Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/514

486 the sixth century, and both in connexion with human sacrifice, are usually held to indicate Tyr, as is also the important god Mars of Tacitus. The identity of Mars and Tyr is established by glossaries which equate Mars with "Tiw," "Tug," as in Tuesday. In Scandinavia the word Tyr originally means "god," and in compounds is applied to Odin.

There is evidence that Frigg, in Northern mythology Odin's wife, was also widely known among Teutonic nations, but she seems in part to have been ousted from her place by Freyja, and in part to have suffered that general decline which must have overtaken the Germanic goddesses since the time of Tacitus, in whose day female divinities appear to have been in the ascendancy — we think of his Veleda, Isis, Ausinia, Nerthus. It is noteworthy that Bede knows of several important goddesses in England, though all other trace of them has vanished.

One class of female divinities however still held a place in Scandinavian belief at least. It seems likely that the term dísir — "(supernatural) female beings" — covered both the valkyries and the norns. The valkyries in the North were Odin's handmaidens in war, and some trace of such beings survives in Anglo-Saxon glossaries, where wælcyrge is used to translate "Bellona," "Gorgon," etc., though in the laws the word is merely equivalent to "sorceress." The norns seem to have been hereditary tutelary spirits: they are thought of as causing good or evil fortune to their owner, and appear in dreams to him, frequently in threes, to warn him of impending danger. When there is only one attendant spirit she is called hamingja, or "Luck." Such a being appears to the dying Hallfred the Unlucky Poet, and to her the Saga-writer evidently ascribes the ill-luck first of Hallfred and later of his son. It seems possible to discern an original distinction between these beings and the fylgja or "associate," which appears as a mere materialisation, as it were, in animal form, of the chief characteristic of its owner; — his soul, perhaps, though it is not the immortal part of him, as it dies on his death. It is probably closely connected with the werewolf beliefs, and that the conception was common to all Teutonic races is indicated by the Song of Roland, which makes Charles the Great dream before Roncesvalles of a fight between a bear and a leopard. The dísir are however too capricious to be called guardian spirits. Those of one family, provoked at the coming change of faith, are credited with having killed one of its representatives. We see the reasonableness of the attitude taken up by a would-be convert, who stipulates that the missionary shall guarantee him the mighty archangel Michael as his "attendant angel" (fylg ju-engill).

All the three sacrifices to dísir on record occur in the autumn, and of one it is stated that it took place at night. It is noteworthy that the term disa-thing is used as late as 1322 to denote a festival at Upsala. A "dísar-hall" appears to be an old name for a temple. From Germany we have a charm which seems rather to invoke the aid of friendly