“The North had its own notion on this point.  Its mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they, too, were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own.  To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and AEsir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost-Giants in AEschylean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds.  There, in a bitterly cold place, she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age; care was her bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife.  Her walls were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge.  ’Half blue was her skin, and half the color of human flesh.  A goddess easy to know, and in all things very stern and grim.’  But though severe, she was not an evil spirit.  She only received those who died as no Norseman wished to die.  For those who fell on the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Valhalla was prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin.  Those went to Hel who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died before they could be killed.  But when Christianity came in and ejected Odin and his crew of false divinities, declaring them to be lying gods and demons, then Hel fell with the rest,—­but, fulfilling her fate, outlived them.  From a person she became a place; and all the Northern nations, from the Goth to the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the abode of the Devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared from the beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned.  One curious fact connected with this explanation of Hell’s origin will not escape the reader’s attention.  The Christian notion of Hell is that of a place of heat; for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment,—­and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful.  But to the dweller in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region, over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round, and huge logs blazed and crackled, for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle.  But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame.”

Still more will orthodoxy be shocked by Mr. Dasent’s neglect to except Christianity from the conclusion, (no new one, it need hardly be said, to those who know anything of the subject,) that the mythologies or personal histories of all religions have been evolved the one from the other, or grafted the one upon the other,—­and by his intimation, that Christianity, keeping pure in its spirit and undiverted from its purpose, has yet not hesitated to adapt its outward forms to the tough popular traditions which it found deeply rooted in the soil where it sought to grow, thus making itself “all things to all men, that it might by all means save some.”