Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/509

Rh main features of Germanic heathendom is yet based with some confidence on this common factor, to which a third stratum of evidence, folk-lore, contributes subsidiary testimony. It has seemed best in almost all cases to begin with the fuller, though later, Scandinavian sources, in the light of which it is sometimes possible to interpret the more meagre references of Continental writers.

A problem confronts us at the outset with regard to the position of the two chief gods, Odin and Thor, in Scandinavia. Most of the poetical sources depict Odin as the chief of the gods, as the Allfather of gods and men, while the prose writings contain frequent indications that Thor, the Thunder-god (Anglo-Saxon Thunor) stands highest of all in the popular estimation. There can be no doubt that the Sagas are right with regard to their own territory. The frequent occurrence of proper names compounded with Thor (such as Thorolf, Thorstein, etc.) testifies to his importance in Scandinavia, especially as we are told that a name compounded with that of a god was esteemed a safeguard to its bearer. At least one out of every five immigrants to Iceland in heathen times bore a name of which Thor formed part. His is certainly a very ancient cult. His whole equipment is primitive: he is never credited in Scandinavian sources with the possession of a sword, a horse or a coat of mail, but he either walks or drives in a car drawn by goats, and wields the hammer or axe. The sanctity of this symbol appears to date from very remote times: in fact the Museum at Stockholm contains a miniature hammer of amber from the later Stone Age. Another indication of the antiquity of the cult is afforded by Thor's original identity, not only with Jupiter and Zeus, but also with Keltic, Old Prussian and Slavonic thunder-gods. But like these, Thor is much more than a thunder-god. In Scandinavia he is called the Defender of the World, a title which he may have earned in his encounter with the "jötnar." This word usually denotes daemonic beings, but it seems that it may originally have applied to the early non-Aryan inhabitants of Scandinavia, whom the Teutonic settlers drove gradually northwards. We may hazard the conjecture that the Teutonic invasion, which crept forward from the Stone Age till the close of heathen times, was made as it were under the auspices of Thor. He is also the guardian of the land. In Iceland we hear of settlers consecrating their land to Thor, and naming it after him. It is interesting to note that an ancient method of allotting holdings in Sweden was known as the "hammer-partition," while among the Upper Saxons the throwing of a hammer was held to legalise possession of land. But this is probably connected with Thor's guardianship of law and order. The Older Edda represents him as dealing out justice under the great world-ash Yggdrasill. Most of the Scandinavian assemblies began on a Thursday — the day named after Thor — and there seems no doubt that it was he who was invoked under the name of "the almighty god" by those swearing oaths at the Icelandic Things. The Russian historian Nestor, of the eleventh century, records