Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/305

Rh frequency of such bloodshed, for various motives, in comparatively modern times, there is no doubt, so far as northern and north-eastern Europe are concerned; and it is worth noting that the Scandinavian temple, or the dom-ring, where men were immolated, was often at no great distance from the blót-kelda or sacrificing spring into which prisoners of war were thrown after being slaughtered like animals. Not far from nearly every one of the twenty dom-rings of Nerike there is a spring tending to confirm the Icelandic tradition of their use. Not only were enemies bestowed upon Odin to win success in arms: on occasions of great need and distress the Norsemen devoted and slew their own nearest and dearest, as the case of Hakon Jarl offering his son Erling for triumph over the Jomsvikings shows. Eirik the Victorious fighting against Styrbiörn gave himself to Odin to get the victory; and up to the year 1000 so-called Christians in the far north recognised the efficacy of human sacrifice, a fact placed beyond doubt by the splendid self-abandonment of Hjalti before the meeting of the Icelandic Althing in that year. When the heathens held a meeting and resolved to sacrifice two men from every district in the land, there being four such districts, and to invoke their gods that they should not let Christianity spread over the country, Hjalti and Gizur had another meeting with the Christians, and declared they would have as many human sacrifices as the heathen. "They sacrifice the worst men," said Hjalti, "and cast them down from rocks and cliffs, but we will choose them for their virtues, and call it a victory-gift to our Lord Jesus Christ; we shall live the better and more warily against sin than before. Gizur and I will give ourselves as a victory-gift on the behalf of our district." A man of robust self-confidence, and robuster faith, this. But in