Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

possible that similar encampments existed in Viking England also. In them we may see the final phase in a long tradition of companies of selected warriors, most of them young bachelors not yet ready to marry and settle down who, along with a few tried veterans, formed the ruler’s bodyguard at the courts of the Scandinavian kings. The survival of warrior communities so late in the heathen period may help to account for the richness and vigour of the traditions about the war god in the literature of the north. It is noticeable that in the pages of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, written at a time when the great warrior encampments must still have been remembered, the old, tough, devoted warriors who followed Odin, men like Starkad and Hadding, occupy an important place.

5. The Worship of the War God

We have seen that the power of the war god was considerable in northern Europe from very early times, from the period when Tiwaz was regarded as the lord of hosts among the heathen Germans, and also the promoter of justice and order among men. When in the first century after Christ the Hermundari and the Chatti are said to have sacrificed to Tiwaz and Wodan, this may be significant. Wodan, lord of the kingdom of death and ancestor of the German kings, may even then have been challenging the supremacy of Tiwaz on the battlefield.

Later in the heathen period Wodan is seen as the bearer of the spear and the god of the wolf and raven, and he was accepted, by certain tribes at least, as the deity of battle. In Sweden he was known as Odin, the leader of the gods, the deity with power to bind and to loose, whose followers were the terrible ‘choosers of the slain’ who could strike down men in the conflict or render them helpless to avert death. In this Odin follows in the footsteps of Wodan, the best interpretation of whose name seems to be ‘one who makes mad’. Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century sums up this power of the god briefly and decisively: ‘Wodan, id est furor.’ We shall see in a later chapter that Odin was also the god of the dead and supreme practitioner in magic, with the ability to inspire his followers and grant them the ecstatic, trance-like state of intoxication. The ecstasy of battle, which inspired the berserks and filled them with such madness that they knew neither fear nor pain, was naturally viewed as a gift of the same god. In his warrior paradise Valhalla, men were said to divide their time between battle and drinking. These were two means by which they could while on earth achieve forgetfulness of self, and it is therefore fitting that they should be the only occupations in Odin’s hall.

We must remember that battle for the Germanic peoples and the Vikings was a very individual affair. The picture of it which emerges from the comments of Greek and Latin historians and again from the poetry and sagas of the people themselves is principally one of single combat between sword-warriors, or of a hand-to-hand struggle between two small bands of men. Under such conditions, faith in Wodan or Odin, who could give supreme confidence and the strength and fury of possession, was an enviable gift; it was a psychological asset likely to bring luck and victory along with it.

Nevertheless men knew that the berserk, freed though he might be for a time from fear and pain, was not inevitably a victor. He might be cut down in battle, for all his strength and furious courage, or wake from his frenzy to find himself crippled for life. The vows made at the ale-drinking to accomplish wild and daring deeds could bring bitter regrets when the men who made them were sober again, as we are reminded more than once in the heroic literature of the north. Thus it is hardly surprising that Odin was remembered as the Arch-Deceiver as well as the god of inspiration.

Throughout the heathen period in northern Europe there was clear need of a god of war. The story of the Germanic peoples and the Vikings is one in which local battles, feuds, invasions, and wars on a national scale are the order of the day. The heroic literature is based on an unsettled society, accustomed to violence and shortness of life. Differences between men were settled for the most part by force of arms, and the natural hero was the warrior chief with his little band of faithful followers, ready to take chances, to trust to their luck with spear and sword, and to risk losing all that they had gained if the fight went against them. Lands, homes, and wives had often to be won by the sword, and always to be defended by it. The leader established his sway over his followers by handing out weapons and armour to be used in his defence, and by the winning of riches in battle. Clearly men reared in such a world were bound to turn to the god whom they served to protect them in the hour of battle, and to grant them the elusive gift of victory, which depended on the spirit of a fighting force – a mysterious, impalpable thing – or sometimes on some slender chance outside men’s control.

In the earlier days of Germanic heathenism the terrible wholesale slaughter of captured forces and criminals implies a belief in a god of battles who demanded that blood should flow in his honour. Blood had to be constantly provided for the mighty deity, or else he would be compelled by his nature to seize on the lives of his worshippers. Pictures of priestesses putting men to a brutal death in his name are reflected in later pictures of the terrible Valkyries of the north, revelling in blood and stirring up battle. Not only must the blood be set flowing, but the panoply of war – swords and mailcoats, shields and spears – must be offered to the god of war, cast into the swamps or the lakes, or burned on the pyre in his honour.

As time went on, the emphasis seems to change from that of a supreme ruler holding in his hand victory or defeat, who taught men the value of law and order among themselves, to that of a more capricious power who bestowed madness on his followers, and who meted out victory or defeat with the arrogance of an earthly tyrant. It is possible that we are led to exaggerate this distinction from the fragmentary evidence left to us, and that Tiwaz also had a strong element of the capricious in his nature. Certainly the madness associated with Wodan and Odin, of whom we know much more, was such as was held to bring dazzling gifts along with it, and at the same time to exact fearful penalties. It would not seem as though Odin was a god whom men could love or respect, although they feared him, and gloried at times in his heady power. But the picture of Odin as the god of battle is an incomplete one. It needs to be finished in the chapter on the gods of the dead.

Chapter 3 - The Thunder God

… And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world!

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,

That make ingrateful man.

SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, III, ii

1. Thor in the Myths

In the myths as presented to us by Snorri, Thor is undoubtedly one of the gods who stands out most clearly. The champion of the Aesir and the defender of Asgard appears as a massive, red-bearded figure, armed with his hammer, his iron gloves, and his girdle of strength. The cult of Thor had a long life in western Europe. In the eleventh century he was still worshipped with enthusiasm by the Vikings of Dublin, and at the close of the heathen period it was he who was thought of as the principal adversary of Christ. In Norway he is described as taking part in a tug-of-war with Christ’s champion, King Olaf Tryggvason, over a fire, while in Iceland an enthusiastic woman worshipper of the old gods told a Christian missionary that Thor had delivered a challenge to Christ to meet him in single combat.

Of all the gods, it is Thor who seems the characteristic hero of the stormy world of the Vikings. Bearded, outspoken, indomitable, filled with vigour and gusto, he puts his reliance on his strong right arm and simple weapons. He strides through the northern realm of the gods, a fitting symbol for the man of action. Like the Indian god Indra, who resembles him in some respects, Thor was a tremendous trencher-man, impressing even the giants by his capacity for eating and drinking. When he visited the hall of Thrym disguised as the fair Freyja, he devoured