Under these circumstances, we may congratulate ourselves in possessing such a work as that of Sjöborg.[321] He wrote, fortunately, before the Danish system was invented, but, unfortunately, before drawing and engraving had reached the precision and clearness which now characterize them. In consequence of the last defect, we cannot always feel sure of our ground in basing an argument on his drawings; but, generally speaking, he is so honest, so free from system, that there is very little danger in this respect. The work has also the merit of being as free from the speculations about Druids and Serpents which disfigure the contemporary works of English antiquaries, as it is from the three ages of the Danes; though, on the other hand, he relegates all the dolmens and such like monuments to a prehistoric "Joter," or giant race, who preceded, according to his views, Odin and his true Scandinavians, to whom he ascribes all the truly historic monuments.
In addition to the difficulties arising from the paucity of information regarding the monuments, the Scandinavians have not yet made up their minds with regard to their early chronology. Even the vast collections contained in the ponderous tomes of Langebeck and Suhm[322] are far from sufficing for the purpose; and such authors as Saxo Grammaticus[323] write with an easy fluency too characteristic of our own Jeffrey of Monmouth, and others who bury true history under such a mass of fables as makes it extremely difficult to recover what we are really seeking for. Patient industry, combined with judicious criticism, would, no doubt, clear away most of the obscurities which now disfigure this page of mediæval history; but, meanwhile, the Scandinavian annals are as obscure as the Irish, and more uncertain than the contemporary annals of England.
Of the history of Scandinavia anterior to the Christian era, absolutely nothing is known. It is now no longer admissible to believe in a historic Odin, whom all the mediæval historians represent as living in the first century B.C., and as the founder of those families who play so important a part in the subsequent histories of our own as well as of the whole group of Northern nations. The modern school of Germans has discovered that Odin was a god who lived in the sky in pre-Adamite times, and never condescended to visit our sublunary sphere. It is now rank heresy to assume that during the thousand years which elapsed between his pretended date and that of our earliest MSS. the wild imaginings of barbarous tribes may not have gathered round the indistinct form of a national hero, transferred him back to a mythic age, and endowed him with the attributes and surroundings of a god. As the Germans have decreed this, it is in vain to dispute it, and not worth while to attempt it here, as for our present purposes it is of the least possible consequence.