Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/83

 CHAP. II. OF THE RELIGION OF THE NORTHMEN.

must strike every reader of saga literature how very little we can gather from the sagas of the doctrines and usages of the paganism which existed among the Northmen down to a comparatively late period, and for five hundred years after the cognate Anglo-Saxon branch, both on the Continent and in England, had been entirely Christianised, and had been long under the full influence of the church and priesthood. The Anglo-Saxons landed in England about the year 450. They appear at that time to have had a religion cognate to, if not identical with, that of the Northmen who landed in England three hundred years afterwards, or about the year 787. Odin, Thor, Friggia, were among their deities; Yule and Easter were religious festivals; and the eating of horse-flesh was prohibited in a council held in Mercia in 785, as "not done by Christians in the East"—which implies that among the Anglo-Saxons also it was a pagan custom, derived from their ancestors. In about a century after the landing of the Saxons, viz. about 550, the Heptarchy was in existence; and in about another century, viz. about 640, Christianity was generally established among them. It was not till a century after their first expeditions, about 787, that the pagan Northmen made a complete and permanent conquest of the kingdom of Northumberland, which they held under independent Danish princes until 953, when independent earls, only nominally subject to the English crown, succeeded; and even at the compilation of Doomsday