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In this uproar Odin appeared, and, making for the thick of the ranks of the fighters, restored by his divine power to the Danes that vision which they had lost by sleights; for he ever cherished them with fatherly love. He instructed them to shower stones to batter the Hellespontines, who used spells to harden their bodies against weapons. Thus both companies slew one another and perished.
For a full minute I waited thus, but all that happened was that a wren settled on the head of Odin and twittered there, then flew off to its nest in the thatch. "Now," I cried, "you have had your turn, and mine comes." I drew the Wanderer's sword, and sprang at Odin.
The tales do not say what Odin thought of the gift. Perhaps he was glad that now there was no one in the whole world who could be called so wise as himself. Perhaps he was sorry for the danger into which he had thrust a poor old giant who had never done him any wrong, except to be a giant of the race which the Æsir hated. Perhaps he was a little ashamed of the trick which he had played the Vanir.
"Odin!" shouted Ingvar; "you speak truth. Woe is me for my father, and woe to the land that has given him a grave thus foully." With that he let his sword fall, and his passion having gone, he sat down and put his face in his hands, and wept tears of grief and rage. And I, as I watched him, was fain to weep also, for my thoughts were akin to his.
The fingers were covered with the most costly rings, no doubt since added. If there be Moslems 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 its light over Europe?
But Brun, amid the toils of his constant journeys to and fro, was drowned in a certain river; and Odin, disguised under his name and looks, shook the close union of the kings by his treacherous embassage; and he sowed strife so guilefully that he engendered in men, who were bound by friendship and blood, a bitter mutual hate, which seemed unappeasable except by war.
Vafthrudnismal, a riddle-poem, shows Odin in a favourite position, seeking in disguise for knowledge of the future. In each case the questions deal first with the past.
"She gave us our first 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 shone strangely.
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 form of Heroism. Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days.
Near it is the Temple of Isis, the Temple of Osiris, the Buddha Temple, the Horus Temple, and the Pyramid of Cheops. Farther to the east is the Diva Temple, the Brahma Temple, the Temple of Zoroaster, and the Tomb of Odin. Indeed, everywhere are there suggestions of temples and tombs, pagodas and pyramids, on a scale that no work of human hands can rival.
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