UNIVERSITY OF YORKMEDIEVAL MONOGRAPH SERIES

THE BATTLE GOD OF THE VIKINGSthe first G. N. Garmonsway Memorial Lecture

delivered 29 October 1971

in the University of York

by Hilda Ellis Davidson, PH.D., FSA.,

Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge

Professor G. Norman Garmonsway

Professor George Norman Garmonsway (1898-1967) retired in 1965 after35 years in the Department of English Language and Literature at King'sCollege, London.

Born at Hartlepool. Co. Durham, he was educated at the Henry SmithSchool from where he took a scholarship to St. Catharine's College, Cam-bridge, returning there after two years as a lieutenant in the R.G.A. duringWorld War L He did brilliantly in both parts of the English Tripos. Upongraduating, in 1921, he was appointed to an Assistant Lectureship at UniversityCollege, Aberystwyth, moving on to a Lectureship at King's College, London,in 1930, where he became a Reader in 1946 and Professor in 1956.

Professor Garmonsway twice spent periods in the U.S.A. as VisitingProfessor, at U.C.L.A. (Los Angeles) in 1955 and the University of NorthCarolina in 1962. When his approaching retirement was known, he was invitedto the University of Toronto for the 1965-66 session, where he endeared him-self so much to his Canadian students and colleagues that he was asked toreturn for another session.

As a student, he was one of a select band trained by Hector MunroChadwick, who did so much to foster the study of Old English in relationto Anglo-Saxon archaeology, Old Icelandic, and kindred fields. At varioustimes he was president of the Viking Society for Northern Research, amember of the Advisory Committee for the Promotion of ScandinavianStudies, and on the committees of the Philological Society and the EnglishAssociation. He was not a prolific writer, but his publications were markedby impeccable scholarship. Outstanding were his Ælfric's Colloquy (1939),his translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1954), in its several forms,with an introduction which is a model for the lucid handling of intricatematerial. His best selling Penguin English Dictionary (1965) in which hewas assisted by an ex-student, Miss Jacqueline Simpson, was a triumph ofeconomy and thoroughness with its 45,000 main entries and its inclusion ofcolloquialisms and slang. Several articles on his medieval discoveries and hisessay on `Anna Gurney: Learned Saxonist' in Essays and Studies (1955)show his interest in the post conquest period.

As a colleague he was exemplary, ever helpful, and quite `unflappable'.He did many little acts of kindness, unremembered no doubt by him, butnever forgotten by their recipients. He had a wide experience of examiningat all levels for schools and universities all over the country.

In administration Garmonsway was efficient and speedy, preserving acalm which was doubtless fostered by some remarkable experiences through-out the Second World War in the Ancillary Materials Division of the Ministryof Food. He never shirked the drudgery of work on boards of studies, and hewas a splendid chairman, unobtrusive, but firm when need be.

He will long be recalled as a teacher and encourager of young scholarsand is remembered all over the world as `one who loved his fellow men'.

Reproduced from The Times of 4th March 1967 by permission.

Illustrations

PLATE PAGE

1 Andreas Cross Fragment 3

2 Rock carving from Litsleby, Bohuslän, Sweden 5

3 Fragment of Memorial Stone from Stenkyrka Church, Gotland 6

4 Memorial Stone, Lärbro St. Hammers, Gotland 11

5 Gilded bronze buckle from Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, Finglesham, Kent 12

6 Helmet plate from Grave 8, Valsgärde, Sweden 14

7 Front panel from the Franks Casket 16

8 Top panel of Memorial Stone, Alskog, Gotland 17

9 Panel from Memorial Stone, Lärbro St. Hammers 111 17

10 Panel from Memorial Stone, Lärbro St. Hammers 111 18

11 Helmet plate from Cemetery at Vendel, Sweden 19

12 Stone from Ziatna Panega, Bulgaria (2nd.-3rd. century A.D.) 20

13 Stone from Halle Broa, Gotland, of Viking Age Date 21

14 Votive stone to Heros Manimazos, from Tomis, Romania 21

THE BATTLE GODOF

THE VIKINGSI N 1899 HECTOR MUNRO CHADWICK , among whose pupils both NormanGarmonsway and I were included, published a small book called The Cultof Othin (Cambridge U.P. Warehouse, London), which characteristicallybroke new and exciting ground. Chadwick took from Greek and Latinsources references to sacrifices made by the Germanic peoples to their godof war, and then showed how the traditions associated with Odin in OldNorse literature continued the same pattern. He brought together evidencefrom myths, legends, poems, chronicles and sagas for religious customsin the pre-Christian period and drew widely on little known passages inAnglo-Saxon, Old High German and Old Norse literature. He used alsothe evidence of philology, and even at this early date included archaeo-logical material, for his attention had been drawn to the possibilities ofthis by the two fascinating volumes of the explorer Du Chaillu, TheViking Age (London, 1889). When Norman Garmonsway brought out hisfirst book, the Early Norse Reader, in 1928, he included some of thepassages from Old Icelandic concerned with the cult of Odin, and I havereason to be grateful to him, since it was his book which first gave me aglimpse of the possibilities of northern mythology studied in the originalIcelandic sources.

Now, some seventy years after Chadwick wrote, we still have the literarysources much as when he used them, although plenty of critical work hasbeen done since. The archaeological evidence on the other hand hasi ncreased to what would then have appeared an incredible extent, whilethe evidence from two new disciplines, iconography and the history ofreligions, now needs to be taken into account. Thus it is time for a newappraisal of the Viking god of battle, built on the sure foundations whichChadwick laid, and with the realisation that only by bringing together

2 THE BATTLE GOD

evidence from many different fields are we likely to gain fuller understandingof this once powerful cult. I am going to use this opportunity to suggestsome directions in which future work on the battle god might prove fruitful.

The precise nature of the relationship between Wodan, the god of theearly Germanic tribes, and the later Scandinavian deity Odin is not perhapsas simple as we tend to assume, but we know that Odin inherited many ofthe traditions belonging to the earlier Germanic concept of the deity.However it seems that the Germanic god particularly associated with thegiving of victory in the first centuries A.D. was not Wodan but Tiwaz.According to Tacitus1 two Germanic tribes, the Hermundari and the Chatti,did battle midway through the first century for a holy place on the riverSaale, N.W. Germany, where salt was obtained, and where it was believedthat there were special opportunities of access to the gods - possibly asupposed place of entry to the Other World. Before the battle both tribesvowed sacrifices on a huge scale to `Mars' and `Mercury' in return forvictory. Mercury is the name which Roman writers used for Wodan,the god who conducted the spirits of the departed to the Other World,2

but Mars seems to have been equated with Tiwaz, the ancient sky-god.Tiwaz was the power giving victory, and also supporting law and orderin the community, as is indicated by the title Mars Thingsus in inscriptionsof the Roman period, associating him with the Thing or general assemblyof the people to settle disputes. 3 He lived on in Norse myths as the shadowygod Tyr, long after he had yielded up his attributes as the god of war toWodan/Odin, and Tyr is best remembered for his binding of the wolfwhich threatened the existence of the gods, and the loss of his right handthereby. It may therefore be from Tiwaz that Odin inherited the wolf ashis antagonist, the creature which in poetry and carvings of the VikingAge was represented as waiting to devour him at the final destruction ofthe gods at Ragnarok. A Christian monument of about A.D. 1000 fromAndreas, Isle of Man (a cross fragment, now in the Museum at Ramsay),shows the god with the devouring monster, together with a bird of prey,the special knot which was one of his symbols, a spear turned downwardsand another bent into a knot (Plate 1) - this last of some interest in viewof the practice of bending up weapons in the bog sacrifices in Denmark.4

The tradition of the wolf is found again, even if no more than a faint echoof the old pagan legend put to decorative use, in a carving from the choirstalls of a thirteenth century stave church at Torpo, Halling, Norway,now in the Historical Museum, Oslo.

OF THE VIKINGS

1. ANDREAS CROSSFRAGMENT.

Copyright,Manx Museum.

3

Certainly it seems probable that Tiwaz was the original owner of themighty spear Gungnir, which in the Old Norse myths is counted amongthe treasures of the gods and in the possession of Odin. At Bohuslän inwest Sweden there is a carving of the Bronze Age of a huge figure brandish-ing a spear,5 which it seems reasonable to interpret as an early representationof the sky god who ruled over the battlefield as well as the rain and thunder,bringing fruitfulness to the earth (Plate 2). The spear may also have beenused to represent the protective aspect of the god, without any visible

THE BATTLE GOD

hand to brandish it, and linked in some way with the creation. A numberof rock-carvings from the Bronze Age in Sweden show spears set up as iffor worship, gigantic spears carried by tiny men, and in one case a groupof spears flying through the air, one as much as twenty feet in length.6

A similar treatment of the spear may be noted in Ancient Egyptian icono-graphy, for in the Ptolemaic temple at Edfu there is a representation of aspear being worshipped, and in accompanying texts this is declared to bethe protection of the god Horus;7 it emerged from the primeval waters tobe the first resting-place of the god in his hawk form at the creation of theworld, and ensured the safety of the sacred place and its divine occupiers.The idea of the spear called into existence at the beginning for defence ofthe gods apparently goes back to very early times in Egypt, while it waslater seen as the likeness of the invisible Protector god. Some similarconception may have been the basis of the sacred spear called Mars,preserved in the god's temple in Rome and other Latin cities,8 and such aconception may have led to the gradual emergence of a god of war in theNorth. This helps us to understand the traditions behind Gungnir, thespear of Odin which according to the Eddic poem Völuspá he flung inthe beginning, causing the first war in the world.9 By the time of Völuspáhowever, towards the end of the heathen period, the spear had come toevoke the picture of Odin as the god who stirred up strife and set kingsa-warring, distributing victory or defeat by the direction of its flight.

Among the pagan Anglo-Saxons, the same pair of deities, Woden andTiu, were worshipped in the fifth century, to judge from the evidence ofplace-names.10 We know little of the symbolism used to represent them,but the spear certainly possessed some religious significance at this period.The widespread Anglo-Saxon custom of laying a spear in the grave, eventhough the length of the shaft rendered this highly inconvenient, couldhave been based on no more than the general principle that clothes andequipment must be left in the possession of the dead, but it may be notedthat spear-heads have also been found in graves of children too young touse them, while in some cases small model spears have been put into thegrave.11 There are examples of tiny spear amulets from graves in Kent,along with the little hammer amulets which seem to be an early exampleof the Thor's-hammers of the Viking Age,12 and while the hammerswould be associated with the sky-god Thunor, one would expect the spearto be the symbol of either Tiu or Woden. Indeed I suspect that the largenumber of spears found in graves of the Germanic pagan period both in

4

OF THE VIKINGS

2. ROCK CARVING FROM LITSLEBY, BOHUSLÄN, SWEDEN(Peter Gelling, The Chariot of the Sun)

5

6 THE BATTLE GOD

England and on the continent indicate that it was more than the mark of afighting man, and that it may originally have been a sign of dedication tothe spear-god. Snorri Sturluson in Ynglinga Saga (ch. 1X) makes the some-what surprising statement that Odin died of sickness and had himselfmarked with a spear when at the point of death, claiming to himself allthose who died of weapons; such a tradition, in obvious contradiction tothe myth of Ragnarok, suggests that at one time the spear, symbol ofviolent death and the god's protection, may have been an essential part offuneral ritual, included among the gravegoods of such followers of Odinas died peacefully in their beds.

3. FRAGMENT OF MEMORIAL STONE FROM STENKYRKA CHURCH, GOTLAND.

Copyright, Gotlands Fornsal, Visby.

The dedication of an enemy host to Odin by flinging a spear over themwith the words 'Odin has you all' was long remembered in Old Norseliterature13 and there is evidence also for this practice symbolising thewinning of new territory in battle; in an early Danish Latin chronicle it isstated that the northern tip of Jutland bore the name Oddaesund becauseOtto I threw his lance into the sea there to perpetuate the memory of hisvictory over Harald Bluetooth of Denmark in the tenth century.14 It is

OF THE VIKINGS 7

particularly interesting to find an early example of this use of a spear on amemorial stone from the island of Gotland, off the east coast of Sweden,dating about A.D. 500; here it can be seen passing over a ship (Plate 3),the conventional symbol of the journey of the dead to the Other World;the dead man is departing, it would seem, into the power of Odin.15

Another clue to the importance of Odin's spear is offered by the survivalof a number of richly decorated heads of long spears or lances which aremarked by runes, or by the pictorial symbols which preceded runes; thesecome for the most part from eastern areas of Germanic occupation fromthe Roman to the Merovingian periods. The importance of the lance asthe symbol of the leader in battle has been made clear by Peter Paulsenin his masterly study of weapons in the graves of Alamannic warriors,16

and it continued to be an important religious symbol in the Christianperiod, when the Holy Lance of Longinus was venerated in Constantinoplefrom 614 onwards, and became the subject of many legends. In Alamanniccemeteries great care was taken to insert the long spears with elaboratelydecorated heads into the graves of warrior leaders, even if this necessitatedbreaking the shaft; they seem too decorative for ordinary use in battle,and Paulsen came to the conclusion that they were intended to carry smallbanners. There is plenty of pictorial evidence for the lance equipped witha pennant; Paulsen gives examples from Germany, Hungary and NormanEngland, dating from the eight to the thirteenth century. The standardsof gold mentioned in Beowulf among the funeral treasures of kings couldwell have been of this kind, pennants of gold or silver thread or brightsilk fixed to a long spear, and this would explain the fact that we havel ooked in vain for examples of such standards in Anglo-Saxon graves.

17

The bright spear with its glittering pennant would stand out in the confusionof battle as a sign for men to follow, and its popularity may have beenpartly due to the use of legionary symbols and banners in the Roman andByzantine armies. The symbol on a banner must be one to invoke luckand protection from the appropriate power, and Paulsen has noted thefrequent use of twisted patterns, net-work and knots, which he explainsas protective devices to ward off evil; in this connection it is worth remem-bering that Odin was the god with power to loose and to bind,18 one ofwhose familiar devices was the three-fold knot or valknut.19 There arestories from the Viking Age also of raven banners carried by Odin'sfollowers, with birds which presaged victory or defeat by the movementof their wings, and of a banner which brought victory, but whose bearer

8 THE BATTLE GOD

was doomed to death, that of Jarl Sigurd of Orkney who fell at Clontarf.20

It now becomes understandable why Odin's weapon was the spear andnot the sword. The sword we know to be an aristocratic weapon of greatsymbolic power, carried by kings and fittingly adorned, handed out tofavoured warriors by the battle-god himself,21 yet the spear with its ancientbackground as a symbol of divine protection and its close link with theleader on the battle-field possessed an even stronger claim to be thewar-god's main attribute.

It has been noted that the elaborate spear-heads from the Germanicpagan period sometimes bear runic inscriptions. One of the earliest comesfrom Øvre Stabu, Toten, in Opland, Norway and dates back to about thethird century A.D., being possibly of Marcomannic origin; others comefrom Kreis Kowel on the Russian border and from Dahmsdorf in Ger-many.22 If the inscriptions have been rightly interpreted, some are in theform of descriptive words, such as Assailant, or One who puts to the test.These have been taken as personifications of the weapon, but it is possibleto regard them as titles of the god of battle symbolised by the spear.Other uses of runes may be seen as relevant to a study of Odin. The runicletters in early times were probably used for the casting of lots, andTacitus emphasises the importance of this practice among Germans ofthe first century A.D.23:

Their method of casting lots is a simple one; they cut a bough froma fruit-bearing tree and divide it into small pieces; these they markwith certain distinguishing signs and scatter at random over a whitecloth. Then after invoking the gods and with eyes lifted up to heaven,the priest of the community, if the lots are consulted publicly, orif privately the father of the family, takes up three pieces at a timeand interprets them according to the signs previously marked onthem.

Caesar knew of this practice, but had heard that it was the older women,the matrons, who did the consultation, even before battle.24 By this time,as Ralph Elliott has pointed out, we would expect the signs on the twigsto be runic symbols, 25 and the fact that each rune bore the name of some-thing - S for sun, M for man and so on - would have been convenientfor this method of divination. Before battle lots were cast to discoverwhether the omens were favourable, and again after a victory, to markout certain prisoners for sacrifice. The picture of the Hermundari and

OF THE VIKINGS 9

Chatti vowing that all living things as well as booty taken in battle shouldbe sacrificed in return for victory, a vow which Tacitus states was carriedout in all its frightfulness by the successful Hermundari,26 is presumablyto be taken as exceptional, because the rewards of that particular battlewere unusually high. We have indeed archaeological evidence from bogfinds in Denmark and Sweden from about the second to the sixth centuriesA.D. for the practice of deliberately damaging weapons, equipment andbooty after battle by bending, breaking or burning, and then eitherdepositing them on marshy ground, as at Illerup27 or throwing them intoa lake, as at Ejsbøl.28 The evidence carefully collected at Ejsbøl is particu-larly impressive, since here large deposits of weapons and wargear weremade on several occasions, and about 600 objects recovered in all; thesmall gleanings of battle such as arrow-heads and scabbard-mounts andstrap-ends were apparently emptied into the water from sacks and baskets.Bones of horses were sometimes included among the deposits, and we haveliterary references to prisoners of war hanged on trees,29 but it seems pro-bable that the normal procedure was to sacrifice certain prisoners only,according to the will of the gods as declared by the casting of lots. Afterhis victory over the Germans in 58 B.C., Julius Caesar was much relievedto recover his friend Valerius Procillus unharmed; he had sent him on anembassy to Ariovistus, but the Romans had been treated as prisoners ofwar, and Procillus told him that lots had been cast three times to decidewhether he should be burned to death immediately or reserved for execu-tion later, and that he owed his survival to the way in which the lots hadfallen.30 A similar escape is ascribed to St. Willibrord in pagan Heligolandin the eighth century; he was liable to execution because he had baptizedconverts in a holy well of the pagans and killed cattle sacred to the gods,but he escaped three times when lots were cast, although another man inhis company was put to death.31

The practice of offering up extravagant sacrifices after battle seems tohave been increasingly associated with Wodan, the chthonic god of therealm of the dead, from the Roman period onwards. He seems to havesteadily ousted the sky god, Tiwaz, as the power to whom men appealedfor victory, and certainly in the Viking Age such offerings formed part ofthe cult of Odin. This may have been the reason why Odin's name wasclosely linked with runes, though their connection with the other deitywas not entirely forgotten, and in the Edda poem Sigrðrífumál men aretold to name Tyr's name in carving runes of victory. The Anglo-Saxon

10 THE BATTLE GOD

riddle dialogue of Salomon and Saturn declares that letters were firstestablished by Mercurius the giant, whom we may assume to be Woden.32

In a powerful passage (verses 139-40) in the Edda poem Hávamál the godclaims that he hung upon the world tree for nine days and nights,

pierced with a spearand given to Odin,myself given to myself. . . .

The passage ends:

They cheered me neitherwith bread nor drink.I peered downward,I took up the runes,lifted them screaming -then I fell back.

Here the implication is that Odin is being offered as a sacrifice in themanner in which it was customary to offer to the god of battle. Such asacrifice is described in detail in Gautreks Saga, in the collection ofFornaldar Sögur.33 A tree is pulled down, a rope fastened to it and loopedround the victim's neck, so that when the tree is released he is lifted upamong the branches and strangled, while at the moment of release he isstabbed with a spear with the words: `Now I give you to Odin'. Such ahanging is depicted on one of the memorial stones from Lärbro StoreHammars i n Gotland (Plate 4), which goes back to the Viking Age.34

When Odin bends to pick up the runes, it is to be presumed that he isselecting the lots which determine life and death, and I think it is possiblethat when a battle sacrifice was carried out in this way, the man hangedwas deemed to be re-enacting the terrible initiation ordeal undergone byOdin i n the beginning. By means of such a re-enactment, contact wasestablished with the divine world and the hidden knowledge associatedwith runes brought to men. Among the many titles of Odin was Lord ofthe Hanged, and elsewhere (157) in the same poem Håvamål he claimsthat when he desired to know the future he consulted a hanged man forguidance. It seems as if the one-eyed god himself appears as a hangedvictim in a wood carving from a stave church at Hegge in Norway.35

OF THE VIKINGS

4. MEMORIAL STONE,

LÄRBRO ST. HAMMERS,GOTLAND.Copyright, ATA Sweden.

12 THE BATTLE GOD

We find the spear in a prominent place in the imagery of warrior ritualin the sixth century, when it is held in the hand of dancing warriors. Onefigure which appears many times, usually on war-gear such as helmet,scabbard or the buckle of a sword belt, is that of a youth who may weararmour but is more often naked except for a belt and a helmet with curvedhorns, and who carries in his hands either spears or a spear and sword.He is seen alone on a gilded buckle (Plate 5) recovered in 1967 from anAnglo-Saxon sixth century grave at Finglesham in Kent;36 or he may be

5. GILDED BRONZE BUCKLE FROM

ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY,FINGLESHAM, KENT.

Copyright, Institute of Archaeology,Oxford.

OF THE VIKINGS 13

accompanied by a mirror-image twin, as on a helmet plate from SuttonHoo and another from one of the royal graves at Old Uppsala i n Sweden,37

but in all cases the figures appear to be dancing. The type of hornedhelmet is that used by Germanic troops serving in the Roman army,known as the Cornuti, and this helmet was officially adopted by the armytogether with the Germanic battle-shout.38 The placing of horns, a symbolof power, on a helmet goes back to the Bronze Age in Scandinavia, fortwo fine examples were found in a peat bog at Vikso in Denmark duringthe last war;39 in the helmets of the Cornuti the horns curve towards oneanother and terminate in the heads of various creatures such as goats,rams, wolves, or, as in the case of the Finglesham man, beaked birds ofprey. The dancing of these helmeted men recalls the account of the war-dance in Tacitus, performed by naked youths, dancing and leaping betweenswords and upturned spears;40 we know too that dedicated followers ofthe battle god would fight without armour or even naked,41 and that thistradition continued in Scandinavia among the berserks, followers of Odincarried away by battle ecstasy so that they were impervious to wounds; theytoo used no armour but fought in the skins of bears or wolves and howledlike wild beasts.42 Paulsen43 discusses the evidence for a ritual dance ofwarriors forming part of the funeral ceremony, and claims that the funeralrites of pre-Christian times among the Germanic peoples included thebearing of weapons belonging to the princely dead to the grave or funeralpyre. He suggests that the dancing man on a mould from Gutenstein andanother from Obrigheim accompanied by a figure in a wolf-mask aretaking part in such a ceremony, personifying the powers of war and death,and the two same figures occur on the well-known mould from Torslundaon the island of Øland in the Baltic.44 I have myself suggested 45

that thelittle naked warriors represent messengers of Odin, his special championsknown as the einherjar i n the Edda poems, who lead his forces at Ragnarokas the berserks were said to fight in the van of earthly armies, and who inone Edda poem, Vafþrúðnismál (41), are said to choose the slain, the sameexpression used of the valkyries who worked the will of the god on thebattle-field and granted victory or death at his behest. The scene whichsupports this view is found on the Sutton Hoo helmet and again on ahelmet-plate from a ship-grave in Valsgärde in Sweden (Plate 6) and on abrooch from Pliezhausen in south Germany.46 Here the little helmeteddancer is seen perched behind a warrior on horseback, with his hand onthe spear the rider holds; meanwhile the horse is being stabbed by a man

14 THE BATTLE GOD

lying beneath it on the ground, suggesting that in this case the decision hasgone against the man on horseback and that he is being summoned toValhalla. Thus the conventional scene of Roman tombstones, showing atriumphant rider trampling down a barbarian, is given new significanceand brought into the heroic imagery associated with the cult of Odin,giver of victory and summoner of the slain.

There is indeed every indication that the symbolism used in the Romanarmy influenced the imagery of the god of battle among the Germanicpeoples. At first they were the unfortunate victims of the mighty warmachine, even though from time to time they inflicted grievous defeats onthe Romans, but later they were welcomed into the army among theNumeri, barbarian troops of exceptional fighting power with their ownleaders, and won honour for their achievements. We see the eagle, imageof the Emperor and symbol of imperial power, becoming along with themore ancient raven the bird of Odin. Eagle brooches were popular through-put the Germanic world47 and there is an eagle on the great ceremonialshield of Sutton Hoo and on others of the same period from Uppsala,while the carving of the blood-eagle on the back of an enemy slain inbattle was one of the more gruesome rituals attributed in the literature tofollowers of Odin.48 The flying dragon, known from its use as a standard

6. HELMET PLATEFROM GRAVE 8,

VALSGARDE, SWEDEN

(G. Arwidsson,

Valsgärde 8)

OF THE VIKINGS 15

in the Roman armies, where it was borne through the air like a wind-sleeve,was identified with the more familiar serpent and associated with burialmounds and the dead.49 The figure of the winged Victory in helmet andarmour as seen on a sword of the Roman period found at Øvre Stabu inNorway along with one of the runic spear-heads mentioned above,50

obviously executed by a barbarian craftsman, came to be associated withthe protective spirits who helped young heroes, and with the fierce andterrible spirits of the battlefield who devoured the dead and who formedpart of the retinue of the early Wodan.51 From such mingling of traditionsemerged the complex figure of the Valkyrie, the messenger of the god whohaunted the field of battle and led back the dead to Odin's realm.

Professor Karl Hauck believes that scenes on the Franks Casket, thelittle box of whalebone believed to have been made in Northumbria atthe close of the seventh century, show early examples of such Valkyriefigures connected with Woden's cult in Anglo-Saxon England.52 On thelid of the casket we have a woman seated behind a warrior who is defendinghimself from attack with his bow, and she sits in what might be a shrine,with the same symbol above her head as that on the horned helmet, anarch terminating in beaked heads.53 On the right side of the casket, theone which has proved most difficult to interpret, a woman appears again,and she seems to be beside a burial mound, and holding a cup (Plate 7).This scene must be connected with the god of battle, for we have a warriorcarrying a spear and wearing a helmet with an eagle crest, attended byravens; he has the characteristic knot of Odin beside him, for this is settwice under the horse which stands with bent head.54 There is also a figuresitting on a mound, which has an animal head and wings, and mightrepresent the Valkyrie in her terrible aspect, as in some of the stories inthe Fornaldar Sögur.55 Indeed it is possible that even the scenes with aforeign background on the casket, the discovery of Romulus and Remusfostered by wolves and the sack of Jerusalem by Titus, could have beendeliberately chosen because of their relevance to Woden's cult: the famousheroes and followers of the battle-god, Sigmund and Sinfjötli, learned theircraft as warriors among the wolves of the forest, while the sacking ofcities and taking of plunder was the besetting ambition of all who owedallegiance to the god of battle. This little ivory box, along with thetapestries recovered from the ninth century ship-burial at Oseberg inNorway, serve to remind us how easily a tradition of narrative art mainlyexpressed in wood-carving and woven pictures, sadly perishable media,

16 THE BATTLE GOD

could vanish almost without trace. The delicate skill and effectiveness ofthe work on the casket and the tapestries implies the existence of such anart, and it may well have played an important part in preserving the talesof the heroes of Odin, familiar to all well-born youths who followed hiscult.

FRONT PANEL FROM THE FRANKS CASKET.

Courtesy, Trustees of the British Museum.

Indeed we find one splendid series of narrative pictures from the VikingAge carved in stone, although the colours which once brightened themare gone. This is in eastern Scandinavia, on the memorial stones of Gotland.Stones were raised as memorials from about A.D. 500 to the end of thepagan period, and those belonging to the Viking Age have a wealth ofscenes from heroic story and myth, vividly portrayed in narrow strips likethe scenes from the Oseberg tapestries.56 Here indeed we find ourselves inthe realm of the Viking god of battle. We see the eight-legged steed ofOdin himself with his rider, who is either a god or the dead man carriedby Sleipnir, welcomed into Valhalla by a woman bearing a horn, the val-kyrie of the Norse poems (Plate 8). We see this scene of welcome many

OF THE VIKINGS 17

H. TOP PANEL OFMEMORIAL STONE,

ALSKOG, GOTLAND.Copyright,

A.T.A. SWEDEN.

9. PANEL FROMMEMORIAL STONE,

LÄRBRO ST. HAMMERS III.

Copyright,

A.T.A. SWEDEN.

times repeated (Plate 9), and sometimes associated with other scenes ofbattle and sacrifice, while the ship of the dead, an established symbol onsome of the earliest stones, continues to appear below. We see the godhimself in eagle form entering the realm of the gods (Plate 10), as in themyth of Odin bringing back the mead of inspiration from the giants.57

Moreover the figures on the stones, the woman with the horn and the rider,together also with the warrior in the horned helmet mentioned above,

18 THE BATTLE GOD

were all used as amulets in the Viking Age and have been found in gravesin Sweden.58

Odin is remembered in the literature as the god who rode over land andsea on his horse Sleipnir, leading the dead to Valhalla and appearing alsoto stir up mischief among kings, to protect or admonish warrior leaders,

10. PANEL FROM MEMORIAL STONE, LÄRBRO ST. HAMMERS III.Copyright, A.T.A. Sweden

to give weapons and horses to young warriors, and to grant victory to thosewhom he desired to keep on earth for a while. The pictorial symbol of arider with a spear became very popular in the Germanic world, and whenwe find such a rider accompanied by ravens on a helmet mount from Vendelin Uppland, Sweden, it must be assumed to be Odin (Plate 11). He is seenhere threatening a serpent, and this motif is derived from Mediterraneanand eastern European sources, particularly from riding saints like St.George and St. Theodore in Coptic and Byzantine art.59 The openworkbuckles found in western Europe from the sixth century onwards originallyshowed a steed without a rider, and appear to have been copied from

OF THE VIKINGS

II. HELMET PLATE FROM CEMETERY AT VENDEL, SWEDEN.Copyright, A.T.A. Sweden.

figures of winged griffins from eastern Europe, which gradually changedto a horse with a burden on its back and finally to a horse with a ridercarrying a spear, which came to be identified with Wodan.60 Yet anothersource of inspiration was that of the Emperor on his horse, as shown ongold medallions of the Roman period. This figure of imperial power wasadapted with enthusiasm by the barbarian North and transformed into apowerful pagan symbol, which incorporated much of the imagery asso-ciated with Wodan/Odin. Professor Hauck has recently produced amonumental study of a number of these gold bracteates.61 He interpretssome of them as representations of Odin as a creator figure and a shaman-magician with the gift of healing, while some he believes to show Odinwith his spear in company with a young warrior, whom he identifies withBalder. This subject is too complex to be discussed here, but there is nodoubt that the message of the bracteates, studied with the aid of much-enlarged photographs which make the amazing detail of these tiny picture-amulets visible, is an important source of evidence for the character of theversatile northern god in the period before the Viking Age.

19

20 THE BATTLE GOD

When Odin appears as a rider in the barbaric setting of the Gotlandstones, it seems as if new influences have also come in from the easternregions visited by the Vikings for trade and plunder. In Russia and southeastern Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries they lived a life underaristocratic warrior-leaders very like that of the earlier heroic age in thewest, the time when Wodan's cult developed into vigorous life and leftits mark on heroic literature. In Bulgaria, Yugo-Slavia and Romania thereis a vast number of stones raised to commemorate another god of the dead,the mysterious Thracian Rider or Hero God.62 We see him there as a rideron his horse (Plate 12), either standing motionless or galloping withhis cloak streaming out behind him, and on many of the stones he isgreeted by a female figure who holds a cup. In this we have close parallelswith the Gotland scenes (Plate 13), particularly as the Hero, like the warrior

12. STONE FROMZIATNA PANEGA,BULGARIA

(2nd-3rd century A.D.).Copyright, National

ArchaeologicalMuseum, Sofia.

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13. STONE FROM HALLE BROA,GOTLAND, of Viking Age date

(Lindqvist, Gotlands Bildsteine).

14. VOTIVE STONE TO HEROSMANIMAZOS, FROM TOMIS, ROMANIA.

Copyright, Institute of Archaeology,Academy R.S.R., Bucarest.

2 1

figure on the Gotland stones, also appears in hunting scenes with dogs,while on a stone from Tomis in Romania (Plate 14) we even have thewelcoming scene, as in Gotland, combined with the ship which symbolisesthe journey to the Other World.63

It seems to me very probable that one of the inspirations behind theGotland stones may be sought in this region of south-eastern Europe,where surviving representations of the Thracian Rider can be numberedin four figures, and where almost every village seems once to have possessedhis likeness. We know that Scandinavians, and particularly those fromeastern Scandinavia, were in this region as traders and fighters in theViking Age, serving as mercenaries in the Byzantine forces and also fightingunder the leadership of men like Svyatoslav of Kiev. The Thracian godwhom they must have encountered on these memorial stones, which datefrom about the second to the fourth century A.D., is something of a mys-tery, but he is known to have been a chthonic deity, who conducted his

THE BATTLE GOD

followers to the Other World. Kazarov, the Bulgarian scholar who is theauthority on this subject64 claimed that the rider sometimes representedthe god and sometimes the dead man - in one case at least a dead woman- so that we have the same ambiguity here as seems to prevail on theGotland stones. Sometimes the inscriptions on the stones identify himwith the dead whom the stone commemorates, but sometimes he is clearlyregarded as a divine figure, given the titles or attributes of Ares, Apollo,Dionysius or Asklepius, so that we have association with war, inspiration,ecstasy, healing and the underworld, as in the cult of Odin. Pettazonitraces the Thracian deity back to the god identified with Hermes whomthe earlier Thracians are said to have worshipped,65 and Hermes is equiva-lent to the Roman Mercury, who in turn was identified by the Romanswith Wodan. The Thracian deity was the divine ancestor of kings, but bythe time the memorial stones were raised he seems to have developed intoa figure of popular worship.

Whether there was ever a direct link between the early GermanicWodan and this Thracian god is a question I cannot venture into here,but I do claim a link between the iconography of these monuments andthose in Gotland which represent Odin entering Valhalla. This could bedue to the fact that the Scandinavians themselves realised that the ridingdeity whom they saw in so many places in the Balkan countries resembledtheir own god of the dead, so that they were inspired to new representationsof Odin conducting the dead to his realm on the memorial stones ofGotland. This island lies on the direct route between Scandinavia and thesouth-east through Russia, and many of the men to whom memorialswere raised probably died in the eastern region or returned from travelsthere to die at home.

Up to now I have been largely concerned with questions of symbolismand iconography, because I feel that it is important to realise that theconception of the god of battle in the Viking Age has changed and deve-loped as a result of outside influence, and that representations in metaland stone, wood and tapestry, were as necessary for the spread of his cultas the literary traditions which they help us to understand. But how muchdid all this mean to the ordinary Viking who followed a career of fightingand plundering and trade in the Viking Age?

There seems little doubt that individuals had their own favourite cults,as Hrafnkell is represented as worshipping Freyr in Hrafnkels Saga and

22

OF THE VIKINGS 23

Thorolf Mostrarskegg Thor in Eyrbyggja Saga, and that the chosen deitieswould be called on to protect them in battle, while their symbols wouldbe carried as amulets to give protection and ward off ill-luck. But the exis-tence of a separate battle-cult among warrior leaders in particular,associated with the god Odin, seems to have continued with some vigouruntil late in the Viking Age, and there is evidence from eastern Europe tosupport this.66 We have the accounts of those who met the Vikings ontheir eastern expeditions, particularly Arabs and Byzantine Greeks,which in some cases are practically contemporary with the events describedor based on the work of earlier authors who are reliable witnesses. Suchare the very detailed accounts of the lightning campaign in the neighbour-hood of the Caspian Sea in the mid tenth century, of which Norse andRussian literature has preserved nothing, and of the account by Leo theDeacon of Svyatoslav's campaign in the Balkans in 971. As well as theimpressive account of the fighting qualities of the Scandinavian invaders,the more significant because it comes from what were in the main hostilewitnesses, of their loyalty to one another in spite of tendencies to quarrel,their determination to win glory, and their reluctance to accept defeat,their reliance on their swords and their ships, we learn something alsofrom these outside observers as to how their religious beliefs affected theirbehaviour as fighting men.

There is general agreement that their method of fighting was ferocious,and that it was the fury of their onslaught and their utter fearlessness thatmade them such formidable opponents. Leo the Deacon, who accompaniedthe emperor John on the expedition into Bulgaria, strongly disapprovedof their methods on their first meeting with the Byzantine forces outsidePerejaslavec; they fought, he tells us, like wild beasts, howling in a strangeand disagreeable manner.67 On another occasion68 he declares that theyseemed driven on by ferocity and blind madness, and fought furiously,howling the while; he scornfully compares them with the Byzantines, whorelied on the arts of war, by which he means their skill in technology, theirtrained cavalry and war machines, splendid organisation and amplesupplies. However for all this his honest account of the campaign makesit clear that these well-trained and equipped Byzantine troops came verynear to a terrible defeat.

One of his most interesting comments is that the followers of Svyatoslavbeseiged in Dristra were never taken prisoner, since when they foundtheir position hopeless they would plunge the sword into the breast and

2 4 THE BATTLE GOD

bring life to an end; the reason he gives for this is that they believed that ifkilled by their enemies they would be forced to serve them in Hades, andas they could not endure the thought of such servitude they gave themselveswillingly to death, on account of the belief prevailing among them. Thisattitude to capture is borne out by another account, that of the Arabwriter Ibn Miskawaih,69 who describes the eastern Vikings as men of` vast frames and great courage', who refused to acknowledge defeat butfought on until they had slain the enemy or were themselves slain. Thiswriter in his vigorous chronicle of the events of the ninth century gives adetailed and apparently reliable account of the capture of Bardha'a in theCaspian region by these people whom he knew as the Rus. He describestheir exploits in raiding and plundering from their ships, which they hadbrought from Kiev down the Dnieper and then across the Black Sea, upthe Don and down the Volga to the Caspian. Finally he gives a graphicaccount of their final retreat after a siege, when a serious epidemic had soweakened them that they could no longer hold out against increasingattack by local forces. Before they left the town there was furious fighting,and Ibn Miskawaih recounts an incident which was described to him, hesays, by a number of those who witnessed it. Five of the Rus were surround-ed in an orchard and defended themselves magnificently against an over-whelming attack, steadfastly refusing to surrender and killing many timestheir own number. Four of them fell, and the last survivor was a handsomebeardless boy, son of one of the leaders; the Moslems were most anxiousto take him alive, but when he saw that he could not resist capture heclimbed a tree and slashed at himself with his sword until he fell dead tothe ground.

It is hardly surprising that the Rus were unwilling to be captured, sinceif taken by the Moslems, their fate would be slavery, and they themselveswere accomplished slave-traders and knew exactly what indignities thatentailed, particularly for handsome aristocratic boys. The fate of thosetaken by the Byzantines might well be mutilation or blindness, as after theattack on Constantinople in 1043, when a number of their Slav allies metwith this treatment.70 I think it possible that Leo the Deacon misunder-stood his informants when he stated that the religion of the Vikingstaught them that they must serve their slayers in the next world, but thathe was right in attributing their readiness to slay themselves rather thanfall into enemy hands to their religious beliefs; such a deed would givethem into the power of Odin as a battle sacrifice, and would mean a

OF THE VIKINGS 25

splendid entry into the Other World, as well as enduring glory in this onewhen the tale of their exploits was recounted at their funeral and toldamong their countrymen at home.

The importance of funeral rites for those who fell in battle is stressedby both Arab and Greek chroniclers. After many men had died in Bardha'a,the survivors were careful to bury them with their weapons before leavingthe town by night; we know this because it is recorded that many of thelocal inhabitants opened their graves after the army had left in order toget hold of the swords buried with the dead, which were in great demandfor their sharpness and excellence and which Ibn Miskawaih stated werestill in use at the time when he was writing.7l Even more impressive isLeo the Deacon's description of a great funeral ceremony outside thewalls of the ill-fated city of Dristra on the Danube,72 where the Rus putup a heroic defence. Their leader Ingmar, second in command to Svyato-slav, had been slain along with many others fighting outside the walls,and Leo tells us that by the light of the full moon they came out of thefortress the night before the battle to search for their dead. They madepiles of logs near the wall and lit great fires, on which they burned thebodies of the slain; they then sacrificed a number of their prisoners, bothmen and women, and also killed young animals and cocks, which theythrew into the Danube, while they made drink-offerings to the departed,` according to their own manner', and he comments once more at thispoint on the wildness and ferocity of this strange people. Cedrenus,drawing his information from an earlier historian, John Skylitzes,73 alsomentions wild, spine-chilling wailing of the Rus, heard mourning theirdead, which was more like the howling of beasts than the lamentation ofhuman beings.

From the descriptions of Greek and Arab writers it is thus possible togain a vivid glimpse of tenth century Vikings in their adventures on theeastern road through Russia to the Black Sea, the Caspian and the Danube.We have the famous account of the ship-burning on the Volga in 921 byIbn Fadlan, a writer of acknowledged reliability, who left an account ofhis journey from Bagdad to the court of the King of the Bulgars on theMiddle Volga, and what he saw of the Rus there. The complete manuscriptof this was discovered in 1938, since when much scholarly work has beendone on it.74 Ibn Fadlan describes the burning of a Rus chief on his ship,and the slaying of a young slave girl who volunteered to die at his funeral.She was despatched according to the rites of Odin, for she was stabbed

26 THE BATTLE GOD

and strangled at the same time, and before her death she took part in astrange ceremony where she was lifted to look over a kind of door, whichseems to represent the door to the Other World. She declared that shecould see her kinsfolk feasting there, and that her master was calling herto join him. Other Arab writers mention that the Rus were accustomedto the death of wife or concubine at the funeral of a leading man amongstthem, either burning her body with his on the pyre or burying her alive inthe grave.75 This is of considerable interest in view of a number of storiesof the voluntary death of a wife or a betrothed, either by burning or entryinto the burial mound, which are found in Old Norse literature associatedwith the heroes of Odin.76 There is also some archaeological evidencefrom graves of the western Vikings, in particular from the Isle of Man andOrkney,77 for sacrifice of a woman at a warrior's funeral. John Skylitzesclaims that after one of the desperate battles in Bulgaria in 971 the Greeksfound the bodies of women in armour among the slain.78 I have foundno confirmation of this in Leo the Deacon or elsewhere, but it is of interesti n view of the accounts of princesses who were said to put on armour likea man and take part in battle in a number of the Fornaldar Sögur (such asHervbr in Hervarar Saga and Brynhild in various versions of the Völsunglegend).

There are other scattered pieces of evidence which are in keeping withwhat we know of the cult of Odin in Scandinavian sources. One of theByzantine emperors, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, gives an account ofthe hazardous journey of the Rus down the Dnieper, and tells us that whenthey had safely passed the rapids and escaped attack by the Pechinegsthey would stop to make sacrifices on St. Gregory's Island, setting up aring of arrows round an oak, and killing a number of cocks, casting lotsto decide which birds should die.79 This recalls the evidence for sacrificingprisoners according to lot, with the emphasis on birds as symbols of Odin,and with archaeological evidence for bird sacrifice in a number of thegreat ship-funerals of Scandinavia in the Viking Age.80 Thus it is possibleto find confirmation in sources outside Scandinavia for practices associatedwith Odin's cult in the tenth century, together with a vivid picture ofViking warriors as strong and fearless fighters, untiring in the pursuit ofglory - and also, it must be confessed, of riches by plunder and pillage;the evidence is the more convincing because it seems unlikely that theGreek and Arab writers concerned could have been familiar with thetraditions of the heroic literature of the North.

OF THE VIKINGS 27

It may well be that journeys among tribes and peoples more barbaricthan themselves and the continuous fighting which they encountered in theEast encouraged the Vikings to return to the worship of the god of battlewith greater fervour than before, and that some of this tenth centuryenthusiasm has found its way back to Scandinavia, to inspire the literatureand art of the late Viking Age. Certainly the cult of the battle god appearsto have been very much alive towards the close of the heathen period,probably for as long as the heroic conditions of life which had first inspiredit continued.

In the picture of certain aspects of Odin's cult given here, I am veryconscious of having only touched on the fringe of an immense subject,on which a great deal remains to be done. It is encouraging however torealise that as one type of source evidence seems to have been exhausted,a new approach may throw light on work done years before.

The cunning god of death and battle who urged men to strife, gave luckto his chosen warriors, and conducted them to his own abode after death,honouring courage and an heroic end, has long been remembered becauseOdin was also the god of poetry and eloquence. The exploits of the heroicdead were remembered at funeral ceremonies and celebrated in poetry,and the evidence of the literature and of the Gotland memorial stonesimplies that it was obligatory among his followers to rehearse and com-memorate the exploits of past heroes; thus it is due to the power that heonce possessed over the minds of men that we have been left with suchabundance of heroic tradition from Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia,even if this only forms a very small part of what flourished in pre-Christiantimes.

We may give him thanks for this, for the heroic world of the North isworthy of remembrance, and without some understanding of the cult ofthe god of battle we shall comprehend little of the art and literature ofthe Viking Age.

2 8

The costs of the G. N. Garmonsway Memorial Lecture are defrayedfrom a fund set up in the University of York by Mrs. Patricia Garmonswayin memory of her husband, the late Professor Norman Garmonsway.

The publication of this first lecture is made possible by a grant fromthe Sessions Book Trust of York, (established in 1966 to assist educational,religious and charitable publications), by gifts from friends of the lateProfessor Garmonsway and from the Pilgrim Trust, made in response tothe Garmonsway Appeal.

The Editors are glad to record their gratitude for these various actsof generosity.

Grateful acknowledgement is also made to the Dean and Chapter ofYork Minster for granting permission to use the medieval tile design onthe front cover.

Author's AcknowledgementsMy thanks are due to the Gulbenkian Trust for the award of a Calouste

Gulbenkian Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, for workon the Eastern Vikings, and to the School of Oriental and African Studies,University of London, for the award of the Louis H. Jordan TravellingFellowship, which enabled me to study material in S.E. Europe.

I am grateful for the help I have received in obtaining illustrations fromthe following: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd.; Paul Hamlyn; the Trustees of theBritish Museum; the Manx Museum, Douglas; Antikvarisk-TopografiskaArkivet, Stockholm; Gotlands Fornsal, Visby; the Bulgarian Archaeo-logical Museum, Sofia; the Romanian Institute of Archaeology, Bucarest;and Mrs. Sonia Hawkes, the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford. I shouldlike in addition to acknowledge the help which I have obtained fromdiscussions with Professor Karl Hauck of the University of Munster( Westf.) and Professor Peter Paulsen of the Württembergische Landes-museum, Stuttgart, on the symbolism of the Germanic Battle-God.Finally it gives me much pleasure to thank Mr. S. A. J. Bradley of theDepartment of English and Related Literature in the University of Yorkfor assistance and encouragement throughout, and Mr. William Sessionsand the staff of The Ebor Press for their efficiency and courtesy.

THE BATTLE GOD

Editors' Acknowledgements

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NOTES

1 Tacitus, Annals xiii, 57 (A.D. 58).

2 Evidence from the names of the days of the week and from inscriptionsof the Roman period can be found in J. A. MacCulloch, Mythologyof All Races 11 (Eddic), London 1930, and more fully in J. de Vries,Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte 11, Berlin 1956 under the sectionson the various gods.

3 On an inscription at Housesteads on the Roman Wall, of thirdcentury date (De Vries, op. cit., 11 ff.)

4 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Pagan Scandinavia, London 1967, 69 ff.

5 P. Gelling and H. R. E. Davidson, The Chariot of the Sun, London1967, 31 ff.

6 Ibid. fig. 14 (i).

7 E. A. E. Reymond, `The Primeval Djeba', Journal of Egyptian Archae-ology 48 (1962), 81-88 and `The Origin of the Spear', ibid. 49 (1963),140-46, 50 (1964), 133-38. I owe the references to Mr. Rundle Clark.

8 Plutarch, Romulus xxix. G. Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion,Chicago 1970, I, 23 ff. makes clear the controversy between thoseclaiming that the sacred lance preceded the anthropomorphic imageof the war-god and those who insist that the lance was originally theweapon of an unseen deity. I think it possible to steer a middle coursebetween these two conflicting theories, and here the Egyptian evidenceis helpful.

9 Völuspá 24; Gungnir is not mentioned here by name, but we are told:'Odin let fly, and shot over the host: that was the first great war inthe world'.

10 M. Gelling, 'Place-names and Anglo-Saxon Paganism,' Universityof Birmingham Historical Journal 8 (1961), 7-25.

11 E.g., T. C. Lethbridge, A Cemetery at Shudy Camps, CambridgeAntiquarian Society (N.S.5, 1936), 12. He suggested that a bentspearhead beside a small child might be due to the keeping upof an old custom in children's burials after it had lapsed for adults.Cf. Proc. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 13 (1959), 3; Hollingworthand O' Reilly, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Girton College, Cambridge,Cambridge 1925, grave 58, 8.

12 B. Faussett, Inventorium Sepulchrale, London 1856, pl. xii, 6, 7. Forthe hammer amulet, H. R. Ellis Davidson, 'Thor's Hammer' Folklore76 (1965), pl. 1.

2 9

3 0 THE BATTLE GOD

13 In Flateyjarbók 11, 61 Eirik is given a rod by Odin to fling over hisenemy's host, and it becomes a spear in the air. In Eyrbyggja Sagaxliv the custom is remembered as a lucky action before battle, althoughOdin is not mentioned.

14 Annales Ryenses, Scriptores 16, 398; cf. P. Paulsen, AlamannischeAdelsgrdber von Niederstotzingen, Stuttgart 1967, 120.

15 A stone found at Stenkyrka Church, see S. Lindqvist, `Bildstensfyndvid Kyrkorestaureringar', Gotländskt Arkiv 28 (1956), 21 ff.

16 Paulsen, (note 14 above). Paulsen has also written on the spear asa Christian relic: `Flügellanzen. Zum archäeologischen Horizont derWiener sancta lancea,' Frühmittelalterliche Studien 3 (1969), 289-312.

17 I suggested the metal stand from Sutton Hoo as a possible example in`Archaeology and Beowulf', (Beowulf and its Analogues, Garmonsway,Simpson and Davidson, London 1968, 354) on the basis of its originalreconstruction in the British Museum (R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, TheSutton Hoo Ship Burial, B. M. 1968, 20-21. More recently howeverfurther work has made it probable that the figure of the stag does notbelong here, but was originally on the whetstone `sceptre'.

18 M. Eliade, `The God who Binds', Images and Svmbols, trans. P.Mairet, London 1961, 103-5.

19 This is roughly formed from three triangles linked together (withvariations). It is set beside figures of Odin on the Gotland stones ofthe Viking Age, and can be clearly seen on the stone from Andreas,Isle of Man. The term valknut survived in Norway as a weaving termfor this device (G. Gjessing, `Hesten i forhistorisk Kunst og Kultur,'Viking 7 (1943), 81.

20 Njals Saga, clvii; cf. N. Lukman, `The Raven Banner and the ChangingRavens,' Classica et Mediaevalia 19 (1958), 140 ff.

21 H. R. Ellis Davidson, The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford1962. References to the gift of a sword by Odin are in Völsunga Sagaiii and Hyndluljóð 2.

22 W. Krause, Was Man in Runen ritze?, Halle-Saale, 1935, 48; G.Marstrander, 'De Gotiske Runeminnesmerker', Norsk Tidsskrift f:Sprogvidenskap 3 (1929), 35 f.

23 Tacitus, Germania x.

24 Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico i, 54.25 R. Elliott, Runes: an Introduction, Manchester 1963, 66. See also

C. L. Wrenn, `Some early Anglo-Saxon cult symbols, ' Medieval andLinguistic Studies in Honour of F. P. Magoun, Jr., ed. J. B. Bessingerand R. P. Creed, New York 1965, 40 ff.

26 See note 1 above.

OF THE VIKINGS

27 A. Anderson, `Det femte store mosefund,' Kuml 1 (1951), 9-22.

28 M. Ørsnes, `The Weapon Find in Ejsbøl Muse at Haderslev,' ActaArchaeologica 34 (1963), 232-47.

29 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, Harmons-worth 1964, 51 ff.

30 Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico I, 54.

31 Alcuin's Life of St. Willibrord, trans. C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-SaxonMissionaries in Germany, London 1954, 10.

32 Suggested by Kemble in his edition of The Dialogues of Salomon andSaturnus, London 1848, 192, 197. For comment on this source, seeC. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature, Oxford 1967, 162 ff.

33 Gautreks Saga vii.

34 S. Lindqvist, Gotlands Bildsteine, Stockholm 1941, fig. 81.

35 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Scandinavian Mythology, London 1970, 29.

36 S. C. Hawkes, H. R. E. Davidson and C. Hawkes, `The FingleshamMan', Antiquity 39 (1965), 17-32.

37 R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, `The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial,' Proc. SuffolkInstitute of Archaeology 25 (1949), 49 ff.

38 A. Alföldi, `Cornuti, a Teutonic contingent in the service of Constan-tine the Great,' Dumbarton Oaks Papers xiii (1959), 171 ff.

39 Acta Archaeologica 17 (1946), 98 ff.

40 Tacitus, Germania 24: translation from Loeb edition from the Latin`inter gladios se atque infestas frameas saltu iaciunt.'

41 Ibid. 45.

42 Davidson, Gods and Myths, 66 ff.

43 Paulsen (note 14 above), 140 ff.

44 Davidson, Pagan Scandinavia, 99-100.

45 `The Finglesham Man' (note 36 above), 25.

46 Bruce-Mitford (note 37 above), 47 ff.

47 J. Werner, `Adlersymbolik und Totenkult,' Beiträge zur Archaeologiedes Attila-Reiches, Munich 1965, 69 ff.

48 Orkneyinga Saga viii; Ragnars Saga Loðbrokar xviii; Saxo Gram-maticus i x, 463; Reginsmál 26.

49 G. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, London 1969, 136; J. S. P.Tatlock, `The Dragons of Wessex and Wales' Speculum 8 (1933),223 ff; H. R. E. Davidson, `The Hill of the Dragon', Folklore 61(1950), 179-80.

31

32 THE BATTLE GOD

50 M. Olsen, Norges Indskrifter med de ældre Runer, Christiania 1914-24,111, 6, fig. 2. The two figures of Mars and Victory are found togetheron a sword from a Vandal grave in Poland: see R. Hachman, TheGermanic Peoples, trans. J. Hogarth, London 1971, figs. 62-3.

51 Davidson, Gods and Myths, 64 ff.52 H. R. Ellis Davidson, `The Smith and the Goddess' Friihmittelalter-

liche Studier 3 (1969), 216-26. Professor Hauck's work on the inter-pretation of the casket, discussed at the symposium at Munster atwhich this paper was given, has not vet been published in full.

53 The interpretation of the runes on this side of the casket by HerthaMarquart (accepted by Krause) begins with the word Herh-os,` goddess of the shrine or sacred place': W. Krause, `Erta, ein anglischerGott,' Zeitschrift fur Sprachwissenschaft 5 (1959), 46-54.

54 A comparison may be made with the Gotland stone from Alskog,Tjängvide, Sweden (Lindgvist, note 34 above, fig. 137), where theknot is shown twice, in one case under the belly of the eight-leggedhorse.

55 H. R. Ellis Davidson, `The Sword at the Wedding,' Folklore 71(1960), 9 ff.

56 Most of the stones are included in Lindqvist's two volumes (note 34above) but some discovered since that publication have appeared inGotländskt Arkiv.

57 Skáldskaparmál (second section of the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson),i.

58 Davidson, Pagan Scandinavia, 130.59 W. Holmkvist, 'Zu Herkunst einiger germanischer Figurendarstel-

lungen der Volkwanderungszeit', IPEK 12 (1938), 78-95.60 H. Kühn, 'Die Reiterscheiben der Volkwanderungszeit', ibid. 95-115.61 K. Hauck, Goldbracteaten Gus Sievern, Munich 1970; another study

of the bracteates is to appear shortly.62 G. I. Kazarov, Die Denkmäler des thrakischen Reitergottes in Bul-

garien, Budapest 1938.63 On a stone in the National Museum, Bucarest, from Tomis, dedicated

to the Hero Manimazos.64 G. I. Kazarov, `Zum Kult des thrakischen Reiters in Bulgaria,'

Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx Universitdt, Leipzig 3(1953-54), 135 ff.

65 R. Pettazzoni, Essays on the History of Religions, Leiden 1954, 81 ff.66 I hope to publish a detailed account of this evidence shortly.67 Leo the Deacon viii, 123.

OF THE VIKINGS 33

68 Ibid. ix, 5151-52.

69 Ibn Miskawaih, The Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate, trans. Amedrozand Margoliouth, Oxford 1921, v, 67 and 73 ff.

70 Cedrenus, Niebur, Bonn, 759 D, 553.

71 Ibn Miskawaih, op. cit. 73.

72 Leo the Deacon ix, 553.

73 Cedrenus (note 70 above).74 H. M. Smyser, in Medieval and Linguistic Studies (note 25, 114-15

above), gives the main editions of Ibn Fadlan's work.75 Hudud al-Alam, Regions of the World, trans. Minorsky, Oxford 1937,

8, 428; Birkeland, Nordens Historie i Middelalderen etter ArabiskeKilder, Oslo 1954, 17 (Ibn Rustah); 33 (Al-Masudi).

76 H. R. Ellis, The Road to Hel, Cambridge 1943, 50 ff.

77 G. Bersu and D. M. Wilson, Three Viking Graves in the Isle ofMan (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series 1 1966),51; the example in Orkney was excavated by a Norwegian archaeolo-gical expedition in 1968.

78 Cedrenus (note 70 above).

79 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, trans.Jenkins, Budapest 1949, 61.

80 Gelling and Davidson (note 5 above), 174-76.