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
Chapter 4 - The Gods of Peace and Plenty
Crawl to your Mother Earth. She will save you from the void.
1.
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
… 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
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
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
Earlier in the history of northern Europe, we hear of a goddess who was carried round in a wagon to bring