SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

120 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
indication of the state of the pagan religion just before the
acceptance of Christianity.
The cult of the lEsir would not have given way with so
little opposition before Christianity as it did in Norway,
and especially in Iceland, if it had ruled undivided over
the minds of men. These people were too loth to give
way, when they knew what they wanted, for this to
happen. But the heathen faith had become too developed,
and at the same time too enfeebled, partly because of the
widening horizon and spiritual development of the
Northern peoples, and partly because of a trickle of
influence from their Christian neighbours. 66inn had
become the All-father, was drawing near to becoming
omnipotent. People worshipped "him who made the
sun", and felt less sure of their own might and main with
regard to him than they did with regard to the ancient
gods. The character of Baldr was influenced by Christian
ideas and became almost milder and gentler than
theWhite Christ of whom the missionaries told, who enlarged
his domain after the manner of warrior kings. But
Christianity had not yet come so close as to open up a vista
of eternal joy and peace. Over the minds of men still hung
the old pessimism, the fear of an evil, hidden fate, the
conviction that all would perish. All the principal heroic
legends told of suffering and fall: Sigurtir Fafnisbani, the
Gjiikungar, Atli, Hrolfr kraki, Hagbaror and the others,
all went the same way. The gods themselves must suffer
the same fate. He who sees the shortest distance ahead
is happiest. But the powers of endurance were not the
same as of old. The spiritual life of the most developed
men, the exceptional men in the van of spiritual progress,
had become too complex to enable them to be happy at the
bidding of the will.85 For those who measured the
world by an ethical yardstick there was little consolation
in the prospect that it would be made new after Ragnarok
.. I have written at greater length of the ancient pessimism in an essay on
the belief of Egill Skallagrimsson, Skimir (I924), I4S-6S.