"Odin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Viking times, before Christianity had found its way so far North, the bird which influenced the people most was the raven. He was credited with much knowledge, as well as with the power to bring good or bad luck. One of the titles of Odin was "Raven-god," and he had as messengers two faithful ravens, "who could speak all manner of tongues, and flew on his behests to the uttermost parts of the earth." In those days the figure of a raven ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... numberless things to interest me, even in a winter's walk, and go back to my room refreshed and eager to get to my books. Once seated with them, what portion of the earth is there that I may not visit, from the crystal Arctic temples of Odin and Thor to the groves of Abyssinia? In this age of travel and cheap books I can sit in my room in the third story, and, by my lamplight, see all, and immeasurably more, than you, who have been traveling for eighteen months. Wherever I go I ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... they had a sore battle: a battle against their own fear of the unseen. They brought with them, out of the heart of Asia, dark and sad nature-superstitions, some of which linger among our peasantry till this day, of elves, trolls, nixes, and what not. Their Thor and Odin were at first, probably, only the thunder and the wind: but they had to be appeased in the dark marches of the forest, where hung rotting on the sacred oaks, amid carcases of goat and horse, the carcases of human victims. No one acquainted with the early legends and ballads ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... man's wandering gaze focussed itself; a silly laugh welled up in his throat. "It would be no strange wonder if I did not," he chuckled. "Odin has changed you greatly; your face was never so beautiful. But this once you cannot trick me, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... fecund than others. The truth is that considerations continue to preside over marriage which are entirely foreign to the improvement of type, much as this is a condition of general progress. Hence the importance of completing Odin's and De Candolle's statistics which are designed to show how characters are incorporated in organisms, how they are transmitted, how lost, and according to what law eugenic, elements depart from the mean ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Quoth one, "The clatter of hoofs anigh." Quoth the other, "Spears against the sky!" "Hither ride men from the Wells apace; Spur we fast to a kindlier place." Down from his horse leapt Hallbiorn straight: "Why should the supper of Odin wait? Weary and chased I will not come To the table of my fathers' home." With that came Snbiorn, who but he, And twelve in all was his company. Snbiorn's folk were on their feet; He spake no word as they ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... recent period, and even yet occasionally in Scandinavia, the peasantry plighted their troth by passing their hands through the hole in the 'Odin-stones,' and clasping them. Beads and wedding rings and 'fairy-stones,' or those found with holes in them, were all linked to the same faith which rendered sacred every resemblance to the 'passing through.' The graves of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor on earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful god, the son of the great god Odin, and himself the wisest, mildest, best beloved of all the immortals. The story of his death, as it is told in the younger or prose Edda, runs thus. Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... arbitrary mass arrests and tax-delinquency imprisonments that are nothing but slave-raids by the geek princes on their own people. And, gradually, abolish serfdom. In a couple of centuries, this planet will be fit to admit to the Federation, like Odin ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... planets, as they had been discovered, had been named from Norse mythology—Odin and Baldur and Thor, Uller and Freya, Bifrost and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, the discoverers had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian and Hindu and Assyrian, and by the middle of the Seventh Century ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... counsellor. Odin and Thor send that we may meet again;" and Edwy with only a dozen followers ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Jocunda's practical jests and overpowering gaiety. When she addressed herself to me, my answers were as constrained and as concise as possible; and, as I was afterwards told, I seemed, at the close of my reply to each interrogative of her ladyship's, to answer with Odin's prophetess, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... not make the mistake of contrasting Berlioz with Wagner, either by sacrificing Berlioz to that Germanic Odin, or by forcibly trying to reconcile one to the other. For there are some who condemn Berlioz in the name of Wagner's theories; and others who, not liking the sacrifice, seek to make him a forerunner of Wagner, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... four hundred and eighty acres situated in Marlon County, Illinois, two and a half miles from Tonti Station, and six miles from Odin, on branch of Illinois Central R. R., and O. & M. Road—300 acres under plow, 180 acres timber. The latter has never been culled and is very valuable. Farm is well fenced into seven fields. Has an orchard on it which has ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Sulgrave, as identified by the garter king-at-arms. Still more recently the mythical spirit has taken violent possession of the Washington ancestry, and an ingenious gentleman has traced the pedigree of our first president back to Thorfinn and thence to Odin, which is sufficiently remote, dignified, and lofty to satisfy the most exacting Welshman that ever lived. Still the breach made by Colonel Chester was not repaired, although many writers, including some who should have known better, clung with undiminished faith to the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the valley of Hopedale, with its two villages, Hope and Castleton, its ancient castle of the Peverils seated on a rock over the entrance of the Peak Cavern, and its lead mines worked ever since the time of the Saxons, the Odin mines as they are called, the white cinders of which lay in heaps at their entrance. We left the driver to take our baggage to its destination, and pursued our way across the fields. Descending a little distance ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the son of Odin or Othin. The story of his death is given in two widely different forms, by Saxo in his Gesta Danorum (ed. Holder, pp. 69 ff.) and in the prose Edda (Gylfaginning, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... but I now Am undone by Sword-Odin. 'Gainst shields beyond the sea-flood The ruin of shields was wielded. Methinks the blood-fowl blood-stained In blood der men's heads stood there, The wound-erne yet ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... Odin had a son named Skioldr who settled and reigned in the land which is now called Denmark, but was then called Gotland. Skioldr had a son named Frithleif, who reigned after him. Frithleif's son was called Frothi, and succeeded ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries; And on the tables stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimm'd skulls the wine. And now would night have fall'n, and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin's will. And thus the father of the ages spake:— "Enough of tears, ye Gods, enough of wail! Not to lament in was Valhalla made. If any here might weep for Balder's death, I most might weep, his father; such a son I lose to-day, so bright, so loved ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... me with compliments and greetings. She is a local celebrity, and is constantly visited by the most respectable ladies and gentlemen. This much I had learned from my coachman. But I kept a steady silence, and sat as serious as Odin when he visited the Vala, until the address ceased. Then I ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... awakens; the stars come out overhead, And a flood of moonlight breaks like a voiceless prayer for the dead. And steals the blessed wind, like Odin's fairest daughter, In viewless ministry, over the fields of slaughter; Soothing the smitten life, easing the pang of death, And bearing away on high the ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... in the highest esteem and veneration by the people among whom they lived; they were received and welcomed wherever they went, and even kings delighted to honor them. In short, their art was supposed, by the Anglo-Saxons, to be of divine origin, having been invented by Odin, the great All-Father, and perfected by Bragi, the musician of the gods. As, however, civilization advanced and Christianity became established, this admiration for the minstrel and his art became modified in a degree. He was no longer regarded as a poet, but only as a singer, a sweet musician. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and before Burnouf had written his works on Buddhism, one cannot be very much surprised that Buddha should have been identified with Minos and Lamech; nay, that even the Babylonian deity Belus, and the Teutonic deity Wodan or Odin, should have been supposed to be connected with the founder of Buddhism in India. As Burnouf said in his "Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme," p. 70: "On avait meme fait du Buddha une planete; et je ne sais pas si quelques savants ne se plaisent pas encore aujourd'hui a retrouver ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... that? Little good can it do me to be a king's son if I am also a slave, made to work hard for my daily portion of black bread and tough horse flesh. Triggvi is in Valhalla, with Harald Fairhair and the rest of them, and he cannot help me now. But Odin be thanked, he died not like a cow upon a bed of straw, but with sword in hand like a brave ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... headed over to the Frankish shore, and there I had my first fight. For we raided a town there, and the citizens stood up to us well. I fought in silence, while my comrades yelled to Thor and Odin as they smote, for those against whom we fought were Christian men, and to fight against them by the side of heathen went against me. Yet the lust of battle took hold on me, and fight I must. But ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... at back, window-holes, right and, left, closed by big heavy wooden shutters. Wooden benches against walls, the high bench, a sort of rude throne, at left. The uprights of this high beach are carved with images of the gods Odin and Thor. From the wall beams hang swords, battle axes and shields. Near the high bench stands a harp. Gunld stands at an open window-hole peering out; through the opening one gets a glimpse of the sea lighted by the aurora borealis. Valgerd sits by the fire, which is in the middle ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... from the North of old The strong sons of Odin; Sailed in the Serpent ships, "By hammer and hand" ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... life he'd been good, as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor And the Canine ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... divinity, were the imagined creators and rulers of the world, and mightiest of spiritual powers, then their position must be set far higher than that of deified men. They must be accepted as the supreme gods of the red race, the analogues in the western continent of Jupiter, Osiris, and Odin in the eastern, and whatever opinions contrary to this may have been advanced by writers and travellers must be set down to the account of that prevailing ignorance of American mythology which has fathered so many other blunders. To solve these knotty points I shall choose for ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... credit of first exciting that interest in Scandinavian antiquity which has enriched the prose and poetry not only of England but of Europe in general. Gray refers to him in his notes on "The Descent of Odin," and his work continued to be popular authority on its subject for at least half a century. Scott cites it in his annotations on "The Lay ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... listened all, in grim delight, While scalds yelled out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, As best might to the mind recall The boist'rous joys of Odin's hall. And well our Christian sires of old Loved, when the year its course had rolled, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all his hospitable train. Domestic and religious rite Gave honour ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... had also a superstitious meaning, and the simple people thought that in this way they could ward off evil spirits and prevent sickness. The Roman shepherds used to leap through the Midsummer blaze in honour of Pales. The Scandinavians lit their bonfires in honour of their gods Odin and Thor, and the leaping through the flames reminds us of the worshippers of Baal and Moloch, who, as we read in the Bible, used to "pass their children through the fire" in awe of their cruel god. St. John's Day, or Midsummer Day (June 24th), was chosen because on ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the leaf, it appeared that Miss Blanche, on retiring, had been pursued by a hideous winged bug which defied the efforts of herself and maid to dislodge. Odin, the Spitz dog, had insisted upon scratching at the door. And it made her eyes red to sleep in the morning. And she had an early call to make. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been well for the Latins had his age been less. He died in the year 1237, and young Baldwin, who was married to his daughter Martha, became sole emperor. John de Brienne made so great a name that he was compared with Ajax, Odin the Dane, Hector, Roland, and Judas Maccabaeus. Baldwin, who came after him, might have been compared with any of those kinglings who succeeded Charlemagne, and sat in their palaces while the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... sojourn awhile, and revel In these bowers, far outshining The six heavens of Mohammed, Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu, Or the Gardens of Adonis, Or the viewless bowers of Irim, Or the fine Mosaic mythus, Or the fair Elysian flower-land, Or the clashing halls of Odin, Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma, Or the marble realms of Siva, Or ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... mounted; in fact, the Icelandic pony is quite a peculiar race, much stronger, faster, and better bred than the Highland shelty, and descended probably from pure-blooded sires that scoured the steppes of Asia, long before Odin and his paladins had peopled the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... slaying the priests at the altars, destroying both prelates and people, and forcing the Britons to take refuge in the woods and mountains. Though driven westward, the Celtic Church did not perish, and every now and then some devoted monk would try to establish himself among the worshippers of Thor and Odin. Such a mission was extremely dangerous, for so intense was the hatred of the pagan conquerors for the religion of the New Testament that it was almost impossible for a Christian teacher to show himself ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Northmen who had ravaged England came eager for blood and plunder, and hating the sight of a Christian church as an insult to their gods, Thor and Odin; but the lapse of a hundred years had in some degree changed the temper of the North; and though almost every young man thought it due to his fame to have sailed forth as a sea rover, yet the attacks of these marauders might be bought off, and provided they had treasure ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beauty and loveliness of soul. Hilding, noticing how each day they became fonder of each other, called Frithiof to him and bade him remember that he was only a humble subject and could never hope to wed Ingeborg, the king's only daughter, descended from the great god Odin. The warning, however, came too late, for Frithiof already loved the fair maiden, and vowed that he would have her for ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... of Odin, Thorfinn was born to rescue my life from the fangs of Hel. No less was Thorsteinn Dromund's aid when I was doomed to ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... by the Irish missionaries under the papal control, as well as in converting many of the more remote German tribes who still clung to their old pagan beliefs. His energetic methods are illustrated by the story of how he cut down the sacred oak of Odin at Fritzlar, in Hesse, and used the wood to build a chapel, around which a monastery soon grew up. In 732 Boniface was raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Mayence and proceeded to establish, in the newly converted region, the German bishoprics ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... as jolly were they as were Odin and the Iotun—dead drunk in Valhalla over their mead ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is in some strange fashion the high moment of the year, as the beginning of new activity in nature and in the gods. They solemnized the return of the fiery sun wheel; they traced in those solstice days the operations on earth of Odin and Berchta. They knew in themselves a thing they could not name. And when the supreme experience took place in Christ, they made the one experience typify the other, and became conscious of the divine nature of this nativity. So, by the illuminati, the prophets, the ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... to that division of the Teutonic race which is called Low-German, man; that is to say, that they were more nearly allied to the Frisians, the Dutch, and to our own Saxon forefathers than they were to the ancestors of the modern Swabian, Bavarian, and Austrian. They worshipped Odin and Thunnor; they wrote the scanty records of their race in Runic characters; they were probably chiefly a pastoral folk, but may have begun to practise agriculture in the rich cornlands of the Ukraine. They were essentially a monarchic people, following their kings, whom they ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Ivor Blue, He turned to the East his eye: “Now help me, Odin, for thou hast might, I hear ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... best of days, for I am named for Woden, or Odin, the king of the gods. The hardest work of the week is finished when I come, and there is time for a rest. Perhaps mother will bake a special cake for dinner. To-day the children take their music lessons, and the boys go for a lesson in swimming ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveller, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine personality of the great ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... bedimmed. To stem back that tide is the task now imposed on our heroism, to elevate and purify and refine the race, to introduce the ideal of quality in place of the ideal of quantity which has run riot so long, with the results we see. "As the Northern Saga tells that Odin must sacrifice his eye to attain the higher wisdom," concludes Fahlbeck, "so Man also, in order to win the treasures of culture and refinement, must give not only his eye but his life, if not his own ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... another man, "Thou art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;" and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, "Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... them at Cologne. There these skeletons were taken into the most especial consideration, crowned with jewels and filigreed with gold. Never were skulls more elegantly mounted; and I doubt whether Odin's buffet could exhibit so fine an assortment. The chapel containing these beatified bones is placed in a dark extremity of the cathedral. Several golden lamps gleam along the polished marbles with which it is adorned, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and were a poor but brave people. Their original name was Vinuler, or Viniler. "When these Viniler," say the traditions, or rather fables of Scandinavia, "were at war with the Vandals, and the latter went to Odin to beseech him to grant them the victory, and received for answer that Odin would award the victory to those whom he beheld first at sunrise, the warlike female, Gambaruk, or Gunborg, who was mother to the leaders of the Viniler—Ebbe and Aage—applied to Frigga, Odin's wife, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... disputes by the summary method of an appeal to arms than to await the issue of a tedious and uncertain lawsuit such an appeal being perfectly competent to those who preferred it, and the belief being strong among the fiery spirits of the age that Odin, the god of war, would assuredly give victory to ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... And, if Odin were still looking out of his window in the sky as of yore, when he granted victory to the women of the Lombards, might he not say ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... existence of worship of stone pillars in Orkney. When he says it continued till a late period, I suppose he must allude to the standing stone at Stenness, perforated by a hole, with the sanctity attached to promises confirmed by the junction of hands through the hole, called the promise of Odin. Dr. Daniel Wilson enters into this fully in Praehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 99, 100, 101. It has been told myself that if a lad and lass promised marriage with joined hands through the hole, the promise was held to be binding. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... a Rhenish, a German hero. The whole scene of the tragic events is laid in the Rhinelands, where the killing of the Worm also takes place. On a hill in Frank-land Sigurd frees Brynhild from the magic slumber into which Odin had thrown her on a rock of punishment, because she, as a Valkyr, or shield-maiden of his, had brought about the death of a Gothic king to whom the god of battle had promised victory. In the south, on the Rhine, Sigurd is murdered. In the Rhine, Hoegni (Hagen) hides the Nibelung treasure. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... don't know that it is. But your folk would pay no ransom, and it would seem foolish if I had let you go offhand. Not but what your folk have not proved their wisdom, for they have got rid of us pretty cheaply. Odin! how they swarmed ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... in order to crush all Europe. The Russian is a humble Christian, socialistic, democratic, thirsting for justice; the German prides himself upon his Christianity, but is an idolator like the German of other centuries. His religion loves blood and maintains castes; his true worship is that of Odin;—only that nowadays, the god of slaughter has changed his name and calls ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... vapour lifted upward, and assumed strange and threatening shape. The cloud forms might be the giants rising up out of Jotunheim, and advancing to attack Odin and the Aesir—the evil wolf Fenrir in the van—his bristles silvered ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... bravura; and all concerning the Castle of the Seven Shields, from the ballad introducing it, through the description of its actual appearance (in which, by the way, Scott shows almost a better grasp of the serious Spenserian stanza than anywhere else) to the final battle of Odin and Harold, is of the very best Romantic quality. Perhaps, indeed, it is because (as the Critical Review, the Abdiel of 'classical' orthodoxy among the reviews of the time, scornfully said), 'both poems ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Moslems in secret to this day in Andalusia, and if there were worshippers of Odin and Thor till lately on the shores of the Baltic, may not some secret votaries of Jupiter and Mars have lingered among the recesses of the Balkan, for centuries after Christianity had shed ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... heretics, trying causes by red hot ploughshares, or offering up human sacrifices to wicker idols. I no more expect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction in favour of Thor and Odin. I should think such a reaction almost as much a miracle as that the shadow should go back upon the dial. Revolutions produced by violence are often followed by reactions; the victories of reason once gained, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the dread choice had to be made—the crisis in the life of Alfgar, a crisis which has its parallel in the lives of many around us—approached, and he had to choose between Christ and Odin, between the death of the ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... in the darkness tonight; but the great shadow of the tree which hides you from the light of heaven shall be swept away. For this is the birth-night of the white Christ, son of the All-Father, and Saviour of mankind. Fairer is He than Baldur the Beautiful, greater than Odin the Wise, kinder than Freya the Good. Since He has come to earth the bloody sacrifices must cease. The dark Thor, on whom you vainly call, is dead. Deep in the shades of Niffelheim he is lost forever. His power in the world is broken. Will you serve a helpless ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... become fishermen and small landholders in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. "Jeudi," or Jupiter's day, becomes their god Thor's day, or Thursday; "Mardi," or Mars's day, is their Tiu's day, or Tuesday; "Mercredi," or Mercury's day, is Odin's or Woden's ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... attention must be directed to the country over which he reigned, and which will be noticed in connection with Denmark; these two countries forming a greater part of the ancient Scandinavia, from which our Teutonic ancestors migrated, the land of Odin, and Frea, and Thor, those half-fabulous deities, concerning whom there are still divided opinions; some supposing that they were heroes, and others, impersonations of virtues, or elements and wonders of nature. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... had none. He told me his history. Thrown upon the world a foundling, his paternal origin was as much a mystery to him as the genealogy of Odin; and, scorned by everybody, he fled the parish workhouse when a boy, and launched upon the sea. He had followed it for several years, a dog before the mast, and now he had thrown it up ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... upon the great plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut.[1] There is no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so visitors have the turf ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the heathens they made their majestical god, and at the cross roads they offered him gifts, and to the high hills brought him victims to slay. This god was main worthy all heathens among, and his name when translated in Danish is Odin. ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... suspect that superstition was the parent of despotism? The descendants of Odin, (whose race was not extinct till the year 1060) are said to have reigned in Sweden above a thousand years. The temple of Upsal was the ancient seat of religion and empire. In the year 1153 I find a singular ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... we rowed in, But we seldom saw them thus; Our master is angry with Odin— Odin is angry with us! Heavy odds have we taken, But never before such odds. The Gods know they are forsaken, We must risk the wrath ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Hohmann, who died at the age of forty, had menstruated regularly to the age of thirty-eight. The penis was imperforate but hypospadic, from whence came the urinary and spermatic discharges, and Hohmann could in turn copulate as either male or female. Odin is also quoted in relation to the case seen at the Hotel-Dieu-de-Lyon, during the service of M. Bondet. The subject was aged sixty-three, and named Mathieu Perret. The case greatly resembled that of Hohmann, at the autopsy being found to be double sexed. So that, while most of the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... consolidate their own position. After that it would take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will require a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and an important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and Kulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could eventually cut us right out of this quarter ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... sharp outlines of the red cliffs of Heligoland appeared, the German cruiser Seeadler came from the island to meet the squadron and reported that the coast ironclads Aegir and Odin, the cruisers Hansa, Vineta, Freya, and Hertha, together with the torpedo-boats, had set out from Wilhelmshaven during the night and had seen nothing of the enemy. The sea appeared free. All the available ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... unharness'd in freedom can play, And safely o'er Odin's steep precipice stray, Whilst the wolf to the forest recesses may fly, And howl to the moon as she glides ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the light of Leo's age, And smooth, as woman's guide, Tansillo's page[12]? Till pleas'd, you make in fair translated song, Odin descend, and rouse the fairy throng[13]? Recall, employment sweet, thy youthful day, Then wake, at Mithra's call, the mystic lay[14]? Unfold the Paradise of ancient lore[15], Or mark the shipwreck from the sounding shore? Now love to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... my thumb," quoth Tostig. "By Odin, the women of the North Danes are a scurvy breed. They birth dwarfs, not men. Of what use is this thing? He will never make a man. Listen you, Lingaard, grow him to be a drink-boy at Brunanbuhr. And have an eye on the dogs lest they slobber him down by mistake ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... his Cross; the sight which melted the hearts of our fierce forefathers, and turned them from the worship of Thor and Odin to the worship of 'The white Christ;' and from the hope of a Valhalla of brute prowess, to the hope of a heaven of righteousness and love. Look at Christ upon his Cross, and see there, as they saw, ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... eminent; that 22% of the men of real talent had such relation; and that among the geniuses the percentage rose to 40. There are thus two chances out of five that a man of genius will have an eminent relative; for a man picked at random from the population the chance is one in several thousand. See Odin, A., La Genese des Grands Hommes, Vol. I, p. 432 and Vol. II, Tableau xii, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... and daring, was still a pagan, when all the world was fast becoming Christian. And as Clotilda listened, she wished that she could turn this brave young chief away from his heathen deities, Thor and Odin, to the worship of the Christians' God; and, revolving strange fancies in her mind, she determined what she would do when she "grew up,"—as many a girl since her day has determined. But even as they reached the fair city ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... geese of which Ilda was so proud, and of the pigeons which Klaus had given her when they were wild, but which had grown tame and lovable under her gentle care. Then the old woman related in turn many a legend and fable, tales of the saintly King Olaf, or the doings of Odin and Thor. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... like the worship of the invisible powers of Nature; for in the rock, the mountain, the river, the forest, the sun, the stars, the storms, the rude Teutonic mind saw a protecting or avenging deity. They easily transferred to the Christian clergy the reverence they had bestowed on the old priests of Odin, of Freya, and of Thor. Reverence was one of the great sentiments of our German ancestors. It was only among such a people that an overpowering spiritual despotism could be maintained. The Pope became to them the vicegerent of the great Power which they adored. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of the general reader, that by Gimle is meant the abode of the righteous after the day of judgment; by Naastrand, the place of punishment after the same dread sentence; by Ragnarok, the last day; Valhal, the temporary place of happiness to which the god Odin invites those who have been slain in battle; and Hel, the goddess of death, whose abode is termed Helheim. With these explanations the reader will be able to understand the subjoined passage, which expresses the Norse idea of the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... well-beloved for his wondrous might, and he was no hard man, though so fell a warrior, and though of few words, as aforesaid, was a blithe companion to old and young. In numberless battles had he fought, and men deemed it a wonder that Odin had not taken to him a man so much after his own heart; and they said it was neighbourly done of the Father of the Slain to forbear his company so long, and showed how well he loved the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... king, by the intervention of God himself (p. 4), who in these Siebenbuergische Maerchen plays a part just as often as "Khuda" does in the Indian tales, taking for the purpose the form of a "good old man," and often wearing a grey mantle that reminds one of Odin. In the Netherlandish story of "The knight with the swan" (Thorpe's Northern Mythology, vol. III. p. 302), King Oriant's mother persuades the king his wife gave him seven puppies instead of seven ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... as a rule, follow very similar lines. Many of them find their parallels not only in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, as we might reasonably expect, but even in the Havamal of the Elder Edda, respecting which Thorpe remarks in his translation (i. p. 36 note): "Odin is the 'High One.' The poem is a collection of rules and maxims, and stories of himself, some of them not very consistent with our ideas of a supreme deity." The style of the Icelandic poem, and the manners of the period when it was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... The old Teutonic religion professed to reveal, like that of Buddh and of Brahma, how the heavens and earth were formed, and of what. Ymir, the great frost-giant, a being mysteriously engendered out of frozen vapor, was slain by the god Odin and his brothers; and, dragging his body into the middle of the universe, they employed the materials of which it was composed in forming the earth. Of his blood they made the vast ocean, and all the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... not hung out to invite to the hall of hospitality[798]. Now I never heard that it was a custom to hang out a helmet[799].' JOHNSON. 'Hang him up, hang him up.' BOSWELL. (humouring the joke) 'Hang out his skull instead of a helmet, and you may drink ale out of it in your hall of Odin, as he is your enemy; that will be truly ancient. There will be Northern Antiquities[800].' JOHNSON. 'He's a Whig, Sir; a sad dog. (smiling at his own violent expressions, merely for political difference of opinion.) But he's the best traveller I ever read; he observes more things ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... on board, but she would not do so until she had been promised peace and safety. When she was taken to the cabin Ragnar looked at her in delight. He thought that she surpassed Tora in beauty, and offered a prayer to Odin, asking for the love of the maiden. Then he took the gold-embroidered dress which Tora had worn and offered it to Kraka, saying in verse, in the fashion of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... festivals, like the Gogs and Magogs of our civic wise men of the East. Thus Andalucia being the half-way point between the N. and S.E., became the meeting-place of the two great ravaging swarms which have desolated Europe: here the stalwart children of frozen Norway, the worshippers of Odin, clashed against the Saracens from torrid Arabia, the followers of Mahomet. Nor can a greater proof be adduced of the power and relative superiority of the Cordovese Moors over the other nations of Europe, than this, their successful resistance ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... uncertainty of movement and eyesight have prostrated the patient and compelled him to surrender at discretion to his nurses and medical advisers, but before the Valkyrie of Delirium are scouring the fields of his understanding, to pounce on the corpses of ideas their Odin had slain. That time was not due for many hours yet, when Gwen got speech of her cousin. She immediately appreciated that the patient was anxious to impress bystanders that this illness was all in the way of business. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... which they are associated in the minds of the peasants. Thus the Penrith circle is locally known as "Meg and her Daughters," a dolmen in Berkshire is called "Wayland the Smith's Cave," while in one of the Orkney Isles is a menhir named "Odin's Stone." In France many are connected with Gargantua, whose name, the origin of which is doubtful, stands clearly for a giant. Thus we find a rock called the "Chair of Gargantua," a menhir called "Gargantua's Little Finger," and an allee couverte called ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... namely, we will go back one-and-twenty years. We will allow the circumstances of Otto's birth again to come before us. It is a leap backward that we take from 1830 to 1810. We are in Odense, that old city, which takes its name from Odin. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Geat; while the Irish and other authorities affect to trace his pedigree for some generations even beyond this last-named ancestor.[178] According to Mallet, the true name of this great conqueror and ruler of the north-western tribes of Europe was "Sigge, son of Fridulph; but he assumed the name of Odin, who was the supreme god among the Teutonic nations, either to pass, among his followers, for a man inspired by the gods, or because he was chief priest, and presided over the worship paid to that deity."[179] In his conquering progress towards the north-west ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... hearers. The very bareness of the outline is sufficient proof that the material is not new. The framework is apparently imitated from that of the poem known as Baldr's Dreams, some lines from which are inserted in Voeluspa. This older poem describes Odin's visit to the Sibyl in hell-gates to inquire into the future. He rides down to her tomb at the eastern door of Nifl-hell and chants spells, until she awakes and asks: "What man unknown to me is that, who has troubled me with this weary journey? Snow has snowed on me, rain ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... Odin's self, I think, was a bit of truer human stuff;—I confess his value to me, in these sad times, is rare and great. Considering the usual Histrionic, Papin's-Digester, Truculent-Charlatan and other species of "Kings," alone ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... came to pass. For from the sons of Ymir came a race of giants whose pleasure was to work evil on the earth; and from the Sons of the Iceman sprang the race of the gods, chief of whom was Odin, Father of All Things that ever were made; and Odin and his brothers began at once to war against the wicked Frost Giants, and most of all against the cold-hearted Ymir, whom in the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... railing accusations against them and remind them of their doings in the "old days." One of his victims tells him to "let bygones be bygones." The gods are the subject of many stories that are here raked up against them, stories of another order of belief and of civilisation than those in which Odin appears as the wise and sleepless counsellor. This poem implies a great amount of independence in the author of it. It is not a satire on the gods; it is pure comedy; that is, it belongs to a type of literature which has risen above prejudices and which has an air of levity because ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... day there came at even, out of the stones, a man's hair, the second day a man's head, the third day all the man was there. He is named Turi; he was fair of face, great and mighty; he gat a son named Bor, who took to him Besla, daughter of Bolthorn, the giant, and they had three sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve. Bor's sons slew Ymir the giant, but when he fell there ran so much blood out of his wounds that all the kin of the Hrimthursar were drowned, save Hvergelmir and his household, who got away in a boat. Then Bor's sons took Ymir and bore him into the ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... could get no sleep for picturing his own deeds when he was man enough to bear a sword and launch his ship. And sometimes in his excitement he would slip outside into the darkness, and hear far up in the frosty sky the whistle of the swans as they flew southward, and fancy them the shield-maids of Odin on their way ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls, and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin Allfather in the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they call Asers. These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancient inhabitants of the Celtic and Cimbric original. The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin or Wodin: first their general, afterwards their tutelar deity. The time of this great change is lost in the imperfection of traditionary history, and the attempts to supply it by fable. It is, however, certain, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, Odin were worshipped. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Thor and Woden. Woden or Odin was the chief god of Scandinavian mythology. Thor, his elder son, was the god of thunder. From these names come the names of the days ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from their eternal repose. His companions take up the parable in turn, "and the echoes, huddling in affright, like Odin's hounds," go baying down the valleys and clamouring amongst the pines, like a legion of invisible fiends after a strange cat. Then again all is hush, and tramp, and sanctity, and flop, and holy meditation! And so the pilgrimage is accomplished. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the "All-Father,"—the holy Odin,—it is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of "God the Father," with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal god as father strongly ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the gray old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods, and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more, and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have been mouldering for a thousand years in some neighbouring knoll; perhaps yonder, where those ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to the Island of the Blessed recalls the journeys made by Odin, Hermod, Svipdag, Hotherus and others to the Germanic Hela. When Hermod went to search for Balder, as the Prose Edda relates, he rode through thick darkness for nine days and nine nights ere he crossed the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... she answered, dropping it again, and sitting down on it. "Heregar the king's thane—the standard bearer—shall bend to no humbler burden than the Dragon of Wessex. Go; and Thor and Odin strike with you." ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... though doubtless well adapted to the climate and soil. Nothing can be more striking to a stranger than the odd shapes of the wagons and carts, and the rudeness of the agricultural implements, which must be patterned upon those in vogue during the time of Odin, the founder of the Norwegian race. Owing to the humidity of the climate, it is necessary in harvest time to dry the hay and grain by staking it out in the fields on long poles, so that the sun and air may penetrate every part of it. The appearance ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Iceland, thrown up, by fire, from the depths of the sea, there once lived a lad who worshipped the god Odin, and was taught from two absurd books called the Eddas. He wished to fight and die on a battle-field, so that his soul might cross a rainbow-bridge, and dwell in the beautiful halls of Valhalla. There—so the Eddas say—are the chosen ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... comes through France from Rome; and the Christian name comes through Rome from Palestine. If there had really been any justification for the Teutonic generalisation, we should expect the surname to be "ox" and not "bull"; and we should expect the hero standing as godfather to be Odin or Siegfried, and not the prophet who lived on locusts in the wilderness of Palestine or the mystic who mused with his burning eyes on the blue seas around Patmos. If our national hero is John Bull and not Olaf the Ox, it is ultimately because that blue ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... melodies, which, to our two swains, prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision, a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry upon a branch beside them, the said bird being, we presume, a filthy squealing cockatoo, although Mr Boas, gay deceiver ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... I am at last! Theodore hadn't been up for a week, so I came down, to find Mr. Gunther thundering like Odin because I had promised to help him arrange sittings with you, and had forgotten it. I had to bring him at once. He says his group is all done but the two heads, and he must have yours and the baby's. But he'll tell ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... difficulties, however, we are already able to come to certain definite conclusions. We cannot connect the megalithic monuments with any one of the ancient religions known. They were certainly not set up in honor of Odin or of Osiris, of Astarte or of Athene, the Phoenician or the Egyptian, the Greek or the Roman gods; their erection seems to have had but one end in view, to do honor to the dead. Beneath none of them do we find the remains either of the cave-bear or of the reindeer, still less of the mammoth ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... town called Odense," replied the Pastor, "the other towns were envious of its better appearance and condition, and particularly the town now called Kjerteminde, and complaint was made to Odin, who was angry, and replied, 'Vaer du mindre' (literally, 'be you less'); this was that they should continue to be smaller towns than Odense. In time the name from Vaer du mindre became altered to its present name of Kjerteminde. There is also ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... And long before this conclusion was reached by philosophers, it had been expressed in unconscious religious thought in myths, in the Valkyria, the Wish-maidens, for instance, who carried the decrees of Odin ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of deep-sea's flame That here worm-land's haunter came; Well-born goddess of red gold, Thus let gamesome rhyme be told. 'Giver forth of Odin's mead Of thy black mare have I need; For to Gilsbank will I ride, Meed of my rash ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... of poetry—our poet of childhood and of poverty, was born at Odense, a town of Funen, one of the green, beech-covered islands of Denmark. It bears the name of the Scandinavian hero, or demigod, Odin; Tradition says he lived there. The parents of Andersen were so poor that when they married they had not wherewithal to purchase a bedstead, or at least thought it advisable to make shift by constructing one out of the wooden tressels ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of the clock were pointing upward. And I was half-asleep, and half-dreaming. Remembering all the friends I had—most of them scattered to the four winds by now. And that best friend of all, Doctor Jack Odin! I wondered where he was and how he had fared since he disappeared into that dark ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... trains of waggons bearing the spoils of all the world, Alaric went on South, 'with the native instinct of the barbarian,' as Dr. Sheppard well says. Always toward the sun. Away from Muspelheim and the dark cold north, toward the sun, and Valhalla, where Odin and the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the Scandinavian mythology: one of the most poetical of all mythologies. I have a great respect for Odin and Thor. Their adventures have always delighted me; and the system was admirably adapted to foster the high spirit of a military people. Lucan has a fine passage ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... 'Tis thou, 'tis Odin, hast unsealed her eyes! In the deep night her ear was closed to thee— Yet now she sees the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... ring lay the sorrow of our hearts; for Odin had called a many home, and there lay their bodies; and the mightiest was Heriulf; and the Romans had taken him up from where he fell, and cast him down out of the way, but they had not stripped him, and his hand still gripped the Wolf's-sister. His shield was full of shafts of ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... halt is a short one among the mountains; but let not the weary repine, for the glorious resting-place that awaits our labours is the city of Rome! The curse of Odin, when in the infancy of our nation he retired before the myriads of the Empire, it is our privilege to fulfil! That future destruction which he denounced against Rome, it is ours to effect! Remember your hostages that the Romans have slain; your ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... wreckage of a thousand years of civilization? Has Israel no contribution to offer here but the old quarrel with Christianity? But that quarrel shrinks into comparative concord beside the common peril from the resurrected gods of paganism, from Thor and Odin and Priapus. And it was always an exaggerated quarrel—half misunderstanding, like most quarrels. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Anselm believed God was other than One. Jesus but applied to himself distributively—as logicians say—those conceptions of divine sonship and suffering service ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... this story is that about Wednesday which follows. Wednesday, the day consecrated to Odin, the eve of the day sacred to the Thundergod,[254] may also have been held holy by the heathen Slavonians, but to some commentators it appears more likely that the traditions now attached to it in Russia became transferred ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... find this wild north land. It is called Scandinavia, and comprises Norway and Sweden. The home of these Northern gods was a city called Asgard, built above the clouds, in the midst of which stood Valhalla, the hall of the chief god, Odin. Such a marvellous place as this was! It had a golden roof that reflected light over all the earth, just like the sun, and its ceiling was supported by spears, while millions of shields formed ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... who salutes him on his return as the firstborn of the gods. Now, De Gubernatis regards this fable as 'making the boar emblem of the hidden moon'; and Mr. Conway thinks there is no doubt that the boar at an early period became emblematic of the wild forces of Nature. 'From being hunted by King Odin on earth, it passed to be his favourite food in Valhalla, and a prominent figure in his spectral hunt.' But it is with the moon, not with Odin, that we are at present concerned, and so note two curious items mentioned by Conway. In Sicilian legend, he ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Surely no Runic Odin, who "howled his war-song to the gale", no Lapland savage who cowered in his hut, ever panted for the respite of the spring-time more than these two lovers ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Egyptian and European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes, Palaeolithic Implements in Upper Egypt, Boston, 1881. See also Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, chap. i, pp. 8, 9, 44, 102, 316, 329. As to stone implements used by priests of Jehovah, priests of Baal, priests of Moloch, priests of Odin, and Egyptian priests, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac, as above, 6 and 7; also Lartet, in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead Sea; also Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, pp. 96, 97; also Sayce, Herodotus, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Pavel, kak odin iz naibolee darovityh uchenikov farisejskoj shkoly, ne mog ne byt' posvjashhen v etu "tajnu bezzakonija, nahodivshujusja v dejstvii" i v ego vremja. Otsjuda osobaja zloba gonenija na nego so storony voinstvujushhago ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... have heard how south in Iceland Gunnar guarded well himself, Boldly battle's thunder wielding, Fiercest foeman on the wave; Hero of the golden collar, Sixteen with the sword he wounded; In the shock that Odin loveth, ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... kingdom. Earldoms and kingdoms are not renounced "for light and transient causes." As regards Siward, who renounced his earldom, he seemed to be destined for a greater career, as subsequent events show and as is indicated by the fact that Odin (for the old man on the hill whom Siward met was none other than Odin) took a hand in directing his course. But when Bjarki renounced his kingdom, it was altogether unmotivated. The saga says: "Soon afterwards [i.e., after Bjarki's ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;—on which point there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakespeare has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... very woodlands here, some thirteen hundred years ago, you might have come upon one of the places where your forefathers worshipped Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind, beneath the shade of ancient oaks, in the darkest heart of the forest. And there you would have seen ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... sacred; the writers having much the same pride and faith in their own and their fellow-countrymen's purity of descent from these imaginary Aryan or Teutonic ancestors that was felt a few generations earlier by the various noble families who traced their lineage direct to Odin, AEneas, or Noah. Nowadays, of course, all students recognize that there may not be, and often is not, the slightest connection between kinship in blood and kinship in tongue. In America we find three races, white, red, and black, and three tongues, English, French, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... proper was one Freir who came among them by adoption, "but was born among the Vanes, a somewhat mysterious other dynasty of gods, who had been conquered and superseded by the stronger and more warlike Odin dynasty." It harmonises, too, with the belief that there are different gods to different territories and nations, as there were different chiefs; that these gods contend for supremacy as chiefs do; and it gives meaning to the boast of neighbouring tribes—"Our ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... in their prayers several spirits who seem, like ODIN LAHANG, to be regarded as deceased members of their tribe; such are TOKONG and UTONG, and PA BALAN and PLIBAN. From all these descent is claimed by various Kenyah and Klemantan sub-tribes; and that they are regarded as standing higher in the spiritual ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... more proper part for her was that of a heroine, a queenly heroine,—that of Theresa of Hungary, for example; or, better still, that of Brynhilda the Valkyrie, the beloved of Sigurd, the serpent-killer, who incurred the curse of Odin, because, in the tumult of spears, she sided with the young king, and doomed the old warrior to die, to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... fringing the coast of Norway is one forming a striking picture of a horse and rider about to plunge into the surf, fifteen hundred feet below. This gigantic illusion, to the fanciful minds of the old bards presented the image of Odin as he disappeared before ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... H. Beam Piper seem to owe a great debt to Dr. Clark. Uller Uprising became the foundation of Piper's monumental Terro-Human Future History; the first story where we encounter the Terran Federation. In it we learn about Odin, the planet that will one day be the capital of the First Galactic Empire; and humble Niflheim, which in more decadent times will become a common expletive, a word meaning hell. This is also where ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... which they hunted in the cold, lonely forests were primitive. It is but natural, therefore, that they should have idealized strength and courage and that they should have represented the gods of Asgard as being large, strong, and courageous. Although Thor, the eldest son of Odin, was small in comparison with the giants, we are told in one of the myths that he was a mile in height; also he had great strength and a wonderful hammer, called Mjolmer, with which he always defeated the giants and kept them from Asgard. Thunder was caused by the stroke of Thor's hammer; ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Conversation chiefly about the profits booksellers make of us scribblers. I remember Peter Pindar saying, one of the few times I ever met him, that the booksellers drank their wine in the manner of the heroes in the hall of Odin, out of authors' skulls." This was a sharp saying; but Rogers, if he had chosen to relate his own experiences when he negotiated with Mr. Murray about the sale of Crabbe's works, and the result of that negotiation, might have proved ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... that in a majority of instances, long before the Cross rose above these sites, they had been the sacred places of faith after faith. Sun-worshippers, Nature-worshippers, Druids, votaries of Jove and Venus, servants of Odin, Thor and Friga, early Christians who were half one thing and half another, all have here bowed their brows to earth in adoration of God as they understood Him, and in these hallowed spots lies mingled the dust ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... their "Teutonism" but indulged it, and it was stimulated by some of the teachers, especially the magnificent Zeller, so full of vigour and joy in existence. I can still see the gigantic young Swiss, as he made the pines tremble with his "Odin, Odin, death ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wanderings through the world the three gods Odin, Honir, and Loki come to a waterfall where an otter is devouring a fish that it has caught. Loki kills the otter with a stone, and they take off its skin. In the evening they seek a lodging at the house ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... of deep-sea's flame That here worm-land's haunter came; Well-born goddess of red gold, Thus let gamesome rhyme be told. 'Giver forth of Odin's mead Of thy black mare have I need; For to Gilsbank will I ride, Meed of my rash ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... unharness'd in freedom can play, And safely o'er Odin's steep precipice stray, Whilst the wolf to the forest recesses may fly, And howl to the moon as she ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... like her father, was a Christian. After her marriage, Bertha herself for some years held Christian services here alone in little St. Martin's Church, but Ethelbert still loved his idols; indeed, for many years, he continued to worship Odin and Thor. St. Patrick had been in Ireland a full century ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... believed, is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character, that it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germanic family. Odin, and his terrific pantheon of war-gods and social deities, could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire, which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes have invariably produced nations, whose ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... gathered themselves—Alf and Eywolf, Hiorward and Haward—and the hosts met in the plain under Lowfell. There was war in heaven while those armies made it on earth. Out of the lightning flare came the Valkyrs, daughters of Odin, choosers of the slain. They rode grey horses; they wore helms and coats of mail; their spear-heads gleamed like fire. Helgi sat by the Eagle Rock and cried out to them to stay. And one—it was Hogni's daughter, Sigrun—turned him her fire-hued face and answered: "Other business ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett |
