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A MYSTERY AMONG THE MYSTERIES: ARE THERE OLD ICELANDIC MYSTERIES
Viking Age, “lord, master”). Freyja and Freyr were leading gods in the Viking
Age, whose adventures are referred to in many different written sources.
Njôrdr appears in such stories both as a heroic and a ridiculous person, or even
as a Clearly average figure. But we do not find among these stories accounts of
mysteries in the proper sense of the term.
It must be pointed out, however, that in the work of Tacitus, the Germans
are not the early Scandinavians but the continental German tribes living in
the territory of present-day Germany. We can speak of a “continuity” of rites
and religious beliefs only in the case of Nerthus / Njérdr.’° There again, we do
not know the reason for the gender shift.
There is another striking case of the afterlife of Nerthus / Njördr. In his
famous book Du mythe au roman (Paris, 1970), Georges Dumézil shows how
the stories about a warrior chieftain, Hadingus, in Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta
Danorum I, v-vii, follow the construction of narratives about Njordr."' Dumézil
rejects the assumption that Hadingus was a Viking named Hastings, that is,
a historical person. Three major narratives (Njordr and Skadi, the marriage
of Hadingus, and the one on Hadingus and navigation) date back to the age of
the Vane gods. By this reconstruction, we may learn more about the structure
of the activities of the Vanes in general. However, one important point is
still not explained by Dumézil’s theory: how does Hadingus, an otherwise
unknown person, replace the god Njordr in Saxo’s chronicle? Is this a case of
“Euhemerism”?”
SACRED PLACES OR SPACES
There is important information on the “grove of the Semnones” in chapter
39 in Tacitus.’? According to him, the Semnones were the mightiest tribe of
the Suebi. From time to time, all the tribes sent delegations to a grove and
there started to perform their rites by sacrificing humans. The grove could
be approached only if one was tied up in handcuffs. German philologists
have noticed that ina lay of the Verse Edda, the Helgakvida Hundingsbana II
(strophe 28, and in a reference in prose) a hero, Dagr, that is, “Day”, kills the
protagonist Helgi with the spear of Odin. The murder happens in a place
called Fjoturlundr, that is, “fetter-grove.” Thus we understand that the grove
10 Folke Ström, Nordisk hedendom. Tro och sed i förkristen tid, Göteborg, Akademieförlaget ¬
Gumperts, 1961, 34-40.
Georges Dumézil, Du mythe au roman, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1970.
Kurt Johannesson, Saxo Grammaticus. Komposition och världsbild i Gesta Danorum,
Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978, 94-100. Johannesson connects the description of
Hadingus and other warriors to the medieval notion of fortitudo.
12 Rudolf Much, Die Germania des Tacitus, 3. Auflage, Heidelberg, Carl Winter, 1967.
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