J. F. Campbell Collection > Our Scandinavian forefathers

you may better know yourselves. Their character you to a large
extent inherit ; and many and powerful as have been the influences
which the slow-creeping centuries have exerted, you are in no inap-
preciable degree moulded by what your forefathers were a thousand
years gone by, in Danish plains, and by wild Norwegian firths.
Often have I regretted that so little is commonly known among us
of our own corner of Scotland — that so little interest is taken in
traditions and remnants of ancient custom, which, if reported to us
as found in some distant land, wotdd move us greatly. If some
here be stirred up to inquire into and to meditate more than before
on these things, I shall feel that my time has not been spent in
vain. For surely none of us is wholly unaware of the benefit that
comes from living under the power of old historic associations — of
being reminded by the objects that daily meet the eye, of the joys
and sorrows, the efi'orts and achievments, of past generations. Here
we have indeed nothing to remind us of struggles for liberty, civil
or reUgious ; no heart-ennobling memorials of the aspirings of genius,
or the victories of art. This is no land
" Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathes around ;"
Yet do these long reaches of rolling sea, those walls of sternest cliff,
that form our northern beauty; and, most of all, the old grey
towers that sentinel our shores — yet do these tell to ears that are
open to hear their voice, of a history not void of interest or instruc-
tion. They point back to a stern, rude time, when, amid the over-
throw of nations and the fierce incursions of a fresh and powerful
race, God, far down in the thick darkness, was laying the strong
foundations of that temple of order, and peace, and purity, which,
with many a check and seeming failure, He has been slowly but
surely buUdiug up in Christendom ; and which shall one day, far
distant as the prospect perhaps seems as yet, be all completed ; and
its every tower surmounted by the cross, shall rise above the hills,
the habitation of the Lord, and draw the nations unto it.
Well then, let me begin by telling you, as briefly as I can, who
these Scandinavians were ; and how it has come to pass that we
should have had them for our forefathers.
As far back as European histoiy can be traced, Scandinavia, or
the countries known now as Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, sent
forth large armies, or rather nations, which precipitated themselves
on the fertile regions of the south. The place of these emigrants
was ever supplied by new invaders from the east ; and at some period,
which cannot now be accurately fixed, but certainly prior to the
year 300, a tribe, advancing from the plains of Russia and Poland,
thus took possession of these countries, and there their descendants
have ever since remained. This tribe was headed by a chieftain of
the name of Odin — so at least their tradition has unvaryingly
affirmed ; and this name we shall find it of importance to remember