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INTRODUCTION
The mythology of our forefathers, as we know it from Norse mythical poems and from the records of ancient writers, has not come down to us in its genuine pagan form. It is extant only in a later form, dating from a period when its devotees had begun to lose their absolute faith in the older divinities, had begun to harbor doubts and to catch intimations of a consolation nobler and better than that which the ancient divinities had been able to give them. We learn to know it, furthermore, in the sources designated, as it manifested itself in Norway during the centuries just preceding the introduction of Christianity and as it appeared, something more than a hundred years earlier, upon its transference into Iceland by the Norwegian emigrants. In its main outlines it was at that time common to all the so-called Germanic tribes: on the one hand, to Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes; and on the other hand, to Goths, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, Frisians, Anglo-Saxons, and other peoples. Yet in the nature of the case, as the Germanic tribes gradually diverged with respect to language, customs, and modes of living, and each thus entered upon a separate development, it followed of necessity that mythology and cult took on a distinct character in each of these tribes; even in early prehistoric times, moreover, external influences proceeding from the more cultivated of neighboring non-Germanic peoples must have been at work, and also mutually operative influences


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as between the Germanic tribes themselves. The ancient Norse religion was thus far from being identical with the mythology and worship of the other Northern or Germanic peoples. Evidence to this effect is to be discovered even in a cursory comparison with the few available accounts of religious conditions among the various German tribes during the pagan era.