"Odin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great ones of Olympus, Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe—Odin, Thor, Freya—are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South that we find the familiar and the real, as from the heroes of the sister-island, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Northmen who had ravaged England came eager for blood and plunder, and hating the sight of a Christian church as an insult to their gods, Thor and Odin; but the lapse of a hundred years had in some degree changed the temper of the North; and though almost every young man thought it due to his fame to have sailed forth as a sea rover, yet the attacks of these marauders might be bought off, and provided ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to frighten children, was the name of Boh, a great general, the son of Odin, whose very appellation struck immediate ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... more Northern latitudes. It was brought to Britain by the German invaders, continued there till the seventh century, and was brought in again in a more Northern form by the Norsemen, who in their turn "gradually deserted Thor and Odin for the white Christ."[3] Bede tells hardly anything of the paganism which had been the religion of England a century before he wrote; in this he is like other Christian teachers who might have told but did not. But though it came to an end in England, Teutonic religion ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing upon these shores, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... how south in Iceland Gunnar guarded well himself, Boldly battle's thunder wielding, Fiercest foeman on the wave; Hero of the golden collar, Sixteen with the sword he wounded; In the shock that Odin loveth, Two before him ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... strength, the girl increased in beauty and loveliness of soul. Hilding, noticing how each day they became fonder of each other, called Frithiof to him and bade him remember that he was only a humble subject and could never hope to wed Ingeborg, the king's only daughter, descended from the great god Odin. The warning, however, came too late, for Frithiof already loved the fair maiden, and vowed that he would have her for his ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... speech, it reached the Norse, stirred the scalds, who repeated it in the Eddie sagas. Loki and his inferior fiends are, as there represented, quite as black as Ahriman and his cohorts. The conflict of good and evil is almost as fully dire. But Odin is a colourless reflection of Ormuzd. The aesir, the angels of the Scandinavian sky, are paler than the izeds. The figure of Baldr, the redeemer, faints beside that of Mithra. Valhalla, though perhaps less fatiguing than ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... presented, attention must be directed to the country over which he reigned, and which will be noticed in connection with Denmark; these two countries forming a greater part of the ancient Scandinavia, from which our Teutonic ancestors migrated, the land of Odin, and Frea, and Thor, those half-fabulous deities, concerning whom there are still divided opinions; some supposing that they were heroes, and others, impersonations of virtues, or elements and wonders of nature. The mythology of Greece does not more fully abound with ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a simple sentence. For example, in the sentence, "Cannot we conceive that Odin was a reality?" we is the principal subject; cannot conceive is the principal predicate; its object is that Odin was a reality, of which clause Odin is ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... am, I seek the fight, and offer as the prize The untasted bait that bribed my soul, nor thou the boon despise; Else, like some worn-out beast of prey, Starkather soon must lie, Nor gain the bliss that Odin gives to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... driven out as wanderers from their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these races lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the right view of life: so, under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, which were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for instance, the Druidic or the Greek religion, the metaphysical content of which was little and shallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a special, one might almost say, an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone of all the nations who have ever existed ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... esteem and veneration by the people among whom they lived; they were received and welcomed wherever they went, and even kings delighted to honor them. In short, their art was supposed, by the Anglo-Saxons, to be of divine origin, having been invented by Odin, the great All-Father, and perfected by Bragi, the musician of the gods. As, however, civilization advanced and Christianity became established, this admiration for the minstrel and his art became modified in a degree. He was no longer regarded as a poet, but only as a singer, a sweet ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... its golden roof with sobs and cries; And on the tables stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimm'd skulls the wine. And now would night have fall'n, and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin's will. And thus the father of the ages spake:— "Enough of tears, ye Gods, enough of wail! Not to lament in was Valhalla made. If any here might weep for Balder's death, I most might weep, his father; such a son I lose to-day, so bright, so loved a God. But he has met that doom, which ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... be endowed with a spirit of prophecy. Sicily (sis' i ly). The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Silenus (si le' nus). The foster-father of Bacchus. Sleipnir (slap' ner). The swift eight-legged horse of Odin. Sonmus (som' nus). The king of sleep. Sparta (spar' ta). Ancient city ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... another direction lay the valley of Hopedale, with its two villages, Hope and Castleton, its ancient castle of the Peverils seated on a rock over the entrance of the Peak Cavern, and its lead mines worked ever since the time of the Saxons, the Odin mines as they are called, the white cinders of which lay in heaps at their entrance. We left the driver to take our baggage to its destination, and pursued our way across the fields. Descending a little distance from the summit, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... through the flames had also a superstitious meaning, and the simple people thought that in this way they could ward off evil spirits and prevent sickness. The Roman shepherds used to leap through the Midsummer blaze in honour of Pales. The Scandinavians lit their bonfires in honour of their gods Odin and Thor, and the leaping through the flames reminds us of the worshippers of Baal and Moloch, who, as we read in the Bible, used to "pass their children through the fire" in awe of their cruel god. St. John's ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... mythology there is a beautiful legend of the mistletoe. Balder, the god of poetry, the son of Odin and Friga, one day told his mother that he had dreamed his death was near at hand. Much alarmed, the mother invoked all the powers of nature—earth, air, water, fire, animals and plants, and obtained from them a solemn oath that they would ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... have we rowed in, But we seldom saw them thus; Our master is angry with Odin— Odin is angry with us! Heavy odds have we taken, But never before such odds. The Gods know they are forsaken, We must risk the wrath of ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... their kings the Lacedemonians met in large numbers and tore the flesh from their foreheads with pins and needles. It is said that when Odin was near his death he ordered himself to be marked with a spear; and Niort, one of his successors, followed the example of his predecessor. Shakespeare speaks of "such as boast and show their scars." In the olden times it was not uncommon for a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Its mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they, too, were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and AEsir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost-Giants in AEschylean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who, with Brahma, their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris, or Fathers. The Chinese count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical times. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... which has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character, that it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germanic family. Odin, and his terrific pantheon of war-gods and social deities, could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire, which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes have invariably produced nations, whose influence has been felt in an elevating power over the world; and whose tracks ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... overthrown their bridge, O thou storm of the sons of Odin, skilful and foremost in the battle, defender of the earth, and restorer of the exiled Ethelred! It was during the fight which the mighty King fought with the men of England, when King Olaf, the son of Odin, valiantly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... drowning witches or burning heretics, trying causes by red hot ploughshares, or offering up human sacrifices to wicker idols. I no more expect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction in favour of Thor and Odin. I should think such a reaction almost as much a miracle as that the shadow should go back upon the dial. Revolutions produced by violence are often followed by reactions; the victories of reason once gained, are gained ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man's wandering gaze focussed itself; a silly laugh welled up in his throat. "It would be no strange wonder if I did not," he chuckled. "Odin has changed you greatly; your face was never so beautiful. But this once you cannot trick ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... fled afar To hills that prop the polar star; And loves on deer-borne car to ride With barren darkness at his side Round the shore where loud Lofoden Whirls to death the roaring whale, Round the hall where Runic Odin Howls his war-song to the gale— Save when adown the ravaged globe He travels on his native storm, Deflowering Nature's grassy robe And trampling on her faded form; Till light's returning Lord assume The shaft that drives him to his northern fields, Of power to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... lassitude and uncertainty of movement and eyesight have prostrated the patient and compelled him to surrender at discretion to his nurses and medical advisers, but before the Valkyrie of Delirium are scouring the fields of his understanding, to pounce on the corpses of ideas their Odin had slain. That time was not due for many hours yet, when Gwen got speech of her cousin. She immediately appreciated that the patient was anxious to impress bystanders that this illness was all in the way of business. Also, that she was watching the development of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... viking times, before Christianity had found its way so far north, the bird which influenced the people most was the raven. He was credited with much knowledge, as well as with the power to bring good or bad luck. One of the titles of Odin was "Raven-god," and he had as messengers two faithful ravens, "who could speak all manner of tongues, and flew on his behests to the uttermost parts of the earth." In those days the figure of a raven was usually emblazoned on shield and standard, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... by axe of Odin, and hammer of Thor, And by all the gods of the Viking's war, I swear we have quitted our homes in vain: We have nothing to look to, glory nor gain. Will our galley return to Norway's shore With heavier gold, or with costlier store? Will our exploits furnish the scald with a song? ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... its site stood an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the gray old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods, and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more, and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have been mouldering for a thousand years ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... appalled. Then in the doorway appeared the figure of Estella, her blue eyes bright as stars, her long golden hair falling like a cloak to her waist, the red-tipped knife in her hand; she looked like a Gothic priestess—a Vala of Odin—with the reeking human sacrifice already at her feet. The blood of a long line of heroic ancestors thrilled in her veins. Stepping over the dead body, already beginning to swell and grow spotted with many colors, like a snake, she advanced toward ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... good war-horse welcomes the stranger. As I said to you anon, Sweyn, I had intended to offer him as a sacrifice to Odin; but as the gods have thus declared him welcome here I must needs change my intentions. Who are you, young Saxon?" he asked as Edmund was brought before him, "and whence do you come? And how is it that a war-ship of your people ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, High over Asgard, to light home the king. But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came. And ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Woden. Woden or Odin was the chief god of Scandinavian mythology. Thor, his elder son, was the god of thunder. From these names come the names of the days ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... lambkin in peace, but a lion in war, The pride of her kindred the heroine grew; Her grandsire, old Odin, triumphantly swore "Whoe'er shall provoke thee, th' encounter shall rue!" With tillage or pasture at times she would sport, To feed her fair flocks by her green rustling corn; But chiefly the woods were ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... laughter From the village and the town, And the church-bells, ever jangling, As the weary day went down. So I lay and sorely pondered On the days long since gone by, When my old primaeval forests Echoed to the war-man's cry; When the race of Thor and Odin Held their battles by my side, And the blood of man was mingling Warmly with my chilly tide. Father Euxine! thou rememb'rest How I brought thee tribute then— Swollen corpses, gashed and gory, Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men? Father Euxine! be thou joyful! I am running ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... positive conclusions whatsoever from it. The tribes that go under one general denomination of Scythians were many, and still it is impossible to deny that there is a good deal of similitude between the customs of the old Scandinavians, worshipers of Odin, whose land indeed was occupied by the Scythians more than five hundred years B.C. and the customs of the Rajputs. But this similitude gives as much right to the Rajputs to say that we are a colony of Surya-vansas settled in the West as to us to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the altars, destroying both prelates and people, and forcing the Britons to take refuge in the woods and mountains. Though driven westward, the Celtic Church did not perish, and every now and then some devoted monk would try to establish himself among the worshippers of Thor and Odin. Such a mission was extremely dangerous, for so intense was the hatred of the pagan conquerors for the religion of the New Testament that it was almost impossible for a Christian teacher to show himself ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... listened all, in grim delight, While scalds yelled out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, As best might to the mind recall The boist'rous joys of Odin's hall. And well our Christian sires of old Loved, when the year its course had rolled, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all his hospitable train. Domestic and religious rite Gave honour to the holy night; On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the mass was sung; That ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... one out of many a red, red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls, and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin Allfather in the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... or dance in magic circles on the greensward. And it did his heart good to feel he was not alone, but that these merry little companions were with him, lightening his way and guiding his course all the night through. And he thought too of luckless dwarfs whom Odin had condemned to dig and delve all day deep in the ground, and throw fuel on the great central fire of the earth, but who at night, like the fairies, might come above and revisit then old haunts. And even these mischievous little ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Zarathustran Fuzzies, who were almost able to qualify under the talk-and-build-a-fire rule. And that had been the Empire when Rodrik VI had seen the map completed, and when Paul II had built the Palace, and when Stevan IV, the grandfather of Paul I, had proclaimed Odin the Imperial planet and Asgard the capital city. There had been some excuse for staying inside that patch of stars then; a newly won Empire must be consolidated within before it can safely be expanded. But that had been over ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... the meadow mist Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, fled baying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Karen and Lovisa came up with the smaller children the place had already an inhabited, homelike look. There was even a wise old raven, almost as large as a gander, whom Nils had christened Munin, after Odin's bird. The little ones had all the new milk they could drink from their wooden bowls, and were put to bed in the movable wooden bed-places, on beds of hay covered with sheepskins and blankets. All were asleep before dark, for at that season the night lasted only two or three hours. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... invisible powers of Nature; for in the rock, the mountain, the river, the forest, the sun, the stars, the storms, the rude Teutonic mind saw a protecting or avenging deity. They easily transferred to the Christian clergy the reverence they had bestowed on the old priests of Odin, of Freya, and of Thor. Reverence was one of the great sentiments of our German ancestors. It was only among such a people that an overpowering spiritual despotism could be maintained. The Pope became to them the vicegerent of the great Power which they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... done before him. It would be to lose the opportunity of exhibiting himself and his prowess on the great festival of the year, together with those subsequent hours of repose and reward for danger and fatigue endured which heroes of all ages, from the quaffers of mead in the halls of Odin to the "food for powder" around the vivandiere's paniers, have never disdained. For these sufficient reasons the merca is practiced still in the old way in the Roman Campagna, and the victory of the man over the brute has to be achieved by main force and dexterity. The buttero ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the Nation's ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... king-at-arms. Still more recently the mythical spirit has taken violent possession of the Washington ancestry, and an ingenious gentleman has traced the pedigree of our first president back to Thorfinn and thence to Odin, which is sufficiently remote, dignified, and lofty to satisfy the most exacting Welshman that ever lived. Still the breach made by Colonel Chester was not repaired, although many writers, including some who should have known better, clung ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... I can only resume, in a few words, their real or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome. Our fancy may create, or adopt, a pleasing romance, that the Goths and Vandals sallied from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin; [20] to break the chains, and to chastise the oppressors, of mankind; that they wished to burn the records of classic literature, and to found their national architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders. But in simple truth, the northern conquerors were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... thinking, not of "shining armour," but of spiritual conflicts. But careful enquirers, who would disdain to condemn Macaulay on passages selected by undiscriminating admirers from his Essays, or Carlyle for his frank admiration of Thor and Odin and the virtues of Valhalla, will ask for a more satisfying explanation. Even if all that were said about Treitschke and Nietzsche were true, it would still remain an unsolved question why they and their ideas should have taken ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... or the inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, were of the same origin as the tribes that peopled Germany, and that came from the East, probably from the borders of the Black Sea. They were fire-worshippers, and their chief god was Odin. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... hall of Odin With mirth and music swells, Rings with the harps and songs of bards, And echoes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the northern side, O'erwrought with ornaments of barbarous pride. 120 There huge Colosses rose, with trophies crown'd, And Runic characters were graved around. There sat Zamolxis[63] with erected eyes, And Odin here in mimic trances dies. There on rude iron columns, smear'd with blood, The horrid forms of Seythian heroes stood, Druids and Bards (their once loud harps unstrung) And youths that died to be by poets sung. These, and a thousand more of doubtful fame, To whom ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... famous bit of bravura; and all concerning the Castle of the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through the description of its actual appearance (in which, by the way, Scott shows almost a better grasp of the serious Spenserian stanza than anywhere else) to the final battle of Odin and Harold, is of the very best Romantic quality. Perhaps, indeed, it is because (as the Critical Review, the Abdiel of 'classical' orthodoxy among the reviews of the time, scornfully said), 'both poems are romantic enough to satisfy all the parlour-boarders ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... sore battle: a battle against their own fear of the unseen. They brought with them, out of the heart of Asia, dark and sad nature-superstitions, some of which linger among our peasantry till this day, of elves, trolls, nixes, and what not. Their Thor and Odin were at first, probably, only the thunder and the wind: but they had to be appeased in the dark marches of the forest, where hung rotting on the sacred oaks, amid carcases of goat and horse, the carcases ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the time, she yet missed nothing of interest. The poppy-strewn plain, the green levels of the mesa delighted her; so did the wide stretches of blue distance, and she screamed with joy at the orange and red pinnacles in Odin's Garden. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... however, we are already able to come to certain definite conclusions. We cannot connect the megalithic monuments with any one of the ancient religions known. They were certainly not set up in honor of Odin or of Osiris, of Astarte or of Athene, the Phoenician or the Egyptian, the Greek or the Roman gods; their erection seems to have had but one end in view, to do honor to the dead. Beneath none of them do we find the remains either of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... milk-white bullocks of the Druid, garlanded with flowers, heading the procession that entered the dark groves in search of the sacred mistletoe-bearing oak; the processions of Pan and Odin, and Siva and Vishnu and Baal, and Venus and Bacchus. Nymphs and fauns and dryads and hamadryads called from the depths of the forest, and youths and maidens and shepherds with vine-wreathed brows danced ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... when the nations of the East invaded Europe, the Scandinavians began to land on the coast of England. Their operations are little better known than those of the barbarians: they are hidden in the mysteries of Odin. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... this. They knew that the time of the Winter solstice is in some strange fashion the high moment of the year, as the beginning of new activity in nature and in the gods. They solemnized the return of the fiery sun wheel; they traced in those solstice days the operations on earth of Odin and Berchta. They knew in themselves a thing they could not name. And when the supreme experience took place in Christ, they made the one experience typify the other, and became conscious of the divine nature of this nativity. So, by the illuminati, ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... it continued till a late period, I suppose he must allude to the standing stone at Stenness, perforated by a hole, with the sanctity attached to promises confirmed by the junction of hands through the hole, called the promise of Odin. Dr. Daniel Wilson enters into this fully in Praehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 99, 100, 101. It has been told myself that if a lad and lass promised marriage with joined hands through the hole, the promise ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... lard fed the vast multitude in Einheriar, the hall of Odin. Though fed on daily, the boar never diminished in size. Odin himself gave his own portion of the lard to his two wolves, Geri and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... backwards. The Doctor was not less well mounted; in fact, the Icelandic pony is quite a peculiar race, much stronger, faster, and better bred than the Highland shelty, and descended probably from pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia, long before Odin and his paladins had peopled ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of the Scalds the Stryga or witch-woman of more classical climates. In the northern ideas of witches there was no irreligion concerned with their lore. On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... find this wild north land. It is called Scandinavia, and comprises Norway and Sweden. The home of these Northern gods was a city called Asgard, built above the clouds, in the midst of which stood Valhalla, the hall of the chief god, Odin. Such a marvellous place as this was! It had a golden roof that reflected light over all the earth, just like the sun, and its ceiling was supported by spears, while millions of shields formed its walls, over which were draped coats of mail. A huge wolf stood before its immense ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and wise counsellor. Odin and Thor send that we may meet again;" and Edwy with only a dozen followers ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... them at Cologne. There these skeletons were taken into the most especial consideration, crowned with jewels and filigreed with gold. Never were skulls more elegantly mounted; and I doubt whether Odin's buffet could exhibit so fine an assortment. The chapel containing these beatified bones is placed in a dark extremity of the cathedral. Several golden lamps gleam along the polished marbles with which it is adorned, and afford just light enough to read ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... of the general reader, that by Gimle is meant the abode of the righteous after the day of judgment; by Naastrand, the place of punishment after the same dread sentence; by Ragnarok, the last day; Valhal, the temporary place of happiness to which the god Odin invites those who have been slain in battle; and Hel, the goddess of death, whose abode is termed Helheim. With these explanations the reader will be able to understand the subjoined passage, which expresses the Norse idea of the future ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... by the intervention of God himself (p. 4), who in these Siebenbuergische Maerchen plays a part just as often as "Khuda" does in the Indian tales, taking for the purpose the form of a "good old man," and often wearing a grey mantle that reminds one of Odin. In the Netherlandish story of "The knight with the swan" (Thorpe's Northern Mythology, vol. III. p. 302), King Oriant's mother persuades the king his wife gave him seven puppies instead of seven children (each born ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... behold Their fanes of marble and their shrines of gold; The sea, the grove, the harvest and the vine Spring from their gods and claim a birth divine; While heroes, kings and sages of their times, Those gods on earth, are gods in happier climes; Minos in judgment sits, and Jove in power, And Odin's friends are ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... shape and a mightless, And the strong men laughed and roared: "Is our father Odin sightless That bade him share ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... it appeared that Miss Blanche, on retiring, had been pursued by a hideous winged bug which defied the efforts of herself and maid to dislodge. Odin, the Spitz dog, had insisted upon scratching at the door. And it made her eyes red to sleep in the morning. And she had an early call to make. And ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... according to Tacitus, they lived bout the period of the birth of Christ, and were a poor but brave people. Their original name was Vinuler, or Viniler. "When these Viniler," say the traditions, or rather fables of Scandinavia, "were at war with the Vandals, and the latter went to Odin to beseech him to grant them the victory, and received for answer that Odin would award the victory to those whom he beheld first at sunrise, the warlike female, Gambaruk, or Gunborg, who was mother to the leaders of the Viniler—Ebbe and Aage—applied ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... say so in a very special and emphatic sense," said Turnbull. "I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us. It is that I do not believe ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... mind, that originally dower was only the price paid by the suitor to the father for his good will; while portion, on the other hand, was the sum paid by the father to persuade a suitor to take a daughter off his hands. Let us remember, therefore, that in those times, as Odin was supreme in Asgard as the Great Father of Gods and men, so in his own house every father of the race that revered Odin was also sovereign ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... equestrian caste the symbol was the horse. The favourite, and therefore the chosen sacrifice of Odin, their ancestor and God, the horse's flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meal; the horse's head, hung on the ash in Odin's wood, gave forth oracular responses. As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden as impiety by the Church, while ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... Odin's self, I think, was a bit of truer human stuff;—I confess his value to me, in these sad times, is rare and great. Considering the usual Histrionic, Papin's-Digester, Truculent-Charlatan and other species of "Kings," alone ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... and dies, I leave my life on sea. To man I yield not spear nor sword Ne'er harmed me in their ire, Vain on me Europe shower'd her shafts, And Asia pour'd her fire. Nor wound nor scar my body bears, My lip made never moan, And Odin bold, who gave me life, Now comes and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... have not preserved the bird in your bosom safer than I have; at home or abroad, in servitude or in freedom, amidst sorrow or joy, plenty or want, my thought was always on the troth I had plighted to Hereward at the stone of Odin." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his son Leif to the Norwegian court, so close at this time was the connexion between the metropolis and the colonies. The king, who had been converted to Christianity, had just despatched a mission to Iceland charged to overthrow the worship of Odin. He committed to Leif's care some priests who were to instruct the Greenlanders; but scarcely had the young adventurer returned to his own country, when he left the holy men to work out the accomplishment of their difficult task and hearing of the discovery made by Bjarn, he fitted ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Gorlias grasped the great flag, The Raven of Odin, torn; And the eyes of Guthrum altered, For the first ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... diameter. It was more than a battle-craft; it also had political functions. The grand salon, on the outer zone where the curvature of the floors was less disconcerting, was as magnificent as any but a few of the rooms of the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, the floor richly carpeted and the walls alternating mirrors and paintings. The movable furniture varied according to occasion; at present, it consisted of the bare desk at which they sat, the three chairs they occupied, and the three secretary-robots, ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... and the dread choice had to be made—the crisis in the life of Alfgar, a crisis which has its parallel in the lives of many around us—approached, and he had to choose between Christ and Odin, between the death ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... who had slain his father. The sons of Hunding gathered themselves—Alf and Eywolf, Hiorward and Haward—and the hosts met in the plain under Lowfell. There was war in heaven while those armies made it on earth. Out of the lightning flare came the Valkyrs, daughters of Odin, choosers of the slain. They rode grey horses; they wore helms and coats of mail; their spear-heads gleamed like fire. Helgi sat by the Eagle Rock and cried out to them to stay. And one—it was Hogni's daughter, Sigrun—turned him her fire-hued ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... preserved at the Hawick Common riding. The burgh officers form the van of a pageant which insensibly carries us back to ancient times, and in some verses sung on the occasion there is a refrain which has been known for ages as the slogan of Hawick. It is "Teribus ye teri Odin," which is probably a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon, "Tyr habbe us, ye Tyr ye Odin"—May Tyr uphold us, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... reindeer unharness'd in freedom can play, And safely o'er Odin's steep precipice stray, Whilst the wolf to the forest recesses may fly, And howl to the moon as ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in Sweden and Norway have been so extensive and frightful of late years, that the natives of those two countries regard them as the most dreadful scourges of Odin, Thor, or Frey; and adopt every precaution they possibly can, in their primitive way, to prevent a fire, or to allay its fury when one does break out. I am not surprised at their consternation, for many of the houses are entirely ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... because that man was proof against that which had slain a host larger than any other that fell on any battle-field of the ages. The Scandinavian warriors believed that in the next world they would sit in the Hall of Odin, and drink wine from the skulls of their enemies. But society, by its requirements of late hours and conviviality, demanded that a man should drink out of his own skull, having rendered it brainless first. I had great admiration for the suavities and graces ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... by Mr. Balfour in his life of Stevenson. Writing of the fables which Stevenson began before he had left England and "attacked again, and from time to time added to their number" in 1893, Mr. Balfour says: "The reference to Odin [Fable XVII] perhaps is due to his reading of the Sagas, which led him to attempt a tale in the same style, ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... causes only, without raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, Odin were worshipped. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... priest's own boyhood home of Tournay, in far-off Belgium, and who, though so brave and daring, was still a pagan, when all the world was fast becoming Christian. And as Clotilda listened, she wished that she could turn this brave young chief away from his heathen deities, Thor and Odin, to the worship of the Christians' God; and, revolving strange fancies in her mind, she determined what she would do when she "grew up,"—as many a girl since her day has determined. But even as they reached the fair city of Geneva—then half ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... peoples of ancient Europe, the Scandinavians were perhaps most imbued with a persuasion of the efficacy of magic; a fact which their home and their habits sufficiently explain. In the Eddas, Odin, the leader of the immigration in the first century, and the great national lawgiver, is represented as well versed in the knowledge of that preternatural art; and the heroes of the Scandinavian legends of the tenth or twelfth century are especially ambitious of initiation. The ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... upon the great plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut.[1] There is no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so visitors have the turf cut away for ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... youth, as the fairest among the Giant-maidens. Mighty heroes sued for my hand; the sea around that island is still filled with the rocky fragments which they hurled against each other in their combats. Andfind won the victory, and I plighted myself to him. But ere I was married came the detestable Odin into the country, who overcame my father, and drove us all from the island. My father and sisters fled to the mountains, and since that time my eyes have beheld them no more. Andfind and I saved ourselves on this island, where we for a long time lived in peace and quiet, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... a skull was found in a secret niche of the walls. It might have been that of the monk who haunted the house, or of one of his own ancestors, or of some victim of the morose race. It was converted into a goblet, and used at Odin-like orgies. Though the affair was but a whim of youth, more odious than poetical, it caused some talk, and raised around the extravagant host the haze of a mystery, suggesting fantasies of irreligion and horror. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... manuscript, the language of the original population of Iceland, invented by Odin himself," cried my uncle, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... soul! And, if Odin were still looking out of his window in the sky as of yore, when he granted victory to the women of the Lombards, might he ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... awhile, and revel In these bowers, far outshining The six heavens of Mohammed, Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu, Or the Gardens of Adonis, Or the viewless bowers of Irim, Or the fine Mosaic mythus, Or the fair Elysian flower-land, Or the clashing halls of Odin, Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma, Or the marble realms of Siva, Or the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... inclosed fork and chain lightning; the lift-fire zigzagged in tangled skeins here of chalk-white threads, there of violet wires, to the surface of earth and sea. Presently nimbus-step, tier and canopy, gradually breaking up, formed a low arch regular as the Bifrost bridge which Odin treads, spanning a space between the horizon, ninety degrees broad and more. The sharply cut soffit, which was thrown out in darkest relief by the dim and sallow light of the underlying sky, waxed pendent and ragged, as though broken by a torrent of storm. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... believe that the earliest British legends recorded the glories of King Arthur—the defender of Christianity against the worshippers of Odin. The origin of these accounts have been traced by some to Scandinavian, by some to Arabian sources, but we may suppose them to have arisen among those ancient British people who inhabited Wales and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... calf, and so was Zeus; so were Thor and Odin, too. And yet they were struck down. (Catches sight of the Harlot.) Who's that woman? Oh, the one I tried to save by sending her in here. Tell me one thing, Olof. Have you ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... the North of old The strong sons of Odin; Sailed in the Serpent ships, "By hammer and ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... stolen, and a curse is laid upon it. The second opera of the series is "Die Walkuere." In this work the remarkable character of Brunhilde is the central figure. She is one of the Wish-maidens of Odin, whose duty it was to conduct the souls of slain heroes to Walhalla, the dwelling place of the gods. The entire conception of this character is unique, and still more unique in the musical way in which it is worked out. We find in this work also the mother and ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Odin had a son named Skioldr who settled and reigned in the land which is now called Denmark, but was then called Gotland. Skioldr had a son named Frithleif, who reigned after him. Frithleif's son was called Frothi, and succeeded ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... arose, Half of anguish, half of pride, As he sprang upon his feet With the flames on every side. "I am coming!" said the king, "Where the swords and bucklers ring— Where the warrior lives again With the souls of mighty men— I am coming, great All-Father, Unto Thee! Unto Odin, unto Thor, And the strong, true hearts of yore— I am coming to Valhalla, O'er ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... proportion to the adherence to the old pagan faith, or the sincere conversion to Christianity. The Norwegian chronicles, and passages in our own history, show how false and hollow was the assumed Christianity of many of these fierce Odin-worshippers. They willingly enough accepted the outward sign of baptism, but the holy water changed little of the inner man. Even Harold, the son of Canute, scarce seventeen years before the date we have now entered, being unable ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes, Palaeolithic Implements in Upper Egypt, Boston, 1881. See also Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, chap. i, pp. 8, 9, 44, 102, 316, 329. As to stone implements used by priests of Jehovah, priests of Baal, priests of Moloch, priests of Odin, and Egyptian priests, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac, as above, 6 and 7; also Lartet, in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead Sea; also Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, pp. 96, 97; also Sayce, Herodotus, p. 171, note. For the discoveries by ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "'T is Odin's own device," cried the delighted helmsman, catching at his young chief's great plan. "Ho, war-wolves all, bite ye your way through the Swedish fens! Up with the serpent banner, and farewell to Olaf ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... smiled at their "Teutonism" but indulged it, and it was stimulated by some of the teachers, especially the magnificent Zeller, so full of vigour and joy in existence. I can still see the gigantic young Swiss, as he made the pines tremble with his "Odin, Odin, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... even of the late Brahmanic custom of sacrificing the widow (suttee), in the practice of the Natchez Indians, and in Guatemala, of burning the widow on the pyre of the dead husband.[15] The storm wind (Odin) as highest god is found among the Choctaws; while 'Master of Breath' is the Creeks' name for this divinity. Huraka (hurricane, ouragon, ourage) is the chief god in Hayti.[16] An exact parallel to the vague idea of hell at the close of the Vedic period, with the gradual ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, the daughter of a line of heroes, whose stem was to be found in the race of Thor, Balder, Odin, and other deified warriors of the North, whose beauty was the theme of a hundred minstrels, and her eyes the leading star of half the chivalry of the warlike marches of Wales, to mourn her sire with the ineffectual tears of a village maiden. Young as she was, and horrible ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Opimian. In the Scandinavian mythology: one of the most poetical of all mythologies. I have a great respect for Odin and Thor. Their adventures have always delighted me; and the system was admirably adapted to foster the high spirit of a military people. Lucan has a fine ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Angles) all lying like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong draught, without a pick of gold lace, prostrate, sweating uncomfortably, sleeping; and travelling as their innumerable predecessors have ever travelled, from the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Norse mythology the wife of Balder, the sun-god; distinguished for her conjugal fidelity, threw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, and descended to the shades along with him; when the pair were entreated to return, he sent his ring to Odin and she her ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... enter not, I pray!' Thus to me did the old wife say; 'For all of us are heathens here, And I for Odin's wrath do fear.' The ugly witch drove me away, Like scared wolf sneaking from his prey. When she told me that there within Was sacrifice ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury, was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the Persians, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... sharp outlines of the red cliffs of Heligoland appeared, the German cruiser Seeadler came from the island to meet the squadron and reported that the coast ironclads Aegir and Odin, the cruisers Hansa, Vineta, Freya, and Hertha, together with the torpedo-boats, had set out from Wilhelmshaven during the night and had seen nothing of the enemy. The sea appeared free. All the available English warships of the North Sea squadron ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... or mind, Blood, or beauty, Or lovely hue. Odin gave spirit, Heinir gave mind, Lothur gave blood ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... hopeless-looking man. Yet full of what I call desperate-hope! One does verily stand on the Earth, a Star-dome encompassing one; seemingly accoutred and enlisted and sent to battle, with rations good, indifferent, or bad,—what can one do but in the name of Odin, Tuisco, Hertha, Horsa, and all Saxon and Hebrew Gods, fight it out?—This ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in secret to this day in Andalusia, and if there were worshippers of Odin and Thor till lately on the shores of the Baltic, may not some secret votaries of Jupiter and Mars have lingered among the recesses of the Balkan, for centuries after Christianity had shed ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... teachers in the Christian faith. And Swein has held Norway, my own land, with the help of the heathen jarls who are yet there. I fight the fight of the Cross, therefore, and when I go back to my own land, it will be to sweep away the last worship of Odin and Thor. But the time has not come yet," and his eyes ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... The very bareness of the outline is sufficient proof that the material is not new. The framework is apparently imitated from that of the poem known as Baldr's Dreams, some lines from which are inserted in Voeluspa. This older poem describes Odin's visit to the Sibyl in hell-gates to inquire into the future. He rides down to her tomb at the eastern door of Nifl-hell and chants spells, until she awakes and asks: "What man unknown to me is that, who has troubled me with this weary journey? Snow has snowed on me, rain ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... They become fishermen and small landholders in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. "Jeudi," or Jupiter's day, becomes their god Thor's day, or Thursday; "Mardi," or Mars's day, is their Tiu's day, or Tuesday; "Mercredi," or Mercury's day, is Odin's or Woden's ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... foretelling events. He was originally a heathen—when, however, Christianity was introduced into Iceland, he was amongst the first to embrace it, and persuaded his family and various people of his acquaintance to do the same, declaring that a new faith was necessary, the old religion of Odin, Thor, and Frey, being quite unsuited to the times. The book is no romance, but a domestic history compiled from tradition about two hundred years after the events which it narrates had taken place. Of its style, which is wonderfully terse, the following ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow |
