Has thou entered into the springs of the sea ?
Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep ?
Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee,
Or hast thou seen the gates of the shadow of death ?
Job, XXXVI
The sea was of such great importance for the peoples of north-western Europe, that it was bound to play a major part in their myths. Many of the old stories have the sea as the background against which the deities play their parts, as in the tales of the ploughing of Gefion, Thor’s fishing, the funeral of Balder. The gods are as much at home in the realm of ocean as in the forests and mountains. The men of the north called upon the powers they worshipped for help on their frequent and perilous voyages, and, since the sea was the source of food as well as the chief road for trade, the gods who gave plenty held sway there as well as over the fertile earth. It is worth while to consider briefly the part played by the sea in their mythology and conceptions of the gods.
The god who appears in Snorri and the poems to be the ruler of the sea is Aegir. He seems to be a personification of the ocean and its mighty strength for good or evil towards men. His name is related to the word for water, and he has much in common with the Greek god Poseidon. The Vikings called the River Eider ‘Aegir’s Door’, while in their poetry the ‘jaws of Aegir’ devoured ships lost at sea. The ocean has inevitably figured as the greedy destroyer in the poetry of sea-going folk. ‘The sea has snapped the ties of my kindred’, says Egill in his great poem of mourning, the Sonatorrek, composed after his young son was lost at sea. ‘Could I have avenged my cause with the sword, the Ale-Brewer would be no more.’ It was perhaps to a god of this kind, relentlessly demanding victims, that Saxon pirates in the fifth century were accustomed to sacrifice a tenth of the captives they had taken before sailing for home, choosing their victims by lot. This is referred to as common knowledge in a letter of Sidonius, who describes the expert seamanship of the Saxons: they had no fear of shipwreck, he says, and rejoiced in storms because they gave them the chance to take their foes by surprise. He continues:
Moreover when the Saxons are setting sail from the continent and are about to drag their firm-holding anchors from an enemy shore, it is their usage thus homeward bound to abandon every tenth captive to the slow agony of a watery end, casting lots with perfect equity among the doomed crowd in execution of this iniquitous sentence of death. This custom is all the more deplorable in that it is prompted by honest superstition. These men are bound by vows which have to be paid in victims, they conceive it a religious act to perpetrate their horrible slaughter. This polluting sacrilege is in their eyes an absolving sacrifice.
Letters, VIII, 6 (Dalton’s translation)
An Old English poetic name for the sea, garsecg, means literally ‘spear-man’, and suggests the image of a fierce warrior, recalling Poseidon with his trident. The weapon of the Norse couple, Aegir and Ran, seems to have been a net, with which Ran would entrap seafarers. A folk-belief quoted in one of the Icelandic sagas is that when people were drowned they were thought to have gone to Ran, and if they appeared at their own funeral feasts, it was a sign that she had given them a good welcome. In a late saga, Friðjófs Saga, it is said to have been a lucky thing to have gold on one’s person if lost at sea. The hero went so far as to distribute small pieces of gold among his men when they were caught in a storm, so that they should not go empty-handed into Ran’s hall if they were drowned. The idea of the hospitality of Aegir and Ran, who were so anxious to throng their underwater realm with the hosts of the dead, may be compared with that of the god of battle. It is by no means inconsistent with their power to destroy.
When however Egill refers to Aegir as the Ale-Brewer, and the poems make reference more than once to the gods gathering for a banquet in the halls of Aegir, we may discern a different aspect of the god of the sea. In Celtic mythology, cauldrons of plenty are sometimes represented as coming from the land-beneath-the-waves. The banquet at which Loki made his scandalous attacks on gods and goddesses in Lokasenna was in Aegir’s hall, and it was to obtain a suitable cauldron for the mead at another of Aegir’s feasts that Thor went down to the sea to visit Hymir. Snorri in Skáldskarmál identifies Aegir with Gymir and Hlér who lived on Hlésey. Gymir, it may be noticed, is the name of the monstrous and terrible giant of the underworld, the father of the beautiful Gerd wooed by Freyr. Hymir, who seems to be a sea-giant, has also a link with the gods, for he is said in Hymiskviða to be the father of Tyr.
Aegir’s place indeed should perhaps be among the giants rather than the gods. He is said to have had nine daughters, and it is generally assumed that these are the waves of the sea. They are called by names such as Gjǫlp, ‘howler’, and Greip, ‘grasper’. These however are typical giantess names as well, and nine giantesses are said to have been the mothers of the god Heimdall, the most puzzling of the dwellers in Asgard. Certain passages in the poems seem to imply that Heimdall was born of the sea, and that these nine daughters of Aesir were his foster-mothers. We seem to have a link here with Celtic traditions. Jean Young has pointed out that there is a story in an Irish saga of nine giant maidens of the sea who mothered a boy between them.1 In the tale of Ruad, son of Rigdonn, Ruad was crossing the sea to Norway with three ships, when the vessels ceased to move. He dived down to find out the reason, and discovered nine giant women, three hanging on to each ship. They seized him, and carried him down into the sea. There he spent a night with each in turn, and then was allowed to continue his journey. They told him that one of them would bear him a child, and he promised to come back to them after he left Norway. But after a stay of seven years he broke his promise, and went straight back to Ireland. The nine women discovered this, took the child ‘that had been born among them’, and set off in pursuit, and when they could not overtake Ruad they cut off the child’s head and flung it after his father.
A giantess of a similar kind is found in medieval German tradition, and is called Vrou Wachilt. She is represented as the mother of the giant Wade, and grandmother of Weland the Smith. The story of the birth of Wade is told in a thirteenth-century saga, Piðriks Saga, composed in Norway but containing much German material. A woman stopped King Vilcinus in a forest, and later appeared out of the sea, holding on to his ship in the same way as the giantesses in the Irish story, and she told him she was going to bear him a child. He took her home with him, but after Wade was born she disappeared. She must be the same woman who comes into a medieval German poem, Rabenschlacht. This tells how Wade’s grandson, Widia (or Wittich) was fleeing for his life when a ‘sea-woman’, said to be his ancestress Wachilt, came out of the sea, seized him and his horse, and bore him down to the sea-bottom to save him from his pursuers. Schneider1 accepted this genealogy of Wachilt, Wade, Weland, Widia as early Germanic tradition. Chambers, reviewing scattered references to Wade,2 came to the conclusion that he was originally a sea-giant from somewhere in the Baltic region, whose exploits were remembered in Britain because the early settlers knew tales about him. In England his name came to be linked with stone ruins and Roman roads, but in Denmark his connexion with the sea was remembered. An attractive story about him in Piðriks Saga is how he carried his little son Weland on his shoulder as he waded over the deep Groenasund.3
These sea-women and their progeny remind us that there was a close link between the giant people of the sea deeps and those who dwelt in the depths of the earth and in caves of the mountains. Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, to whom Aegir has been compared, was also known as the Earth-Shaker, and had power over the earthquake as well as the storm. The cauldrons associated with Aegir’s hall and the giantesses related to him offer us points of contact with Celtic myth, and it is indeed in the lore of the sea that connexions between Norse and Celtic tradition are most clearly perceived. This is not surprising when we remember how it was in their voyaging over the western ocean that the two people came into contact with one another.
The god Njord, father of Freyr and Freyja, had close associations with the sea. His dwelling is said in an Edda poem to be Noatún, ‘enclosure of ships’, and Snorri tells us that he controlled the winds and the sea, and brought wealth to those whom he helped in fishing and seafaring. Place-names called after him suggest that he was worshipped along the west coast of Norway. Other inland places called after him have an obvious connexion with water, for they are usually at the heads of fiords, by lakes or rivers, or on islands in lakes. Some of the names (those ending in -ey for instance) indicate cult centres on islands, like that of the goddess Nerthus in Tacitus’s account. The island now called Tysnesøen in Norway formerly bore the name Njarðarlǫg, ‘bath of Njord’. This is of special interest, suggesting that this island in a lake was once sacred to Njord together with the water surrounding it.1 We are told of Nerthus that her wagon was bathed every year in a sacred lake, and then kept on her island till the time came for it to be used again.
The connexion of ships with the Vanir has already been noted (see page 100). Freyr possessed a ship Skiðblaðnir, while other male figures who seem to be linked with Freyr came in a ship across the sea to rule over men, and returned again by ship when their period of earthly rule was over. There is no doubt, moreover, that the symbol of the ship was an important one in the north from the earliest times of which we have archaeological record. In the early rock carvings of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia, horse and ship are often found side by side, and sometimes the sun-wheel is placed with them, a suggestion that these symbols were already linked with the powers governing fertility. Model ships were given as offerings, and at one early site at Nors in Denmark a hundred small boats, each with a symbol depicted on its side, were packed inside one another and deposited in a clay jar. In the Iron Age it was possible for a real ship to be offered in sacrifice to some power. Such a sacrifice was found in a peat bog at Hjortspring in Denmark, with skeletons of horses and dogs under the large vessel which had been abandoned there.
By the early Iron Age, the ship was also in use as a funeral symbol. Graves in Gotland and elsewhere were carefully made in the shape of a boat, the outline marked out in stones around the burned or buried remains of the dead. By about A.D. 600, the dead were buried or burned inside real boats, or parts of boats. Sometimes in peaty soil the wood of the boats has survived, and in other cases rows of clinch-nails mark the lines of the planks, or these are found among the ashes of cremation burials. As far as our knowledge goes, this custom seems to have begun in Sweden, and spread to Norway and Anglo-Saxon England.1
In England it was followed by the heathen kings of East Anglia. In the seventh century, when the kingdom had already been converted to Christianity, but was either suffering a relapse or clinging obstinately to old funeral customs, a ship was buried in the royal cemetery at Sutton Hoo. It was a sea-going vessel, eighty feet long, and it was hauled overland for about half a mile, on to the sandy stretch of heathland above the Deben estuary where burial mounds stood. There it was lowered into the trench prepared for it, and within a gabled burial chamber erected on the deck a king’s treasures were laid. There was much rich jewellery, a royal sceptre, a standard, a great ceremonial shield and helmet, a gold-adorned sword, harp, and playing pieces, silver bowls, cups, and drinking horns from the banqueting hall. In this tomb no body was laid, perhaps because the king was lost in battle or at sea, or perhaps because he was given Christian burial while his treasures were laid in the earth according to earlier custom.2
Somewhat later, probably in the ninth century, another richly equipped ship was buried in a great mound at Oseburg in Norway. The grave was entered and robbed, but a series of exquisitely carved wooden objects was recovered and restored, sufficient to show that a rich and elaborate funeral had taken place there. The remains found in the ship were those of a woman. Here, and at two other famous Norwegian ship-burials at Gokstad and Tune, a number of horses and dogs had been slain at the graveside.1 A series of ship-burials was also discovered in Sweden, at two rich cemeteries at Vendel and Valsgärde. They were not common in Denmark, but one, at Ladby, was on an impressive scale, and bones of horses and dogs show that this too was accompanied by animal sacrifice.
These were the great ship-funerals for people of importance in the community, but many humble folk were also laid to rest in small boats in different parts of Scandinavia, and in places where the Vikings settled. In the early days of the twentieth century Shetelig was able to number the known ship-graves in four figures,2 and many more have been discovered and excavated since then. Only very recently have we discovered that the ship symbolism must have been important for many of the heathen Angles in eastern England. Apart from the rich Sutton Hoo grave of the seventh century, other ship-graves of earlier date were found in the same cemetery, and another large ship in a burial mound at Snape, further down the coast, unfortunately never properly excavated.3 Recent excavation in an early Anglian cemetery at Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk, revealed the fact that several graves held bodies covered by part of a boat, recognizable from the clinch-nails still in position. Even in a child’s grave, two small pieces of a wooden boat had been raised to form an arch over the body.4 Association of ships with the dead is further borne out by the careful outline of a ship cut on a cremation urn preserved in Norwich Museum.
Clearly then the ship meant something significant to the heathen north, and it was something which was connected with the dead. We have no exact clue from the myths as to what exactly it meant to men’s minds, but such indications as we do possess point to association of the ship with the worship of the Vanir. Ship-burial was associated with King Frodi by Saxo. Among the laws attributed to him was one to the effect that every chief should be burned in his own ship if killed in battle, and lesser men in groups of ten to one ship. Frodi, as we have seen, seems to be the Danish equivalent of Freyr. There are not many references to ship-burial in the Icelandic sagas, but two of these are specifically connected with so-called priests of Freyr. Ingimund in Vatnsdœla Saga was buried in a ship’s boat, and the priest of Freyr in Gísla Saga, Thorgrim, was laid in his ship inside a mound. Before they closed the mound Gisli, who was responsible for his foster-brother’s death, flung a huge stone down on to the ship, and this offers an interesting parallel to the Oseberg ship-burial, where a great stone was found lying on top of the vessel. It has been suggested that the woman buried at Oseberg may have been a priestess of the Vanir, and it has already been noted (p. 95) that an elaborate little wagon was buried with her.
The most impressive account of a ship-funeral in the early literature comes from Old English poetry, and has taken on new significance now that we know that ship-funeral was a traditional form of burial in East Anglia in heathen times. This is the account in Beowulf of the funeral voyage of Scyld, the first king of the Danes, whom we have seen to have certain connexions with the gods of fertility. This account is earlier in date than any of the literary references to ship-funeral from Scandinavia, since it was written down about A.D. 1000, and could have been composed some time considerably earlier than this. The poet tells how the old king was equipped for his journey over the sea:
Never have I heard of a ship more splendidly equipped with swords and mailcoats, the weapons of war and the raiment of battle. In her hold lay a wealth of treasures, which were to journey with him into the realm of ocean. Gifts were prepared for him, and a nation’s treasures, whose value was every whit as great as those which others had given him when they sent him forth at the beginning, alone over the waves, while he was but a child. High above him they set a golden standard. Then they let the sea bear him away, and committed him to the ocean. Their hearts were full of grief and their thoughts were heavy. Men who bear rule in halls, heroes beneath the heavens, cannot say in truth who was to receive the cargo which that vessel bore.
Beowulf, 38–52
This passage reads like a myth to account for a funeral rite, implying that the kings of East Anglia were to be laid in a ship after death because Scyld, one of the founder kings of their race, departed thus from his people, the Danes. Memories of great funeral ceremonies like that at Sutton Hoo could have remained in some men’s memory or in family tradition at the time when this passage was composed. We can picture for instance the Sutton Hoo ship bearing the king’s treasures being rowed out from the harbour nearest his palace at Rendlesham, and taken up the Deben to a point below the cemetery of the East Anglian kings. If this was the way in which the rulers of the kingdom were borne to their last resting place when a ship was involved in the ceremony, then the description given of Scyld’s departure may not be far removed from actual practice. A ship may have borne the dead king away from his sorrowing people, although it was not to be committed to the ocean, as in the poem, but to the earth in the cemetery where a mound was waiting to receive it. There must have been some idea in the minds of those who prepared these elaborate and expensive ship-funerals that the treasures buried with the dead were to pass with them in some way into the mysterious realm of the gods, as did the treasures bestowed upon Scyld in the old story.
Whether in heathen times a dead man was ever launched on a ship which formed his funeral pyre as it sailed, slowly burning, out to sea is something which we cannot know. Such a rite was said to have formed part of Balder’s funeral, when he was burned on his ship in the presence of the assembled gods, with his wife and his horse beside him. Two early kings, Haki of Norway and Sigurd Ring of Sweden, were said in late accounts to be sent out to sea when they were dying or dead from wounds received in battle.1 But we have no early reliable evidence for such a custom, and no eye-witness accounts of such a practice. Possibly here again such stories are to be viewed as myths, explaining the well-established custom of burning a man in his ship after death. Ship-funeral could have been presented as a re-enactment of the departure in the mythical past of the founder of the race over the sea to the Other World.
As we have seen, such a belief is most likely to have been associated with the Vanir. This conclusion is supported by the use of the ship symbol in the ancient world. It is a very ancient funeral symbol, for in ancient Egypt ships were placed in graves beside some of the pyramids in the Old Kingdom, while model ships were buried in the tombs of Tutankhamen and other rulers of the New Kingdom. In Egyptian belief it was natural to link the ship with the journey of the sun across the heavens, and with the departure of the divine Pharaoh to the realm of the gods. Thus the ship came to stand for the gift of warmth and fertility to men, and since fertility depended on the life-giving water of the River Nile, it was an exceptionally good symbol of new life on earth, and a fitting gift for the dead. The connexion with fertility stands out even more clearly in the ship used as the symbol of Isis in southern Europe. In Roman times, a yearly festival was held at Ostia in her honour when the shipping season re-opened, and on the first full moon of March a ship was blessed and launched without a crew, as a sacrifice to the sea in honour of the goddess. Isis was a fertility deity, whose equivalent in the north was Nerthus, and later Freyja.
About the third century A.D., we know that a goddess had a shrine on the island of Walcheren on the Dutch coast. This was afterwards engulfed by the sand, and many inscribed stones have been found there, some showing the goddess and giving her name as Nehalennia.1 There is no doubt of her kinship with the Mothers, since she is shown holding fruit and a horn of plenty, and a ship is frequently shown beside her. These stones were probably raised in her honour by travellers who hoped for a safe voyage over to Britain, since her shrine stood at one of the points where passengers embarked to cross the North Sea.
Thus when Njord is renowned as the god of ships, we are faced with a pattern familiar from very early times, the linking of a ship with the deities of peace and plenty. We need to remember too that there was an obvious link between the Vanir and the sea for the people of the north, for much of their food came from it. A dearth of fish was as terrible a calamity as a failure of the crops, and on the poor farms folk depended on their store of dried fish to get them through the worst of the winter. Men prayed to the gods for a double harvest, from the earth and from the ocean, and it would naturally be to the Vanir to whom they would turn to bless the fishing boats and to draw the fish into the sounds and fiords.
There is little doubt however that the connexion of water with fertility, existing in some form in all the great pagan religions, goes deeper than dependence on sea and river as a source of food. Water is seen as the source of inspiration, of wisdom, even of life itself. It is regarded also as a cleansing and renewing element, from which man can rise new-born. Thus, according to the myth of the end of the northern gods, a new world was destined to rise from the old, and would emerge from the ocean after the fires of destruction had been quenched. This world was in fact the old one cleansed and renewed, since the gold playing-pieces of the ancient gods still lay forgotten in the grass. Out of the sea also came the rulers who were to bring peace and prosperity to the land. The image which men liked to form of them was of a little child voyaging alone in a boat, as the cycle began anew and an infant coming from the sea formed the link between the world of men and that of the gods.
The sea at the same time was the element of. destruction. At Ragnarok it was to rise and cover the earth, devouring the dwellings of men and gods along with the overwhelming fire. The chief enemy of Thor, who protected mankind and the gods from chaos and anarchy, was the ancient serpent who dwelt in the ocean depths. This serpent, called by the poets the ‘girdle of earth’, lay coiled round the world, and it was when he lashed himself into giant rage at the end of the world that the sea covered the land and men and gods perished. The implication in the story of Thor’s fishing is that had the god been worsted in his struggle with the monster in the sea, it would have meant the world’s destruction then and there. Even in the comic tale of Thor’s struggle to lift the serpent in the form of a great grey cat, there was a moment of terror for those who watched to see what the end would be. Like Leviathan and the Kraken, the serpent was a monster of the ocean depths, the eternal enemy of the guardian of the sky. The serpent is linked with the giants, and with the snakes that inhabit the world of death and are its symbols. Beside him we must set the fiery dragon of northern mythology, emerging from the depths of the earth, from rocks, caves, or burial mounds of the dead. To him we shall return in the next chapter.
Thus the fertile sea, source of inspiration and life, and yet a force of destruction, must be set beside the earth, which forms both the cradle of life and its engulfing grave. The dark depths of earth and sea are an essential part of all mythologies. They form the foundations on which the northern Asgard was built.