ABSTRACT

The object of the preface to the first volume was two-fold; I wished in the first place to give some account of the princes mentioned in the poem, and the more so, because scarcely any one seemed to be aware who they were, or whether any other accounts of them were in existence; next I desired to show that the poem was essentially an Angle one, that is to say, that it belonged to the poetical cycle of the Angles, and that it was founded upon legends far older than the date of the MS. which contained it, nay which existed previous to the Angle conquest of Britain. Neither of these objects was satisfactorily attained; want of space and the pressure of other matter compelled me to assign very narrow limits to an enquiry of which I at that time hardly saw all the importance; perhaps I had not defined to myself with sufficient accuracy what the limits of my enquiry ought to be: but that which was most injurious in its operation was that I proceeded upon a basis essentially false. The works which I made use of; and more especially Suhm’s History of Denmark [1782-1828] laborious as they are, are subject to one serious reproach: they treat mythic and traditional matters as ascertained history; it is the old story of the Minos, Lycurgus, or Numa of antiquity, new furbished up for us in the North. The mischief of this confined and false way of proceeding need hardly be dilated upon here; it brings with it, as a necessary consequence, the most violent straining of legends, numberless repetitions of traditional heroes, numberless minglings and meltings down of the most heterogeneous materials, and the poor flimsy whole which thus arises from the sacrifice of invaluable individualities

free from all confusion: While the God Woden existed, it belonged to his godhead that at various times and places he mingled in the affairs of‘men, guided their hosts in battle, and appeared as the adviser or threatener of various royal races: once a hero, a magician, a king of Turkey (Tyrkja konungr) having time and space to confine him, the various legends in which he appeared must be forced together, or half a dozen different Wodens must be assumed, to account for his agency at the different times and places. The last scheme is that adopted by Suhm, who in common with very many of his countrymen, pays a slavish and uncritical homage to the middle-age writers of Denmark. With an insight expanded by a far more close acquaintance with the mythic history of the North, I cannot suffer the erroneous views developed in my preface to continue as my recorded opinion, uncorrected, and unrefuted: it is due not only to myself; but to those who interest themselves with the antiquities of our native land, to cut away, root and branch, whatever is false in what I have published, and to add what upon maturer consideration seems likely to throw light upon the obscure and difficult subject with which we have to deal.