Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

begun in Sweden, and spread to Norway and Anglo-Saxon England.¹

In England it was followed by the heathen kings of East Anglia. In the seventh century, when the kingdom had already been converted to Christianity, but was either suffering a relapse or clinging obstinately to old funeral customs, a ship was buried in the royal cemetery at Sutton Hoo. It was a sea-going vessel, eighty feet long, and it was hauled overland for about half a mile, on to the sandy stretch of heathland above the Deben estuary where burial mounds stood. There it was lowered into the trench prepared for it, and within a gabled burial chamber erected on the deck a king’s treasures were laid. There was much rich jewellery, a royal sceptre, a standard, a great ceremonial shield and helmet, a gold-adorned sword, harp, and playing pieces, silver bowls, cups, and drinking horns from the banqueting hall. In this tomb no body was laid, perhaps because the king was lost in battle or at sea, or perhaps because he was given Christian burial while his treasures were laid in the earth according to earlier custom.²

Somewhat later, probably in the ninth century, another richly equipped ship was buried in a great mound at Oseburg in Norway. The grave was entered and robbed, but a series of exquisitely carved wooden objects was recovered and restored, sufficient to show that a rich and elaborate funeral had taken place there. The remains found in the ship were those of a woman. Here, and at two other famous Norwegian ship-burials at Gokstad and Tune, a number of horses and dogs had been slain at the graveside.¹ A series of ship-burials was also discovered in Sweden, at two rich cemeteries at Vendel and Valsgarde. They were not common in Denmark, but one, at Ladby, was on an impressive scale, and bones of horses and dogs show that this too was accompanied by animal sacrifice.

These were the great ship-funerals for people of importance in the community, but many humble folk were also laid to rest in small boats in different parts of Scandinavia, and in places where the Vikings settled. In the early days of the twentieth century Shetelig was able to number the known ship-graves in four figures,² and many more have been discovered and excavated since then. Only very recently have we discovered that the ship symbolism must have been important for many of the heathen Angles in eastern England. Apart from the rich Sutton Hoo grave of the seventh century, other ship-graves of earlier date were found in the same cemetery, and another large ship in a burial mound at Snape, further down the coast, unfortunately never properly excavated.³ Recent excavation in an early Anglian cemetery at Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk, revealed the fact that several graves held bodies covered by part of a boat, recognizable from the clinch-nails still in position. Even in a child’s grave, two small pieces of a wooden boat had been raised to form an arch over the body.⁴ Association of ships with the dead is further borne out by the careful outline of a ship cut on a cremation urn preserved in Norwich Museum.

Clearly then the ship meant something significant to the heathen north, and it was something which was connected with the dead. We have no exact clue from the myths as to what exactly it meant to men’s minds, but such indications as we do possess point to association of the ship with the worship of the Vanir. Ship-burial was associated with King Frodi by Saxo. Among the laws attributed to him was one to the effect that every chief should be burned in his own ship if killed in battle, and lesser men in groups of ten to one ship. Frodi, as we have seen, seems to be the Danish equivalent of Freyr. There are not many references to ship-burial in the Icelandic sagas, but two of these are specifically connected with so-called priests of Freyr. Ingimund in Vatnsd?la Saga was buried in a ship’s boat, and the priest of Freyr in Gisla Saga, Thorgrim, was laid in his ship inside a mound. Before they closed the mound Gisli, who was responsible for his foster-brother’s death, flung a huge stone down on to the ship, and this offers an interesting parallel to the Oseberg ship-burial, where a great stone was found lying on top of the vessel. It has been suggested that the woman buried at Oseberg may have been a priestess of the Vanir, and it has already been noted (p. 95) that an elaborate little wagon was buried with her.

The most impressive account of a ship-funeral in the early literature comes from Old English poetry, and has taken on new significance now that we know that ship-funeral was a traditional form of burial in East Anglia in heathen times. This is the account in Beowulf of the funeral voyage of Scyld, the first king of the Danes, whom we have seen to have certain connexions with the gods of fertility. This account is earlier in date than any of the literary references to ship-funeral from Scandinavia, since it was written down about A.D. 1000, and could have been composed some time considerably earlier than this. The poet tells how the old king was equipped for his journey over the sea:

Never have I heard of a ship more splendidly equipped with swords and mailcoats, the weapons of war and the raiment of battle. In her hold lay a wealth of treasures, which were to journey with him into the realm of ocean. Gifts were prepared for him, and a nation’s treasures, whose value was every whit as great as those which others had given him when they sent him forth at the beginning, alone over the waves, while he was but a child. High above him they set a golden standard. Then they let the sea bear him away, and committed him to the ocean. Their hearts were full of grief and their thoughts were heavy. Men who bear rule in halls, heroes beneath the heavens, cannot say in truth who was to receive the cargo which that vessel bore.

Beowulf, 38–52

This passage reads like a myth to account for a funeral rite, implying that the kings of East Anglia were to be laid in a ship after death because Scyld, one of the founder kings of their race, departed thus from his people, the Danes. Memories of great funeral ceremonies like that at Sutton Hoo could have remained in some men’s memory or in family tradition at the time when this passage was composed. We can picture for instance the Sutton Hoo ship bearing the king’s treasures being rowed out from the harbour nearest his palace at Rendlesham, and taken up the Deben to a point below the cemetery of the East Anglian kings. If this was the way in which the rulers of the kingdom were borne to their last resting place when a ship was involved in the ceremony, then the description given of Scyld’s departure may not be far removed from actual practice. A ship may have borne the dead king away from his sorrowing people, although it was not to be committed to the ocean, as in the poem, but to the earth in the cemetery where a mound was waiting to receive it. There must have been some idea in the minds of those who prepared these elaborate and expensive ship-funerals that the treasures buried with the dead were to pass with them in some way into the mysterious realm of the gods, as did the treasures bestowed upon Scyld in the old story.

Whether in heathen times a dead man was ever launched on a ship which formed his funeral pyre as it sailed, slowly burning, out to sea is something which we cannot know. Such a rite was said to have formed part of Balder’s funeral, when he was burned on his ship in the presence of the assembled gods, with his wife and his horse beside him. Two early kings, Haki of Norway and Sigurd Ring of Sweden, were said in late accounts to be sent out to sea when they were dying or dead from wounds received in battle.¹ But we have no early reliable evidence for such a custom, and no eye-witness accounts of such a practice. Possibly here again such stories are to be viewed as myths, explaining the well-established custom of burning a man in his ship after death. Ship-funeral could have been presented as a re-enactment of the departure in the mythical past of the founder of the race over the sea to the Other World.

As we have seen, such a belief is most likely to have been associated with the Vanir. This conclusion is supported by the use of the ship symbol in the ancient world. It is a very ancient funeral symbol, for in ancient Egypt ships were placed in graves beside some of the pyramids in the Old Kingdom, while model ships were buried in the tombs of Tutankhamen and other rulers of the New Kingdom. In Egyptian belief it was natural to link the ship with the journey of the sun across the heavens, and with the departure of the divine Pharaoh to the realm of the gods. Thus the ship came to stand for the gift of warmth and fertility to men, and since fertility depended on the life-giving water of the River Nile, it was an exceptionally good symbol of new life on earth, and a fitting gift for the dead. The connexion with fertility stands out even more clearly in the ship used as the symbol of Isis in southern Europe. In Roman times, a yearly festival was held at Ostia in her honour when the shipping season re-opened, and on the first full moon of March a ship was blessed and launched without a crew, as a sacrifice to the sea in honour of the goddess. Isis was a fertility deity, whose equivalent in the north was Nerthus, and later Freyja.

About the third century A.D., we know that a goddess had a shrine on the island of Walcheren on the Dutch coast. This was afterwards engulfed by the sand, and many inscribed stones have been found there, some showing the goddess and giving her name as Nehalennia.¹ There is no doubt of her kinship with the Mothers, since she is shown holding fruit and a horn of plenty, and a ship is frequently shown beside her. These stones were probably raised in her honour by travellers who hoped for a safe voyage over to Britain, since her shrine stood at one of the points where passengers embarked to cross the North Sea.

Thus when Njord is renowned as the god of ships, we are faced with a pattern familiar from very early times,