Читать книгу The Mythology of the Northland - Viktor Rydberg - Страница 31

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The migration sagas which I have now examined are the only ones preserved to our time on Teutonic ground. They have come down to us from the traditions of various tribes. They embrace the East Goths, West Goths, Longobardians, Gepidæ, Burgundians, Herulians, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, and Alamannians. And if we add to these the evidence of Hrabanus Maurus, then all the German tribes are embraced in the traditions. All the evidences are unanimous in pointing to the North as the Teutonic cradle. To these testimonies we must, finally, add the oldest of all—the testimony of the sources of Tacitus from the time of the birth of Christ and the first century of our era.

The statements made by Tacitus in his masterly work concerning the various tribes of Germany and their religion, traditions, laws, customs, and character, are gathered from men who, in Germany itself, had seen and heard what they reported. Of this every page of the work bears evidence, and it also proves its author to have been a man of keen observation, veracity, and wide knowledge. The knowledge of his reporters extends to the myths and heroic songs of the Teutons. The latter is the characteristic means with which a gifted people, still leading their primitive life, makes compensation for their lack of written history in regard to the events and exploits of the past. We find that the man he interviewed had informed himself in regard to the contents of the songs which described the first beginning and the most ancient adventures of the race, and he had done this with sufficient accuracy to discover a certain disagreement in the genealogies found in these songs of the patriarchs and tribe heroes of the Teutons—a disagreement which we shall consider later on. But the man who had done this had heard nothing which could bring him, and after him Tacitus, to believe that the Teutons had immigrated from some remote part of the world to that country which they occupied immediately before the birth of Christ—to that Germany which Tacitus describes, and in which he embraces that large island in the North Sea where the seafaring and warlike Sviones dwelt. Quite the contrary. In his sources of information Tacitus found nothing to hinder him from assuming as probable the view he expresses—that the Teutons were aborigines, autochthones, fostered on the soil which was their fatherland. He expresses his surprise at the typical similarity prevailing among all the tribes of this populous people, and at the dissimilarity existing between them on the one hand, and the non-Teutonic peoples on the other; and he draws the conclusion that they are entirely unmixed with other races, which, again, presupposes that the Teutons from the most ancient times have possessed their country for themselves, and that no foreign element has been able to get a foothold there. He remarks that there could scarcely have been any immigrations from that part of Asia which was known to him, or from Africa or Italy, since the nature of Germany was not suited to invite people from richer and more beautiful regions. But while Tacitus thus doubts that non-Teutonic races ever settled in Germany, still he has heard that people who desired to exchange their old homes for new ones have come there to live. But these settlements did not, in his opinion, result in a mixing of the race. Those early immigrants did not come by land, but in fleets over the sea; and as this sea was the boundless ocean which lies beyond the Teutonic continent and was seldom visited by people living in the countries embraced in the Roman empire, those immigrants must themselves have been Teutons. The words of Tacitus are (Germ., 2): Germanos indigenas crediderim minimeque aliarum gentium adventibus et hospitiis mixtos, quia nec terra olim sed classibus advehebantur qui mutare sedes quærebant, et immensus ultra atque ut sic dixerim adversus Oceanus raris ab orbe nostro navibus aditur. "I should think that the Teutons themselves are aborigines (and not at all mixed through immigrations or connection with non-Teutonic tribes). For those desiring to change homes did not in early times come by land, but in ships across the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean—a sea seldom visited by ships from the Roman world." This passage is to be compared with, and is interpreted by, what Tacitus tells when he, for the second time, speaks of this same ocean in chapter 44, where he relates that in the very midst of this ocean lies a land inhabited by Teutonic tribes, rich not only in men and arms, but also in fleets (præter viros armaque classibus valent), and having a stronger and better organization than the other Teutons. These people formed several communities (civitates). He calls them the Sviones, and describes their ships. The conclusion to be drawn from his words is, in short, that those immigrants were Northmen belonging to the same race as the continental Teutons. Thus traditions concerning immigrations from the North to Germany have been current among the continental Teutons already in the first century after Christ.