fertility to men. Tacitus knew of such a goddess in Denmark, called Nerthus, and in Germania, 40, he gives his famous account of her worship by the Danes. She represented Terra Mater, ‘Mother Earth’, he tells us, and had the power to intervene in the affairs of men. She visited her people in a sacred wagon, which none but the priest might touch, and no one save him was permitted to look inside. When the wagon was not in use, it was kept in a grove on an island. At a certain time the priest knew that she was present in her sanctuary (we are not told how, but possibly, as with Lytir, the wagon became heavy), and then he set out with the wagon, drawn by oxen. Everywhere Nerthus was warmly welcomed by the people:
They do not undertake hostilities nor take up arms; every weapon is put away; peace and quiet then only are known and welcomed.
When the goddess returned to her sanctuary, the wagon, the cloth that covered it, and some symbol (numen) which it contained were all cleansed in a sacred lake by slaves who were drowned when their task was over.
There is a long gap between the first century A.D. when Tacitus was writing and the story of Gunnar Helming, and yet there are a number of points of resemblance in the account of the progress of the deity through the district. This gap is bridged to some extent by archaeological evidence. Two elaborate and delicately made wagons were found in a peat-bog at Dejbjerg, in west Denmark, and are thought to date back to about A.D. 200. With them was a small stool of alder wood, which might have served as a seat for the occupant. Clay vessels and a loom-piece found with these objects suggested association with women. Little wagons of this sort could have been used in such a ceremonial progress as Tacitus described. In the ninth century A.D. another beautiful little wagon, delicately carved and ornamented, was buried in a ship at Oseberg, together with other fine wooden objects which seem to have had a ceremonial purpose, and which accompanied the body of a lady of high rank. Tapestries found with the ship show a wagon with a man and woman standing beside it, possibly a representation of such a progress as the stories describe. It is possible also that little figures of the ‘driving goddess’, female figures wearing neck- rings and kneeling as if to drive a chariot, which have been found in Denmark and are thought to be of Bronze Age date, represent a similar conception of the goddess of fertility, driving out to bless the land with her presence.
In south-eastern Europe one goddess borne round the countryside was Cybele, the Syrian goddess of fruitfulness. An unforgettable account of her progress – again by a cynical and unsympathetic writer – is found in Apuleius’s Golden Ass. He describes the image as being accompanied by giggling, shrill- voiced priests in women’s clothes, pretending to fall into a state of ecstasy and indulging in disgusting practices. Cybele’s worship reached Gaul, and tales of St Martin in the fourth century A.D. tell of images covered with white curtains carried round the fields, while Gregory of Tours had heard of similar practices at Autun, in the days of Bishop Simplicius. It has been suggested that Tacitus’s account of Nerthus was based on what he knew of the worship of Cybele, but the independent evidence suggests that the fertility deity was indeed worshipped in the north in the way in which he describes, and that similar customs, associated with Freyr and the Vanir, continued in Sweden until the close of the heathen period.
At the outset we are faced with the question why a fertility goddess, worshipped in Denmark in the first century, had been replaced in the Viking age by a fertility god. 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 also tells us that there was worship of Freyr at Uppsala. He 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’.1 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 the male god of plenty could have evolved gradually out of that of the priest-king. Here however we are dealing with theories and hypotheses, for we have no clear statement from reliable outside observers that such sacrifices of the king did in fact take place, and no archaeological evidence up to now for the existence of such sacrificial rites in Sweden.
We know that Freyr was closely associated with the horse cult, and that sacred horses were kept in his sanctuary at Thrandheim in Norway. When Olaf Tryggvason arrived there to destroy it, it is said that he found a stallion about to be killed ‘for Freyr to eat’. The king had the horse brought to him, and rode it to the temple.1 This meant that he defied Freyr, since it was forbidden to ride the horse which had been given to the god. In the sagas too we hear of horses kept near Freyr’s temples in Iceland. The best-known story is that of Hrafnkell, who had a stallion dedicated to the god, and a stud of twelve mares. Hrafnkell shared all his possessions with Freyr, but the horse, called Freyfaxi, ‘mane of Freyr’, was specially sacred, and no one except Hrafnkell might ride him. When a boy did so on one occasion, meaning no harm, Hrafnkell felt forced by his vow to slay the offender. The saga shows the dire results of this action, and how it brought about Hrafnkell’s ruin, for in the end his enemies slew Freyfaxi by pushing him over a cliff, and in his bitterness Hrafnkell abandoned the god whom he had worshipped with such devotion. Much of this story is fiction, but must nevertheless be based on traditions about the cult of Freyr which had come down to the story-teller, and as such it merits our attention. Another horse called Freyfaxi is mentioned in Vatnsd?la Saga, and the sons of Ingimund, represented as worshippers of Freyr, are there said to be in the habit of attending horse-fights. It seems likely that the horse contests described in several of the sagas, which roused great local excitement in certain districts of Iceland, were originally associated with the cult of Freyr.1
Another animal linked with both Freyr and his sister Freyja was the boar. Freyr is said by Snorri to have possessed the boar Gullinbursti, made by the dwarfs, whose coat shone in the dark, and who could out-run any steed. Freyja also had a boar, called Hildisvin. In the poem Hyndluljo? we are told that when she wanted to disguise her protege, Ottar the Simple, she let him take the shape of her boar. The association of the boar with the deities of fertility is likely to be very old indeed. In early Sweden and in Anglo-Saxon England the boar possessed special significance, since his image is found on ceremonial objects, as well as on those used for war and adornment. Helmets of the seventh century are found with images of the boar on them, and some Swedish helmet-plates show warriors who have helmets with a large boar as a crest. A boar-crested helmet has survived from Anglo-Saxon times, taken from a tumulus at Benty Grange, Derbyshire; the crest is small but exquisitely made in the form of a little boar in gilded bronze with ruby eyes. It was remembered by the Anglo-Saxons that such figures were believed to have protective power, for in Beowulf it is said that the boar on the helmet was there to keep guard over the life of the warrior who wore it. When we find an Anglo-Saxon sword from East Anglia bearing three tiny figures of boars stamped on its blade, we may assume that they have been placed there for a similar purpose.1
Tacitus tells us that the Germanic tribe of the Aestii who lived on the Prussian coast in the first century wore figures (formae) of boars as the emblem of their religion. Such figures may have been masks or helmets which covered the face, such as Plutarch tells us were worn by the Cimbri. He does not indicate what kind of animals the Cimbri chose, but in his Life of Caius Marius describes these helmets as resembling ‘the open jaws of terrible beasts of prey and strange animal faces’. The boar-mask may well
