Studia Islandica - 01.06.1963, Page 84

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of the stories of Freyja’s cats and of her search for her husband
Óthr, which undeniably recall elements in the eastern myths of
Isis and Cybele. But the author thinks it far more likely that
these motifs are borrowed from the eastern myths than that they
originated in the rituals of the Freyja cult.
Chapter VI takes up the question of sacral kingship in Scandi-
navia. A comparison of the stories told of the ancient Danish kings
Skjold and Frodi with similar accounts of fertility gods and sacred
kings among various peoples leads to the conclusion that, like the
Swedes, the Danes originally regarded their kings as divine beings
and worshiped them as givers of plenty and prosperity. Indeed,
Skjold, the founder of the dynasty, resembles a vegetation god
more than a human being. But sacral kingship seems to have dis-
appeared earlier in Denmark than in Sweden, perhaps because it
was closely tied up with the worship of the Vanir, which in Den-
mark seems to have yielded ground to the worship of Odin and
Tyr more quickly than in Sweden.
The sacral kingship of the Ynglings, already touched on in the
preceding chapter, is then taken up for fuller treatment. There
can be little doubt that the name Ynglingar is to be identified with
the name Ingaevones or Ingvaeones found in Tacitus and Pliny.
Yngvi, whom Icelandic sources name as the founder of the family,
bears the same name as Ing, King of the East-Danes, who is men-
tioned in an Anglo-Saxon runic poem. This divine ancestor, Yngvi
or Ing, the Scandinavians later identified with the fertility god
Frey.
Finally the lack of clear evidence regarding sacral kingship
among the South-Germanic peoples is pointed out and explained
on the grounds that in historical times the worship of the Vanir
was unknown, or virtually unknown, among these peoples.
Chapter VII deals with the origin of the Vanir. There is first a
discussion of Scandinavian rock carvings of the Bronze Age. Like
most later scholars, the author accepts in general Almgren’s inter-
pretation of these carvings as representations of f ertility rites, al-
though he thinks Almgren sometimes finds in these pictures more
than the evidence warrants. The activities depicted in these rock
carvings have many points of similarity with the rites of the fer-
tility gods of the Middle East as well as with festivities associated
with the worship of the Vanir in Scandinavia. He regards all these
festivities as being similar in nature and as having originated in
the religious cermonies of various agricultural peoples who wor-
shiped their gods in much the same fashion throughout a wide
region reaching from Asia in the east to west of the Baltic.
There follows a discussion of Dumézil’s claim of an Aryan
origin for the Vanir. The author stresses the fact that all the evi-
dence of fertility cults in Scandinavia is far younger than the Aryan