Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/221

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ODIN'S RUNE SONG.
189

CHAP.


of the Hesiodic ages. Such a classification we find in the relations of the Jotun or giants, who are conquered by Odin as the Titans are overthrown by Zeus ; and this sequence forms part of a theogony which, like that of Hesiod, begins with chaos. From this chaos the earth emerged, made by the gods out of the blood and bones of the giant Ymir, whose name denotes the dead and barren sea. This being is sprung from the contact of the frozen with the heated waters, the former coming from Niflheim, the region of deadly cold at the northern end of the chaotic world, the latter from Muspelheim, the domain of the devouring fire. The Kosmos so brought into existence is called the " Bearer of God " — a phrase which finds its explanation in the world-tree Yggdrasil, on which Odin himself hangs, like the Helene Dendritis of the Cretan legend:—

I know that I hung    On a wind-rocked tree
Nine whole nights,    With a spear wounded,
And to Odin offered,    Myself to myself,
On that tree,    Of which no one knows
From what root it springs.[1]

This mighty tree, which in Odin's Rune Song becomes a veritable tree of knowledge, and whose roots are undermined by Hel or death and by the Hrimthursen or frost-giants, rises into Asgard, the highest heavens where the gods dwell, while men have their abode in Mid- gard, the middle garden or earth, embraced by its branches.

Genealogy of Odin.The giant Ymir was nourished by the four streams which flowed from the treasure of moisture, the cow Audhumla,[2] which belongs to Zoroastrian not less than to Teutonic mythology, and is there found with the meaning both of cow and earth.[3] This earth afforded salt, without which no life can be vigorous, and from Audhumla, as she fed on the salt of the blocks of ice, there came forth a perfect man, Buri, the fashioner of the world, whose son, Bor,[4] had as his wife Besla, or Bettla,[5] the daughter of the giant Bolthorn, the root or kernel of the earth. From Buri[6] proceeded apparently Odin

  1. ↑ “Odin’s Rune Song,” Thorpe’s Translation of Sæmund’s Edda, p. 340. We may compare with the “Bearer of God,” the names Atlas and Christophoros.
  2. ↑ This is the cow beneath whose udder the Dawn maiden hides herself in the Norse story of the Two Step-Sisters.—Dasent. Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 224.
  3. ↑ Bunsen, God in History, ii. 483.
  4. ↑ The two names would answer to the active and passive meanings of the Greek phoros in compound words.
  5. ↑ Bunsen thinks that the original form of this name was Beidsla, a word perhaps denoting desire or longing, and thus answering to the Kama of Vedic and the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony, while it is reflected also in the Teutonic Wunsch or Wish.
  6. ↑ The children of Buri educe order out of Chaos, and at the four ends of the world thus brought into shape they
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