I oo Norway and the Norwegians 



to the Danes and Norsemen as the Danes (for instance) 

 were inferior to the Swedes in the days of Gustavus- 

 Adolphus, we shall understand why the Swedish 

 national god Frey is so different from the Norse god 

 Thor. I say this may have been the case with the Swedes. 

 True, there is the history of the conquest of Eussia, of 

 Greater Suithiod, which seems to negative that supposi- 

 tion. But then we have no details of this conquest. 

 The country may have been very sparsely inhabited ; 

 in any case the danger of attacking it cannot have 

 been as great, or seemed so great, as would in those 

 days appear an attack upon the famous empire of the 

 Franks or on the hardy English. 



Frey is, of course, to some extent a warrior ; no 

 northern god could be otherwise. He is, like Thor, a 

 patron of agriculture. And in his essence he is a god 

 of peace. Men pray to him for good harvests and for 

 peace. He is a god of spring-time; much more of 

 what is called a Nature-god than any other god of the 

 northern mythology. All the gods were in their origin 

 embodiments of natural phenomena or natural forces. 

 Thor, as we have said, was originally the thunder; 

 Odin was the wind or the storm ; Frey, the spring, or 

 the early vegetation clothing the earth. But Frey 

 alone still keeps his nature-being pretty conspicuously 

 before our eyes. Odin and Thor have become idealised 

 men and little else. 



Another name of the god Frey is Yngvi, Ynge. Under 

 this name he is the ancestor of the royal race of Sweden 

 and of the first royal race of all Norway, the line of 

 Harald Fairhair. This race was called the Ynglings. 

 Certain feminine names which we meet with in Norse 



