Aslak

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  ASLAK— “divine sport”

  Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart and eyes were to have furnished Finn’s child with amusement, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth century, and his still more celebrated twin brother, Bishop Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Denmark, namely,…

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  Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart and eyes were to have furnished Finn’s child with amusement, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth century, and his still more celebrated twin brother, Bishop Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Denmark, namely, Aslak, the divine sport or reward, a name which in Denmark and Sweden is always called Axel, in which shape it belonged to Oxenstjerna, the beloved minister of Gustavus Adolphus, and has ever since been a favourite national name. Aslak is in the North pronounced Atlak, and sometimes taken for the original Atli in the Volsunga Saga; but this is far more probably the Tartar Attalik. We had a Bernician Aslak of the like meaning. Never were there a more noted pair of twins than these brothers, of the _bear_ and the _sport_. Well might their birth be first announced to their absent father, on his return to the isle of Soro, by twin church steeples, built by the mother to greet his eyes over the sea.…

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter II (Names From Teuton Mythology), Section II (The Aasir) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)