Th ey exchanged hostages, with one of the hostages being the
earth goddess herself, who went to live with the war god. If
she was the basis for the Norse goddess Freyja, it would ex-
plain Freyja’s sexual promiscuity, which would represent her
exceptionally fruitful powers. It may be signifi cant that the
earth goddess ended up as a hostage to the forces of the war
god, making him the chief of all gods.
Th is war god would have become Odin, perhaps by
the 400s c.e. It worth noting that an early Christian writer,
known as the Venerable Bede (673–735 c.e.), wrote that Odin
had been a great Germanic king who was deifi ed. Although
Bede was biased against the pagan religion of the Germans,
he may have touched on a truth, because sometimes historical
fi gures become gods or goddesses in their cultures. For in-
stance, two of the avatars of Vishnu—Rama and Krishna—in
the Hindu faith may have been important leaders during the
preliterate era of the Vedic religion.
If in fact a core European religion once existed that was
transformed into the pantheons of Greece and Rome and into
the elaborate and contradictory beliefs of the Celts, then it
took another interesting turn among the Germanic peoples.
Where the Celts had gods all over the landscape, the Ger-
manic peoples developed supernatural beings that were usu-
ally mortal. Th ey had dragons, dwarfs, light elves, dark elves,
trolls, and giants. Dragons were frightful creatures who loved
wealth and hoarded treasure that they fi ercely guarded. Th e
dwarfs lived in the ground. If exposed to light, they turned
to stone. Light elves were beautiful and airy. Th ey may have
inhabited the sky. Dark elves lived underground and were
sullen and unfriendly. Trolls were monsters, perhaps as-
sociated with specifi c spots of land. Th ey served the giants,
who inhabited mountains and lands of frigid cold. (All these
diff erent beings seem to have been part of a creation-of-the-
world myth in which all appeared at about the same time,
with human beings inhabiting a realm between the sky and
the ground. Th us the ancient Germanic religion had a world
of three parts, with humanity in the middle.)
Th e mortality of these and other supernatural beings is
perhaps the most unusual aspect of the Germanic belief sys-
tem. Only rarely does any being have immunity from being
killed. Even the gods can die. Th is mortality even for gods is
part of a dark view of existence that all the Germanic peoples
seem to have shared by the fi rst century b.c.e. Everything
was temporary in their faith. Th e gods would perish, and the
world would end. Even those who had gone into the aft erlife
would eventually be snuff ed out. Th e later Vikings viewed the
end as a great battle between good and evil, full of betrayal
and futile heroism. Th e war god himself would perish. Th e
earth would be destroyed, taking the earth goddess with it.
It is not known for sure when runes began to be used
in Germanic rituals. A form of writing made up of straight
lines set at various angles, ideal for engraving into stone,
runes may have been a late development, but they may have
predated the onset of Christianity in the 100s c.e. Th ey were
considered sacred, and most people were not allowed to know
their meaning. It seems that just as Druids wanted to keep
their supernatural knowledge to themselves, the priests of
the Germanic peoples wanted exclusive knowledge of how to
write. Part of the importance they attached to writing was
that it could reshape reality. To them the written word had a
supernatural creative power. A written word could kill, could
create an animal, could change the weather, or could change
much else.
Th e Germans may have shared with the Celts a belief
that the spoken word had the power to alter reality. Th is belief
was wrapped in mysticism. Common in the German culture
were women seers and sorceresses. Th e Germans did not have
temples, so their ceremonies oft en took place in homes. Fe-
male seers traveled the countryside, perhaps making annual
rounds, and they held ceremonies in people’s houses. Th ey
could tell women whether they would become pregnant in the
near future and tell farmers whether they would have good or
bad crops. During early medieval times the female seers wore
cloaks made of many diff erent animal skins, and they prob-
ably did so in ancient times too. Archaeologists have found
bronze caps, dating to the last few centuries b.c.e., that were
attached to staff s the female seers carried with them. Perhaps
they served as signs of a woman’s status as a magician. Th e
staff s themselves may have served to focus their owners’ su-
pernatural powers.
It is possible that these female seers sacrifi ced animals
on occasion to help them foretell the future. Th ey may have
claimed certain powers over the dead, such as being able to
bring them back to life for a short time to speak with the liv-
ing and even take action. Th e female seers’ powers were to
be used only by women. Men who practiced the magic of the
female seers were put to death; apparently they represented a
danger to the community because the magic could get out of
their control.
Th e ancient Germanic peoples practiced human sacrifi ce
extensively, but this does not seem to have been associated
with the female seers. Animals were oft en sacrifi ced by chiefs
or kings. Th e blood of the animal could consecrate a build-
ing or meeting place. Th e animals were cooked and eaten by
the chief and his guests, symbolically uniting them in mutual
obligation. Th ose assembled were expected to aid the chief in
his rule, and the chief was expected to guide his followers to
prosperity. In Sweden and Denmark special gathering places
existed where tribes made sacrifi ces to mark the seasons. Hu-
man beings were killed on such occasions, probably nine or 99
at a time, as was the practice of the Norse. Hanging, strangling,
cutting the throat, and drowning were among the methods
employed. Th e corpses were hung from trees in a sacred part
of a wood or sometimes dumped in bogs. Even in Denmark’s
sacred groves of Nerthus, the goddess of peace, prisoners were
drowned as sacrifi ces to her in the fi rst century c.e.
Some ceremonies were practiced by all Germanic people.
For example, they made sure to leave food as off erings to the
elves, took care not to off end the easily insulted dwarfs, and
used charms to ward off evil spirits. Th at they buried their852 religion and cosmology: Europe