Chapter 1

Against the error which has so frequently done damage to the study of the Norse and Greek mythologies, I mean the mania of foisting metaphysical or astronomical solutions on but half-discovered historical data, I am sufficiently guarded by the incompleteness and loose connexion of all that has been preserved. My object is, faithfully and simply to collect what the distortions early introduced by the nations themselves, and afterwards the scorn and aversion of christians have left remaining of heathenism; and to enlist fellow-labourers in the slow task of securing a more solid store of facts, without which a general view of the substance and worth of our mythology is not to be attained (see Suppl.).