The
bitterness of his attack on Frigg especially suggests that she
was, among the Northmen, a formidable rival to the Virgin. When he
repeats a legend of the Gods, he transforms them into mortal heroes,
and when, as often happens, he refers to them accidentally as Gods,
he invariably hastens to protest that he does so only because it had
been the custom. He describes Thor and Odin as men versed in sorcery
who claimed the rank of Gods; and in another passage he speaks of
the latter as a king who had his seat at Upsala, and who was falsely
credited with divinity throughout Europe. His description of Odin
agrees with that in the Edda: an old man of great stature and mighty
in battle, one-eyed, wearing a great cloak, and constantly wandering
about in disguise. The story which Saxo tells of his driving into
battle with Harald War-tooth, disguised as the latter's charioteer
Brun, and turning the fight against him by revealing to his enemy Ring
the order of battle which he had invented for Harald's advantage, is
in thorough agreement with the traditional character of the God who
betrayed Sigmund the Volsung and Helgi Hundingsbane. Saxo's version
of the Baldr story has been mentioned already. Baldr's transformation
into a hero (who could only be slain by a sword in the keeping of
a wood-satyr) is almost complete. But Odin and Thor and all the
Gods fight for him against his rival Hother, "so that it might be
called a battle of Gods against men"; and Nanna's excuse to Baldr
that "a God could not wed with a mortal," preserves a trace of his
origin.
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