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38 I. THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.
least as the fourth century. They were figured on the
storied column of Theodosius as part of the spoils of war
brought to the city of Constantinople in the fourth century
(The Goths, by Hy. Bradley, pp. 9 and 14, Lond., 1888).
In Iceland they seem not to have been in early use, for we
rather read of nails driven into the pillars of the high-seat.
But there were certainly three images in the Upsala
temple; and Odin, on his eight-legged horse,
"
Slepne," is
several times represented on rune-stones (Montelius : Sv.
H.1
, fig. 335, 403, from Tjangvide and Hablingbo in
Gotland).
As to the victims offered to Odin, they were too often
men (for women are never mentioned), as well as dogs,
horses, cocks, etc. The king himself might be chosen in
times of emergency, as Domald was, or he might have to
sacrifice his sons (as Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia), or
he might devote himself as King Eric the Victorious did
at the Battle of Fyrisfield in 983, to gain victory from Odin.
It is no doubt from such compacts with the old gods that
the mediaeval idea of compacts with Satan has grown up.
Eric, it is said, died just ten years after the battle.27
If there was much that was terribly cruel in the human
sacrifices in Sweden, there was often a heroic spirit mingled
with it. In a later day we find Christians in Iceland offer
ing to devote themselves to Christ for a purer life (not, I
suppose, to actual death, but to a life of renunciation) if
the heathen would do the same (C. P. B., Vol. i., p. 410,
from the Kristni Saga). The reverence for and impulse
towards the monastic ideal thus had its natural root in the
country.
These sacrifices, of whatever kind, were great occasions
of popular concourse. The word "
Ting," the old name
for such a gathering, meant at once sacrifice, banquet, diet
or parliament, assize for justice, and fair or market. The
27
Compare the idea in Gosta Berlings Saga, by the novelist,
Selma Lagerlof, of the supposed compact made by the Majorska
with the Devil, under which one of the cavaliers was to die every
ten years. The scene of the novel is laid in the eighteenth
century.
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