Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/93

 Reviews. 83

victory in battle, skill in song and in public speaking, and fair winds to war ships.

He giveth his sons victory, and his followers money, Skill of speech to his children, and good wit to men, Fair breeze to captains, and song to poets. Prowess or luck in love he gives to many a champion.

Whereas Thor or Thunder is the god who gives progeny, land, memory, bodily luck and safety, and Frey is especially the god of fertility. Now Woden's foster-son Starcad was hated by Thunder, who largely limited his powers of mischief, and Starcad loathed Frey and his genial worship. Starcad (who has parallels in Russian legend) has usually, says our author, " been regarded as the typical Northern warrior of old time. This is true ; but in reality he is far more. He is also the chief of the legendary Northern poets. If I am not mistaken, he was regarded in early times as the typical worshipper of Othin."

In considering the cult of Niord Mr. Chadwick agrees with Drs. Much and Sarrazin that the " isle in the ocean," where Tacitus says some tribes worshipped Nerthus, was Seeland. As this god's son was worshipped at Upsala, there is apparently a filial connection implied between some southern sanctuary, whether it be Hledra [Leire] in Seeland or not, and the great sactuary at Upsala ; but it is certain that Woden's cult later became the favourite worship of Southern Scandinavia. Golther's ingenious suggestion that the war between Wanes and Anses is a reminiscence of the struggle between the two cults and their re- spective votaries is rightly, I think, accepted by our author. The preface to " Heimskringla " contains merely Are's conclusions drawn from poems with which he was acquainted, especially those curious genealogic compositions that (like their Celtic counter- parts) formed valued documents attesting descent and rights drawn from descent, though in the case of the Earl of Orkney and of Harold Fairhair the artificial nature of the pedigree is ex- ceedingly obvious to the modern student, as Vigfusson long ago pointed out. However, Are has given us himself the key to the original difference between the cults that supposed the dead to live a spirit-life in the " howe " or " barrow," and those that sup- posed them to live in another place — i.e., between the barrow G 2