages, with the fables or mythology of the poets. Without these distinctions it is difficult to reconcile the different accounts, often in appearance contradictory, which we find in ancient authors. Yet I cannot promise to mark out precisely, what belongs to each of these classes in particular. The lights which guide us at intervals through these dark ages, are barely sufficient to show us some of the more striking objects; but the finer links which connect and join them together, will generally escape us.

Let us, first of all examine this religion in its purity. It taught the being of a “supreme God, master of the universe, to whom all things were submissive and obedient^[2].” Such, according to Tacitus, was the supreme God of the Germans. The ancient Icelandic mythology calls him "The author of every thing that existeth; the eternal, the ancient, the living and awful Being, the searcher into concealed things, the Being that never changeth.” It attributed to their deity “an infinite power, a boundless knowledge, an incorruptible justice.” It forbade them to represent this divinity under any corporeal form. They were not even to think of confining him within the inclosure of walls^[3], but were taught that it was only within woods and consecrated forests, that they could serve him properly. There, he seemed to reign in silence, and to make himself felt by the respect which he inspired. It was an injurious extravagance to attribute to this deity a human figure, to erect statues to him, to suppose him of any sex, or to represent him by images. From this supreme God were sprung (as it were emanations of his divinity) an infinite number of subaltern deities and genii, of which every part of the visible world was the seat and temple. These intelligences did not barely reside in each part of nature; they directed its operations, it was the organ or instrument of their love or liberality to mankind. Each element was under the guidance of some Being peculiar to it. The earth, the water, the fire, the air, the sun, moon, and stars had each their respective divinity. The trees, forests, rivers, mountains, rocks, winds, thunder and tempests had the same; and merited on that score a religious worship, which, at first, could not be directed to the visible object, but to the intelligence with which it was animated. The motive of this worship was the fear of a deity irritated by the sins of men, but who, at the same time, was merciful, and capable of being appeased by prayer and repentance. They looked up to him as to the active principle, which, by uniting with the earth or passive principle, had produced men, animals, plants, and all visible beings; they even believed that he was the only agent in nature, who preserves the several beings, and disposes of all events. To serve this divinity with sacrifices and prayers, to do no wrong to others, and to be brave and intrepid in themselves, were all the moral consequences they derived from these doctrines. Lastly, the belief of a future state cemented and compleated the whole building. Cruel tortures were there reserved for such as despised these three fundamental precepts of morality, and joys without number and without end awaited every religious, just and valiant man.

These are the principal heads of that ancient religion, which probably prevailed for many ages through the greatest part of the north of Europe, and doubtless among several nations of Asia. It was preserved tolerably pure in the North till towards the decline of the Roman republic: One may judge at least by the testimony of several authors, that the Germans had maintained till that time the chief of these doctrines, whilst the inhabitants of Spain, Gaul and Britain, half subdued by the arms and luxury of the Romans, adopted by degrees new Gods, at the same time that they received new masters^[4]. It is probable then, that it was not till the arrival of Odin in the North, that the Scythian religion among the ancient Danes and other Scandinavians began to lose the most beautiful features of its original purity. Though the fact itself is probable, it is not so easy to assign the causes of it. Whether this change must be attributed to the natural inconstancy of mankind and their invincible proneness to whatever is marvellous, and strikes the senses. Or whether we ought to throw the blame on that conqueror, and suppose with some authors that he had a formed design to pass among the northern people for a formidable deity; and to found there a new worship, on which to establish his new dominion, and to eternize his hatred for the Romans, by planting among those valiant and populous nations a perpetual nursery of devoted enemies to everything that should bear that name. It is difficult to decide this question. The eye is lost and bewildered, when it endeavours to trace out events so remote and obscure. To unravel and distinguish the several causes, and to mark exactly the distinct influence of each, is what we can hardly do in the history of such ages as are the most enlightened and best known to us. Let us then confine ourselves within more narrow limits, and endeavour to sketch out a new picture of this same religion, as it was afterwards altered, and like a piece of cloth so profusely overcharged with false ornaments, as hardly to show the least glimpse of the original groundwork. This picture will take in a space of seven or eight centuries, which intervened between the time of Odin and the conversion of Denmark to the Christian faith. The Icelandic Edda, and some ancient pieces of poetry, wherein the same mythology is taught, are the sources whence I shall draw my information. But the fear of falling into needless repetitions, prevents me at present from describing the nature of these ancient works, which are known but to few of the learned. This discussion will find its most proper place in the article which I reserve for the ancient literature of the North.

1. Particularly all those of Celtic origin. The author had expressed it simply “As all the Celtic nations made a scruple,” supposing the Gothic nations to be the same with the Celtic: but this opinion is considered in the preface. T.
2. No doctrine was held in higher reverence among the ancient Germans than this. Regnator omnium Deus, cætera subjecta atque parentia, says Tacitus, speaking of their religion. De Mor. Germ. c. xxxv. The epithets that follow above are expressly given to the Deity in the old treatise of Icelandic mythology, intitled the Edda, which has been mentioned above. See the translation of this in the next volume.
3. Cæterum nec cohibere parietibus Deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem assimilare ex magnitudine cælestium arbitrantur. Lucos ac nemora consecrant, Deorum qua nominibus appellant secretum illud quod solâ reverentia vident. Tacit. Germ. c. ix. One might here bring together a great multitude of authorities to prove that so long as these nations had no communication with strangers, their religion severely prohibited the use of temples, idols, images, &c. But it is sufficient to refer those, who would see this subject treated more at large, to M. Pelloutier’s Histoire des Celtes, tom. ii.
4. Pelloutier, chap. xvii.