Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/289

 The Ancient Teutonic Priesthood.

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district seems to have been governed by its own chief. Traditionally, no doubt, the bond of union in the tribe was held to be community of blood. But the tangible evidences of unity seem to be only four in number, namely the law, the assembly, the sanctuary, and the priesthood, all of which are closely connected. The priests seem to be the only permanent central authority in the tribe,

II. The Priesthood in the North.

In the North there is practically no evidence for the existence of a priestly class.^ The word godl, ' priest,' occurs frequently, but it is always, or almost always, used to denote a person who combined priestly duties with temporal power. The very rare exceptions, real or appa- rent, to this rule will be discussed in the following pages. It will be convenient to treat the four countries, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, separately, owing to the very different social and political conditions w^hich they present.

I. For Iceland our information is extensive' and trust- worthy. In the early days of the colony, the more im- portant settlers built temples of their own, often from the material of the temples which they had had in Norway. They exercised a kind of patriarchal authority over their followers, but bore no title of authority other than that of godi, their office and sphere of jurisdiction being called godtordt. The smaller settlers, who had no temples of their own, gradually joined themselves to them, in order to enjoy both the use of their temples and the benefit of their pro- tection. The godi had to keep up the temple and provide the sacrifices, in return for which the members of the godord paid a temple-tax (hof-tollr). In the neighbourhood of each temple there was a consecrated place set apart for the thing or assembly of the members of the godord. At first

' On this question the first chapter of H. Petersen's important paper Om Nordboernes gudedyrkelse og gudetro i Fhedenold dQiQx\Qii attention.