[142] It is probable that the mention of the tribes in Jordanes is taken from two different sources; for he begins by saying that Ptolemy only has the names of seven, without mentioning any of these, and later on he gives a whole series of others, which may have been added from another author who supplemented the one from whom the mention of Ptolemy is taken.
[143] Jordanes here repeats Ptolemy, from whom the name of Scandza, == Scandia, is taken (and the statement as to the shape of the island ?), while Procopius has nothing about it.
[144] The name appears in the runic inscriptions to be often a designation of the author of the inscription. Sophus Bugge thought that the Eruli had obtained their knowledge of runes from the Goths, and that they kept them a secret (this reappears in the word “run” itself, which means secret), especially in the leading families, who turned them to account. During their centuries of roving life they carried the knowledge of runes with them to various parts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In this way the uniformity of language in the inscriptions from widely separated places may also be explained.
[145] It appears to have been a general custom among the Germans to put old people to death (cf. [p. 18]). Herodotus [i. 216] relates of the Massagetæ, who may have been a Germanic tribe, that “when any one has grown very old all his relatives come together and slaughter him, and with him other small cattle; they then cook the flesh and hold a banquet. This is considered by them the happiest end. But they do not eat one who dies of sickness, but bury him underground, and lament that he did not live to be slaughtered.”
[146] This widespread form of anthropophagy is due to the superstition that by eating something of another, beast or man, or particular parts, e.g., the heart (cf. Sigurd Favnesbane), one acquired the peculiar properties of the other, such as strength, courage, goodness, etc. It is thus a similar idea to that in the Christian sacrament.
[147] They were also called O T maps; O T being the initials of Orbis Terrarum.
[148] Cf. Wuttke, 1854.
[149] The text has “ovium” (== sheep), but this is doubtless a copyist’s error for “ovum” (== egg). This may remind us of the Œonæ of Mela and Pliny, who lived on the eggs of fen-fowl (see above, [p. 92]).
[150] Cf. the “Origo Gentis Langobardorum” (of the second half of the seventh century), where the “Winnilians,” who were later called Langobards, live originally on an island called “Scadanan,” or in another MS. “Scadan.” The latter name, with the addition of a Germanic word for meadow or island, might become Scadanau, Scadanauge, or Scadanovia. Cf. also Fredegar Scholasticus’s abbreviated history after Gregory of Tours, where it is related that the Langobards originated in “Schatanavia,” or in one MS. “Schatanagia.”
[151] It is difficult to understand how Paulus has managed to transfer the legend to the North. It might be thought that the idea, which already appears in Herodotus, that the people of the North sleep for the six winter months (see [p. 20]), is connected with it. Plutarch [“De defectu oraculorum,” c. 18] relates that in the ocean beyond Britain there was according to the statement of Demetrius an island “where Cronos was imprisoned and guarded, while he slept, by Briareus. For sleep had been used as a bond, and there were many spirits about him as companions and servants.” According to another passage in Plutarch [“De facie in orbe Lunæ,” 941] this island was north-west of the isle of Ogygia, which was five days’ sail west of Britain. It is possible that this myth of the sleeping Cronos has also helped to locate the legend of the Seven Sleepers on the north-west coast of Europe. Viktor Rydberg [1886, i. pp. 529 ff.] thought that the legend and its localisation in the North might be connected with Mimer’s seven sons, who in the Vǫlospǫ’s description (st. 45) of Ragnarok were to spring up at the sound of the horn Gjallar, after having lain asleep for long ages. But this interpretation of the strophe: “Leika Mims synir” is improbable.