23 – Kings and Rulers

Jens Peter schjødt

That there is some relation between the ruler and the gods within PCRN is a fact which no scholars have disputed. This said, however, almost everything else connected to this relation has been heavily debated, and as we have already seen several times, at the basis of the disagreement are varying opinions about the sources and how they should be used, which shall not be discussed again at this place. instead, we shall begin with some general considerations concerning the relation between rulers and the other World.

We know from all kinds of societies that they have religious specialists of various types: some of them mostly involved in what we would most often classify as ‘magic’, whereas others are particularly specialized in the conducting of more or less spectacular public rituals. such specialists will be dealt with in (è29). The existence of religious specialists is due to the fact that in religious societies, as a defining element, there is a clear awareness of a dependence of the ‘other World’: we are able to control many things in our world, but certainly not everything. if the beings of the other World are not friendly to us and grant us success in our work in the field, luck in war, and in personal matters, and so forth, then we are in deep trouble. This means that, just as we need some specialists to guide and help us in ordinary affairs (the blacksmith, the ship builder, etc.) we need somebody to help us in our relation towards the other World and the beings who in the last instance determine the outcome of our enterprises. and since, in most tribal and archaic societies the relation to the other World is intertwined with almost anything we do, the person who is in charge of the well-being of the society above ordinary people, that is, the Jens Peter Schjødt, Professor of the study of Religion, aarhus University The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures, Volume ii, ed. by Jens Peter schjødt, John lindow, and anders andrén, PCRN-HS 2 (Turn hout: Brepols, 2020) pp. 529–557

BREPols

PUBlisHERs

10.1484/M.PCRN-EB.5.116950

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ruler, must also have a special relation to the other World. This special relation is thus, from an emic point of view, an extremely important legitimizing factor for our acceptance of this person’s decisions. Because of this special relation to the gods, he (it is most often a male) is also the person we accept to guide us in other matters which do not immediately, from a modern perspective, have anything to with the other World and thus with religion. There is no reason to go into a detailed discussion whether the political leader held his religious position because of his political office, or if it was the other way round. Most likely the answer to that question is dependent on whether we take an emic or an etic perspective (è1): from the emic perspective the religious relation is seen as legitimization for political office, whereas from an etic perspective it could very well be the other way round: because of the political power of the leader, it is possible for him to be in charge also in religious matters. The important thing, however, is that leadership within the political and the religious sphere1 is most often very hard to distinguish in tribal and archaic societies. Therefore it would not be possible to deal with the social aspects of PCRN without taking the role of the political leader into consideration.

a couple of terminological problems should be addressed before we can deal in any detail with the subject. first and foremost, seen from the perspective of the history of religions, it is hardly possible to make a clear distinction between different kinds of political leaders, based on the extant sources.

This is not to say that there could not well have been differences between, for instance, kings and chieftains (see, e.g., Jón Viðar sigurðsson 2011: 80–85).

That there were such differences in relation to their political roles and the extent of their power is clear, but in relation to religion, the sources are simply not sufficiently detailed for us to draw any sharp distinctions, although they may well have been there as has been suggested by olof sundqvist (2012), discussing the differences between icelandic chieftains and scandinavian kings. Even the designations create huge problems. as we shall see below, Tacitus distinguishes between reges and duces ( Germania ch. 7), and he also writes about principes (some kind of chieftains), but we do not know the exact relation between these different leaders; and to make it even more difficult, the Romans sometimes called a dux a rex, as is the case with ariovist (cf. è12). also within the scandinavian area we have terms such as dróttinn,2

1 speaking of these two spheres is of course possible only from an etic perspective, since in archaic cultures people would hardly be able to draw a sharp distinction between them.

2 The word means ‘the leader of the army’ (or the warrior band, see è24) and goes back to proto-germanic (cf. lindow 1976).

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jarl,3 konungr,4 and many more that designate various kinds of leaders and sometimes the same kind of leader. it is quite likely, even probable, that also within the religious realm there were clear differences between these categories, but because of the source situation it is not possible to pin out these differences.

for these reasons we shall stick to such terms as ‘leader’ and ‘ruler’.5

second, traditionally within the history of religions a distinction between different kinds of religious specialists, particularly between specialists of a

‘priestly’ type and specialists of a ‘shamanic’ type, has been made (cf. Malefijt 1968: 228–45). The question about ‘shamanism’ within PCRN has played a major role in the discussion since the last decade of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries (e.g., Hedeager 1997a; solli 2002; schjødt 2001; Price 2002; Tolley 2009a), but has also been a subject for older research (e.g., strömbäck 1935; Buchholz 1968–69, 1971). This discussion will not be taken up in this chapter; suffice it to say that there is no evidence at all that the political leader was anything like a shaman.6 There may have been other specialists who acted in a ‘shamanistic’ way, for instance, the people who performed the seiðr, but the descriptions we have about leaders suggest rather that these were part of, perhaps even in charge of, important parts of the official cult, and certainly ideologically related to the gods, but without any sign of ‘spirit travels’

or other characteristics which we usually connect with shamanism.

Notwithstanding the difficulties in distinguishing between the different categories of leaders, just mentioned, we will have to discuss the term ‘sacral kingship’, which therefore, in this connection, can also be applied to ‘sacral chieftainship’. Within the general study of religion, however, the term ‘sacral kingship’ is most often used (Widengren 1969: 360–93),7 whether or not the 3 Jarl means a kind of chieftain, but there can hardly be no doubt that etymologically it is related to * erilaz meaning ‘magician’ or ‘priest’, which would indicate some sort of combination of secular and religious power (cf. de Vries 1962a: 290).

4 Konungr meaning probably ‘man of divine descent’ (de Vries 1962a: 326).

5 D. H. green (1998: 124–34) discusses within the germani in general three vernacular words, þiudans, truhtin, and kuning, which he does not distinguish functionally but rather chronologically.

6 it has been suggested by John lindow (2003) that the Óðinn we meet in Ynglinga saga ch.

6–7 is presented as a sámi shaman, which seems very likely. at the same time, however, Óðinn is euhemerized, so he is also presented as a king. Thus the two figures, ‘shaman’ and ‘king’, are present in the same person. However, this is an extraordinary case and can hardly be used as evidence for any such thing as shamanic performances carried out by scandinavian kings.

7 another, often-used term is ‘divine kingship’, emphasizing the idea that the king is seen as god, as is the case in many cultures. Whether this is the case also in PCRN will be discussed below.

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leader in case is actually a king, which is why it will also be used here. But even if the term ‘sacral kingship’ has been seen to designate different institutions, as we shall see in a moment, some scholars insist that in order to use the term, the king should be seen as some kind of god, whereas others would argue that a role as cult leader would justify the use of it (Köhler 2004: 181).8 as a consequence, it may cover a wide range of relationships between the ruler and the other World, from ‘just’ being an important participant in rituals to being a god —

and all intermediate forms, including ideas about the king’s inherent numinous power, his descent from the gods, and many other stronger or weaker relations.9

Therefore, a certain relation between rulers and religion is something we should expect, before we have even looked at the sources; and as mentioned, probably nobody would deny that this was also the case in scandinavia, so what we have to look for is a wide range of relations between the ruler and the phenomenon of religion as it was characterized in (è1). There is no immediate reason to look for all the typological details that were suggested by an older generation of scholars like James george frazer,10 arthur M. Hocart (1927; see below), and geo Widengren (1969: 360–93). a more recent structural approach was taken by Henry J. M. Claessen (1978: 550–51). He enumerates the following points: 1. The position of the sovereign is based on a mythical charter.

2. The ruler is sacral. The most important manifestation of his sacrality is his mediation between his people and the supernatural forces.

3. The ruler performs rites, and in some cases is even the high priest.

4. He placates the supernatural powers with offerings.

5. The sovereign is also the lawgiver and supreme judge. Being the supreme commander of the armed forces, he is charged with the protection of his 8 Köhler (2004: 181) has a useful overview of various kinds of sacrality by the leader, such as divinity by his own power, incarnating a divinity, substitute for the god, direct descent, the main figure in mediating between humans and gods, symbolic closeness to the gods, or magic and supernatural powers. These forms of sacrality may appear individually, but more often they can be seen in combination.

9 for a splendid outline of the discussion within PCRN, we can refer to sundqvist (2002: 18–38), although his account is mainly concerned with the old swedish society. for the viewpoints up until the 1970s, a very useful survey can be read in McTurk (1974–77, 1994).

10 all through The Golden Bough (1907–15) frazer touches upon sacral kings, as is also indicated by the myth-ritual complex with which the work begins: the king of the woods in Nemi.

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people. His benevolence is expressed in the gifts pre-

sented and the remuneration paid by him.

6. The essential aim of all these characteristics is protection against supernatural forces, enemies, poverty, and anar-chy. it is believed that wherever the sovereign is, there is

safety, order, and well-being.

7. in principle, therefore, the relationship between the sov-

ereign and his people can be seen as a reciprocal one: the

people supply food, goods, and services, and the ruler

provides protection, that is, a redistribution system.

of course, there is room for criticisms here, but mostly it

will be a matter of perspective, and there certainly are valu-

able observations in the above list. it is, however, important

to be aware that this is not a checklist, according to which we

can determine whether we face a sacral kingdom or not, but

it is a figure we may use in order to interpret the sources from PCRN. and even if some of the points do not seem immediately to have any direct relation to religion, they probably

have so anyway, since, as was mentioned, most happenings in

archaic societies were seen in relation to the religious world-

view. We may miss some points, and perhaps we can find other

characteristics that are of importance in scandinavia, but

Claessen’s points are useful to bear in mind, exactly because

they allow us to see, within each point, a variety of poten-

tial manifestations. This distinguishes the list from those of

earlier generations, and makes it much more useful when we

attempt to analyse different structural relationships between

rulers and religion.

figure 23.1. a sceptre from the royal ship burial at sutton Hoo in suffolk, dated to the early seventh century (British Museum no. 1939, 1010.160). The sceptre consists of a whetstone with four carved human masks at both ends.

at the upper end of the sceptre is a ring with a stag. The ship burial at sutton Hoo has many scandinavian parallels, and from a scandinavian point of view, the whetstone sceptre recalls the myth of Þórr’s killing of the giant Hrungnir.

according to snorri, all whetstones come from Hrungnir’s whetstone, which Þórr shattered with his hammer (è41). The sceptre, consequently, could have suggested association of the ruler and his relations to the other World and to the creation of the world. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum, london.

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as mentioned above, the religious character of the ruler in PCRN has been vividly discussed for a long time, and in the following section we shall attempt to give a brief overview of some of the more important view points in the history of scholarship.

Scholarship

Up until 1964, there was a general consensus that the king in pre-Christian scandinavia should be seen as ‘sacred’, partly due to analogies from the Mediterranean area and to the scattered hints in the scandinavian sources themselves. The whole idea of sacral kingship in the scholarly community had its origin in the so called ‘Myth and Ritual school’ founded by the Cambridge ritualists in the years around 1900,11 and it survived the criticisms raised against its other parts (schjødt 1990a; steinsland 2000: 53–57; sundqvist 2002: 18–38) such as the stable relation between the two phenomena ‘myth’

and ‘ritual’ and others. in accordance with the comparative method of the time, scholars within PCRN construed detailed models, sometimes based on that of a. M. Hocart, which was created from material mainly from the ancient Near East, but also from the rest of the world (Hocart 1927), connecting the scattered evidence within the Nordic sources. There is no doubt that some of these reconstructions had very meagre support in the sources, and that they were often part of a romantic view of the scandinavian past. But many valuable theories about sacral kingship which were still based on comparative evidence were also published by scholars such as Vilhelm grønbech (1909–12), Åke V.

ström (1956), folke ström (1954), and otto Höfler (1959).

in 1964, however, Walter Baetke published his famous book on sacral kingship, Yngvi und die Ynglingar: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung über das nor-dische ‘Sakralkönigtum’, in which he concluded that there was no such thing as a sacral kingship in the North. This created a heated debate in the following years, but there is no doubt that in this period in which the ‘source critical’ method was at its peak the tendency was in favour of Baetke,12 whereas this has changed in recent years, where the tendency seems to go in the opposite direction, as we 11 for general accounts and discussions about the school, we can refer to fontenrose (1966); Kirk (1970: 8–31); Doty (1986: 72–106); Bell (1997: 3–22); and segal (1998: 1–13).

12 again, we can refer to sundqvist and McTurk when it comes to the debate about Baetke (sundqvist 2002: 31–35; McTurk 1974–77: 150–68). it should be mentioned that already in 1971 Erik gunnes challenged Baetke for not taking comparative perspectives into consideration in connection with what the old Norse sources actually relate (gunnes 1971: 31).

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shall return to below. an interesting thing, however, is that the main part of the disagreement seems to be about definitions: what do we need in order to speak about sacral kingship? Baetke insisted that sacral kingship necessarily had to involve a veneration of the king as a sacred figure — that he had to have some inherent ‘religious power’ (Baetke 1964: 39). in old Norse we have such terms as hamingja, gæfa, gipta (è36) definitely indicating qualities of some inner ‘life’

that can be expressed as a kind of inherent soul, gift, or luck (see sundqvist 2002: 244–48; Ejerfeldt 1969–70) and could be seen as an indication of such power, but they are all rejected by Baetke as evidence for pagan ideas about the king’s ‘power’, mainly because they were not only attributed to kings (Baetke 1964: 19). We shall return to that below, but as we just noted, the idea of such an inherent power is not necessary, in order to speak of ‘sacral kingship’ as the term is used in the general study of religion. But of course definitions are not

‘right’ or ‘wrong’. The problem, however, is that it is hard to discuss the existence of sacral kingship if the participants in the discussion have differing opinions about what they are actually talking about. More famous is Baetke’s rejection of the descent from the gods, primarily based on a source critical analysis of Ynglingatal. Baetke did not accept this poem, or any other source for that matter, as an indication that the scandinavian kings descended from any god, be it Óðinn or freyr. The divine qualities that can be seen in many saga descriptions, it was maintained, are due to Christian influence, including the notion of rex justus. This rejection of divine genealogy was of course necessary in order to reject the inherent power of the ruler: if a person descends from the gods, he or she would most likely possess some superhuman power.

Therefore, in spite of the fact that neither Baetke nor anybody else rejected the idea that the king played a role in the cult, he had no ‘divine’ qualities, and thus was not really ‘sacral’. The problem, however, is then, how — in a tribal or an archaic society — it would be possible to legitimize the social and political position of the ruler without recurring to some basic ideological patterns, shared in more or less detail by all members of the society in question, that is, religion. of course military or economical ‘force’ would play an important role, but it is hardly likely that people in the long run would accept a leader who was not able to maintain a good relationship with the other World, governing most things in this world. so even if Baetke’s analysis, particularly in the first couple of decades following the publication, had immense impact, and still has, in the sense that many scholars are hesitant to use the term ‘sacral kingship’ at all,13 we must reconsider the whole idea of the divine qualities of the king.

13 The term ‘sacral kingship’ is in this chapter used without any prejudice. a scholar such as

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since Baetke, the whole discussion of the role of the ruler has continued, and many contributions have been published, and some of them will be mentioned below. as suggested above, since the 1990s the general attitude towards the existence of a kind of sacral kingship — whether or not the term is accepted

— in pre-Christian scandinavia has been more positive, mostly due to a more positive attitude in general towards the possibility of using the sources for reconstructing PCRN.14 We shall not go into details with the various contributions at this place, but important viewpoints will be mentioned in the following sections.15 one scholar, however, should be mentioned here: namely, the Norwegian historian of religion gro steinsland. in her thesis she proposes that a certain pattern concerning the descent of the king was to be seen in some eddic and skaldic poems (steinsland 1991: passim; (more briefly) steinsland 2000: 57–81). This pattern consists mainly in the fact that the numinous power of the king is due to his descent from a relation between a god (freyr or Óðinn) and a giant woman, a relation which steinsland characterizes as a hieros gamos.16 Prior to steinsland, the ancestral mother was never focused upon, but sundqvist seems to be very hesitant to use the term in connection with the pre-Christian scandinavian area, because he sees it as a continuation of the ‘pre-Baetke’ scholarship (sundqvist 2002: 37, 365; cf. steinsland 2011b: 16). He speaks about a ‘sacral kingship school’ which is understood as part of the frazerian framework. in this chapter the term is used simply to characterize any relation in which the ruler possess some numinous power which is beyond that of his people, involving some or all of the characteristics presented by Claessen. ‘sacral kingship’

is thus understood as a religious phenomenon at the same level as ‘sacrifice’, ‘myth’, ‘shamanism’, etc., and certainly not as a ‘school’ (after all, we do not talk about a ‘sacrifice school’, a

‘myth school’, etc.). The fact that a term has been used by some scholars we do not agree with should not prevent us from using that term — as long as it is meaningful: if an important part of the legitimization of the position of the king has to do with his position vis-à-vis the sacred, it definitely makes sense to speak of a ‘sacral kingdom’, and thus of ‘sacral kings’. see also von Padberg (2004: 180).

14 see, for instance, Brink (1990b); North (1997); Nygaard (2016); schjødt (1990a, 2010); steinsland (1991, 2000); Jón Viðar sigurðsson (1999), and a bit more hesitant sundqvist (2002, 2005, 2007, 2012). among ‘post-Baetke’ scholars rejecting the idea of sacral kingship, we can mention Ejerfeldt (1969–70), lönnroth (1986), Picard (1991), and frank (2007).

15 sundqvist in numerous publications, and in particular in his book from 2016, An Arena for Higher Powers, * * has gathered and discussed almost all relevant material, including a brief account of the research history (sundqvist 2016: 7–14). in contrast to his earlier book from 2002, Freyr’s Offspring, he is here dealing with the whole Nordic area.

16 once again a term, the definition of which there is absolutely no agreement about. Basically it is about a sexual relation either between a human and a divine being, or two divine beings, or two human beings who have some metaphorical relation to the other World.

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according to her, it is decisive to take this giant woman into account, because it explains the ill fate we often see connected to the kings. Whether or not this theory can account for the entire ‘ruler ideology’ remains to be seen,17 but whether or not the relation between a god and a giantess is significant, there can hardly be any doubt that it is significant in many sources that a woman who is in some way connected with the other World is very often chosen when kings are in need of a wife, both in myths and in legendary history,18 as well as in real life.19 steinsland, thus, although somewhat sceptical towards the term

‘sacral kingship’ (steinsland 2011b: 16), fully agrees that the king is closely related to the other World through descent.

Historical Framework

The discussion about an early germanic kingship has been going on for more than a century, and it would be impossible in this chapter to go into just the most important details of that discussion.20 in brief it can be stated that, as we have just seen in relation to scandinavia, there is no agreement whether there actually was such a thing as a sacred kingship and also in the same way as in the discussion above, whether the sources are reliable concerning these matters. and, as is nearly always the case in dealing with the early germanic peoples, we cannot be sure of anything. We do know a lot about kings, or at least persons who were seen as kings by the classical authors, but the character Whether it is a question of ‘pure’ sexuality or the main purpose is procreation is hard to say, but in general the two things are very difficult to separate in religious matters.

17 Margaret Clunies Ross (2014) has, like some other reviewers, been very critical towards steinsland’s theory and has problematized the textual foundation for it.

18 several examples can be found in Ynglinga saga.

19 Examples, although partly legendary, could be the wife of Haraldr hárfagri snæfríðr, King Hringr’s wife Hvít, or King Vǫlsungr’s wife Hljóð, who are all ‘strangers’ (cf. Mundal 1996), just as Danish kings such as gormr the old and Haraldr blátǫnn took (slavonic) wives outside the ‘in-group’.

20 among many good overviews we shall in particular refer to the articles on ‘Königtum’ and ‘sakralkönigtum’ in Reallexikon der germanischer Altertumskunde, 17 (2001) and 26

(2004) (for instance, schneider 2001, Padberg 2004, and steuer 2004); see also Castritius and sawyer (2001); Wolfram (1968); Wallace-Hadrill (1971). green (1998: 121–40) has a good discussion but leaves the question of ‘sacral kingship’ unsolved (1998: 123–24). an interesting contribution dealing primarily with anglo-saxon matters, but very suggestive also for the old Norse world is Chaney (1970).

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of their relation to the gods is very hard to grasp from the sources.21 it seems, however, that at least some of the germanic tribes — and there may well have been differences22 — saw their ruler as a descendant from the gods, as we see it most clearly in Jordanes’s Getica (14.79), in which we are told that the kingly family, the Amali, were seen as semi-gods ( ansis)23 and had descended from gapt (probably Óðinn). We may also interpret the statement by Tacitus in Germania ch. 7 that the kings were chosen according to their birth (‘Reges ex nobilitate […] sumunt’) as if the genealogy of the royal family (known as stirbs regia) was of another kind than that of ordinary people. Here it is also said that war leaders are chosen because of their courage. Tacitus speaks about reges and duces as two kinds of leaders which may very well correspond to the so called ‘freyr kings’ and ‘Óðinn kings’ respectively, the king of peace, and of the tribe, and the king of war, and of the war bands (schjødt 2012b: 73–79; Nygaard 2016: 14–15, 24–26; cf. Enright 1996a: 89–90).24 How and when this division developed and how and why it later, in the pagan scandinavian context (and in medieval Europe, of course), was reduced to one king, we cannot know with any certainty, but we shall return to the theme below.25 also most of the anglo-saxon royal houses would trace their line back to Óðinn as 21 for a thorough overview of the sources concerning the germanic peoples, outside of scandinavia we can refer to goltz and others (2004). Here there are also many references to the heated discussion about the sources, and it is stated that almost no sources speak clearly about anything that can be connected directly to a ‘sacral kingdom’ ( Sakralkönigtum).

22 for instance, it seems that the eastern tribes had a more monarchic kind of government than those in the west (Chaney 1970: 9).

23 The word is related to old Norse * æsir* (de Vries 1962a: 16); see also North (1997: 135–

39), who maintains that gapt was not in the outset Óðinn but a god of the vanir-type.

24 These two types of kings are also discussed in Wolfram (1997: 15–20). He says about Tacitus’s two kinds of leaders that they represented ‘two forms of germanic kingship that supplemented, indeed succeeded, one another’ (p. 15).

25 The archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen has attempted to demonstrate a ‘twin rulership’

already in Bronze age scandinavia (and other places). although many of his theories remain rather speculative, his results may well be of interest in this connection (Kristiansen 2001; cf. Kristiansen and larsson 2005: 271–82). The so-called ‘hillforts’ or ‘ringforts’ and their use may also indicate the existence of some sort of military leaders, probably the duces of Tacitus, as has been demonstrated by anders andrén (2014: 69–115). These constructions and the military organization they were part of, therefore, in the third century ce, seem to be ‘based on negotiations between different aristocratic families, and the military leaders probably only enjoyed temporary power associated with the actual campaign’ (andrén 2014: 114), whereas they developed into more permanent settings in the fifth century, probably indicating a change in the position of the duces (cf. Wolfram 1997: 15–20).

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their ultimate forefather (Chaney 1970: 29–33). apart from this genealogical evidence, we also learn from Germania (ch. 10) that the king or the chieftain was, together with the priest, in charge of a divination ritual involving horses.

in Histories (4.61–65), Tacitus likewise relates that there was a seeress, Veleda, living in a tower who was closely related to the chieftain Civilis of the Batavians who settled things together.

Charlotte fabech in particular (fabech 1991) has proposed that a transformation took place in the fifth century when important parts of the cult were moved from wet areas to the rulers’ halls: this also suggests the important role of the ruler in connection with the cultic performances. Whether or not fabech’s theory corresponds to the archaeological record — it has been severely questioned by other archaeologists (e.g., Zachrissson 1998; Hedeager 1999; Monikander 2010) — there can be no doubt that during the later iron age many rituals took place in the kingly halls (Jørgensen 2009).

for the later period of scandinavia the sources are much more explicit.

although, as we saw above, the value of the written sources is problematic, we shall attempt in the following to apply some of the criteria we have seen above in order to see whether we can draw a likely if rough picture of the various relations that can be seen between the king and the other World in PCRN.

There is no doubt that archaeology is able to support the idea that the leaders carried with them a certain amount of sacrality. The problem, as it has been stated by Heiko steuer (2004) and Torsten Capelle (2001), is that archaeology cannot by itself, and without written sources, decide in any detail the relation between ruler and religion or even whether the corpse in a mound or a grave is that of a king. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that, for instance, the mounds at sutton Hoo (particularly the ship burials)26 and many scandinavian mounds are made in relation to members of the highest strata in the society, and some of them very likely for kings. one of the clearest examples from the archaeological record about this connection is exactly the helmet from sutton Hoo, Mound 1 (for illustration, see Carver 1998: 30–31); it has recently been shown convincingly that the left eye on the helmet has deliberately been changed in a way so that it would seem as if the person wearing the helmet would look one-eyed (Price and Mortimer 2014). Therefore, we can hardly escape the view that the king (Raedwald, who died 625, or some other pagan king) on certain occasions was to be seen as a replica of Óðinn. That would all fit extremely well with the ideas of this god as the leader of the warrior band 26 a brief introduction to the sutton Hoo burial place can be read in Carver (1998), in which it is also possible to see most relevant references (1998: 185). see also Carver (2005).

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figure 23.2. an eyebrow of a

helmet from Uppåkra in skåne,

dated to the seventh or eighth

century (lUHM 31251:3804).

The eyebrow is similar to the

eyebrows of the helmet from the

royal ship burial at sutton Hoo

in suffolk, showing that similar

helmets were used in scandinavia

as well. Photo: Historiska museet

vid lunds universitet, lund.

(è24), who would attend the feasts in the royal halls, facing their leader in this world as well as the other (Price and Mortimer 2014). it is also conspicuous that in the same period (sixth and seventh centuries) we can see the mounds, in at least some places in scandinavia, perhaps under the influence of frankish and anglo-saxon culture, grow bigger, suggesting a new position of the ruler (cf. Zachrisson 2011b, with references to previous literature),27 and also a kind of centralization with various functions being moved into the main halls, for instance, at Tissø in Denmark (Jørgensen 2014: 260).

Cultic Relations

We can, in accordance with what has been stated above, divide the relation between rulers and religion into two ‘levels’: namely the cultic (or ritual) and the mythic. it would make no sense to have the ruler as cult leader, if it was not because he was, beforehand, seen as someone ‘special’. The special qualities of the leader can in various religions be accounted for in many different ways, but what is constant is that he is always closer to the other World than other humans, and thus he is attributed with a higher degree of the numinous.28

We shall now turn to some examples of various ways in which the ruler is particularly related to rituals. We can provisionally divide the rituals into those in which the king acts as a cult leader, and those in which he is the object of the ritual (either as a sacrificial victim, the recipient of worship, or as the entity 27 in central sweden it is also quite clear that more valuable riches are found in the graves from this period, such as, for instance, the gold collar from the west mound in gamla Uppsala.

28 This does not necessarily need a straightforward mythic explanation, as it can be attributed to other phenomena, such as abilities to interpret the will of the gods, maybe because the

‘sacred’ person has passed through some initiation ritual, or because he or she is in other ways

‘special’, and therefore beyond the level of ‘normal’ people.

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which is manipulated through the ritual). as a cult leader we meet him in various sources, and most of them are insecure in one way or another. for the runic inscriptions, for instance, olof sundqvist has examined the most important examples (sundqvist 2002: 176–80, 197–98), but both the reading and the semantics are so uncertain that we can hardly build any sort of reconstruction on them, even if they may support a general cultic relation of a ruler. as for the literary sources, we see this relation mainly in snorri’s Heimskringla, to which we shall return immediately, but also at other places too we get some indication of a close relation between the ruler and the performance of rituals. for instance, adam of Bremen (4.27, schol. 140) reports that a certain anund who was a Christian refused to bring the sacrifice of the people for the gods, and this may be a literary topos, since the same is related in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks ch.

16 about a king ingi who would not give up his Christian faith as demanded by the people at the þing and was therefore driven away and replaced by the pagan Blót-sveinn (cf. sävborg 2017). similarly in Hákonar saga góða in Heimskringla ch. 17 the king is forced to take part in the blótveizla (sacrificial feast) at Hlaðir, if he is going to keep his position (cf. Ágrip ch. 5).29

These examples all relate to so-called calendrical rituals of a public kind, the number of which is not certain (è31), but probably three or four during the year, and further some, even more spectacular ones every ninth year, as is related by adam of Bremen concerning Uppsala (4.27) and Thietmar of Merseburg concerning lejre ( *Chronicon * 1.17; è28). These calendrical, public rituals were probably often placed in connection with þing meetings (è20). The example from Hákonar saga góða is not said directly to have anything to do with any other kind of gathering, and we are not even told that it is a calendrical ritual, but nevertheless we hear that it was held in the autumn, in the beginning of the winter which indicates that it indeed was one of the calendrical rituals (è31).

in the examples given above it seems clear that the king is confronted by the people, indicating that his duties concerning the rituals are on behalf of the people. He can thus be seen as a primus inter pares whose responsibility it is to keep up good relations with the other World, in accordance with what we would expect. in this sense he represents the people towards the world of the gods. We shall deal a little further with some elements of the sacrificial feasts at Hlaðir, 29 This passage, together with the description of the same ritual that we get in Chapter 14, has been heavily debated (i.e., Düwel 1985; sundqvist 2005, both with many references; and not least Meulengracht sørensen 2001c, with important theoretical considerations), and obviously it is not ‘historical’ in every detail, but the importance of the king for the performance of the ritual is in accordance with many other sources (è31).

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figure 23.3. Drinking vessels from rich inhumation graves, dated to the third and fourth centuries, from Himlingøje in stevns on sjælland. The drinking vessels emphasize the importance of drinking within elite groups (Nationalmuseet no. C24707; j.nr.360/49; MCMXXXiii; C24708; C24709; MCMXXXiV; MCMXXXV; C7675; j.nr.1200/75; C3243). Photo: lennart larsen, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen.

so far as it tells us about the relation between ruler and religion. in Chapter 14

of the saga, we get a general description of the feast that was held there. We are told that sigurðr Hlaðajarl was a great blótmaðr (performer of sacrifices), and that he held the sacrificial feasts in Trøndelagen on behalf of the king, which could indicate that the king, as the formal ruler, had the duty to celebrate these feasts, but for practical reasons had to rely on a substitute.30 further, we are told that all men had to come to the feast bringing their own food, and all were to take part in the drinking of beer.31 The drinking of alcohol in connection with religious feasts has played an immense role in PCRN, both on a mythical and a ritual level (cf. Doht 1974; de Vries 1956–57a: i, 424–28; Dillmann 1997; 30 However, politically it could also well be a show off of the hierarchical relation between the jarl and the king.

31 in the text it is said that all the farmers, or rather the landowners ( allir bœndr), had to go to the sacrificial place ( hof). This would probably mean the wealthier men, and it could indicate, therefore, that the ritual to be celebrated, apart from its overtly religious purposes (the emic part) also had a political purpose, that is, strengthening the relation between king and people and thus the unity of the group (cf. Durkheim 1912).

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sundqvist 2002: 191–93), and there is no doubt that the ritual drinking was another way of strengthening the solidarity, both among the participants and between gods and humans.32 also, huge sacrifices of various animals, and horses in particular,33 took place, and the blood clearly has the same important role that we see all over the world in connection with bloody sacrifices, whereas the meat was boiled and eaten by the participants, thus again creating a communion. in connection with the ruler it is of special interest that the leader of the ceremony, the chieftain, should bless ( signa) the beaker and the sacrificial food.

The word signa is definitely a word of post-pagan origin which is to be expected by an author of the thirteenth century,34 but the idea that the ruler should make the drink and the food ‘sacred’ is again in full agreement with what we should expect beforehand. after this we are told that a toast should firstly be drunk to Óðinn for victory and power of the king, and then one for Njǫrðr and freyr for abundance of crops and peace ( ár ok friðr),35 and following that it is said that many also drank the bragafull, meaning either ‘beaker of Bragi’, an apparently minor god in the pantheon, or more likely ‘beaker of the king’ (cf. Cleasby and Vigfusson 1957: 75; de Vries 1956–57a: i, 457–58). finally, toasts in memory ( minni) of the dead relatives were drunk.36

it seems quite obvious that this spectacular ritual was centred around the ruler and aimed at strengthening the solidarity of the leading people with the ruler as a sort of symbol for the unity of the group, which is of course why the behaviour of Hákon related in Chapter 17 was such a disaster. according to this description, which is the most detailed we have for a calendrical ritual 32 it is also worth mentioning the ritual drinking in the hall, mentioned by Enright (1996a) in which the warrior band ( comitatus) was transformed into a kind of relatives to the ruler through the drinking of mead, dispensed by the female consort of the ruler, probably representing a goddess (1996a: 285 and passim).

33 for instance, in the ladby ship burial ( c. 950) eleven horses and several dogs were found (cf. sørensen 2001).

34 it has been raised as an argument against the reliability of the passage that this word (along with others) is used (e.g., Walter 1966), which does not seem reasonable: no matter how much a person knows about the past, he or she will of course use the language of his or her own time in order to relate it. That has no impact at all on the trustworthiness of the content of what is actually related.

35 This formula can be seen in a large number of texts, and there are no convincing arguments for seeing it as Christian, as has been done by some scholars (e.g., von see 1988; see also è25 and è31).

36 There is no indication in this source that dead rulers were memorized in particular, but at other places, it is said directly that kings were memorized (e.g., Ynglinga saga ch. 37).

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with the ruler in the centre, and which is very much in accordance with rituals of this kind known from the phenomenology of religion, we see that the king or his substitute was responsible for maintaining the feasts, and that he had an outstanding role, since he was the one who had to make sacred the mediating substances between this and the other World, that is, the drink and the meat from the victims. But apart from this role as a cult leader, he was also in the centre of the very goal of the ritual which appears to be on the one hand the victory of the king, for which purpose Óðinn is called upon, and on the other hand the prosperity of the land, with the gods Njǫrðr and freyr as recipients of the toast. The role of the ruler in war is obvious, but according to a religious world-view he should also be seen as responsible for the general well-being of the land, inherent in the formula ár ok friðr. if it is true that the term bragafull implies a toast to the king, it is of particular interest that the king seems to be at the same level as the gods and the dead ancestors in relation to the toasts. since the gods, as well as the dead, hold a high degree of numinous power compared to ordinary, living people, this would indicate that the king, at least at ritual occasions, could hold a similar status. We shall return to this below.

it has been suggested by scholars such as folke ström (1954, 1961) and gro steinsland (1991, 2000) that the king in relation to an inauguration ritual or some calendrical ritual would have been involved in a so-called hieros gamos, a sacred wedding, during which the male ruler would perform a sexual act with a woman who represented the land.37 although there is no direct evidence for this proposition, it can definitely not be ruled out. from what we know about the ruler and his responsibility for his land and its ‘well-being’ in a broad sense, there would definitely be room for such a ritual. But again, maybe it was never carried out in the real world, or it had been carried out long before the Viking age but was forgotten somewhere along the way or heavily transformed. as we shall return to below this could have something to do with a shift from a freyr-kingship to an Óðinn-kingship.38

also in divination rituals which were often carried out in relation to crises we see the ruler as responsible for organizing the ceremonies. We saw already 37 folke ström and steinsland differ in many ways, however. Whereas ström in continuation of Magnus olsen (1909) sees the relation as part of a fertility cult, steinsland sees it in the context of ruler ideology, and thus as part of an inauguration ritual (steinsland 2000: 61). for ström the

‘land’ is the fields, whereas for steinsland it is the political area, belonging to the king.

38 see also West (2007: 415–17). Here we learn that already in indo-European times the idea of the king being responsible for the land can be seen, as well as the relation between the queen and the land.

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in Tacitus that the king played an important role in divinations together with priests, and that there was a strong relation between the ruler Civilis and the seeress Veleda ( Histories 4.61–65). at a more modest level we have the account from Eiríks saga rauða ch. 4 where we are told that Þorkell the chieftain, or at least the most powerful of the farmers, is obliged to find out why things go bad with fishing and hunting, and therefore invites a vǫlva to foresee what will happen.39

The description in Hákonar saga góða portrays the king not only as a cult leader but also as an object of the cult. so if we turn to the rituals in which the ruler has the role as the sacrificial object of the ritual, we have the famous description, also by snorri, from Ynglinga saga ch. 15 concerning the sacrifice of King Dómaldi. This is much more mythical in its character than the descriptions from Hákonar saga góða, and there is nothing to suggest that Dómaldi was ever a historical person. snorri tells that in his days there was famine in sweden, and the swedes therefore made a big sacrifice, blót, in Uppsala. The first fall they sacrificed oxen, which did not help. The next year they sacrificed humans, which did not help either; and the third year the chieftains decided that Dómaldi was probably to blame for the bad harvests and that he should be sacrificed, which they accordingly did. as with most other pieces of information in Ynglinga saga, snorri relies here on Þjóðólfr ór Hvini’s Ynglingatal,40

which clearly seems to support that the king was killed and that it was connected to (lack of ) fertility in some sense. Now, if we preliminary take at face value the reason for the killing, given by both Þjóðólfr and snorri (but leave out the context we get from snorri — but not from Þjóðólfr about the oxen and ordinary people being sacrificed), then it takes place because the swedes are árgjǫrn (eager for prosperity), because they want the bad years to end, and the fields to prosper. This can be interpreted in three ways: first, because the ruler’s numinous power was not strong enough he had to be sacrificed (ström 1954: 39); second, because he did not perform the rituals in the way he should, the chieftains wanted to get rid of him (Baetke 1964: 65).41 The third possibil-39 Many other examples of divination in connection with rulers can be seen in sundqvist (2002: 214–24).

40 all important references concerning this poem can be found in Bergsveinn Birgisson (2008). in opposition to most scholarship, which holds the poem to be one of the oldest skaldic poems dating towards the end of the ninth century, Claus Krag (1991) has suggested that the poem is only from the twelfth century. although some have accepted Krag’s argument, it is for a variety of reasons very unlikely.

41 Baetke’s idea here is thus more a question of getting rid of the old ruler in order to have a new one. if this is the case, the ‘gift’ aspect of the ritual (i.e., ‘gift sacrifice’) is absent, and thus it can hardly qualify for a sacrifice at all.

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ity is, if we take snorri’s account into consideration — that the outcome failed in spite of the sacrifices of oxen and ordinary people, but succeeded with the sacrifice of the king — which indicates that the numinosity of the king was so much stronger than that of the other categories of victims, that the ‘value’ of this sacrifice was in accordance with what was demanded from the gods. and that this was actually the case seems likely from the inherent logic of the relation between ruler and gods: The ruler was a representative of the gods towards the people and a representative of the people towards the gods, as it has been argued by schjødt (1990a: 58), and as we shall return to below. as is always the case in sacrifices, the victims have to be made ‘sacred’ before they can be sent from this to the other World in order to become compatible with it (Hubert and Mauss 1964). according to this logic, it also seems obvious that an object which is already seen as numinous, as was no doubt the case with the king, would be more suitable than one which is not: outstanding objects which possess more numinosity than other objects are closer to the other World and thus better suited as gifts to the gods than ordinary things (schjødt 2010: 174). and the more important the outcome of the sacrificial ritual is, the more numinosity is needed. from that perspective, there is an inherent logic, which puts the king in a risky position, although such king sacrifices probably did not take place in historical times.42 We also know from the sacrifice by starkaðr of King Víkarr in Gautreks saga ch. 7 and Gesta Danorum (6.5.7) that the idea of the gods, in this case Óðinn, wanting kingly victims existed. We do not know to whom Dómaldi was sacrificed, but we cannot be certain that it was to some fertility god or goddess, just because the crisis was about lack of prosperity. it might just as well, and perhaps more likely, have been Óðinn, being the god to whom the kings were attached in particular, and who is seen as their patron.43 from this perspective, whether Dómaldi was sacrificed because of his neglects of the cult or because his numinosity was not sufficient does not appear as important as has been thought, although both ideas might have been part of the ideological basis. if sacrificial regicides ever took place in the real world, it seems as if it 42 in this connection it is also worth mentioning the french literary historian René girard (1986) who argues that religion as such originated from the scapegoat figure, who is always some extraordinary figure, either by birth or by arrangement (lot casting or other means), and in either a positive or a negative way.

43 in Historia Norwegie ch. 9 it is said that Dómaldi was sacrificed to Ceres (perhaps interpretatio Romana for freyja); however, we are also told that he was hung, clearly an indication that the receiver of the sacrifice was Óðinn. This could perhaps point to a cult in which both freyja and Óðinn were involved, a subject to which we shall return in (è42).

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was because the rulers were seen as the most appropriate victims for the gods.44

But of course it was also because their relation to the other World was not as good as it had to be. Whether this ‘disturbance’ was due to lack of numinosity or neglect of rituals or both, we will certainly never know for sure, and perhaps we should not even attempt to make such a distinction. The important thing, then, is that the king for some reason was not able to keep up the good relations with the other World,45 and since he was at the same time the representative of the people, being somewhat closer to the gods, he was also the most valuable victim of all. in general we should probably be careful about distinguishing too sharply between these various ‘figures of thought’.

although we have no sources indicating that the living ruler ever was a recipient of worship,46 we surely do have such indications concerning the dead ruler (sundqvist 2015). Thus it is related about the Danish king frotho by saxo (5.16.3) that after he had died, his death was kept secret, and for three years he was driven around in a wagon, so that people could see that he was still alive and continue to pay taxes to him. These ‘taxes’ could very well be seen as a kind of sacrifices. freyr47 who is strongly related, perhaps basically identical, to frotho (cf. schier 1968; schjødt 2009b) was, according to Ynglinga saga ch.

10, secretly put into a mound when he died where he stayed for three years, and in the mound there were three windows so that the swedes could throw into it copper, silver, and gold as tributes. in that way ár ok friðr lasted. in both cases we may well think of the taxes as a kind of sacrifice for peace and prosperity. another king, Hálfdan svarti, in whose reign there was great prosperity, drowned, and his body was dismembered and put into mounds at four different places, so that prosperity would last in the different parts of the country ( Hálfdanar saga svarta ch. 9).48 These examples certainly indicate that the dead 44 see Nygaard (2016) for the possibility of a specific ‘ruler sacrifice’ in PCRN.

45 in a purely speculative way one could think of the happenings in 536, having been discussed in several publications by Morten axboe (e.g., 1999a) and recently by gräslund and Price (2012). one could perhaps imagine that events such as the virtual disappearing of the sun could be a proper reason to sacrifice a king.

46 However, it cannot be ruled out when we take into consideration the source situation.

of course, it would be futile to postulate a cult centering around the living king, since it is never mentioned, but if theories, for instance based on new archaeological finds, would involve the idea of such a cult, it would not be much of a surprise.

47 Who, we must remember, in Ynglinga saga is seen as a human king.

48 for other variants of the same story, see sundqvist (2002: 279–80; sundqvist 2016: 462–65; cf. also lincoln 2006, 2014).

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king was supposed to be able to bring prosperity, exactly as the gods of fertility. and as a matter of fact we are told about a king who was transformed into a god, or at least a divine being (an álfr). This story ( Ólafs þáttr Geirstaðaálfs) is found in Flateyjarbók ( Ólafs saga hins helga ch. 5–8)49 and deals with a certain legendary king, Ólafr, who when he died was called Ólafr geirstaðaálfr and received sacrifices (è63). and other examples could be mentioned which, although they are not reliable from a traditional source-critical stance,50 suggest that in the Middle ages there existed a vague memory of a cult of dead rulers.

other rituals in which the ruler should be seen as object of the cult are constituted by various rites de passage (cf. van gennep 1960), especially those of inauguration and funeral. it has been argued by some scholars that we have no evidence to support the idea of inauguration rituals (sawyer 2001: 385).

it is true in the sense that there is no direct account dealing with such rituals, but we do have scattered hints — and we should expect beforehand that they took place because they are known all over the world and in all historical periods — indicating that some important symbolic acts took place when a person took office as king. We are told, for instance, in the Ynglinga saga ch. 36 and Haralds saga hárfagra ch. 8 that sitting in a high seat is a symbolic expression of being king, and it is hard to believe that nothing else should have taken place (cf. sundqvist 2016: 498).51 Thus it has been argued by Jere fleck, through an analysis of Hyndluljóð, Grímnismál, and Rígsþula, that a ‘knowledge transmission’ took place (fleck 1970) from a person with numinous power, probably a kind of ‘priest’, maybe called a þulr, to the new ruler, which was an important part of the ritual. This would be very well in accordance with the scheme of initiation that we find in much of the medieval literary material (schjødt 1990a: 59–62; schjødt 2008, esp. pp. 373–78). and it is likely that the inauguration took place in connection with the funeral of the former king, as it is related in Chapter 36 of Ynglinga saga.52 What is of particular importance is that such 49 for other variants, see Heinrichs (1989).

50 as in other cases, it is rather easy to be suspicious about each individual source, whereas taken together there seems to be a clear indication that dead rulers were the object of cult.

51 This is, however, what has been suggested by Vestergaard (1990). sundqvist, however (2001: 628–44, 2002: 266–77; cf. 2016: 498–502), mentions several elements which rather likely might have been part of an inauguration. also from archaeology there are indications that the high seat played an important symbolic role in connection with the king, for instance at the inglinge mound in småland on which apparently a high seat has been on top of the mound (flodérus 1950).

52 in Ynglinga saga and Ynglingatal it appears that the royal inheritance was decided

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figure 23.4. a large grave-mound at inglinge in Östra

Torsås in Värend (southern småland). at the top of the

mound a tall stone slab is erected, and in front of the

stone slab a round decorated stone is placed. The stone

slab and the round stone have been interpreted as a

high seat fashioned from stone for a ruler. The location

of this high seat at the top of a grave-mound further

indicates links between a ruler and the worlds of the

dead. Photo: anders andrén.

numinous knowledge would be the most natural way to explain the numinosity of the leader, both in relation to his position during the ritual performances and the power with which he is attributed after his death (è32).

The funeral feasts concerning kings and chieftains are another ritual of passage, in which the deceased person is the object of the ritual. as in all funerals, the purpose is to make sure that the dead person will be able to go into the other World, but of course we are also dealing here with a power discourse, attempting to secure the status of both the deceased and his family. again we do not have as much evidence as we could wish for, but we do have one source which is quite outstanding: namely, a description by an eyewitness of a funeral taking place among scandinavian, probably swedish, Vikings, situated by the river Volga. This description is given by the arab diplomat ibn fadlan in his book Risalat (meaning ‘small book’). The funeral took place in 922, and ibn fadlan gives us a lot of details, some of which will be commented upon in (è32–33).53

beforehand, whereas we can see from later kings’ sagas that it was not so obvious who was going to succeed the deceased king.

53 an English translation of the relevant chapters is given in Duczko (2004: 137–54), with a thorough commentary. another very valuable work with many good observations is Montgomery (2000). see also schjødt (2007b).

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Much of what is related here, and in other descriptions of funerals, does not speak directly of a certain relation between ruler and religion. of course in all funeral rituals there is a transference of something (the dead person) from this to the other World, but the special relationship between the ruler and the other World seems in ibn fadlan’s account to be mostly expressed in the expenses needed for his funeral and the value of the grave goods, which in general is much higher when it comes to persons from the highest social strata than is the case with ordinary people. funerals, therefore, should not least be seen as power discourses staged by the family of the deceased. of particular interest, however, in connection with rulers is it that ibn fadlan says that the dead chieftain will go to his ‘lord’ (Duczko 2004: 141), and that this god of his has sent the wind, so that the funeral pyre will take the chieftain, the ship, and all the grave goods within a short time, which is actually also what happens. This

‘lord’ who is responsible for the wind, and who is apparently residing in some kind of ‘paradise’ where there are ‘young men’, probably warriors, and where the chieftain will eventually go, and is thus, most likely a variant of Valhǫll, must be Óðinn, the god of the aristocracy who in many instances is reported to take home his chosen heroes. and, even if it is not stated directly, the text most likely also hints at parts of an inauguration ritual connected with the successor, since it is said that he who sets the ship on fire is the closest relative to the deceased. He is reported to be naked, walking backwards towards the ship with his face, therefore, turned towards the ‘world of the living’, perhaps indicating some sort of symbolic ‘rebirth’ (cf. schjødt 2007b: 141; è32).54

Thus, although funerals of chieftains appear sometimes to be more of a social and power-related ‘show off ’ than a ritual, expressing a certain relation between the ruler and the other World, it seems as if we do get some glimpses of this relation. However, it is often very difficult from archaeological as well as the kind of textual material we have for PCRN to determine the ideas lying behind the various rites that were performed. We shall, therefore, now turn to the relation between the ruler and the other World as this can be seen from the

‘mythic’ information.

54 This rite has been seen as purely apothropaeic (ström 1961: 214; sass and Warmind 1989: 43), which, however, is hardly enough to account for the various elements (schjødt 2007b: 141). it seems obvious that this rite would not be the only one concerning the ‘new ruler’, for as we have been told earlier, the dead chieftain has been in a provisional grave for ten days, during which we are only told about the slave girl who is eventually to be burned with him, and therefore many other rites, for instance, some secret ones concerning the future ruler, might well have taken place, although ibn fadlan was not aware of them (è32).

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Mythic Relations55

We have already touched upon some of the themes that constitute the ‘ideology of rulership’ or the ‘ruler ideology’ as it has been formulated by some scholars (e.g., steinsland 2011a: 8; sundqvist 2007: 105; sundqvist 2012).56 But we shall now go into somewhat more detail about the ideological relationship between the ruler and the gods. it was said above that the ruler in a symbolic way was a representative of the gods towards society and a representative of society towards the gods, which is the reason why we can state that he performed as an intermediary between this and the other World. This position forces us to accept that the ruler was seen as a figure with some inherent numinosity, although this, as we have seen, has been rejected by some scholars, perhaps because they did not see this fundamental structure as a constant figure in almost all tribal and archaic societies. We have also seen that the ruler, after his death, became an object of cult and that his role in the cultic performances must be ascribed to some kind of numinosity. further it was suggested that this numinosity most likely was transferred during an initiation ritual in connection with his inauguration. But there is another way by which we may explain the numinosity of the ruler: namely, through his descent.

as was seen, one of the important issues that has been discussed is whether the pre-Christian scandinavians saw their rulers, or some of their rulers, as descendants from the gods. it was in particular this part of the theory of a Sakralkönigtum in scandinavia that was criticized by Baetke. Whereas steinsland accepts the genealogical connection as constitutive for scandinavian kingship, although with the addition that the giants’ role should be taken into consideration (steinsland 1991, 2000, 2011b), others, such as sundqvist, have argued that terms such as Freys ǫttungr (frey’s offspring) in, for instance, Ynglingatal st. 21 should not be taken literally (sundqvist 2002: 169–70)57 but should rather be taken as metaphorical or symbolical expressions.58

55 The following section is a slightly revised version of parts of schjødt 2010.

56 see further steinsland 2011a for valuable observations on myth, ritual, and ideology.

57 However, it seems as if sundqvist has changed his mind, stating that ‘in general, the god freyr is regarded as the divine father of the “ynglingar”’ (sundqvist 2012: 238).

58 sundqvist’s argument runs as follows: ‘it seems that a symbolic approach might be pref-erable. We would then avoid the problematic consequences of the crude literalist’s approach, i.e. to explain why the people should believe that their ruler was a god or the god’s son in a concrete sense’. it may not be too ‘problematic’, however: People, or rather most people, have no difficulties in believing almost anything, if they are told so, by people they respect. it is not easy

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an important aspect of this question is the relationship between the human and the divine (è36). The main part of the discussion about ‘sacred kings’ has thus been focusing on the way in which the ruler was ‘divine’: was he a god or was he not; and if he was, then in which sense? But there is another perspective which should also be taken into consideration: namely, the way the gods were gods. in snorri and in many other sources the gods are portrayed as past kings and chieftains, which is a common way in the Middle ages to view the pagan gods, the so called ‘euhemeristic perspective’.59 No doubt this was a common device to explain these false gods from a Christian point of view, and it seems as if many scholars have concluded that if this obvious Christian influence were extracted from the sources, the actors of these mythological stories would be

‘gods’ and not ‘humans’.60 This either/or scenario, however, is not what we usually find in the mythologies of comparable cultures.61 Here, by contrast, it is normally so that ‘a long time ago’, before the world was what it is now, the differences between humans and gods did not exist in the same way as we see it in the world we are living in today. and this lack of distinction does not only concern humans and gods. often we see that differences between animals and humans were also of a different kind than what is experienced in the present world, and the same goes for the relation between male and female. in short: the world was once much less differentiated than is the case nowadays, and the mythical-historical process towards our present time is also a process of differentiation. The mythic past represents an other World compared to our world.

Therefore, the heroes of the past were greater than they are today, and they were also closer to the gods, for their numinosity was greater than that of present humans. actually, we often meet a scenario in which it would be hard to tell the difference between the ancestors and the gods, since the gods are also more ‘like’ humans: they think, feel, and act in ways that humans would, had they had the same powers. The difference between gods and humans are thus blurred in many archaic religions by comparison with conceptions of the gods to see why the divine descent of rulers should be more problematic than most other religious postulates.

59 from the greek Euhemeros (third century bce) who argued that the Homeric gods were kings and heroes of the past.

60 for a general overview of the euhemeristic position, see Weber (1994) and von see (1989); and particularly in relation to snorri, see Beck (2000, with further references). a most relevant article is also faulkes (1978–79).

61 Cf. the distinction made between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ religions in (è1).

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in the major religions of our era (è36).62 in these, particularly in the so-called biblical religions, there is an idea that god in (nearly) all respects is different from humans. god is the creator, whereas humans are created by god. god is eternal; he was not born, and he will not die. These qualitative differences,63

however, are not typical for archaic religions, and forefathers may achieve the status of gods when they die; at the beginning of time both humans and gods lived under conditions different from the present situation. Humans did not have to work, and they were often thought to have been immortal.64 The differentiation between gods and humans is thus due to a process; the world was not

‘created’ that way, and thus the various ‘differentiations’ are not absolute in the sense we normally perceive the term.

it is important to recognize this insofar as many scholars have discussed whether this or that being (historical or mythic) should be seen as god or human.65 some of these scholars tend to hold the view that the mutually opposing ideas present in the sources must be due to mistakes or confusion on the part of the authors. and of course this could well be the case in some sources, but it is important to be aware that there is no reason to believe that a certain figure, from the outset, must have been either a god or a human. Rather, the ambiguity we often encounter in the sources is characteristic of the pagan religion itself. We can state then, that in the genuine pagan world-view, the gods were not ‘transcendent’ in the way, for instance, the Christian god is. on the contrary, they mingled with humans all the time (or at least some of them did)

— and much more so in the olden days than in the present.

one shared characteristic which exists all over the indo-European world is that gods and humans are able to procreate children with each other. as these children will naturally also procreate, we humans may claim some form of descent from the gods.66 We hear about this in the poem Rígsþula, but what seems to be a much more common idea is that the kings, in particular, 62 Many examples can be found in Bellah (2011: 117–209).

63 But even within Christianity, the difference is not as straightforward as some theologians would like it to be. Beings such as angels, saints, or even the Virgin Mother are, from a phenomenological perspective, very hard to distinguish from what we usually call gods in polytheistic religions.

64 for examples of this lack of differentiation, see schjødt (2009b: 572–76) and (2010: 178–79).

65 for instance, Höfler (1961) on siegfried and schier (1968) on fróði.

66 according to Tacitus, Germania ch. 2, all humans are descended from the gods, cf. the so-called ‘Mannus’ tribes.

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were descendants from the gods.67 as mentioned, we see this in many sagas and in the anglo-saxon regnal lists. We also know from some skaldic poems ( Hákonarmál and Eiríksmál) that some of the heroes of olden times were supposed to play a special role in Valhǫll, distinctive in some way from the other einherjar, which suggests the existence of the idea that dead heroes (or dead kings) were, if not gods themselves, then very close to the gods. Thus the dead, and especially the dead rulers, were expected to join the gods and to become somewhat ‘like’ the gods, just as living rulers of the past were more ‘like’ the gods. Therefore it would make sense to sacrifice to them and, in particular, to rulers whose divine descent was seen in their numinous power while they were still alive, manifested in the well-being of land and people.

Therefore, the problem is not just whether the rulers were divine, but just as much the extent to which the gods were ‘human’. There is no doubt that gods normally were seen as having much more numinous power than humans, but the difference was not an absolute one, and therefore the gods should not be seen as qualitatively distinct from humans but rather quantitatively distinct.

and therefore it makes much more sense to speak of a lineage from a divine ancestor:68 Humans were not just humans, and gods were not just gods. The two species were compatible.

so basically, as it has also been supported by John McKinnell, who has argued convincingly that the idea of descent of sacred kings from a god is very old, using various narrative patterns for the argument (McKinnell 2005: e.g., 79–80), and by Richard North (1997: 260–66), most recent scholarship accepts that some idea of descent from the gods existed in pre-Christian scandinavia, although the viewpoints on various details vary. We shall in the following deal briefly with one of these ‘details’, which is, however, of great importance: namely, the question of whether the one or the other god was seen as ancestor of the kingly lines, and in that connection also touch upon the relation between numinosity due to initiation and numinosity due to descent.

67 This is basically also what Rígsþula is about: the creation of kingship. But still it is important that humans in general are seen as descendants.

68 Which would, of course, be impossible within Christianity, for example. However, many beings within Christian mythology (saints, angels, as we have seen) seem to have some divine qualities from the perspective of the phenomenology of religion. This also goes for adam and Eve, who were from the outset immortal: they could not procreate, they did not have to work, and they had nothing to worry about at all. in other words they had important similarities with at least some of the gods in polytheistic religions. and yet they became the ancestors of all humankind.

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as has been demonstrated by several scholars, it is clear from the sources that Óðinn has a special relation to the king or more generally to the ruler (e.g., Enright 1996a; Hultgård 2011; schjødt 1990a; steinsland 2000, 2011b), probably already from the Early iron age, and perhaps even earlier. This is likely to be due to this god’s role as initiator of kings and warriors (schjødt 2008). But we also have evidence, both from anglo-saxon England and scandinavia, stating that Óðinn was the ancestor of many royal lines. However, freyr also has this role in some instances, and among them perhaps the most famous of all royal lines: namely, that of the Ynglingar.69 This difference could, of course, be explained by the simple fact that traditions may evolve differently in different areas, and as many scholars have proposed there may very well be some historical explanations for the existence of two gods as ancestors for different royal families among the germanic peoples.70 a part of the solution to the problem could be that whereas Óðinn can be seen as the god to whom the warlord (the dux of Tacitus) was initiated, the ‘peace’ king (the rex of Tacitus) was the offspring of freyr. During the centuries, and due to different political and social conditions, the two were mixed, and since the ‘warlord’ tended to become the real leader in most places, whereas the peace king apparently gradually lost his importance,71 Óðinn therefore in most of the genealogies transformed himself into the ancestor. But we could very well imagine a situation in which the war king and the peace king had their numinous power from two different sources: the first through initiation to his personal guardian god, and the other through family relationship (schjødt 2010, 2012b).

it is obvious that during the mission process of the Viking age, the ruler ideology had to be transformed, but it was not abandoned.

69 freyr may also be the same as saxneat, ancestor of the royal line in Essex (cf. Dumézil 1973c: 29), and, to judge from the name, a very important god among the saxons.

70 Thus Enright (1996a) proposes that Óðinn became the god of the warlord under Celtic influences during the first century bce, whereas North (1997) proposes that Óðinn only became the ancestor of the anglo-saxons during the seventh century and substituted for ing as the ancestor. Then later on, this tradition was transported to scandinavia. finally, steinsland (2011b) believes that freyr was replaced by Óðinn in the ninth century in scandinavia. There may be some truth in all these propositions, since they are partly compatible.

71 This is in accordance with Robert Bellah’s idea that it is during the transformation from tribal to archaic society, the leaders come to play an important role outside the ritual arena (Bellah 2011: 181). it could be hypothesized that the rex would be a representative of this old tribal and ritual king, whereas the dux would be the ‘modern’ political king of archaic societies.

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A New Religion — A New Relation 72

as was argued in the beginning of this chapter, the idea that the ruler must have some special relation to the other World — that he can be seen as a kind of mediator — can be found in all religious societies, more or less explicitly, and more or less referring directly to the general notions of the other World.

in Christianity it was of course out of the question to postulate any sort of family relation to god. Because in pre-Christian times, as we just saw, the differences between gods and humans were not radical, it makes sense to see certain people (or all people) as descendants of the gods. When gods are more or less ‘human’, we may ascribe to them the same qualities and relationships that apply to humans, even if there is always a difference in relation to the degree of numinosity. This makes many things relatively easy: even if the gods have more numinosity than humans and, accordingly, must be treated somewhat differently, it causes no logical problems.73 When the gods, however, became one god, and when this god is seen as the creator ex nihilo of the whole world, totally distinguishable from the creation, we certainly do have a problem in maintaining that we descend from god. Not even the kings could postulate they did, so a new relationship to legitimizing force would have to be construed: and this turned out to be the complex of ideas surrounding the notion of rex justus, in which the king was king because of the grace of the lord, a grace which he deserved because of his personal qualities.

so far so good: the king was thus established as someone special and supported by god. The cult of the dead king could then be continued by making him a saint74, or failing that, some ancestors of the king could be seen as saints.

saints too are surely beings associated with the other World, and they may grant health, luck, and other benefits: so, as mentioned above, they can hardly be distinguished from what we usually call deities in archaic religions. Thus the dead king became a god, although this term could of course not be used. in that way everything went back to normal, and sacral kingship was established 72 This last section is a slightly revised version of schjødt (2010: 188–90).

73 However, it should be stated here that it is quite unlikely that the pagans ever reflected too much about the logic of their world-view. That is usually not what religious people do, except for the theologians and other ‘professionals’.

74 Thus it is worth noticing that saint olaf and saint Knud (kings of Norway and Denmark, respectively) were made saints already in the eleventh century, whereas saint Erik in sweden achieved saintly status in 1167.

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figure 23.5. Example of the first

swedish coins, minted by olof

skötkonung in sigtuna (sf 243i).

The coins were modelled on

contemporary anglo-saxon coins

and presented the king as a Chris-

tian ruler. Photo: Kari Kohvakka,

sigtuna Museum, sigtuna.

once again.75 To be sure it was established in a transformed manner, but all the ingredients constituting sacral kingship were at hand: the king’s possession of a special numinosity which was greater than that of other people; his relation to the other World, which was necessary in order for the people to be prosperous; the fact that he was to a certain extent responsible for cult practice (building churches, attending selected services, etc.); religious elements which were important in the inauguration rituals; and finally the explanation of his numinosity through the fact that he or one of his ancestors was a ‘deity’.

in this way it is reasonable to argue that at a certain structural level not much changed concerning the relation between ruler and religion: there was sacral kingship before Christianity, and there was sacral kingship afterwards.

75 for continuity of this kind in iceland, see Jón Viðar sigurðsson (1999: 193–94); and for anglo-saxon examples, see Chaney (1970: 89–90, 110–11).