Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/96

 make the ancestors of the kings or great personages they are treating of, although they had lived in pagan times, partake of the important Christian ceremony which of itself had, in the rude conception of the early Christian converts, a saving power; for we find on the birth of every child who is to become a king, and leave descendants, that "water was poured over the child, and a name given him;" that he was baptized, in short, although living in the Odin religion. Harald Haarfager is stated in his saga "to have had water poured over him, and a name given him," and his son Hakon also, who succeeded him; but we hear nothing of any such baptism of Eric Blodöxe, or of any other of his sons, nor of any whose descendants did not succeed to power as kings. It may reasonably be doubted if any such ceremony was used in the Odin religion on the birth of a child; because these pagans certainly exposed their children—a practice not consistent with dedicating them by a ceremony analogous to baptism to the service of their gods in any way; and if it had no meaning in their religion, it could not be practised, unless in imitation of the Christian ceremony. Marriage also appears not to have been celebrated with any religious form. Polygamy was as fully tolerated as in Asia. Harald Haarfager had nine wives, with several concubines. Saint Olaf had concubines besides his wife, and was succeeded by a natural son; for illegitimacy, where it is not founded on any religious element in the marriage tie, is not considered a natural or just disqualification from inheritance. Marriage appears with the Odin worshippers to have been altogether a civil tie, subject, consequently, to the disruptions which civil circumstances might produce or excuse.

The churches or temples of Odin appear to have had no consecrated order of men like a priesthood set apart for administering in religious rites. In the