"Odin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disclosed the Norse mythology in all its strength and weirdness. As classical mythology had become hackneyed, poets like Gray rejoiced that there was a new fountain to which they could turn. Thor and his invincible hammer, the Frost Giants, Bifrost or the Rainbow Bridge, Odin, the Valkyries, Valhal, the sad story of Baldur, and the Twilight of the Gods, have appealed strongly to a race which takes pride in its own mythology, to a race which today loves to hear Wagner's translation of these myths into the music of Die Walkuere, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... 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, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... mythology, the God of war and strength. He is girded by a belt of bear-sinews, and bears a hammer called "Miolner," which means the shatterer, and with which he destroys giants, demons, and other foes of Odin the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... are restored to their father, the king, 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 with a silver chain round its ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... as I 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 men ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the Creation myths of other barbarous nations. Our own Scandinavian ancestors had a similar one, the setting of which was certainly not inferior to the grotesque battle of Merodach with Tiamat. The prose Edda tells us that the first man, Bur, was the father of Boer, who was in turn the father of Odin and his two brothers Vili and Ve. These sons of Boer slew Ymir, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... forests were primitive. It is but natural, therefore, that they should have idealized strength and courage and that they should have represented the gods of Asgard as being large, strong, and courageous. Although Thor, the eldest son of Odin, was small in comparison with the giants, we are told in one of the myths that he was a mile in height; also he had great strength and a wonderful hammer, called Mjolmer, with which he always defeated the giants and kept them ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... discomfited by Lady Jocunda's practical jests and overpowering gaiety. When she addressed herself to me, my answers were as constrained and as concise as possible; and, as I was afterwards told, I seemed, at the close of my reply to each interrogative of her ladyship's, to answer with Odin's prophetess, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the icy halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... papers, is mentioned 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
... century: "All religion rests on a mental want; we hope, we fear, because we wish."[53-1] And long before this conclusion was reached by philosophers, it had been expressed in unconscious religious thought in myths, in the Valkyria, the Wish-maidens, for instance, who carried the decrees of Odin ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... 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
... 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 Roman, half Gallic, in its buildings and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the 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 terribly ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... built the town called Odense," replied the Pastor, "the other towns were envious of its better appearance and condition, and particularly the town now called Kjerteminde, and complaint was made to Odin, who was angry, and replied, 'Vaer du mindre' (literally, 'be you less'); this was that they should continue to be smaller towns than Odense. In time the name from Vaer du mindre became altered to its present name of Kjerteminde. There is also the variation that the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... the people fell, A famine after laid them low; Then thorpe and byre arose in fire, For on them brake the sudden foe; So thick they died the people cried, 'The Gods are moved against the land.' The priest in horror about his altar To Thor and Odin lifted a hand: 'Help us from famine And plague and strife! What would you have of us? Human life? Were it our nearest, Were it our dearest,—Answer, O answer!— ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... 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? We ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 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 took her and made her queen of Niflheim, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;—on which point there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakespeare has actually become among us. Which ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... here to consolidate their own position. After that it would take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will require a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and an important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and Kulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could eventually cut us right out of ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... internal conditions of his country and her military resources; in praise of him as a sternly genuine man and king, Carlyle has much to say in the early volumes of his "Frederick"; "No Baresark of them" ("the primeval sons of Thor"), among whom he ranks him, "no Baresark of them, not Odin's self, I think, was a bit of truer human stuff; his value to me in these times, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... superior force of any kind, that is the hallmark of his heroism, and before such an one humanity should bow down. Of real history, therefore, you will learn nothing from Heroes; neither will you get any trustworthy information concerning Odin, Mahomet and the rest of Carlyle's oddly consorted characters. One does not read the book for facts but for a new view of old matters. With hero-worshipers especially it ranks very high among the thought-provoking ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... names of mountains in Germany, are relics of the name. The name of the god, if preserved in the Gothic, would have been Fairguneis; and indeed in the Old Norse language Fioergynn is the father of Frigg, the wife of Odin, and Fioergynnior, the Earth-goddess, is mother of Thor. Professor Zimmer takes the same view. Grimm thinks that the Greeks and Romans, by changing f into h, represented Fergunni by Hercynia, and, in fine, he traces the words ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... 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, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... as they were called, did he miss. When he by daytime watched the sheep he thought of them, and told them over to himself. Thus he learned of other lands. He learned of Thor, and Odin, and the other gods which the Jarl worshipped with all his men, since they had never heard of the one true God, our Father of all. And he knew the Jarl believed that if a man was brave, and honest, and told the truth and lived a life pleasing to the gods, that pleasant things would happen to him ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... 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
... 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 was held to be binding. Whence ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... rocks fringing the coast of Norway is one forming a striking picture of a horse and rider about to plunge into the surf, fifteen hundred feet below. This gigantic illusion, to the fanciful minds of the old bards presented the image of Odin as he disappeared before ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... most miscellaneous collection, in which there is whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps the single exception of original verse. One of the books opens with: "Vegtam's Kvitha, or The Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the death of Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern historians—Auctore Gualtero ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... menstruated regularly to the age of thirty-eight. The penis was imperforate but hypospadic, from whence came the urinary and spermatic discharges, and Hohmann could in turn copulate as either male or female. Odin is also quoted in relation to the case seen at the Hotel-Dieu-de-Lyon, during the service of M. Bondet. The subject was aged sixty-three, and named Mathieu Perret. The case greatly resembled that of Hohmann, at the autopsy being found to be double sexed. So that, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... you might almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon 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 in some ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Saracens, moreover, wishing to introduce their own school of music, taught the girls to sing; proof of which is the horrible songs the contadini still have, resembling in no wise pious Christian hymns, but rather a cross between a growl to Odin and a yell to Allah! A growl to Odin, for the girls could not forget the Goths, albeit they only knew them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upon his Cross; the sight which melted the hearts of our fierce forefathers, and turned them from the worship of Thor and Odin to the worship of 'The white Christ;' and from the hope of a Valhalla of brute prowess, to the hope of a heaven of righteousness and love. Look at Christ upon his Cross, and see there, as they saw, the true prowess, the true valour, the true chivalry, the true glory, the ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... valour he was 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 intellectual Germany by storm. But it is not true. What is true, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... seas 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 ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 soul from ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... defeated by the old Emperor. It would have been well for the Latins had his age been less. He died in the year 1237, and young Baldwin, who was married to his daughter Martha, became sole emperor. John de Brienne made so great a name that he was compared with Ajax, Odin the Dane, Hector, Roland, and Judas Maccabaeus. Baldwin, who came after him, might have been compared with any of those kinglings who succeeded Charlemagne, and sat in their palaces while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... disguises. 'T is the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior. In the Norse legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher's hut, and patches a boat. In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells a peasant among peasants. In the Greek legend, Apollo lodges with the shepherds of Admetus; and Jove liked to rusticate among the poor Ethiopians. So, in our history, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Pavel, kak odin iz naibolee darovityh uchenikov farisejskoj shkoly, ne mog ne byt' posvjashhen v etu "tajnu bezzakonija, nahodivshujusja v dejstvii" i v ego vremja. Otsjuda osobaja zloba gonenija na nego so ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... admiration, "you ask just the question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population, (and indeed if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin,) are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty, I just ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... he had none. He told me his history. Thrown upon the world a foundling, his paternal origin was as much a mystery to him as the genealogy of Odin; and, scorned by everybody, he fled the parish workhouse when a boy, and launched upon the sea. He had followed it for several years, a dog before the mast, and now he had thrown it up ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... came nearer the shore they saw it was laden with quantities of gold and weapons, but not a soul was to be seen on board. When the Danes boarded the ship, they found a little boy lying asleep on the deck, and above his head floated a golden banner. Thinking that their god Odin had sent the boy, they brought him ashore and proclaimed him King. They named him Skjold, and he became a great and good King. His fame was such that the Danish Kings to this day are called "Skjoldunger." When this King died, his body was placed on board a ship which was loaded with treasure; ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... shall do well to bear in 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 ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... 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
... mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore; And the gods of the North,—are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... accusations against them and remind them of their doings in the "old days." One of his victims tells him to "let bygones be bygones." The gods are the subject of many stories that are here raked up against them, stories of another order of belief and of civilisation than those in which Odin appears as the wise and sleepless counsellor. This poem implies a great amount of independence in the author of it. It is not a satire on the gods; it is pure comedy; that is, it belongs to a type of literature which has risen above prejudices and which has an ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... 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 that purpose. The naked earth ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... much for Harek's courage that at once he lifted up no trembling voice and sang lustily, roaring verses old as Odin himself, such as no troll can abide within hearing of, so that those who bore him fell back amazed, and stared at him. Then I saw that on the arms and necks of one or two of these weird folk were golden rings flashing, and I saw, too, that our poor greyhounds ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... religious matters and when he did, told himself that he was too intelligent to believe in a literal heaven, a literal hell, and a personal God personally interfering in human affairs like any Jove or Odin. But the moment he rejected a concrete religion Vandover was almost helpless. He was not mystic enough to find any meaning in signs or symbols, nor philosophic enough to grasp vague and immense abstractions. Infinities, Presences, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... grasped the great flag, The Raven of Odin, torn; And the eyes of Guthrum altered, For the ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible 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 North to rule ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... to settle disputes by the summary method of an appeal to arms than to await the issue of a tedious and uncertain lawsuit such an appeal being perfectly competent to those who preferred it, and the belief being strong among the fiery spirits of the age that Odin, the god of war, would assuredly give ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... and 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... my thumb," quoth Tostig. "By Odin, the women of the North Danes are a scurvy breed. They birth dwarfs, not men. Of what use is this thing? He will never make a man. Listen you, Lingaard, grow him to be a drink-boy at Brunanbuhr. And have an eye on the dogs lest ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... exclaimed, "my 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 is ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... 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 with ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... 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 her fav'rite resort, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... burning breath, A fiery Soul that knows no fear, The armed hosts of Odin hear Her voice amid the ranks ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... 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 ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... and eighty acres situated in Marlon County, Illinois, two and a half miles from Tonti Station, and six miles from Odin, on branch of Illinois Central R. R., and O. & M. Road—300 acres under plow, 180 acres timber. The latter has never been culled and is very valuable. Farm is well fenced into seven fields. Has an orchard on it which has yielded ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... 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 built ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... walk downstairs 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 the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... light of Leo's age, And smooth, as woman's guide, Tansillo's page[12]? Till pleas'd, you make in fair translated song, Odin descend, and rouse the fairy throng[13]? Recall, employment sweet, thy youthful day, Then wake, at Mithra's call, the mystic lay[14]? Unfold the Paradise of ancient lore[15], Or mark the shipwreck from the sounding shore? Now love to linger in the daisied ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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 attacked the bridge at London. Bravely ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... memory of another witch, who had said to another man, "Thou art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;" and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, "Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... 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 ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... must sing you no more such Sagas," said he, "if they fill your mind with these revengeful thoughts, fit only for the worshippers of Odin and Thor. Neither Ragnar nor his sons knew better than to rejoice in this deadly vengeance, but we, who are Christians, know that it ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Valhalla rang Up to 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, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the Angles and Saxons, and colonized all England north and east of Watling Street (a rough line from London to Chester), and the eastern lowlands of Scotland likewise. Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin for "the White Christ"; had their own priests and bishops, and built their own minsters. The convents which the fathers had destroyed, the sons, or at least the grandsons, rebuilt; and often, casting away sword and axe, they entered them as monks themselves; ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... 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, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... blotted out in the darkness to-night; but the great shadow of the tree which hides you from the light of heaven shall be swept away. For this is the birth-night of the white Christ, son of the All-Father, and Saviour of mankind. Fairer is He than Baldur the Beautiful, greater than Odin the Wise, kinder than Freya the Good. Since He has come to earth the bloody sacrifices must cease. The dark Thor, on whom you vainly call, is dead. Deep in the shades of Niffelheim he is lost forever. His power in the world is broken. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... and actual;—their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series, Odin the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a most extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and wise counsellor. Odin and Thor send that we may meet again;" and Edwy with only a dozen followers rode ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... no contribution to offer here but the old quarrel with Christianity? But that quarrel shrinks into comparative concord beside the common peril from the resurrected gods of paganism, from Thor and Odin and Priapus. And it was always an exaggerated quarrel—half misunderstanding, like most quarrels. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Anselm believed God was other than One. Jesus but applied to himself distributively—as ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Siebenbuergische Maerchen also speak with human voice and give their masters good counsel. See p. 35 of "Der goldne Vogel;" p. 49 of "Der Zauberross;" p. 101 of "Der Knabe und der Schlange." These last two horses have more than four legs: like Odin's Sleipnir, they each have eight. See, too, the dragon's horse and this horse's brother in "Der goldne Apfelbaum und die neun Pfauinnen" (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, pp. 33-40). The "steed" in the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... the sea was his park of pleasure, Where he scattered in fear the human deer, And rested,—when he had leisure! Come,—shout and sing Of the great Sea-King, And ride in the track he rode in! He sits at the head Of the mighty dead, On the red right hand of Odin! ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... "Standing Stones of Stenness," with the famous Stone of Odin about 150 yards to the north, are second only to Stonehenge, one measuring 18 feet in length, 5 feet 4 inches in breadth, and 18 inches in thickness. The Stone of Odin had a hole in it to which it was supposed that sacrificial victims were fastened in ancient ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... patient courage and unblemished truth, To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable, And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves. 185 Sometimes, more sternly moved, I would relate How vanquished Mithridates northward passed, And, hidden in the cloud of years, became Odin, the Father of a race by whom Perished the Roman Empire: [M] how the friends 190 And followers of Sertorius, [N] out of Spain Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles, [O] And left their usages, their arts and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... them, and only one swam across. Sigurd chose him: his name was Grani, and he came of Sleipnir's breed, and was the best horse in the world. For Sleipnir was the horse of Odin, the God of the North, and was ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... were made at Old Upsala. Outside the church, in a row, are three great mounds of earth, erected in commemoration of Odin, Thor, and Freia—hence our Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. These mounds, of about 60 feet high and 232 feet in diameter, were in former times used as burying-places for the great and valiant. I went into a cottage near the tumuli, and drank a bumper of mead to the memory of Thor from ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... he was received with open arms by the enthusiastic students, who looked upon him as a sort of typical Goth, the prototype of the Teutonic races. And when they found how readily he learned to handle schlaeger and sabre, and that, like a true son of Odin, he could drain the great horn of brown ale at a draught, and laugh through the foam on his yellow beard, he became to them the embodiment of the student as he should be. But there was little of all that left now, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... can it do me to be a king's son if I am also a slave, made to work hard for my daily portion of black bread and tough horse flesh. Triggvi is in Valhalla, with Harald Fairhair and the rest of them, and he cannot help me now. But Odin be thanked, he died not like a cow upon a bed of straw, but with sword in hand ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... blessd bounds, nor sought the barbarous climes of barbarous gods Where Odin of the dreary North oer hog and sickly ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the sword, but I now Am undone by Sword-Odin. 'Gainst shields beyond the sea-flood The ruin of shields was wielded. Methinks the blood-fowl blood-stained In blood der men's heads stood there, The wound-erne yet ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... the Barbarian ideals of Teutonism. Men whose ancestors had worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... 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
... Odin, hast unsealed her eyes! In the deep night her ear was closed to thee— Yet now she sees the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... gives a glimpse at least of the nobleness which underlay the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian peoples had their great times; when the old fierceness of the worshippers of Thor and Odin was tempered, without being effeminated, by the Faith of the "White Christ," till the very men who had been the destroyers of ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... independently altogether of the momentous change in human affairs and prospects which they ushered in, have a substantial hold on history, of which neither the classical nor the northern hierology can boast. Poseidon and Aphrodite, Odin and Freya, vanish into the indefinite and undiscoverable at the approach of historical criticism. But separately altogether from their miracles, Cuthbert and Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, had actual existences. We know when they lived and when they died. The closer that historical criticism ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... olden might, The King of the Wends Thassilo's stern fight On land with Nimrod, and on ocean wide With Neptune. Rivers too personified Appear—the Rhine as by the Meuse betrayed, And fading groups of Odin in the shade, And the wolf Fenrir and the Asgard snake. One might the place for dragons' stable take. The only lights that in the shed appear Spring from the table's giant chandelier With seven iron ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... historic 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 Scalds, like the Brahmins ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... 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 ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... an ancient archbishop with the fervent wish of depositing 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 ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... a story in an old Norse book telling that Odin, the Scandinavian god, learned them and used them. St Bede tells in his "Church History" a story which proves that the belief in the magic power of runes lingered on in England after Christianity had become the professed religion of the people. It takes ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... 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
... 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 of all the ladies' schools in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to take you for a good long drive to-morrow, and show you something; but the trouble is, the doctor and I are at variance as to what the something shall be. I want you to see Odin's Garden; and the doctor insists that you ought to go to the Cheyenne canyons first, because those are his favorites. Now, which shall it be? We will leave it ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... raven of the waste or the parting: hence the bird of Odin symbolises separation (which is also called Al-bayn). The Raven (Ghurab Heb. Oreb and Lat. Corvus, one of the prehistoric words) is supposed to be seen abroad earlier than any other bird; and it is entitled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton |
