Hymiskvi?a also leaves the result open to doubt, but it may be noted that one of the titles there given to Thor is orms einbani, ‘sole slayer of the serpent’.

The conquest of a World Monster by the God of the Sky is a recognized pattern in world mythologies. The Indian thunder god Indra, in many ways Thor’s counterpart, slew a great dragon in single combat. The conception behind the varying forms of this myth appears to be a fundamental one: that the Sky and Thunder God, the being of enormous strength who defends mankind, does battle with the terrible monster threatening man’s destruction. Concerning this monster, there will be more to say in a later chapter.

The giants slain by Thor have no special characteristics except that they are huge, powerful, and greedy, being specially jealous of the possessions of the gods. They are always waiting for a chance to attack Asgard and to carry its treasures away. It is implied more than once that Thor was engaged in continual conflict with these beings, and that the stories which survive are only a few out of a large number. In a tenth-century poem by Thorbjorn Disarskald a long list of unknown names of giants overcome by Thor is given, and the refrain of the poem is ‘Thor has guarded Asgard with courage’. Nor did he only fight these battles on behalf of the gods; it is clear that he was also regarded as the Defence of Men (alda bergr). He was struggling for mankind, and for the precarious civilization which men had wrested from a hard and chaotic world. If we see his doings in the myths in this light, then they harmonize with the picture given in the prose literature of a god who supported law, helped men to build and to cultivate, to marry and bring up children, and protected them on their journeyings. He guarded not only the halls of Asgard, but the humbler homesteads of Norway and Iceland, marked out and hallowed by his sacred fire and his hammer-sign; he safeguarded their oaths with one another, and invested them with the sanctity of his temple and holy place. As the sky god, he drove his chariot over the circuit of the heavens, and could at will grant the traveller desirable weather and favourable winds. In Asgard he kept the goddesses of peace and plenty safe, so that they could grant their benefits to mankind; on earth, in the stony and storm-beaten lands of the north, he battled with the monsters of cold and violence that unceasingly threatened men’s security. It is hardly surprising that he attracted the allegiance of men who struggled against the odds which nature and hostile powers raised against them, nor that, even after he had been long supplanted by Christ, he still played a major part in the old myths of the gods which were recounted in the north.

Chapter 4 - The Gods of Peace and Plenty

Crawl to your Mother Earth. She will save you from the void.

Rigveda, XVIII, 10.

1. The Deity in the Wagon

Those gods who determined the course of war and sent thunder from heaven were essentially powers of destruction, although they might also give protection from chaos and disorder. Other powers were said to dwell in Asgard with Odin and Thor whose province was of a different kind, since their sphere of influence was over the peace and fertility of the inhabited earth. These were called the Vanir, and Snorri tells us that the chief figures among them were the twin deities Freyr and Freyja, the children of Njord. We are not told much about them in the myths which he includes in the Prose Edda, but it is clear that he regarded them as powerful beings whose worship continued until late in the heathen period. Freyr he calls Veraldar go?, god of the world. He tells us in Ynglinga Saga that he was the god much loved by the Swedes, because

… in his time the people of the land became richer on account of peace and good seasons than ever before.

The one story which Snorri tells of Freyr is taken from the poem Skirnismal, and is concerned with his love for the fair maiden Gerd who dwelled in the underworld with the giants, and how he sent down Skirnir to woo her. She finally consented to meet him and become his bride (see p. 30). Magnus Olsen, in an illuminating study of the poem,1 interpreted this myth as one representing the marriage of the god of the sky with the goddess of the fruitful earth, resulting in rich harvest.

Other evidence exists which implies that the idea of a divine marriage formed an essential part of Freyr’s cult, just as it formed a part of the worship of the fertility gods of the Near East. A memory of it survives in an ironic little comedy preserved in Flateyjarbok, part of the saga of King Olaf Tryggvason. The hero of this tale is Gunnar Helming, a young Norwegian who quarrelled with King Olaf and fled to Sweden. There he found that the god Freyr was held in much honour, and that at his temple there was an attractive young woman who served the god as his priestess, and was called his wife. Gunnar got on well with the priestess, and when the time came for Freyr to make his autumn journey round the land to bless the season, he was invited to join the party, although the priestess felt that Freyr might not approve of this. Gunnar set out with Freyr’s wagon, while an attendant led the beast that pulled it, but they were overtaken by a blizzard on a mountain road, and everyone deserted the god and his wife except Gunnar. For a while he led the wagon, and at last sat down to rest. The priestess then rather ungratefully threatened that Freyr would attack him if he did not go on, and at this Freyr is said to have come down from his wagon and fought with Gunnar. The struggle was a fierce one, but just in time Gunnar remembered the god of King Olaf, and called on him for help. Thereupon he was able to get the better of the ‘fiend’, who made off, leaving Gunnar to destroy his image. Then Gunnar had the idea of putting on the adornments of the god and impersonating him, and this plan succeeded brilliantly. They arrived at the feast to which they had been invited in spite of the bad weather, and now the god was able to eat and drink with men, which pleased them mightily. Moreover he demanded valuables and clothes from them instead of human sacrifice, which pleased them even more. The season proved a good one, and when in a few months time it was found that Freyr’s wife was with child, his reputation grew apace. But this happy state of affairs was ended when news of the doings in Sweden reached the ears of King Olaf. He at once sent a message to Gunnar to return, and the young man stole away with his wife and the large fortune which he had obtained from the credulous Swedes, and went back to Norway.

There is no need to take this story too seriously as a reliable account of the acts of one of Olaf’s men, based on historical fact. It is in all probability a piece of brilliant fiction, and may have been partially inspired by classical tales of men who impersonated gods for their own ends. But even if this is so, it provides interesting evidence for the kind of practices associated with Freyr in Sweden. The story would lose its comic point were it not assumed that the image of Freyr was taken round to feasts throughout the winter months, that the Swedes believed that the god in some way was present in his image, and that his priestess, known as his wife, interpreted his messages to men. The naive delight of the Swedes when they discovered that their god would now be able to eat at feasts and beget children is a mocking commentary on the kind of belief which they had in the powers of Freyr. Incidentally the story throws some light on why the fertility cult never flourished in the north to the extent that it did in the Near East and Mediterranean regions. The picture of Freyr’s wagon, harbinger of warmth and fertility, stuck in a snowdrift in the mountains of Sweden is a somewhat pathetic one.

This is not the only account of a god carried round in a wagon. Another story in Flateyjarbok (1, 467) shows the Swedish king himself consulting such a god, who is here called Lytir. Little is known of such a deity, but his name seems to have inspired a number of Swedish place-names, and it is possible that it was one of the titles of Freyr. King Eric of Sweden is said to have led the god’s wagon to a certain place, and waited until it became heavy, the sign that the god was present within. Then the wagon was drawn to the king’s hall, and Eric greeted the god, drank a horn in his honour, and put various questions to him. Here then the privileged person consulting the god was the king himself, and some kind of divination ceremony seems to have taken place.

Earlier in the history of northern Europe, we hear of a goddess who was carried round in a wagon to bring

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