Students of Icelandic literature agree that the Norse deities stand out as rude
and as massive as the Scandinavian mountains. They exhibit “a spirit of victory,
superior to brute force, superior to mere matter, a spirit that fights and overcomes.”
“The Norsemen have given their gods a noble, upright, great spirit, and placed them
upon a high level that is all their own.” “It is a greatness not of mere body and
gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul.”
It was in the infancy of thought gazing upon a universe filled with divinity, and
believing heartily with all sincerity that a large-hearted people reached out in the
dark towards ideals which were better than they knew. But, Ragnarok was to undo
their gods because they had stumbled from their higher standards.
The weighty words of William Morris regarding the Volsunga Saga may also be fitly
quoted as an introduction to this collection of “Myths of the Norsemen”: “This is
the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy
was to the Greeks—to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the
world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been—a story too
—then should it be to those that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy has
been to us.”
We have to thank a curious phenomenon for the preservation of so much of the
old lore as we still possess. While modern and foreign influences were changing
the Norse language, it remained practically unaltered in Iceland. And so here they
are, re-presented in 29 chapters for you to discover “as it was writ” over a
thousand years ago.
