The Saga from which this incident has been derived was written by a Norwegian, who certainly held Thor to be the equal, if not the superior, of Odin. It is not unlike the magian scene at the creation of the world, when to every good thing decreed by Ormusd, an evil one was joined by Ahriman. That Odin and Thor were rival deities, and that they gave rise to hostile sects, is evident. And there is another point from which this hostility may be viewed. The warriors who went to Valhalla were all of noble birth; they were jarls or herser, were rich and powerful. But what became of meaner freemen and thralls (serfs) who fell in battle? They went to Thrudheim to the palace of Thor, Bilskirner[[55]], which that the owner might not be outdone, had the same number of gates as the palace of Odin, viz. five hundred and forty. Does not this prove that Thor was the native, Odin the foreign, god?—that the former belonged to the vanquished, the latter to the victorious people? The very name of Thor shows that he was a Celtic divinity. He is the Taranis of Lucan, the Toron of the Scottish Highlands, and the Tiermes of the Lapps.[[56]]
The visit of Odin to the giant Vafthrudnir, and his contest with him[[57]], may also serve to illustrate his boasted knowledge, as well as power. Frigga, his wife, was alarmed when she first heard of her husband’s intention to visit “that learned giant.” He conquers, indeed, in the strife, but not through any superiority of knowledge: it is rather by an unworthy artifice.
Frigga, the wife of Odin, was a distinguished personage in the northern Olympus. She is the queen and mother of the gods. Her palace, called Fensale, was magnificent; and it was a sort of drawing-room for all the goddesses. Her prescience was great; she could foresee the future, and she was invoked by women in childbed.
According to the vulgar genealogy,—that which the Odinists, in opposition to the Thorists, were anxious to establish,—Thor was the eldest son of Odin and Frigga. Even in Sweden he was, after Odin, the first in rank among the gods. We may even doubt whether by one sect of the Odinists he was not esteemed the first; for his image at Upsal, where he is represented seated on a throne, with the attributes of divine majesty about him,—while Odin, the war god, is standing at his right hand with a drawn sword, and Frigga, the goddess of production, on his left, with the fruits of nature in her hands,—clearly establishes his predominancy. His strength was unrivalled; and his structure so large, that no horse could carry him: he always travelled in a chariot drawn by two he-goats. He had three treasures, all unrivalled, all made by the Dwarfs. Of these the most famous was his hammer, called Miölner (the miller, the bruiser), which, when thrown by his powerful hand, was irresistible; yet, however far it was thrown, it always returned to him. Formidable as it was, it was so small that he could put it in his pocket. No hands but his could touch it; nor even he without his wonderful steel gloves, the second of his treasures. The third was a belt,—Melgingandur, which doubled his strength whenever he girded it on. Above all the gods, he was the enemy of the Rimthurser, or Frost Giants, against whom, with his dreaded weapon, he waged unceasing war. The very glare of his eyes was tremendous: it was lightning; and lightning was emitted by his chariot wheels as he rolled along. Every day did he make the circuit of Asgard, to drive away the giants.
Of this mythos an interpretation is scarcely necessary. Miölner is his thunderbolt. His antipathy to the giants—the powers alike of darkness and of cold, and his daily circuit round Asgard, sufficiently explain themselves. His gloves and belt were an embellishment, which have no necessary connection with his nature. The latter is to be found in many oriental fictions, (the Arabian Nights, for instance,) and in many also current throughout Europe. His wife, Sif, is another illustration of the mythos. She is held to be a personification of the summer earth, and is represented in the act of distributing fruits and flowers. She, like her husband, was peculiarly worshipped in Norway. By a former husband she had a son—Uller, the god of hunters, whose residence was Ydale, or the Dewy Valley.[[58]] The most wonderful of her peculiarities was her hair, which was unrivalled for its beauty, and to which we have before adverted.
The fact, that Sif was worshipped in Norway alone, of all the Scandinavian regions, is another argument in favour of her husband’s supreme worship, long before the arrival of the Aser. A still stronger one is to be found in the fact, that Thrudheim, or Thrudvang, was the name of a district in that kingdom, no less than of a palace in heaven: and the strongest of all is, the peculiar affection with which he was regarded by the Norwegians, who held him to be their native, their tutelary god. He seems to have had some attributes of the Roman thunderer: the same day (Thursday), and the same planet (Jupiter), were sacred to him.
The giants of whom Thor was thus the natural, the everlasting enemy, were, as we have frequently observed, the offspring of Bergelmer, the old man of the mountains, and of his wife, who escaped the destruction of their race by the blood of Ymer, only because they chanced to be at sea, fishing, when the giant was slain. Repairing to the dark lower region which lies within the polar seas, they soon peopled it. Darkness, indeed, was the element of these beings: no sun enlightened or cheered them. When they visited earth, it was during the night, for then their power was the greatest. In magic they surpassed all other beings: they possessed many secrets, relating to the origin and nature of things, unknown to the wisest of the gods. With them the three Nornies, or destinies,—with them Vala herself, the great prophetess of heaven, was educated. They regarded the Aser with dislike,—as usurpers of a world which rightly belonged to them; and towards the sons of Askur, the creation of the gods, they bore equal dislike. This feeling, indeed, did not prevent the Aser from occasionally intermarrying with them; but the marriages were never well assorted. The king of this vast gloomy region was Ugarthiloc, or, more correctly, Utgardelok, viz. the Loke of Utgard, the monarch of the outer world. The notion entertained of this personage, and of the whole race, by the Danes, we have shown on a former occasion.[[59]] Wild as the legends there related may seem, they have their meaning. The reader will not fail to observe, that these original inhabitants of the earth—this people destroyed by the Aser, and exiled into the dreary wastes of the North, were the original Finnish, or rather Celtic race, whom the Goths expelled. The mythology of that race was full of giants; the Druids boasted of an acquaintance with nature denied to the rest of mankind; and the boast was probably a just one. The testimony borne by Cæsar to the extensive character of their knowledge, will abundantly illustrate this part of the historical question. Again, the Celts pretended to mystical science: in proof of it, look to Cæsar, to the traditions rife wherever the Celts have been located, and, above all, to the fragments of the ancient Welsh bards preserved in the Archæologia of the principality. The Eddas are filled with Celtic mythological allusions. For example, Celtic were the dwarfs or fairies of the benevolent class; while the malignant ones, who were a kind of evil genii, came with the Aser from a seat where the two principles of good and evil were a dominant article of the popular creed.
A personage no less important than Odin or Thor in the Scandinavian mythology, is Loke, or, as he is sometimes called, Luptur. He was important, not from his power, or his wisdom, or his dignity, but from his cunning, his treachery, his ill-nature, and the influence which he exercised alike over gods and men. He was the son of the giant Farbautè, by the enchantress Laufeya. Though of giant race, he obtained admission among the gods: indeed, as his manners were exceedingly pleasant, his mirth constant, and his wit unbounded, whenever they were not mixed with spite, he could not fail to be acceptable to so vulgar a race as the Aser. But when, as indeed was often the case, there was malice in his jokes, his laughter made the hearer shudder. Why the gods should tolerate him, is not very clear; but destiny was probably the reason which a devout Odinist would have assigned for it,—a very convenient reason in most systems of mythology. His birth might be traced to the origin of time; for, in some way or other, he was concerned with Odin in the work of creation, though the connection is very obscurely hinted at. He was a relation, we are told, of the Utgard Loke, or Ugarthiloc, the monarch of the frosty giants. These two personages were no doubt originally the same; but as the Celts and Aser had different notions of the same being, it was found necessary to introduce the two into the united creed. In virtue of his connection with them, Loke often visited the giants, by whom he was as little trusted as by the Aser. But he was sometimes useful to both; and, from the malice of his nature, no less than from his dislike to the gods, whom he at once feared and hated, he was frequently the ally of the giants in their efforts to recover their lost dominion, and to destroy the usurpers. If he thus brought the latter into danger, he alone could extricate them from it. In perfect accordance with the Eddas, he is thus described by Ohlenschlager:—
Amongst bright Asgard’s lords
Is one, As-Luptur hight.