[544] For analogies to this belief cf. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 112 ff. Especially interesting parallels are to be found in the region of the Congo; cf. Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, Vol. XVI. pp. 330, 577.
[545] Frequently used in poetry. The god's full name seems to have been Yngvifreyr or Ingunarfreyr, both of which occur occasionally (cf. The Origin of the English Nation, p. 231).
[546] We may compare Ibn Fadhlan's account of the king of the (Scandinavian) Russians, who never put his foot to the ground. His duties also were discharged by a viceroy. Cf. Frähn, Ibn Foszlan's und anderer Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer Zeit, pp. 21, 23.
[547] The priesthood figures very prominently in Tacitus' Germania. But it is not safe to assume that the conditions described there are necessarily more primitive than those which we find in much later times in the North.
[548] Tacitus, Hist., IV 15.
[549] Among the Ostrogoths during their war with the Romans (from 535 onwards) we meet with several kings of non-royal birth; but the conditions were altogether abnormal. One king (Eraric) was a Rugian and appointed apparently by his own followers.
[550] E.g. Athalaric the grandson of Theodric and Walthari the son of Waccho, king of the Langobardi. Aethelberht, king of Kent, must have succeeded as a child. Heardred, the son of Hygelac, is represented as very young.
[551] Cf. especially Tacitus, Germ. 39; Ann. I 51.
[552] For references see Folk-Lore, XI, pp. 280, 282 f., 300.
[553] Cf. especially Gylf. 14, Yngl. S. 2, Gautreks S. 7.