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Gods and Myths of Northern EuropeWodan, lord of the kingdom of death and ancestor of the German kings, may even then have been challenging the supremacy of TГ®waz on the battlefield. Later in the heathen period Wodan is seen as the bearer of the spear and the god of the wolf and raven, and he was accepted, by certain tribes at least, as the deity of battle. In Sweden he was known as Odin, the leader of the gods, the deity with power to bind and to loose, whose followers were the terrible вЂchoosers of the slain’ who could strike down men in the conflict or render them helpless to avert death. In this Odin follows in the footsteps of Wodan, the best interpretation of whose name seems to be вЂone who makes mad’. Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century sums up this power of the god briefly and decisively: вЂWodan, id est furor.’ We shall see in a later chapter that Odin was also the god of the dead and supreme practitioner in magic, with the ability to inspire his followers and grant them the ecstatic, trance-like state of intoxication. The ecstasy of battle, which inspired the berserks and filled them with such madness that they knew neither fear nor pain, was naturally viewed as a gift of the same god ...» |
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