The Elder Edda,[68] or the earliest collection of Scandinavian songs, makes reference to this confraternity of Odin and Lôké. At a banquet of the gods, Lôké, who had not been invited, found an entrance, and there reproached his fellow divinities for their hostility to him. Recalling the indissoluble tie of blood-friendship, he said:
“Father of Slaughter, [69] Odin, say,
Rememberest not the former day,
When ruddy in the goblet stood,
For mutual drink, our blended blood?
Rememberest not, thou then didst swear,
The festive banquet ne’er to share,
Unless thy brother Lok was there?”
In citing this illustration of the ancient rite, a modern historian of chivalry has said: “Among barbarous people [the barbarians of Europe] the fraternity of arms [the sacred brotherhood of heroes] was established by the horrid custom of the new brothers drinking each other’s blood; but if this practice was barbarous, nothing was farther from barbarism than the sentiment which inspired it.”[70]