Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

there, the woman brought him to a plain which glittered as in sunshine 11 (loca aprica, translation
of "the Glittering Plains"), and there grew the plants which she had shown him. This was one
side of the river. On the other side, there was bustle and activity. There Hadding saw two armies
engaged in battle. They were, his fair guide explained to him, the souls of warriors who had
fallen in battle, and now imitated the sword-games they had played on earth. Continuing their
journey, they reached a place surrounded by a wall, which was difficult to pass through or to
surmount. Nor did the woman make any effort to enter there, either alone or with him: "It would
not have been possible for the smallest or thinnest physical being." They therefore returned the
way they had come. But before this, and while they stood near the wall, the woman demonstrated
to Hadding by an experiment that the walled place had a strange nature. She jerked the head off a
cock which she had taken with her, and threw it over the wall, but the head came back to the
neck of the cock, and with a distinct crow it announced "that it had regained its life and breath."
48.
MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (continued).
A FRISIAN SAGA IN ADAM OF BREMEN.
So far as the age of their recording in writing is concerned, the series of traditions
narrated above in regard to Odainsakur, the Glittering Plains and their ruler Gudmund, and also
in regard to the neighboring domains as habitations of the souls of the dead, extends through a
period of considerable length. The latest cannot be referred to an earlier date than the fourteenth
century; the oldest were put in writing toward the close of the twelfth. Saxo began working on
his history between the years 1179 and 1186. Thus these literary evidences span about two
centuries, and stop near the threshold of heathendom. The generation which Saxo's father
belonged to witnessed the crusade which Sigurd the Crusader made in Eastern Smaland, in
whose forests the Asa-doctrine until that time seems to have prevailed, and the Odinic religion is
believed to have flourished in the more remote parts of Sweden even in Saxo's own time.
We must still add to this series of documents one which is to carry it back another
century, and even more. This document is a saga told by Adam of Bremen 12 in De situ Daniæ.
Adam, or, perhaps, before him, his authority Adalbert (appointed archbishop in the year 1043),
has turned the saga into history, and made it as credible as possible by excluding all distinctly
mythical elements. And as it, doubtless for this reason, neither mentions a place which can be
compared with Odainsakur or with the Glittering Plains, I have omitted it among the literary
evidences above quoted. Nevertheless, it reminds us in its main features of Saxo's account of
Gorm's journey of discovery, and its relation both to it and to the still older myth shall be shown
later (see No. 94). In the form in which Adam heard the saga, its point of departure has been
located in Friesland, not in Denmark. Frisian noblemen make a voyage past Norway up to the
11 "a sunny region," both the Elton and Fisher translations.
12 Adam of Bremen; Adam Bremensis (c. 1044 - 1080) A German historian and geographer, author of "Gesta
Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum" consisting of four books. The fourth book is a geographical treatise titled
"Descriptio insularum Aquilonis", describing Northern Europe and the islands in the Northern seas, many of which
had only recently been explored. Adam's information is largely drawn from his conversations with the Danish king
Svend Estridson. Apparently the last book is also known as "Liber de Situ Daniae," and is notable for a brief
description of the island of Vinland (America) found there (IV, 38). Adam discusses heathenism in Sweden, and
remains the only source of his time.