106 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
reminiscences. Yilmar calls it the only real Christian epos, and a wonderful creation of the German genius.1
A little later (about 870) Otfried, a Franconian, educated at Fulda and St. Gall, produced another poetic harmony of the Gospels, which is one of the chief monuments of old high Ger man literature. It is a life of Christ from his birth to the ascen sion, and ends with a description of the judgment. It consists of fifteen thousand rhymed lines in strophes of four lines.
Thus the victory of Christianity in Germany as well as in England, was the beginning of poetry and literature, and of true civilization.
The Christianization of North-Eastern Germany, among the Slavonic races, along the Baltic shores in Prussia, Livonia, and Courlaud, went on in the next period, chiefly through Bishop Otto of Bamberg, the apostle of Pomerania, and the Knights of the Teutonic order, and was completed in the twelfth and thir^ teenth centuries.
III. THE CONVERSION OF SCANDINAVIA.
General Literature.
I. Scandinavia before Christianity.
The EDDAS, edit. Rask (Copenhagen, 1818); A. Munch (Christiania,
1847); Mobius (Leipzig, 1860). N. M. PETERSEN : Danmarks Historic i Hedenold. Copenhagen, 1834-37,
3 vols. ; Den Nordiske Mythologie, Copenhagen, 1839. N. F. S. GRUNDTVIG : Nordens Mythologie. Copenhagen, 1839. B. THORPE: Northern Mythology. London, 1852, 3 vols. RASMUS B. ANDERSON: Norse Mythology ; Myths of the Eddas systematized
and interpreted. Chicago, 1875.
II. The Christianization of Scandinavia.
CLAUDIUS GERNHJALM : Historia Sueonum Gothorumque Ecclesice. Stock holm, 1689, 4 vols.
E. POXTOPPIDAN: Annales EccZesice Danicce. Copenhagen, 1741.
F. MUNTER: Kirchengeschichte von Danemark und Norwegen. Copen
hagen and Leipzig, 1823-33, 3 vols.
1 See Ed. Sievers, Heliand. Halle, 1878;
2 28. SCANDINAVIAN HEATHENISM. 107
H. REIJTERDAHL: fivcmka kyrkans historia. Lund, 1833, 3 vols., first volume translated into German by E. T. Mayerhof, under the title : Lebcn Ansgars.
FRED. HELWEG: Den Danske Kirkes Historic. Copenhagen, 1862.
A. JORGENSEN: Dennordiske Kirkes Grundlveygelsc. Copenhagen, 1874.
NEANDER: Geschichtc der christlichen Kirche, Vol. IV., pp. 1-150.
§ 28. Scandinavian Heathenism.
WIIEATON: History of the Northmen. London, 1831.
DEPPING: Histoire des expeditions maritiines des Normands. Paris, 1843.
2 vols. F. WORSAAE: Account of the Danes in England, Ireland, and Scotland.
London, 1852 ; The Danish Conquest of England and Normandy.
London, 1863. These works are translated from the Danish.
Scandinavia was inhabited by one of the wildest and fiercest, but also one of the strongest and most valiant branches of the Teutonic race, a people of robbers which grew into a people of conquerors. Speaking the same language — rthat which is still spoken in Iceland — and worshipping the same gods, they were split into a number of small kingdoms covering the present Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Every spring, when the ice broke in the fjords, they launched their boats or skiffs, and swept, each swarm under the leadership of its own king, down upon the coasts of the neighboring countries. By the rivers they penetrated far into the countries, burning and destroying what they could not carry away with them. When autumn came, they returned home, loaded with spoil, and they spent the winter round the open hearth, devouring their prey. But in course of time, the swarms congregated and formed large armies, and the robber-campaigns became organized expeditions for conquest; kingdoms were founded in Russia, England, France, and Sicily. In their new homes, however, the Northern vikings soon forgot both their native language and their old gods, and became the strong bearers of new departures of civilization and the valiant knights of Christianity.
In the Scandinavian mythology, there were not a few ideas
108 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
which the Christian missionary could use as connecting links. It was not absolutely necessary for him to begin with a mere negation; here, too, there was an " unknown God," and many traits indicate that, during the eighth and ninth centuries, people throughout Scandinavia became more and more anxious to hear something about him. When a man died, he went to Walhall, if he had been brave, and to Niflheim, if he had been a coward. In Walhall he lived together with the gods, in great brightness and joy, fighting all the day, feasting all the night. In Niflheim he sat alone, a shadow, surrounded with everything disgusting and degrading. But Walhall and Niflheim were not to last forever. A deep darkness, Ragnarokr, shall fall over the uni verse; Walhall and Niflheim shall be destroyed by fire; the gods, the heroes, the shadows, shall perish. Then a new heaven and a new earth shall be created by the All-Father, and he shall judge men not according as they have been brave or cowardly, but according as they have been good or bad. From the Eddas them selves, it appears that, throughout Scandinavian heathendom, there now and then arose characters who, though they would not cease to be brave, longed to be good. The representative of this goodness, this dim fore-shadowing of the Christian idea of holiness, was Baldur, the young god standing on the rainbow and watching the worlds, and he was also the link which held together the whole chain of the Walhall gods; when he died, Ragnarokr came.
A transition from the myth of "Baldur to the gospel of Christ cannot have been very difficult to the Scandinavian imagination ; and, indeed, it is apparent that the first ideas which the Scandi navian heathens formed of the "White Christ" were influenced by their ideas of Baldur. It is a question, however, not yet set tled, whether certain parts of the Scandinavian mythology, as, for instance, the above myths of Ragnarokr and Baldur, are not a reflex of Christian ideas; and it is quite probable that when the Scandinavians in the ninth century began to look at Christ under the image of Baldur, they had long before