E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, eagkw,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
Transcriber’s note:
An Index of Names and a Key to Pronunciation canbe found at the end of the book.
On page 29 a period was added (feastwith the Æsir.). Otherwise the original text was preserved.
[iii]
ASGARD STORIES
TALES FROM NORSE MYTHOLOGY
BY
MARY H. FOSTER
AND
MABEL H. CUMMINGS, A.B.
ILLUSTRATED
SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
[iv]
Copyright, 1901,
By SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY.
[v]
To all our Children
who have loved the hearing of these
Asgard Stories
[vi]
[vii]
PREFACE.
This little volume is the outcome of several years’experience in telling to classes of children the classicmyths, both southern and northern. The insight andinterest displayed by the children encourage theauthors to hope that other teachers and pupils mayenjoy the myths here reproduced.
The interest shown at present in the teaching ofmyths to children seems to call for some such simplevolume, giving the Norse myths in suitable form foruse with pupils as well as for the children’s home reading.There are various collections of the Greek tales,but the books dealing with the Norse myths seem tobe more or less cumbered with detail, and, therefore,not adapted to very young readers.
The experience of the authors satisfies them thatthe teaching of myths should begin with those of theNorth, and that the Greek tales should be given later,with comparisons and references to the Norse myths.The stories which were dear to our own northern forefathersstir our children more deeply and are morecongenial to them than those which come down to usfrom the Greeks. This is perfectly reasonable. Thegraphic descriptions in the Norse tales of the hardstruggle with rugged nature and the severe climate[viii]of the North naturally come home more closely to usthan the less rigorous and sturdy conditions of thesouthern nations. Then, too, the moral tone of theNorse myths is higher, purer, and more steadfast thanthat of the Greek tales, and is more congenial to ourTeutonic point of view.
Much depends, of course, upon the teacher’s carefulstudy of the myths and insight into their significance.They should be presented in such manner as to awakenthe intere