[i]

Religions Ancient and Modern

THE RELIGION OF
ANCIENT SCANDINAVIA

[ii]

RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.

ANIMISM.

By Edward Clodd, Author of The Story of Creation.

PANTHEISM.

By James Allanson Picton, Author of The Religion of the Universe.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.

By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.

By Jane Harrison, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, Author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion.

ISLAM.

By Ameer Ali Syed, M.A., C.I.E., late of H.M.'s High Court of Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit of Islam and The Ethics of Islam.

MAGIC AND FETISHISM.

By Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cambridge University.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.

THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

By Theophilus G. Pinches, late of the British Museum.

EARLY BUDDHISM.

By Professor Rhys Davids, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal Asiatic Society.

HINDUISM.

By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental Printed Books and MSS., British Museum.

SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.

By William A. Craigie, Joint Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

CELTIC RELIGION.

By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University College, Aberystwyth.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of the British Islands.

JUDAISM.

By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge University, Author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME.

By Cyril Bailey, M.A.

SHINTO, THE ANCIENT RELIGION OF JAPAN.

By W. G. Aston, C.M.G.

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.

By Lewis Spence, M.A.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY.

By S. B. Slack, Professor at McGill University.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND NATURE OF RELIGION.

By Professor J. H. Leuba.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE.

By Stanley A. Cook.

[iii]

THE
RELIGION OF ANCIENT
SCANDINAVIA

By

W. A. CRAIGIE, M.A.

TAYLORIAN LECTURER IN THE SCANDINAVIAN
LANGUAGES, OXFORD. AUTHOR OF
'SCANDINAVIAN FOLK-LORE'

LONDON

CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd

10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE

1914

[iv]

FOREWORD

The native religion of the ancient Scandinavians was in its main features only a special form of that common to all the Germanic peoples, and this again was only a particular development of primitive beliefs and practices characteristic of the whole Aryan race. It is impossible to say how far back in time the special Germanic and Scandinavian developments of this religion may go, and of their earlier stages we have absolutely no knowledge beyond what may be doubtfully reached by the methods of comparison and inference. Even of the later stages our information is much more scanty than might be expected. Among the Goths, the southern Germans, and the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, paganism gave way to Christianity at so early a period, that very few details relating to it have been recorded by the civil or religious historians of these peoples; they were indeed more inclined to suppress than perpetuate any lingering knowledge of this kind. The absence of such information is a great bar to the proper understanding of many points in Scandinavian religion, which, instead of being thus illuminated from without, has continually been forced to throw light on the heathen worship of the other Teutonic peoples.

As to the Scandinavian peoples themselves, it is only from a comparatively late period in the history of Europe that we have any real knowledge of them. They first became notorious at the close of the eighth century, when their unexpected piratical descents on Britain and France alarmed Western Christendom. Early in the ninth century the Saxon monk Ansgar ventured upon missionary enterprises into Scandinavia, at that time entirely a heathen region, and on two occasions reached the court of the Swedish king. About the middle of the same century Christianity began to make way in Denmark, which in another fifty years or so had become in the main a Christian land. During the tenth century the new faith began to make itself felt in Norway, but did not finally overcome the old religion until the beginning of the eleventh: in Iceland, which had been colonised from Norway, the adoption of Christianity took place somewhat suddenly in the year 1000. Sweden for the most part still remained heathen, and did not fully accept the new religion until the twelfth century.

During these three centuries we have very little outside evidence as to the character of the religion professed by any of the Scandinavian peoples, and our knowledge of the beliefs and practices of northern heathenism is for the most part derived from native sources of a later date. These, while in some respects copious enough, by no means give all the information that could be desired, and on some important points their evidence is either scanty or very unsatisfactory. The deficiencies are to a large extent disguised, at first sight, by the fact that we possess abundant information as to Scandinavian mythology. Not only do the poems of the skalds (from the close of the ninth century onwards) abound in mythological allusions, but there also exists a systematic account of the subject in the work of Snorri Sturluson, commonly known as the 'Prose Edda,' written in Iceland about the year 1220. For the facts relating to the actual religion, on the other hand, we have to depend on the few pieces of outside evidence, and on fairly numerous, but not always reliable, statements in the biographical and historical prose writings commonly grouped together under the name of 'Sagas.' These works, based on oral tradition of a very full and often very accurate nature, were written in Iceland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and most of them are separated by more than a century and a half from the