34
 

[By Utgard-Loki] The discomfited god [Thor] and his companions were then given splendid hospitality, and stayed there that night. Next morning Utgard-Loki himself escorted them to the gate, and once they were safely outside, he revealed the truth to them. Thor and his comrades had been deceived by cunning magic, altering the appearance of things. The three blows struck at Skrymir?who in fact was Utgard-Loki himself?had fallen on to the earth, and Thor?s hammer had left three mighty pits in the hill which the giant had interposed between himself and the angry god. The bag which could not be undone had been fastened by iron bands. As for the contests in the hall, they had not been what they seemed. Loki?s opponent was Logi (Fire), which consumes all things more swiftly than any man or god. Thialfi had raced against Hugi (Thought), swifter than any man in its flight. The horn offered to Thor had its tip in the ocean, and the great draughts he had drunk had lowered the sea-level down to ebb tide. The cat was in truth the ancient monster, the World Serpent, so that all were terrified when Thor?s strength proved great enough to raise it a little from the depths of the sea. His opponent in the wrestling was no other than Elli (Old Age), who can overcome the strongest.
 

37 [description of Ragnarok = apocalypse]
 

43
 

Because of the interference of the fly, however, which was Loki in disguise, it was a little short in the handle. Nevertheless the gods held that the hammer was the best of all their treasures, and a sure weapon against their enemies, and they declared that Loki had lost his wager. He ran away, only to be caught by Thor and handed over to the dwarfs; they wanted to cut off his head, but Loki argued that they had no right to touch his neck. So in the end they contented themselves with sewing up his lips.
 

68
 

The basis of such tales may lie in the fierce frenzy, like that of a wild beast, which overcame the berserks in battle. Such fits of rage could be inconvenient in private life, and this is illustrated by a story from the life of the famous poet, Egill Skallagrimson. His father appears to have been a berserk in his youth, and when he had married and settled down in Iceland, he became over-excited one evening in a game of ball with his child. In a mad frenzy he killed the little boy?s nurse, and came very near to destroying his son Egill as well. In another saga a man who suffered from such attacks of berserk rage was said to be healed from them when he became a Christian.
 

75
 

A description of an image of Thor at Thrandheim refers to a chariot drawn by goats, in which Thor sat: ?Thor sat in the middle. He was the most highly honoured. He was huge, and all adorned with gold and silver. Thor was arranged to sit in a chariot; he was very splendid. There were goats, two of them, harnessed in front of him, very well wrought. Both car and goats ran on wheels. The rope round the horns of the goats was of twisted silver, and the whole was worked with extremely fine craftsmanship.? Flateyjarbok, I, 268
 

Skeggi, the man who took Olaf Tryggvson to the temple to see Thor, persuaded him to pull the cord round the horns of the goats, and when he did, 'the goats moved easily along.' Thereupon Skeggi declared that the king had done service to the god, and Olaf not surprisingly became angry, and called on his men to destroy the idols, while he himself knocked Thor from his chariot. ?the pulling along of a well-greased chariot formed part of a ritual in Thor?s honour.
 

77
 

Earlier than this, in 876, the heathen Danish leaders in England made a truce with King Alfred, and they are said in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have sworn oaths to him on their sacred ring.
 

81
 

[Saxo] He took care to bring home certain hammers of unusual weight, which they call Jupiter?s, used by the island men in their antique faith. For the men of old, desiring to comprehend the causes of thunder and lightning by means of the similitude of things, took hammers great and massy of bronze, with which they believed the crashing of the sky might be made, thinking that great and violent noise might very well be imitated by the smith?s toil, as it were. But Magnus, in his zeal for Christian teaching and dislike to Paganism, determined to spoil the temple of its equipment, and Jupiter of his tokens in the place of his sanctity. And even now the Swedes consider him guilty of sacrilege and a robber of spoil belonging to the god. XIII, 421 Elton?s
 

97
 

Freyr, God of Plenty
 

The written sources represent Freyr as the sovereign deity of increase and prosperity. According to Adam of Bremen, his image in the temple at Uppsala was a phallic one, and he was the god who dispensed peace and plenty to mortals and was invoked at marriages. Saxo mentions a great sacrifice called Froblod which took place there at regular intervals, which included human victims. He also refers to the worship of Freyr accompanied by ?effeminate gestures? and ?clapping of mimes upon the stage?, together with the ?unmanly clatter of bells?. This implies some kind of performance, possibly ritual drama, which to Saxo and the Danish heroes whom he describes appeared unmanly and debased. It may be noted that men dressed as women and the use of clapping and bells have survived into our own time in the annual mumming plays and the dances which go with them. Possibly some kind of symbolic drama to ensure the divine blessing on the fruitfulness of the season was once performed at Uppsala in Freyr?s honour. If some kind of ritual marriage formed part of it, it might account for the horror which Saxo felt for such rites.
 

Saxo and others also state that human sacrifice was part of the cult of the Vanir. In the poem Ynglingatal there are puzzling references to a number of early kings of the Swedes meeting with strange and violent deaths. The Swedes evidently believed that their kings had the power to bring peace and plenty to the land, the power attributed to Freyr. It has been suggested that they were regarded in heathen times as the husbands of the fertility goddess?perhaps Freyja, Nerthus, or called by some other name?and that they suffered a real or a symbolic death in that capacity when their time of supremacy came to an end. If that were indeed the case, then the figure of Freyr as a male god of plenty could have evolved gradually out of that of the priest- king.
 

99
 

When we are told that Freyja?s worshipper, Ottar the Simple, disguised himself as her boar, this might be explained by the donning of a boar-mask by the priest of the Vanir, who thus claimed inspiration and protection from the deity. Although the Vanir were not gods of battle, the protection which they offered would no doubt extend into time of war, and it is noticeable that both Tacitus and Beowulf stress the protective power of the emblem. This has been remembered in Cynewulf?s poem Elene, as Rosemary Cramp pointed out, when Constantine is said to sleep eofor cumble beþæht, ?over-shadowed? or ?covered by the boar sign? at the time when he received the vision of the symbol of Christ.
 

105
 

Another version of this legend seems to have survived in England as late as the twelfth century, and appears in William of Malmesbury?s Gesta Regum. He gives the child?s name as Sceaf, and says that he came over the sea with a sheaf of corn beside him. On the whole this late tradition is thought to be untrustworthy, but Sceaf?s name is found earlier. The tenth-century Chronicle of Aethelweard says that Sceaf came with a boat full of weapons to the island of Scani, and was made king by the inhabitants. Earlier still his name occurs in a ninth-century genealogy of King Egbert of Wessex, included in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with the added comment that he was born in the Ark, presumably an optimistic attempt to reconcile native tradition with Biblical lore. Thus, althought the allusions vary and are widely scattered, the idea of a young child coming in a ship over the sea and becoming a king in Denmark seems to have long survived in Anglo-Saxon England.

When William of Malmesbury states that Sceaf came in a boat with a sheaf of corn, this suggests folk tradition of some kind. In the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Abingdon, it is recorded that when the monks wished to prove their right to certain meadows beside the Thames, they set a sheaf of corn with a lighted candle beside it on a round shield and floated it down the river, the course taken by the shield proving their claim. Since H.M. Chadwick first drew attention to this passage there has been much argument, first as to whether such a custom ever existed as described, and secondly whether it could have any significant connexion with the stories of Scyld and Sceaf. It is not possible here to go into all the complications involved, but it seems worth noticing the fact that a series of traditions has gone on into medieval times bringing together a divine child, a sheaf of corn, and a vessel moving by supernatural power.
 

117
 

Freyja?s name is specifically linked by Snorri with a special kind of witchcraft known as seðir, for he states that she was a priestess of the Vanir who first taught this knowledge to the Aesir. We know a good deal about seðirfrom prose sources, and it forms an interesting clue to the nature of her cult. The essentials for performing it were the erection of a platform or lofty seat on which the leading practitioner sat, the singing of spells, and the falling into a state of ecstasy by this leader, who is generally a woman, and is called a volva. Sometimes the volva was supported by a large company, who acted as a choir and provided the music. At the close of the ceremony, the worker of seðir was able to answer questions put to her by those present, and it is implied that she received her information while she was in a state of trance. The accounts show that questions put to her were concerned for the most part with the coming season and the hope of plenty, and with the destinies of young men and women in the audience. Sometimes the term seðir is used to refer to harmful magic, directed against a victim, but in the majority of accounts it appears to be a divination rite. The term volva is found in the poetry and sagas to denote someone with special mantic gifts, a seeress or soothsayer.
 

119
 

Some poems, like Voluspa (literally, ?Soothsaying of he Volva?) are presented as the utterances of a seeress, revealing what is hidden from men.
 

It seems established that some form of shamanistic practice was so widespread in the heathen north as to have left a considerable impact on the literature.
 

120
 

?At that time wise women used to go about the land. They were called ?spae-wives? and they foretold people?s futures. For this reason folk used to invite them to their houses and give them hospitality, and bestow gifts on them at parting.? Flateyjarbok, I 346
 

122
 

Memories of this evil cult lived on for many years. An English chronicle of the twelfth century states that the wife of King Edgar was accused of witchcraft, and that she was accustomed to take on the form of a horse by her magic arts, and was seen by a bishop ?running and leaping hither and thither with horses and showing herself shamelessly to them?. This may be unreliable evidence for the character of a historic queen, but it is significant that an accusation of witchcraft should be expressed in this particular form. It recalls the accusation against Freyja herself, that she strayed out at night like a she-goat among the bucks. Hints such as this build up a vague but unpleasant picture of the malignant powers and repulsive practices of some women connected with the cult of the Vanir, and they may help to explain the strong prejudice against eating horse-flesh which has survived in this country.
 

?in Saxo she is said to be one of the ?wives of the kinsfolk? of Freyr, and to have been put into a brothel along with her companions.
 

N2 The story of Volsi in Flateyjarbok ii, 331 where a housewife?s ?god? is the generative organ of a horse, fits in with this general picture.
 

123
 

It is even possible to recognize a triad of goddesses, such as Asherah, Astarte, and Anat of Syria, or Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis of Greece. Here the three main aspects of womanhood appear side by side as wife and mother, lover and mistress, chaste and beautiful virgin. Frigg and Freyja in northern mythology could figure as the first two of such a trio, while the dim figure of Skadi the huntress might once have occupied the vacant place.
 

124
 

The Power of the Vanir
 

Who were the rest of the company of the fighting Vanir? The most likely answer seems to be the vast assembly of gods of fertility from many different localities, of which a few names like Ing, Scyld, and Frodi have come down to us, while many more are utterly forgotten. Freyr, the fertility god of the Swedes in the eleventh century, and chief deity after Thor in Uppsala when Adam of Bremen was writing, has become the prototype of the male god of fertility in the literature, but behind him there must have been a vast host representing the givers of peace and plenty to many tribes and families throughout the northern world. Freyr?s name is really a title, meaning ?lord?, while Freyja meant ?lady?. Perhaps in the lord and lady of the May Day festivities we are seeing their final manifestation, a last glimpse of the fertility powers, humbled from their once high estate.
 

129
 

The Gods of the Sea
 

A folk-belief quoted in one of the Icelandic sagas is that when people were drowned they were thought to have gone to Ran, and if they appeared at their own funeral feasts, it was a sign that she had given them a good welcome.
 

140-44
 

[Wodan as Mercury and Wodan as shaman]
 

145
 

[Snorri] ?Odin could change himself. His body then lay as if sleeping or dead, but he became a bird or a wild beast, a fish or a dragon, and journeyed in the twinkling of an eye to far-off lands, on his own errands or those of other men.
 

146
 

[Baldrs Draumar] ?Who is this man, unknown to me,

who drives me on down this weary path?

Snowed on by snow, beaten by rain,

drenched with the dew, long I lay dead.?
 

As a refrain throughout the poem we have her reiterated words:
 

?I have spoken unwillingly;

now must I be silent.?
 

Fresh insistence by Odin, ?Be not silent, volva?, prefaces each new question which he puts to the seeress. The poems Voluspa and the Shorter Voluspa are set in the same pattern, and presented as replies made unwillingly to a persistent questioner. They could indeed be viewed as a speeches made by a shaman on awakening form a trance, after a ritual ?death?, or journey by the soul to the underworld to gain knowledge of secret things.
 

147
 

The picture of the god as the bringer of ecstasy is in keeping with the most acceptable interpretation of the Germanic name Wodan, that which relates it to wut, meaning high mental excitement, fury, intoxication, or possession. The Old Norse adjective oðr, from which Oðinn, the later form of his name in Scandinavia, must be derived, bears a similar meaning: ?raging, furious, intoxicated?, and can be used to signify poetic genius and inspiration. Such meanings are most appropriate for the name of a god who not only inspired the battle fury of the berserks, but also obtained the mead of inspiration for the Aesir, and is associated with the ecstatic trance of the seer.
 

157
 

Perhaps we should regard stories of the living being shut inside the mounds of the dead as something connected with memories of the Vanir rather than as part of the cult of Odin. The most vivid of such accounts is found in the poem Helgakviða, where the princess Sigrun joyfully enters the mound of her dead husband, and clasps him again in death. Notes which accompany the poem state that the lovers Helgi and Sigrun were believed to have been reborn, and to have lived more than once in the world. Here we have the idea of a wife dying with her husband which appears to differ form the traditions of suttee which we have associated with the cult of Odin. In these the wife died usually by strangling before her body was burned and she was not said to be reborn into this world, but to join her husband or lover in the realm of the gods. Such a distinction may explain the strange words spoken of Brynhild in the Poetic Edda, when she was determined to be burned along with the dead Sigurd?
 

167
 

Enigmatic Gods: Mimir and Hoenir
 

The story of how the Aesir sent Mimir as a hostage to the Vanir, and how he was killed by them because they were dissatisfied with his silent companion Hoenir does not make very good sense as it stands. The tradition of a war between two companies of the gods however is familiar in many mythologies. One explanation is that it was inspired by memories of rivalry between an old and a new cult, or between two contemporary cults in opposition to one another. Dumezil explained it on the basis of a deep rooted hostility between the gods of fertility on the one hand and the gods of magic on the other. He gives the Celtic myth of a war between the Tuatha De Donann and the Fomoiri as another example of the same pattern.

Snorri has given us two independent accounts of the war of the gods, but in each case the end is the same, and is the gaining of the source of inspiration by Odin and the Aesir. This would imply the triumph of the gods of magic over their opponents, if Dumezil is correct.
 

215
 

We realize anew the value which they set on individualism. Greek and Latin writers, commenting on the methods of warfare among the Germanic peoples, noted that while they were intensely loyal to leaders and kinsmen, they could not be relied on to cooperate in large numbers, or to obey a general?s commands without question: ?If it comes about that their friends fall, they expose themselves to danger to avenge them. They charge swiftly with much spirit, both foot-soldiers and horsemen, as if they were of a single mind, and quite without the slightest fear. They do not obey their leaders well. Headstrong, despising strategy, precaution, or foresight, they show contempt for every tactical command.? Such was the shrewd description of the sixth-century Germans recorded in Strategicon.
 

216
 

?O wise man, do not grieve. Better for every man to avenge his friend rather than lament for him overmuch. Each of us must endure the ending of life in this world. Let those who can therefore achieve glory before the coming of death. That is the finest lot for the warrior when life is over.? Beowulf, 1384-9
 

Cattle die, kinsfolk die,

oneself dies the same.

I know one thing only which never dies ?

the renown of noble dead. Norse Havamal
 

231
 

Grimnismal: Poem in the Edda, the utterance of Grimnir, who is Odin in disguise
 

Gunnar Helming (Gunnarr Helmingr): Hero of short humorous story inserted into Flateyjarbok, a Norwegian who impersonated the god Freyr in Sweden.