These difficulties have appeared so formidable to most of the advocates for the mythological system, that they have been induced to admit the hypothesis of _two_ Odins, who appeared in the north at different intervals;—the former a pontiff, whom superstition afterwards deified; the other a king, yet the chief of religion, who, seeing the veneration in which his predecessor was held, boldly declared himself an incarnation of the same being. This hypothesis, which is purely arbitrary, so far from diminishing the difficulty, greatly increases it, and is not, in other respects, worth another moment’s consideration. A second is more plausible, and not so arbitrary. It represents the pontiff-warrior—the _second_ Odin—as assuming the name, and laying claim to the attributes, of another Odin, long received as a god. In this case, the god must have been incarnate in the person of this Scythian warrior; yet we have not even the shadow of a proof that metempsychosis was a doctrine ever received by the Scandinavians, or by any nation of the Goths. The Celts had it[42]; yet this wide distinction between the two races has not prevented them from being confounded. As well confound the Caffre with the Cherokee. The Eddas assure us that, when a mortal paid the debt of nature, or fell in battle, he went at once to Helheim or Valhalla. Still there are two or three instances in which a transmigration into other bodies was effected; and though they are manifestly at variance with the religious creed of the north, and must be regarded merely as extraordinary exceptions, we are not disposed to reject the hypothesis that Odin assumed, or rather, after death, his people conferred upon him, the name of the god whom they had so long worshipped. It receives no little confirmation from the facts stated by Snorro, that in Asia the pontiff-king was known by the name of _Sigoe_. The truth is, that transmigration being an article of the Celtic creed, Odin might so far avail himself of it as to pass for the incarnate god. In either case, however, unless we reject Snorro and Saxo, and the Saxon Chronicle, and Adam of Bremen, and a host of writers in the middle ages, we adopt the conclusion that Odin lived, and reigned, and conquered, in the north.