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16 I. THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.
symbol for the power of imagination.
13
Historically, I
conceive it implies that the worship of the Aesir and Vanir
was already conjoined when the Suiones came to Lake
Malar. At any rate, Fro remained a special patron of the
Sveas, and expresses, it seems to me, something of their
character their love of ease and peace and wealth. He
was also specially venerated at Trondhjem, in Norway.
Another feature of the worship of the Bronze Age has
already been referred to in passing, the habit of throwing
the spoils of victory into a sacred lake. Swords and spears
and armour were bent and broken in pieces, conquered
enemies, captives and slaves, were killed and thrown into
such lakes in the later Bronze Age, and the earlier Iron
Age no doubt as offerings to the god or gods.
14
It is natural to compare with this the passage of Tacitus
(Germ., ch. 40), which mentions certain tribes, amongst
whom he numbers the Anglii, as all worshipping "Nerthus,
that is to say, mother earth," a deity which is evidently the
female form of the northern Niord. He then describes a
sacred wood in an island, which is supposed to be Riigen,
in the midst of which is a lake where secret rites are per
formed at her annual festival, which ended with washing
of the image of the goddess in the lake, and the drowning
of the slaves who ministered in the rite. A lake now called
the Hertha-see, on the promontory of Jasmund, is often
visited by antiquarian pilgrims as the scene of this gloomy
festival, as many English readers have been reminded by
a recent story (Elizabeth in Riigen, p. 235). Other Latin
historians describe the devotion of captives and spoils in
sacred lakes or rivers, and we may believe that this form
of worship was widely spread. The cave of Grendel, at
the bottom of a deep lake, described in the poem of
Beowulf, fills up the picture. The god or demon of the
13
See J. E. D. Bethune s Specimens of Swedish and German
Poetry, p. 74 foil., Lond. 1848.
14
See S. H. 2
,
Vol. i., p. 118, for the Bronze Period; ibid.,
167 for the Iron,
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