Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/107

 in the ideas of a future state, in the exclusion of females from it, in the hereditary succession of a family to sacred and temporal power and function, show a coincidence in the ideas and elements of society among the people among whom the two religions flourished; and this coincidence is perhaps sufficiently strong to prove that the religion of Odin must have sprung up originally in the East among the same ideas and social elements as Mahometanism. The rapid conquest by Christianity over Odinism, about the beginning of the 11th century, proves that the latter was not indigenous, but imported, and belonged to different physical circumstances and a different social state. The exclusion of females from a future life, and their virtues from reward, was not suited to the physical circumstances under which men live in the North, although among a people living on horseback in the plains of Asia the female may hold no higher social estimation than the horse. Christianity, by including the female sex in its benefits, could not but prevail in the North over Odinism.

The Odin worship was not the only form of paganism in the north of Europe. We find in chapter 143. of the "Saga of Saint Olaf," an account of an expedition of Karl and Gunstein round the North Cape to Biarmaland, or the coast of the White Sea; and after trading for skins at the mouth of the Dwina, where Archangel now stands, of their proceeding, when the fair was over, to plunder the temple and idol of Jomala. They took a cup of silver coins that rested on his knee, a gold ornament that was round his neck, and treasure that was buried with the chiefs interred there, and retired to their ships. If this Jomala had been Thor or Odin, these vikings would not have plundered his temple, especially as one of them, Thorer Hund, was a zealous Odin worshipper, and a martyr at last to his faith. We find, on the