Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

Mimir is called the wisest of the Aesir. Snorri describes him as the guardian of the spring beneath the World Tree in the territory of the frost-giants. Elsewhere he is said to have been given as a hostage to the Vanir and killed by them, after which Odin preserved his head and consulted it in all times of perplexity and danger. His name survives in three different forms: Mimir, Mimr, and Mimi. These seem to be no more than variants of one being associated with wisdom and inspiration, who dwelt beside the spring under the tree. An attractive derivation of his name is that linking it with the Latin memor, although attempts have also been made to establish a connexion with Old English meotud, ‘fate’.

The story of how the Aesir sent Mimir as a hostage to the Vanir, and how he was killed by them because they were dissatisfied with his silent companion Hoenir does not make very good sense as it stands. The tradition of a war between two companies of the gods however is familiar in many mythologies. One explanation is that it was inspired by memories of rivalry between an old and a new cult, or between two contemporary cults in opposition to one another. Dumezil¹ explained it on the basis of a deep-rooted hostility between the gods of fertility on the one hand and the gods of magic on the other. He gives the Celtic myth of a war between the Tuatha De Donann and the Fomoiri as another example of the same pattern.

Snorri has given us two independent accounts of the war of the gods (see pp. 40 and 45), but in each case the end is the same, and is the gaining of the source of inspiration by Odin and the Aesir. This would imply the triumph of the gods of magic over their opponents, if Dumezil is correct. In one case the source of inspiration was the head of Mimir, and in the other it was the mead created out of the body of Kvasir. There is additional confusion because Kvasir, like Mimir, is sometimes described as the wisest of the Aesir, but his origin seems to be quite different. His name comes from kvas, the word for strong beer used by the eastern neighbours of the Germans, and still used in Jutland for crushed fruit. Kvasir was created out of the saliva of the Aesir and the Vanir, as a symbol of the truce between them. Unpleasant as the idea seems to a modern mind, use of saliva may have been a primitive method of fermentation, and in the figure of Kvasir we seem to see something akin to John Barleycorn, symbol of the sacrifice of the fruits of the earth to give the drink of good fellowship and inspiration.

Mimir, however, has been remembered primarily as the guardian of the spring, from which Odin could drink. One stanza of Voluspa implies that he won this privilege only after sacrificing one of his eyes to Mimir, as the price to be paid for the acquisition of mantic knowledge. If Mimir was the power who possessed inspiration before the Aesir, it is among the giants rather than the gods that we should expect to find him. Certainly in the poems a powerful and terrible giant is mentioned more than once in association with the World Tree (sometimes called the Tree of Mimi), and sometimes a magic weapon is connected with this giant figure. Saxo knew a story of a journey made by the hero Hadding down to the underworld to obtain a magic sword, and this weapon was guarded by an old man whose name is Mimingus, and who is called a ‘satyr of the woods’. Possibly this too may be Mimir, and he may have been the giant credited with the making of the wonderful sword Mimming, one of the marvellous weapons of early Germanic tradition. In the confused state of the evidence as it stands, however, the figure of this wise giant has become lost in obscurity.

As to Mimir’s silent companion Hoenir, he also has slid back into the mists of oblivion. Naturally many attempts have been made to identify him with one of the better known gods, but without conspicuous success.¹ It may be assumed that he was more than the handsome, brainless fellow who appears in Snorri’s tale of the truce between the Aesir and the Vanir, since he is named among the gods present at the creation of man, and indeed in Voluspa is said to have given them the gift of intelligence. He is also said to survive the downfall of the old gods and to reign in the new world. The poets knew him as the friend of Odin and Loki, and Snorri describes him as swift and long-legged. In a prose source (Sogubrot) he is said to be the most timid of the Aesir. A clue perhaps may be sought in the value put upon silence in Old Norse literature; it was thought to be a sign of wisdom, and conceivably some form of mantic wisdom was represented by the figure of Hoenir the silent. But there is little trace remaining of his relationship to the other inhabitants of Asgard, and Hoenir has become engulfed in the silence which was his strength.

3. The Twin Gods

There is good reason to believe that at one time the heathen Germans worshipped twin deities, two brothers who were the sons of the god of the sky. Traces of these have been sought in the myths of northern Europe, but without much success.

Here again we are dealing with a pattern familiar in many mythologies. The most famous twins were Kastor and Polydeukes, the Dioskouroi, twin sons of Zeus, who were Castor and Pollux to the Romans. They were celebrated horsemen, rescuing men from peril on sea and land, and they were worshipped in particular by the Spartans. They were represented by a strange symbol called the dokana, two wooden beams joined by a cross-beam, which has been explained as a primitive apparatus for kindling fire.

In the third century A.D. the Twins were said by Greek geographers to be worshipped along the coast of the North Sea. Tacitus mentioned the Germanic tribe of the Naharvali, near Breslau, who worshipped twin gods similar to Castor and Pollux. He himself was struck by the resemblance, but came to the conclusion that the cult was not an imitation of the Roman one, but was native to the Germans. These gods were called the Alcis; they were worshipped by priests in a forest sanctuary, and the priests were ‘decked out like women’ (muliebris ornatus). The gods were young men and brothers, but no images (simulacra) of them were found among the Germans. It happens that an urn of the La Tene period has been found in the region where the Naharvali lived, and this shows men on horseback, each pair fastened to a cross-beam. This resembles the symbol of the dokana, and suggests that a similar cult reached the Germans during Roman times.

Of the later history of the Alcis however we know nothing definite. It has been noticed that a number of Germanic peoples had a pair of rulers, described as brothers, included among the ancestors of their royal house. The Vandals had two early kings called Raos and Raptos, the Langobards two heroes Ibor and Aio, and there are brother kings mentioned in the early history of the Swedes, such as Alrik and Eirek, and Alf and Yngvi. The Anglo- Saxons had two heroes with the strange names Hengest and Horsa (meaning ‘stallion’ and ‘horse’) who were said to have played an important part in the foundation of the kingdom of Kent. The association with horses is characteristic of the Dioskouroi, so that these two are of special interest. The idea that one brother kills the other, as in the case of the Roman twins, Romulus and Remus, is found as part of some of these traditions, for instance that of the Swedish brothers mentioned above. There are also the brothers called the Haddingjar, vaguely remembered in Scandinavia. Places in Norway have been named after them, and the Old Norse word haddr, used of women’s hair, recalls Tacitus’s description of the priests of the twin gods, adorned in some way like women. The Haddingjar must presumably be connected with the Hasdingi, the royal dynasty of the Vandals, and with the Hartungen of German tradition.

All this however is scholarly speculation. A more practical question is whether we can find any trace of the heavenly brothers, the protective deities who gave help in time of need, in the northern myths. They have been sought among the Vanir, and it has been suggested that Njord and Freyr are their descendants, or Freyr and Ull. But only faint traces remain of these protective gods who supported their followers in battle or on the sea. It would seem that the initiative has passed over to the greater gods, Thor, Freyr, and Odin, or possibly to the goddesses. There is some evidence for a pair of female deities. Hakon, the Jarl of Halogaland, called in time of need upon his protectress Thorgerda, and according to one story in Flateyjarbok she appeared in the sky in answer to his prayers with her sister Irpa, and they shot arrows against the Jarl’s enemies. This is behaviour reminiscent of the Dioskouroi. There is also a passage in Saxo which is hard to interpret. When the Swedes were at war with the Danes, each was threatened in turn by the god protecting the other side, and while they fought:

Two hairless old men, of appearance fouler than human, and displaying their horrid baldness in the twinkling starlight, divided their monstrous efforts with opposing ardour, one of them being zealous on the Danish side and