of Loki, and it seems as if his main characteristic is that he is defending the cosmos
against chaos, but, unlike Óðinn, with physical means. In the same way his role as a
god of fertility may best be seen, not as a direct giver of fertility, but as the one who
protects the right order (including fertility) against the interference of chaos. It should
also be mentioned that when he creates rain it is due to his cosmic battles where he
drives in his carriage, drawn by goats, through the sky, throwing his hammer, Mjo ̨llnir,
against the giants and producing thunder and lightning as a by-product of his cosmic
fights.
Fertility gods of the more traditional kind are the gods of the vanir family (as opposed
to the æsir family, including Óðinn, Þórr and most of the other gods). There are three
of them, namely Njo ̨rðr and his children Freyr and Freyja. They are connected with
sexuality and wealth, and thus represent another aspect of the needs of the society. It is
also related how the cult of the vanir had many sexual aspects. The myth of the war
between the æsir and vanir reflects some kind of opposition between the activity of the
peasants and the warriors, but the exchange of hostages which takes place as part of the
peacemaking at the same time shows that the different social classes have to be united in
order to make the society run. Freyja is one of the few individual goddesses who has had
a major role in the more official religious cult (whereas many female deities seen as
collectives played a part in both myth and ritual). She incorporates many traits that can
be found in fertility goddesses all over the world (Näsström 1995 ), among whom is a
clear connection also to death.
Apart from the major gods mentioned above, we meet many gods about whom we do
not know very much, either because they were more or less forgotten by the time our
sources were written down – which seems to be the case for instance with Týr and
Heimdallr – or because they never played any significant part in the religion – which
seems to be the case with Bragi, Hermóðr and others, at least in the official religion. There
is no doubt that many of the collective groups just mentioned played an important role
in private cult at the farmsteads, and were probably more important than many of the
so-called great gods. It is thus characteristic that we do not know much about the beliefs
of the lower classes, and we have only vague ideas about the differences from one place to
another in the Nordic countries. On the other hand there seems to be no reason to doubt
that there were some general structures that were known throughout the north, even if
we must accept that a lot of details differed; myths were told in different ways, rituals
were performed differently from one place to another and so forth. This also goes for the
development in history. It is obvious that the religion of the Vikings differed from
that of the Germanic peoples by the time of, let us say Tacitus, but on the other hand
there is no doubt that certain gods as well as mythical and ritual structures must be seen
as continuity.
BIBLIOGRAPHYBertell, M. ( 2003 ) Tor och den nordiska åskan. Föreställningar kring världsaxeln, Stockholm:
Religionshistoriska inst., Stockholms universitet.
Clunies Ross, M. ( 1994 ) Prolonged Echoes. Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society, vol. 1 : The
Myths (The Viking Collection 7 ), Odense: Odense University Press.
DuBois, Th.A. ( 1999 ) Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (The Middle Ages), Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
–– chapter 16 ( 1 ): The Old Norse gods––