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933, and boasted of being an Ynglingar through his descent from Olaf Trætelje, the Tree-hewer.

Thus all three of the royal houses of Scandinavia claimed Odin as their founder; for although Göta-land, or the land of the Goths, was not reckoned as part of the monarchy of the Svea, it was admitted to have been first settled by "Got" or " Gaut,' from whom it had derived its name and by whom it had been raised into a free state. And as Got and Gaut were only other names of Odin, the Goths of Sweden thought they had as good a right as their neighbours, the Svea, to count the chief god of their religion as the founder of their nation.

The Swedes-under which name are included both the Göta and Svea-and the Norwegians retained their old faith much longer than the Danes, and the few glimpses which we catch from the sagas of their character and conduct in those early times show us how little regard they paid to life. In Denmark human sacrifices were only very rarely practised, but in Sweden, where they are said to have been enjoined as a religious duty by Frey-Yngve, the first of the Ynglingar race, they appear to have been very frequent. We even read of one Swedish King called Ane, who tried to gain from Odin length of life from year to year by offering up one of his sons at each annual sacrifice to the god. According to this saga, when nine of his children had thus been slain, the Svea, in spite of their dread of Odin and of the King who was his high priest, rose in anger against Ane, and saved the tenth and last of his sons from sharing the fate of his brothers.

Pontiff-Kings.-Throughout all the North every king was the pontiff or high priest of his people, and one of the most important and sacred of his duties was to offer annual sacrifices within the temples of his kingdom, and this gave some of the northern kings greater power than others. Thus in Denmark, as we have seen, where the chief temple to Odin was at Lejre or Ledra in Sjælland, Gorm as the pontiff-king of that district was looked up to by the neighbouring small kings and enabled to secure a strong influence over them, which helped him greatly in his efforts to make himself king of all Denmark It was the same in Sweden, where the Ynglingar who had charge of Odin's chief temple at Uppsala were, from the first, head kings of the country, just as

the kings of Lund, in whose territories there was another great temple, early made themselves head kings in Skaania. The province of Skaania in South Sweden, which took its name from the old northern word "Skaun," a swampy land, was before Christian times one of the best known of the northern states; for not far from its capital, Lund, which was enclosed with high sharply-spiked walls, a large trading port had sprung up near the temple to Odin. The position of this ancient pagan stronghold on the eastern shore of the Sound, leading into the Baltic, made it a very important and convenient harbour for the trading or plundering fleets, which every summer passed to and from the lands of Scandinavia and the rich states of southern Europe. Here many of the northern vikingar kept the wares and gold and silver, which they had collected on their viking expeditions, paying toll to the king of the district for leave to put into the harbour, and wait there with their treasures till the season came round for darting forth again in search of fresh booty. Long before the ninth century, when King Gorm of Denmark took possession of this rich province and joined it to his other Danish lands, Skaania had been a free state, ruled over by kings of its own, a few of whom gained for themselves great renown. Amongst these there was none more celebrated than "Ivar Vidfadme" or the "Far-stretching," who was made chief King over the Svea, as well as the Göta, after the death of Ingjald "Ill-raade," the last of the Ynglingar in Sweden.

This Ivar, who is believed to have lived in the seventh century, plays a great part in the sagas of the Icelanders, for he is there said to have conquered Sweden and Denmark, a large portion of the lands of the Saxons and one-fifth of all England.1 But on the other hand Saxo-Grammaticus, the Danish historian, does not even mention his name among the rulers of Denmark, nor do Anglo-Saxon records make any reference to him. The Danes, however, speak of him as the grandfather of their King Harald Hildetand, of whose defeat in his old age by the young Swedish king, Sigurd Ring, at the battle of Bravalla, we have read in a former chapter.

1 Ivar's daughter, Audur, was married to Rerik, a King of Lejre, and their son Harald, surnamed Hildetand, became in time King of Denmark and Sweden.

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SETTLEMENTS OF THE NORTHMEN IN THE WESTERN OCEAN (9TH & 10TH CENTURIES).

London; Macmillan & Co

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In this, as in other periods of Northern history, the kings and heroes of Denmark and Sweden are so intermingled that it is often impossible to decide to which nation we must refer any one of them. The Danish and Icelandic sagas generally agree in making all great northern chiefs Danes or Norwegians, whilst the Swedes as often claim them for their own country. This is especially the case in regard to the favourite demi-god Stærkodder, and to Ragnar, called "Lodbrog" of the Leather Leggings, whose numerous sons grandsons ranked amongst the most daring and fiercest of the vikingar of the ninth century. The history of Sweden is, moreover, so confused and so shrouded in fable before the time of Ólaf, "the Lap-king," who reigned from 993 to 1024, and was the first Christian king of the Swedes and Goths, that it would be quite useless to try to give a continuous account of what happened in that kingdom before the establishment of Christianity. Another cause of our great ignorance of Swedish history in those early times was, no doubt, that the Swedes, instead of fitting out great fleets of rowing and sailing boats year after year, like the other Scandinavian nations, to attack the Southern lands of Europe, turned their arms against the Finns, Quens, Lapps and Wends, who lived north and east of them, and whom they could reach by crossing the mountains and frozen gulfs which separated them from those remote tribes. In this manner they were kept out of contact with the more civilized nations of Europe, who hardly knew of their existence till the middle ages.

PART II.

NORTHERN CONQUESTS.

Russia Peopled.-The people of Sweden early gave the name of "Vanen," or Wends, to all nations living to the east of them, and they also called the Finnish tribes "Jötunar," which was the same word that they applied to the giants of their mythology. The Finns on the other hand have continued from

1 His name is spelt Regner by the Danes; see chap. ii.

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