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  The evidence for Norse mythology: archaeology

  Archaeology can be used to compare the evidence from Viking Age graves, carvings and artefacts with the picture that we get of Norse beliefs from the later written evidence. So, we find ‘Thor’s hammers’ used as pendants across Scandinavia and in Britain;10 birds accompany a mounted warrior (possibly Odin and his ravens?) on decorated Vendel-style helmets unearthed in Sweden;11 an amulet in the shape of a woman carries a drinking horn (a valkyrie?) from Öland, Sweden;12 a warrior struggles with two bears on a bronze plaque from Torslunda, Sweden, which may also show human-animal hybrids;13 a carving of Odin’s eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, comes from Gotland;14 there are elite ship burials in Norway, Sweden and the British Isles; sacrifices of animals and occasionally of people have been found. All of these echo themes found in the later written myths and corroborate something of what they reveal about Norse beliefs in the Viking Age.

  In a similar way, runestones from Denmark, Sweden and Norway reveal beliefs through the pictures engraved on them, as well as in the brief runic messages carved on them. Runes revealing religious beliefs, and belief in magic, have also been found cut into bone, on weapons and other items. From these the names of gods and religious practices can be compared with the ideas recorded in the literature. However, while there clearly is evidence for common beliefs across a wide ‘Norse culture area’, we should not expect uniformity, as the beliefs were not codified or policed by a common religious hierarchy.

  Other surviving clues

  Early Anglo-Saxon settlers originally worshipped similar gods to other groups of north-west Germanics and Scandinavians and so religious beliefs beyond the Scandinavian homelands can be traced and compared. While names differed slightly (Old Norse Odin and Thor appear in Old English as Woden and Thunor), there is a general assumption that the beliefs were similar across the northern world; although it must be admitted that our evidence for Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs is thin. Nevertheless, aspects of these northern beliefs can still be identified outside Scandinavia: from the English words for ‘thunder’ and ‘Thursday’ (both containing the Old English form of the Old Norse name Thor) and Wednesday (meaning ‘Woden/Odin’s day’), to place names that record the worship of these Scandinavian deities in England, such as the name of the Wansdyke (Woden/Odin’s dyke) earthwork in Wiltshire and the many Grim’s Ditches (formed from the word grima, ‘the masked one’, another name for Woden/Odin).

  In the ninth century, invading Vikings reintroduced their form of these gods to England and elsewhere until they later converted to Christianity. As a consequence, there are scenes illustrating Odin’s fight with the wolf at Ragnarok (the end of the world) carved on a cross from Kirk Andreas, Isle of Man; Thor fishing for the Midgard serpent is carved on a standing cross at Gosforth, Cumbria, which also seems to be decorated with a valkyrie; Regin forging Sigurd’s sword and Sigurd roasting the dragon’s heart can be seen on a stone cross from Halton, Lancashire.15 Anglo-Saxon written sources also refer to the raven-banners, which represented the companions of Odin and which also appear in the Viking myths, and were carried by Viking armies.16

  Across the Viking diaspora from Sweden to Iceland, the names of Norse gods and goddesses – as well as references to elves, dwarfs and dragons – appear in the landscape. These reveal the way that these beliefs influenced the outlook and the ‘mental maps’ of farming communities and can be compared with the documentary evidence to form a more rounded picture of Viking Age beliefs.

  However, it is from the written traditions – most first recorded in thirteenth-century Iceland – that we get the detail regarding these earlier myths; and the retelling of these stories is the aim of this book.

  2

  The impact of Christianity on Norse mythology

  THE WRITING DOWN of Norse mythology occurred principally in the thirteenth century, in Iceland, when Snorri Sturluson compiled his Prose Edda; and it was then that the Poetic Edda was also written down, mainly in the Codex Regius.17 This work was done by practising Christians in a country which had officially been Christian for over 200 years. It is therefore possible to debate how much this is an accurate representation of pre-conversion beliefs and how much we are viewing Norse mythology through a medieval Christian lens. The key point is that none of the evidence for Norse mythology and Norse religion was written down by believers who lived in the Viking Age.18 The same, of course, is similarly true for all our evidence for Celtic mythology and also for Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian beliefs. The Vikings are not alone in having their beliefs later recorded by those who no longer subscribed to them.

  The work and ideology of Snorri Sturluson

  Snorri Sturluson’s Edda was composed as a textbook for the traditional art of writing skaldic poetry. His Edda addresses the content, style and metres of traditional Viking poetry and due to that is also greatly concerned with pre-Christian mythology. The Norse mythological stories are mainly found in the section entitled The Tricking of Gylfi, where we hear about the beginning and the end of the world, as well as various other tales about the gods. The part called The Language of Poetry also contains mythological stories as examples to explain the origins of the poetic form called kennings. These stories are based on older, traditional poems and possibly oral prose stories, although the process of oral transmission means that they are likely to have been greatly adapted/corrupted from when they were first composed. It also seems that Snorri himself adapted these stories and – with the addition of his Prologue – attempted to neutralise them to make this pagan past acceptable to a Christian present.

  Snorri outlines his attitude towards the pagan past in his Prologue and uses it to set the mythology within the social context of his day, basing it ‘on a historical interpretation rather than an ideological or mythical one’.19 The beginning of the Prologue reads very similarly to Genesis and he then goes on to discuss how God became neglected by mankind. The Prologue then moves to highlight a belief in animism or natural religion whereby those who had not been exposed to Christ – due to their predecessors moving away from God – sought to explain creation but were unable to do so due to a lack of divine wisdom. There is a clear distinction made between knowledge of God that had been gleaned through natural observations and that acquired through grace. Despite this, both are presented as heavenly gifts from God and as such it is a sympathetic attempt to record the beliefs of his Viking Age antecedents without prejudice, while still maintaining the false nature of it.

  Snorri then moves on to discuss the movement of Odin and his brothers from their homeland of Troy to Scandinavia where they set up their own kingdom. This links the Scandinavian pagan past not only with the biblical past but also back to the classical past, which was socially acceptable within medieval Christian society. The narrative is concerned with the seeming greatness of Odin but he is not portrayed as a warrior-god but as an ancient man to whom people wrongly began to offer worship and sacrifices. In contrast to this central role of Odin in the Prologue, the character of Thor is neutralised in both the Prologue and in Ynglinga Saga, which is also thought to have been written by Snorri. Thor is placed in the genealogy in a way that diminishes his importance compared to that of Odin. Since Thor was seen as a counter-force to Christ by many Christian missionaries, it may be that, as Odin was less powerful and potent in the mind, then it was safer to promote him as an analogue to Christ. As we will explore in later chapters, the way the beginning of the world is presented in The Tricking of Gylfi seems to suggest that Snorri adapted the traditions to make them more familiar to a Christian audience.20

  In The Language of Poetry, Snorri discusses the pagan past in relation to the kennings used within skaldic poetry and to provide the readers of his treatise with an understanding of where the origins of these kennings lay. Despite the initial references to the Æsir as gods at the beginning of The Language of Poetry, Snorri employs ‘euhemerism’, where the pre-Christian gods are explained as transformed by later traditions from what were ori
ginally just powerful humans, to make them more socially acceptable and to reduce their potency. He justifies the telling of the myths as giving examples and explanations, and suggests that these stories should not be viewed as mythology but rather understood so that they can be used in poetry. He references the telling of the stories with the quoting of verse from various major poets. The implication is that these stories may not be true but that it was still socially acceptable to use them within poetics as it is an ancient, traditional form of oral communication that has been used by a long line of poets before him. He demonstrates a strong defence of the poetic tradition yet he cannot and does not want to promote it as a belief system. This shows the intellectual balance that Snorri needed to achieve.21 It is this emphasis on the kennings rather than mythology itself that helps to remove its sting: Snorri’s Edda is not a catalogue of pre-Christian mythology; instead, it is a treatise on poetry, which is heavily reliant on pagan mythology and which adapts and uses it for his own polemic purposes.22 This means that he has no problem with denying the authenticity of the stories as the stories are not his primary concern. Nevertheless, for later readers he provides an insight into the earlier Norse mythology.

  Evidence from Adam of Bremen

  Although most of the information about Norse mythology comes to us through either the Prose or the Poetic Edda, information about the way the gods were worshipped comes through a number of other, different, sources. Adam of Bremen, a German chronicler and monk writing in the second half of the eleventh century, records gods named Thor, Wotan (Odin) and Frikko (Freyr) being worshipped at the temple at Uppsala.23 Interestingly, though, it is Thor rather than Odin who is recorded as the chief god. Odin is also depicted mainly as a god of war rather than a god of poetry that we see in the later sources. This trio of gods ties in with the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus, from the first-century AD, although he uses Roman names: Hercules, Mercury and Mars (the last more often thought to equate with the Norse god Tyr).24

  Possible Christian influence on the sagas

  In the sagas, there are several characters who have particular devotions to different gods. One of these is the main character, named Hrafnkell, in Hrafnkell’s Saga. This character is so dedicated to the god Freyr that he is nicknamed Freysgoði or Freyr’s chieftain. Not all characters have such a firm devotion to one god and, in Egill’s Saga, Egill Skallagrímsson ‘converts’ from Thor to Odin. This may, though, be coloured by Christian ideas of devotion to one particular God.

  A contemporary voice?

  In the absence of native, written records from the age of conversion, skaldic poetry offers us the closest it is possible to get to the thoughts and feelings of those who lived through the Viking period. However, in a pre-literate society, oral tradition and transmission was the only way to preserve verses and this means that the skaldic verse that has been preserved had undergone many stages of transmission before it was written down in the form that it currently is in. Although the tight, metrical rules favoured the accurate memorisation and passing down of skaldic stanzas, the manuscripts give plentiful evidence of corruption and variation. This means that we cannot take for granted that the verses that we have are the original utterances of the skalds (poets), although it does seem likely that in most cases we are getting the general sense of what the original skald said. The work of the skalds is often concerned with the lives and deeds of great men and, once the complex kennings are stripped away, the verses often amount to little more than ‘the king is a good warrior who has killed many men’. However, what is of particular interest with regard to the preservation of original mythology lies in the kennings themselves, as it is often within these that clues can be found about both the pagan religion and the faith of the convert kings.

  All of this means that having a truly accurate picture of what eighth-, ninth- and tenth-century Scandinavians believed is very difficult to achieve. The best evidence comes from the poetry – both Eddic and skaldic – but even with this the years of oral transmission mean it is hard to know whether it has survived completely intact. As we will see in the Seeress’ Prophecy, even in one of the most well-known Old Norse poems, there can be parts of the poem that seem to have a later Christian interpolation.25 What is consistent across all the sources, however, are the names of the gods and we can be fairly certain that these were the gods that the people of early medieval Scandinavia worshipped, even if we cannot be completely certain of the exact belief system. And the stories, though transmitted through Christian writers, still provide significant amounts of information concerning traditions associated with these gods and goddesses.

  Part One: Norse Myths

  3

  The origins of the world

  FOUND IN THE collection of Norse myths known as the Prose Edda, and particularly in the section called The Tricking of Gylfi, there are many tales of the adventures of the Norse gods and giants from the beginning of life to the building of the bridge Bifrost, between Asgard and earth.

  The purpose of The Tricking of Gylfi seems to be to provide a background for the accounts of the kennings (usually compounding two words to indirectly describe an object), which are found in The Language of Poetry, another section of the Prose Edda. The nature of the gods and their presentation is very different from that in the Prologue of the Prose Edda. While in the Prologue the characters of Odin and Thor are presented simply as grandiose humans, in the main body of The Tricking of Gylfi they – along with many others – are repeatedly and clearly referred to as gods and are firmly separated from the realms of humanity. In add ition, the compiler, Snorri, was seeking to explain most, though not all, of the Norse mythology. He collected information about different topics and placed them in roughly chronological order triggered by questions. The presentation of these stories by Snorri seems to suggest that he adapted them to make them more familiar to a Christian audience. Snorri refers to Odin as ‘All-Father’ to provide a synchronisation between paganism and Christianity, something which is later reinforced by the description of him as living through all the ages and ruling all the kingdoms. The three speakers can be seen to represent the Trinity. Calling them ‘High One’, ‘As High’ and the one on the highest throne ‘Third’ can be seen to imply a sense of unity and equality that is a defining feature of the Christian Trinity. The names of all three of the speakers are also given as names for Odin in the lists of Norse poetic synonyms known as heiti, and this seems to confirm the sense of unity attributed to these three characters.

  The Tricking of Gylfi is punctuated throughout with Eddic poetry. This is reminiscent of the poetic forms found in the version of the mythology known as the Poetic Edda. The prose version is based upon the stories outlined in the poetry. Although by no means the only source, the largest source of this poetry is The Seeress’ Prophecy, found in the Poetic Edda. Although similar in many ways to The Seeress’ Prophecy, there are several differences in the presentation of the information and Snorri seems to have been trying to draw it more into line with Christian ideology. However, despite some similarities between biblical stories and the mythological tales, the vast majority of them are completely at odds with Christian teaching and the actions of the gods are not at all ‘God-like’ in the Christian sense of the word. Odin is neither omnipotent nor omniscient; he has to sacrifice his eye in order to gain wisdom; and he is powerless to prevent his own total destruction by Fenrir the wolf. As such, he is greatly diminished in comparison with Christ, who transcends death. In this way, the purpose of the account was clearly to diminish pagan beliefs even as they were being retold.

  * * *

  The tricking of King Gylfi of Sweden and the creation of Zealand

  Long ago in the land that we now call Sweden, there lived a king named Gylfi. One of the stories about him tells how once a wandering woman came to his court and seduced him. As a reward, King Gylfi granted her a piece of land in his kingdom. The land was as much as could be ploughed with four oxen over one day and one night. It was to be he
r ‘plough-land’. Now, this wandering woman was no ordinary mortal. Instead, she was one of the divine Æsir. She was called Gefion and she was married to a giant. She went to the north, to Giantland, and there she selected four strong oxen to do her ploughing. These were no ordinary oxen for they were in fact her sons whom she had transformed, and they were half-giant, half-Æsir. These great oxen pulled the plough with such strength that it sliced deeply into the land and broke its connection to the earth beneath it. As a result, it was dragged away into the sea by the oxen that were pulling the plough. Away to the west they hauled it, until at last it came to rest in a large inlet of the sea. Gefion halted the oxen there and called the land that had been planted in the sea Zealand, meaning ‘sea-land’. A great hole in the ground had been left in the place from which that land had been uprooted and this filled with water to become Lake Mälaren in Sweden. It can still be seen today that the bays of the lake are the same shape as the headlands of Zealand and this bears witness to how the lake was formed long ago.

  The story of Gefion was known to the poet Bragi the Old who composed a verse that reminded his listeners that,

  Gefion happily took from Gylfi a great piece of land

  And the steaming oxen made of it a part of Denmark.

  Each of the oxen had eight eyes and four heads

  And the land they stole was rich in meadows.

  Now, King Gylfi was intelligent and also a magician. He was astonished at the way that the Æsir always got their own way and he wondered why this was so. He asked himself: was this because of their own skills and ability or were the gods particularly favourable to them? He was determined to discover the answer and so he decided to travel to Asgard, the home of the gods. He decided to go in secret and in order to do this he took on the appearance of an old man. But the Æsir had the gift of prophecy and were able to outwit him. They knew that he was coming and were determined to trick him; not all would be as he perceived it to be! For the Æsir would meet him in various disguises.