and horses, and reddening the altars with the blood; this was done on account of a great dearth in that part of Norway, 'and it seemed clear to all men that the gods were angry because they had turned to Christianity.' So late as the twelfth century the people in some parts of Sweden were still inclined to throw off such Christianity as they had, and revert to the sacrificial rites of the old religion. On the other hand, it is clear that even in the ninth and tenth centuries the worship of the Æsir was gradually losing its hold. Some of the early settlers in Iceland were either wholly or partly Christian; among the latter were, for example, Helgi the Lean, who believed in both Thor and Christ, and the kinsmen of the Hebridean Örlyg, who 'believed in Columcille, though they were not baptized.' A belief 'in their own might and strength' was all the faith that some of the Scandinavians of this period would own to. Many who came into intercourse with southern peoples accepted the _prima signatio_, or first sign of adoption into the Christian Church. From at least the beginning of the ninth century zealous missionary efforts were made by the Church to supplant Thor and his hammer by Christ and the cross; while, on the other hand, the Scandinavian religion, however strong its hold upon its adherents, never succeeded in spreading beyond its original limits. The combination of all these facts explains the comparatively rapid manner in which the old faith finally succumbed before the new, leaving behind it only the imperfect traces which have been summed up in these pages, and a mythology which has a profound interest of its own and is inextricably associated with the history of Old Norwegian and Icelandic poetry. SELECTED WORKS The chief works in English in which information on ancient Scandinavian mythology and religion may be found are the following:-- G. VIGFUSSON and F. Y. POWELL.--_Corpus Poeticum Boreale; the Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue._ 2 vols. Oxford, 1883. B. THORPE.--_The Edda of Sæmund the Learned._ London, 1866. G. W. DASENT.--_The Prose or Younger Edda._ Stockholm, 1842. I. A. BLACKWELL.--_The Prose Edda_ (in Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_). R. B. ANDERSON.--_The Younger Edda; also called Snorre's Edda or the Prose Edda._ Chicago, 1880. R. B. ANDERSON.--_Norse Mythology; or the Religion of our Forefathers._ Chicago, 1875. C. F. KEARY.--_Mythology of the Eddas._ London, 1882. (Miss) W. FARADAY.--_The Divine Mythology of the North._ London, 1902. (No. 12 of Nutt's _Popular Studies in Mythology_, etc.) GRIMM'S _Teutonic Mythology_, translated by Stallybrass. 3 vols. London, 1880-83. RYDBERG'S _Teutonic Mythology_, translated by R. B. Anderson. London, 1889. S. LAING.--_The Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway._ London, 1844.