Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 | Page 7

more cheerful and homelike. Pleasantly wave the evergreen boughs
of the Life-Tree, Yggdrasil, the mythic ash-tree of the old North, whose
leaves are green with an unwithering bloom that shall defy even the
fires of the final conflagration. Iduna, or Spring, sits in those boughs
with her apples of rejuvenescence, restoring the wasted strength of the
gods. In the shade of its topmost branches stands Asgard, the abode of
the Asen, who are called the Rafters of the World,--to wit, Odin, Thor,
Freir, and the other higher powers, male and female, of the old
Teutonic religion. In Asgard is Valhalla, the hall of elect heroes. The
roots of this mundane ash reach as far downwards as its branches do
upwards. Its roots, trunk, and branches together thrid the universe,
shooting Hela, the kingdom of death, Midgard, the abode of men, and
Asgard, the dwelling of the gods, like so many concentric rings.
This ash was a psychological and ontological plant. All the lore of
Plato and Kant and Fichte and Cousin was audible in the sigh of its
branches. Three Norns, Urt, Urgand, and Skuld, dwelt beneath it, so
that it comprehended time past, present, and future. The gods held their
councils beneath it. By one of its stems murmured the Fountain of
Mimir, in Niflheim or Mistland, from whose urn welled up the ocean
and the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept
watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and
gambolled a squirrel called _Busybody_, which carried gossip from
bough to root and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in
which swam the sun and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its
celestial stem in Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course
had its parasites and rodentia clinging to it and gnawing it; but the
brave old ash defied them all, and is to wave its skywide umbrage even
over the ruins of the universe, after the dies irae shall have passed. So
sings the Voluspa. This tree is a worthy type of the Teutonic race, so
green, so vigorous, so all-embracing. We should expect to find the
chief object in the Northern myth-world a tree. The forest was ever dear
to the sons of the North, and many ancient Northern tribes used to hold
their councils and parliaments under the branches of some
wide-spreading oak or ash. Like its type, Yggdrasil, the Teutonic race

seems to be threading the earth with the roots of universal dominion,
and, true to hereditary instincts, it is belting the globe with its colonies,
planting it, as it were, with slips from the great Mundane Ash, and
throwing Bifröst bridges across oceans, in the shape of telegraph-cables
and steamships.
Asgard is a more homelike place than Olympus. Home and fireside, in
their true sense, are Teutonic institutions. Valhalla, the hall of elect
heroes, was appropriately shingled with golden shields. Guzzlers of ale
and drinkers of lagerbier will be pleased to learn that this Northern
Valhalla was a sort of celestial beer-saloon, thus showing that it was a
genuine Teutonic paradise; for ale would surely be found in such a
region. In the "Prose Edda," Hor replies to Gangler--who is asking him
about the board and lodgings of the heroes who had gone to Odin in
Valhalla, and whether they had anything but water to drink--in huge
disdain, inquiring of Gangler whether he supposed that the Allfather
would invite kings and jarls and other great men, and give them
nothing to drink but water. How do things divine and supernatural,
when conceived of by man and cast in an earthly, finite mould,
necessarily assume human attributes and characteristics! Strong drinks,
the passion of the Northern races in all ages, are of course found in
their old mythic heaven, in their fabled Hereafter,--and even boar's
flesh also. The ancient Teuton could not have endured a heaven with
mere airy, unsubstantial joys. There must be celestial roasts of strong
meat for him, and flagons of his ancestral ale. His descendants to this
day never celebrate a great occasion without a huge feed and
corporation dinners, thus establishing their legitimate descent from
Teutonic stock. The Teutonic man ever led a life of vigorous action;
hence his keen appetite, whetted by the cold blasts of his native North.
What wonder, then, at the presence of sodden boar's flesh in his ancient
Elysium, and of a celestial goat whose teats yielded a strong beverage?
The Teuton liked not fasting and humiliation either in Midgard or
Asgard. He was ever carnivorous and eupeptic. We New Englanders
are perhaps the leanest of his descendants, because we have forsaken
too much the old ways and habits of the race, and given ourselves too
much