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Pearsall Surname Project
Number of Pearsalls By Location
Maps by Family
Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
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1.
THE MYTHOLOGY
Note:-The reader
will find the Yngling Saga well worth reading. The
writer of this Family History has only retained enough to show the
generations of the Ancestry of Rognvald, Earl
of Mere. The reader should also read section 3 of chapter 11 of this
Family History.
*55. ODIN. It is
said that the earth's circle which the human race inhabits is torn across
into many bights, so that great seas run into the land from the out-ocean.
Thus it is known that a great sea goes in at Niorvasund,
the Straits of Gibraltar, and up to the land of Jerusalem.
From the same sea a long sea-bight stretches towards the north-east, and
is called the Black Sea, and divides the three parts of the earth; of
which the eastern part is called Asia, and the Western is called by some Europe, by some Enea.
Northward of the Black Sea lies Swithiod the Great or the Cold. (Swithiod
the Great, or the Cold, is the ancient Sarmatia;
and is also called Godheim in the mythological
sagas, or the home of Odin and the other gods. Swithiod
the Less is Sweden
proper, and is called Mannheim,
or the home of the kings the descendants of these gods.) The Great Sweden
is reckoned by some not less than the Saracen's land; (Serkiand means North Africa and Spain) and others compare it to the Great Blueland, (the coun¬try of
the blacks in Africa). The northern part
of Swithiod lies uninhabited on account of
frost and cold, as likewise the southern parts of Blueland
are waste from the burning of the sun. On the north side of the
mountains, which lie out-side of all inhabited lands, runs a river
through Swithiod, which is properly called by
the name of Tanais, but which was formerly
called Tanaguisl, or Vanaquisl,
and which falls into the ocean at the Black Sea. The county of the people
on the Vanaquisl, was called Vanaland, or Vanaheim; and the river separates the three parts of
the world, of which the easternmost part is called Asia, and the west¬ernmost Europe.
The country east
of the Tanaquisl in Asia
was called Asaland, or Asaheim,
and the chief city in that land was called Asgaard.
Asgaard is supposed by those who are searching
for historical fact, hidden in mythological tales, to be the present Assor; others that it is Chasgar
in the Caucasian ridge, called by Strabo Aspurgum-the
Asburg or castle of Aas;
which word Aas still remains in the northern
languages, signifying a ridge of high land. In that city was a king
called Odin, who was the son of Burr and the grandson of Bure [Norroena, vol. 4,
page 603], which at once discloses that he was no god or creator, but a
mortal and also quite a modern one when compared with the age of the
Aryan race part of which he ruled. Hence it appears that even the Teuton sagas must have a beginning, and when they had
reached a point whereof the mind of man runneth
not to the contrary, the story-tellers resorted to the mythology which
made the cow the source of primeval fertility and gave her credit for
bringing forth Ymer the father of giants, and Bure the father of their kings. Ymer,
they said, was father to two different races of giants, one of which was
the nobility to which Bestla belongs. While Bure gives birth to Burr or Bor,
whose name survives in the Scotch word bairn,
meaning child. Burr married Bestla and they had
three children Odin, Vei and Vir. On the other hand the genealogy of the kings of Denmark
begins with Bel whose name means-the god or
father (of the Danes). The appellation has the special significance of
secondary relationship, thereby indicating that he found the Danish
people already established when his sons
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