The Riddles of Gestumblindi
Freyja - Lady of the Wildwood
Freyr in England - A historical assessment
Turning of the Wheel
News'flash'
Sources & Sayings
Welcome to the very first issue of a journal which is dedicated to the Vanir ! I would not argue against the notion that using the word 'journal' may be a little over the top for this little periodical but everything has to start somewhere. How will it grow ? Who can say ? Everything has its' season and I hope that this journal will 'flower' in time and that it will bring forth a good harvest of ideas, information and images. Time will tell if this 'seed' was 'planted' well. Enough gardening metaphors - I hope you enjoy this issue and would look forward to hearing from you whatever your views.
I am very grateful to all my contributors. Especial thanks to Thorskegga for 'The Wain' logo and to Jim Kirkwood for the front coverwork of the Vanadis. Any articles, poetry, artwork, etc on the Vanir would be warmly welcomed (but not any item which promotes hatred or division due to racial, gender or sexual orientation differences). Freyr's frith will not be threatened through this journal.
P. Deegan : Editor Fealcen Stow
Submissions and Subscriptions
Subscription is £2 for four issues. Subscriptions and/or submissions for publication are welcome and should be sent to: P. Deegan c/o Thorshof
The most frequently forgotten rule of the Norse religion is there are no rules. Our ancestors' faith varied from village to village, and a lord and a cowherd working on the same farm might have utterly incompatible beliefs. The myths we know today would have been known in many forms, with subtle changes of emphasis to cater for the different cults.
When Snorri recorded the Norse lore it must have been a terrible mess, two centuries after the conversion, merged with Christian beliefs and half forgotten by a community mostly satisfied with the new God and his multitude of saints. Invaluable as Snorri's Edda is, it is the product of a very tidy mind and the myths it contains have been desperately organised. To produce the gentle run of interlocking stories building up to the climax of Ragnarok, Snorri had to choose one religious cult to dominate the others. He choose a faith steeped in poetic tradition but almost alien to the shores of his native Iceland, the cult of Óðinn.
The effects of Snorri's housekeeping are unfortunate, we are now accustomed to seeing the Norse religion from one consistent angle: a fixed hierarchy with Óðinn the undisputed all-father enthroned at the top. It is now very difficult to envisage our gods in any other scenario. Of all the Norse gods Freyr has probably suffered the worst. In the Edda he is a hostage taken from the Vanir race, a minor god of little influence, powerless after the loss of his magic sword.
This image of Freyr is far removed from his status in the Vanir cult, where he would have been the supreme lord of all creation with Freyja at his side. Snorri writing in Iceland (where the cult of Freyr was well established) must have omitted many myths of the Vanir to allow Óðinn's myths to dominate his work. One obvious example is the reference to Freyr's battle with the giant Beli, which Snorri clearly knew but declined to relate in his usual detail.
The tale of Gestumblindi is of great importance as it shows a world very different from the ordered mythology of Snorri's Edda. The story is told of the court of king Heithrek who is dedicated to Freyr and clearly sees his patron as supreme above all the other gods .....
There was once a very wise king called Heithrek. Heithrek worshipped Freyr and every Yule he would choose the finest boar from his herds to be an offering to his god. On Yule eve the boar was brought into the hall and it was the custom for members of his court to swear oaths on its bristles. Heithrek himself had sworn that if any captive could ask a riddle the king could not answer, the man would be freed without charge. Heithrek was so wise that such mercy would be hard to win, for no man had yet asked a riddle the king could not answer.
One of the king's subjects, a fellow called Gestumblindi, had broken the kings laws and was called to appear before the royal council for sentence. Gestumblindi knew his only chance of freedom was to challenge Heithrek to a contest of riddles, but Gestumblindi was well aware that his wits could not match the king's. Gestumblindi made a sacrifice to Óðinn and promised many offerings if the god would aid him.
Shortly before Gestumblindi needed to leave for the king's court, a man appeared who shared his likeness. The stranger introduced himself as 'Gestumblindi' and explained that he would represent him. The two men changed clothes and they were so alike that one could not be told from the other.
The new Gestumblindi travelled to the king's court and presented himself to king Heithrek. Gestumblindi said he had come to make his peace. Heithrek asked if he was ready to be tried by the king's seven judges. Gestumblindi asked if there was any other path open to him and Heithrek replied that he could try asking riddles. If he could ask a riddle the king could not answer he could go free, but if the king answered them correctly and he ran out of riddles to ask, he would be handed over to the judges. Gestumblindi gave the matter some thought and reluctantly agreed to try the riddles, as he felt he had little hope before the judges.
A chair was brought up for Gestumblindi and the contest began. Each riddle Gestumblindi asked was answered quickly and accurately by wise king Heithrek. But Gestumblindi's store of riddles showed no sign of abating. Heithrek showed more and more respect for his humble opponent.
Eventually Gestumblindi asked the king his final riddle 'What did Óðinn whisper in Balder's ear before he was placed on his funeral pyre ?'. At these words the king realised the true identity of his opponent, as only Óðinn would know what he had told his dead son. Heithrek stood up and drew his sword crying 'I am sure that it was something scandalous and cowardly ! But only you know the answer, you evil creature !' Óðinn turned himself into a falcon to escape the king's wrath but his tail feathers were cut short when the king swung his sword. And this is why the falcon's tail has been short to this day.
Óðinn was enraged by this attempt on his life and arranged for the king's death that very night.
The most striking element of this story is king Heithrek's undisguised disgust when he realises that he is facing Óðinn. There is no sign of respect here for a benign all-father figure, Heithrek simply goes in for the kill, fully aware of what he is doing. Why he should do so is somewhat puzzling but Óðinn has beguiled the king with trickery, both by appearing as Gestumblindi and by asking his final and unanswerable riddle. There is also an element of hatred between this devotee of Freyr and Óðinn, as if the two faiths had a tradition of hostility in this region, which is seen elsewhere in myths concerning Óðinn and Þórr.
Heithrek's opinion of both Óðinn and his son Balder is very similar in style to the writings of Saxo Grammaticus (13th century Danish historian). Saxo was mercilessly damning of the Norse gods in general but he recorded a Danish version of the Balder myth in which Balder is clearly the villain and Hoder is the hero. The varying myths associated with the highly diverse Norse cults may be a clue as to how Saxo's tale arose.
A less obvious lesson in this tale is the connection between the wise king and his patron. Heithrek appears to be the wisest man in the land and he would expect Freyr to live up to the same standard. Thus for followers of the Vanir cult Freyr is the god of wisdom. It is interesting to note that Óðinn is unable to win the contest without resorting to trickery, despite the fact that his riddles are new to the king, and many of them could have several answers.
The tale of Gestumblindi is very reminiscent of the story of Ottar and Freyja. Again in this myth the devotee requires knowledge to present an appeal. Freyja aids Ottar by giving him magic to extend his memory. As Ottar's case is based on him knowing his ancestry no trickery is required because his reward is deserved. On the other hand Gestumblindi is a far more shady character, one can only assume that Heithrek was well justified in calling him before the royal judges.
In the two sources named below Gestumblindi's riddles are quoted in full, both the riddles and the answers, and they make very interesting reading on their own. Riddles would have been an important part of the Norse oral tradition, and many of the riddles in this story draw on mythological material.
Norse Poems, WH Auden & Paul B. Taylor (tr), Faber and Faber 1983
Northern Lights, legends, and sagas folk tales, Kevin Crossley-Holland (ed.), Faber and Faber 1987
Stories and Ballads of the Far Past, N. Kershaw, Cambridge University Press 1921
Edda, Snorri Sturluson. JM Dent & Sons 1987 (translated by Anthony Faulkes)
Poetic Edda translated by Lee M. Hollander University of Texas Press 1962
The History of the Danes Saxo Grammaticus (translated by P. Fisher) D.S. Brewer 1980
Far beneath the canopy
amongst the great tree wights
the Lady dances a wild step through
calling all the animals too
to join her dance of life
In this article I propose to look at the worship of this god in England.
There is the Viking heritage in England and they could well have brought across the worship of Freyr, although the real religious aspects of the Vikings have been very successfully suppressed. There are hints, such as artefacts like the Gosforth cross which shows Loki bound (this is a heathen story known from surviving Scandinavian sources). But there are also signs that point to an earlier worship in England of the god known to the Norse as Freyr.
First comes in section/chapter Two of The Germania by the Roman historian Tacitus, written in approximately 98 c.e. He tells of a god, one of the sons of Mannus, who was worshipped by the Germanic Ingaevones tribe on the North sea coast and who had given his name to the tribe.
From the Anglo-Saxon rune poem we can see that the English certainly knew of Ing as this poem has retained the rune for Ing and a poetic stanza. However it is not obvious if this stanza has had an more obviously heathen element bowdlerised by the christian writer as the other runes alluding to other major Germanic gods within this futhorc were changed so the gods are only discernible within the basic form of the rune or through puns in the Anglo-Saxon poem: the Ansuz rune (Wodan) in the elder futhark changed into the Os rune and the Tiwaz rune (Tiw) into Tir within the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Unfortunately, as the pagan or heathen period of our history was a period of oral rather than written culture, we are dependent on the records of the later christian writers who recorded history and bits of early lore.
The stanza that has come down to us reads:
'Ing as first seen among men
among the East Danes
till he later departed east
over the sea; the wain ran after;
thus the warriors named the hero.'
The rune itself is extended from the earlier version, i.e. from the diamond form to the interlocking chevrons.
Their descendants would have been amongst the Germanic tribes who came across to Britain, in the fifth and sixth centuries c.e., and eventually formed England.
The three main tribes involved in the conquest of, or movement into, Britain were named later in 731 by the Venerable Bede as the Saxons, Angles and Jutes. Only the Angles (Anglii) were identified by their later name in The Germania. Kathleen Herbert has suggested that the Saxons came from the Suebic tribes but the Jutes are not identified as such in this early account.
Ing and Freyr may, at first sight, seem to be different gods but there is a known link between them. The Norse sources sometimes refer to Freyr as Ingvi/Yngvi-Freyr or Ingunar and the royal dynasty of Sweden was the Ynglings.
The Anglian kings of Bernicia, which was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the north-eastern part of the country now known as England, included Ingui, Ingibrand and Inguec at the beginning of their genealogies.
The Mercian royal genealogies go back to Woden but as Woden Frealafing.
One animal strongly associated not only with Freyr but also with his sister Freyja is the boar. In Scandinavian mythological sources he has a special boar, made by dwarves, called Gullinbursti or 'Golden Bristles'. As can be seen in the preceding article, "The Riddles of Gestumblindi", it was a devotee of Freyr (king Heithrek) who brought in a boar at Yule for oaths to be sworn on its' bristles. The boar was known in Anglo-Saxon England and used in what can be argued are significant sacral fashions here.
Firstly a boar figure has been found attached to the top of a sixth or seventh century helmet found in a tumulus at Benty Grange and also recently in Northamptonshire. David Wilson refers to this kind of boar figure as having 'significance in terms of protection and strength for its' owner'. The magificent ship burial in mound 1 at Sutton Hoo has stylised boars both over the eyeholes in the helmet and on the shoulder clasps. A boar's head decoration has been found on a shield boss in Warwichshire.
Boars teeth, some perforated, have been found in various female inhumations in England in a manner which suggests more than a simple necklace to accompany the dead.
English Yule customs retain memories of the ancient boar's head at the heart of the feast, such as that which has developed into the famous tradition at Queen's College in Oxford where a boar's head is ceremonially carried into the christmas feast while a special carol is sung.
The title 'Lord', seen in the Norse countries, was Frea in Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It was certainly used in connection with the christian god in the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Dream of the Rood". However this reference would not mean an allusion to Freyr as, by the time the title was written down, it had come to refer to any lord or the christian 'Lord'.
In various Scandinavian sources there is found the phrase "Æsir and alfar" (the alfar being elves) and in these countries Freyr was known as the ruler of Alfheim or the realm of elves. In looking at the Old English sources, there is only one comparable surviving reference in an Anglo-Saxon charm text.
"If it be shot of Æsir, or the shot of elves,
or the shot of hags, I will help you now."
No. 2. 11. 23-24.
Certainly elves (Old English ælf or ælfe) were known in Anglo-Saxon England and although they were believed to be the source of various sicknesses and diseases (elf-shot), they were also believed to distribute favours and be a benign influence. The Old English word ælfsciene means 'bright as an elf' and a number of proper names using this root word show its favourable connotations: ælfred, ælfric, ælfwine, etc. Although we cannot know with a certainty that the Anglo-Saxon god Ing was also linked with elves, as was Freyr in Scandinavia, this is still a suggestive pointer to the worship in England of the god known as Ing or Freyr.
One notable source confirming the worship in England of some of the major Germanic gods has been the etymological base of some original English place-names. The thunder god, Thunor or Þórr, was the base of place names such as Thundersley (Thunor's grove) in Essex, whilst Wodan or Óðinn was the base of Wednesbury (Wodan's stronghold) in Mercia and even the great mother goddess Frige or Frigg was the base of the Derbyshire location originally called Frigedene (Frige's valley).
However when it comes to Ing the evidence cannot definitely confirm his worship, despite the numerous place-names which start with 'Ing'. The main element of confusion derives from the use of the word Ing, apart from being used as the god's name, as a patronymic meaning 'son of' or 'people of'. This can be seen even in areas of known worship of Ingvi-Freyr with the names of families such as the afore-mentioned Ynglingas or in the Scyldings. All the Anglo-Saxon place names are usually translated today as being from the folk or family link rather than referring to the name of the god.
Another problem in England is that research has been done into Old English place names with the element '..inga..' in them and it has been shown that these are usually from a later phase of settlements and thus this version of the word is unlikely to represent a heathen element.
If any reader has any ideas on how to tackle the problems of assessing place-names with 'Ing' in it, I should be very interested to hear from you.
Another major source in England, felt to confirm the worship of the gods is the naming of the days of the week: Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frige are commemorated in the days Tuesday to Friday inclusively. The absence of a day obviously named after Freyr does not mean he was not a major god in England. One major god in England, who also cannot be found in a day of the week is Seaxnet/Saxnot. This god is known of as the East Saxon kings claimed him, rather than Wodan, as their ancestor, and because the Old Saxon christian baptismal vow named certain gods who had to be renounced: Thunaer, Woden and Saxnot.
Back in the north-east of England, at the place identified as Goodmanham, I would like to mention the account of Coifi, the pagan 'high priest' from the Venerable Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'. Great play is made of the fact that, to spite the god(s) he has forsaken, he deliberately rides a stallion and carries arms which was forbidden to the priest. Although horses are associated with both the Oðinnic and Vanic cults, there are no hints in any surviving Norse literature that I am aware of which suggests that riding horses was an Oðinnic prohibition but there is old material on horses which could not be ridden as they had been given to Freyr.
Flateyjarbók tells of Olaf Tryggvason deliberately riding one of Frey's sacred stallions at Thrandheim, in Norway, to the temple since it was forbidden to ride a horse which had been given to Freyr. Hrafnkell's Saga tells of the horse Freyfaxi in Iceland which had been given to Frey and of the tragedy that breaking the riding prohibition leads to (albeit from a christian viewpoint).
The story does not specify whether he is the priest of any particular god although there is sometimes an assumption (especially with the desecration by the spear) that he must have been a priest of Wodan. It could be argued however that the spear was a common weapon and that it was deliberately used to simply desecrate an area that was a frithgarð where weapons were forbidden. An area where weapons were forbidden would be in line with the processions of Nerthus (often identified as one of the Vanir - more in another issue) where weapons had to be laid aside as she came to the area. In Vatndæla Saga, a sword that is accidentally brought into Freyr's temple where this was forbidden, has to then forfeit it to the priest but the Sagas tell of weapons (along with men and horses) being sacrificed to Óðinn.
However Coifi could have been the temple priest for a temple on the Uppsala lines with more than one god of the people within it and that he deliberately broke both the riding the sacred horse prohibition of Ing (Freyr) and mocked Wodan by casting a spear not to give him an army but to desecrate the temple.
There are tantalising elements in considering the history of Freyr in England, such as the assimilation of his title to both mundane usage and for the christian 'Lord' and the alternative usage of his name to a simple element of the Old English language to indicate 'people', which has so confused the question of whether Ingvi-Freyr was commemorated in place names. But there are also the records which tell of the god Ing on the main European continent from whence the original English came. Even the christianised Anglo-Saxon rune poem has retained memories of Ing and the Vanic wagon, known in Scandinavia where it was recorded in sacral processions. Also the tale of Coifi's desecration of the temple and deliberate breaking of riding a stallion and carrying arms taboos suggests that probably it was Ing (Freyr's) temple, or at least that He was one of the gods within, whom Coifi was dishonouring.
Margaret Baker, Discovering Christmas customs and Folklore, © 1968, 1992 (Shire Publications)
Bede (L. Sherley-Price - trans), Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ©1955, 1968 (Penguin Classics 1990)
H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, ©1964 (Penguin Books 1990)
H.R. Ellis Davidson, The lost beliefs of Northern Europe, © 1993 (Routledge)
Kathleen Herbert, Looking for the Lost Gods of England, ©1994 (Anglo-Saxon Books 1995)
Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, ©1991 (Blackwell 1993)
Gale R. Owen, Rites and Relions of the Anglo-Saxons, © 1981 (Barnes & Noble 1996)
The Ring of Troth, Our Troth, © 1993 (Private Publication, USA)
Dr. G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic, ©1948 (Martinus Nijhoff)
Tacitus (H. Mattingley/S.A. Handford-trans), The Agricola & The Germania, © 1948,1970 (Pentguin Classics)
David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, © 1992 (Routledge)
Eric Wódening, Gods of the World, © 1996 (Theod)
This is the time of the year when high summer is celebrated.
In 1997 spring actually came a lot earlier than the spring equinox on March 20th. Buds and the greening of deciduous trees could be seen in late February - which caused problems for those of us who had left repotting a bit close to the normally expected start of spring. Early April has also brought exceptionally fine day time weather to England. A report in the Daily Mail newspaper on 17th April 1997 told how spring has been arriving earlier each year for some time. By the start of the 1990's spring was arriving eight days earlier than even in 1981 within a broad band of the Northern Hemisphere.
There are still arguements as to whether this is due to global warming arising from environmentally disruptive and exploitative practises of modern commercial operations or whether this is simply a period, which is hotter and drier, within a very long weather cycle of Mother Earth. Our meterological records only cover 200-300 years so there is not enough evidence to objectively consider the pros and cons of these arguements.
The traditional heathen celebrations of summer include the celebrations at midsummer - are generally held on the summer solstice. This falls on June 21st in 1997. This is the height of the sun's path and a time of intense plant fertility.
Folk customs at this time include fires being lit in the street or on high places, wreaths which can be made up of all sorts of plants and carried through the local area (or even exchanged as love tokens) or even the burning of sun-wheels. One tradition says that if you sit under an elder tree at midnight you can see the "king of Fairyland" riding by with all his host (shades of Freyr ?).
Another tradition, believed to have heathen origins, was the Icelandic fairs in early August where there was horse-fighting. This is also the time of the start of the grain harvest.
As this journal was being compiled, reports were issued in England about an Anglo-Saxon helmet that has been found in a gravel quarry in Northamptonshire. Dated to mid seventh- century, this is an exceedingly rare find and the precise location is currently being kept a secret (for obvious reasons). As there was also a fine sword buried next to the helmet, this would indicate a nobleman or chieftain ('princeling' as one of the tabloids put it). There have only been three other finds of helmets of this early medieval date - one Viking age helmet in Coppergate in York, one early seventh helmet in the Sutton Hoo mound 1 and the Benty Grange helmet. This is being reported again here because - yes, it has a boar on top. The Daily Telegraph reported Professor Rosemary Cramp as saying that any later helmet under christian influence would have also had a cross on it.
One intriguing little sidelight on potentially sacred places connected with the goddess Freyja - albeit purely word of mouth rather than from literary or archaeological proof - can be found in 'Twilight of the Celtic Gods' by David Clarke and Andy Roberts.
They discuss the fertility connotations of the carved stone 'Sheela-na-Gig' figures found on churches in the British Isles. (For those unfamiliar with this term, it is a gaelic expression meaning "immodest woman" and is normally a squat little naked, and bald, female figure who holds open her vulva, normally disproportionately large, with one or both hands).
At Pennington in Cumbria, at the twelfth century St. Michaael and All Angels Church, there was a Sheela-na-Gig that used to be firstly in the church wall and then in the porch. A later vicar had it removed as an 'evil influence'. The authors quote a 1930s account which specifically described this carving as a depiction of 'the goddess of fertility Frea or Freya' and that there appears to be a local verbal traditions that this figure is her.
Unfortunately its current location cannot be confirmed - one place may be the church cellar.
AUTHORS : David Clarke and Andy Roberts
TITLE: Twilight of the Celtic Gods
PUBLISHER: Blandford
YEAR: 1996
ISBN: 0-7137-2522-2