"Odin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the surly advent of the storm, Much as the brown-cheeked planters of Barbadoes Must watch a rising of the Negro swarm: Meantime it steered, like Odin's old Armadas, Right on our coast;—a dismal, coal-black form; Many proud gaits were quelled—and all bravadoes Of folly ceased—and sundry idle jokers Went home to cover ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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 to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... permitted to the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, the daughter of a line of heroes, whose stem was to be found in the race of Thor, Balder, Odin, and other deified warriors of the North, whose beauty was the theme of a hundred minstrels, and her eyes the leading star of half the chivalry of the warlike marches of Wales, to mourn her sire with the ineffectual ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 was usually emblazoned on shield and standard, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... little shape and a mightless, And the strong men laughed and roared: "Is our father Odin sightless That bade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... it is the Temple of Isis, the Temple of Osiris, the Buddha Temple, the Horus Temple, and the Pyramid of Cheops. Farther to the east is the Diva Temple, the Brahma Temple, the Temple of Zoroaster, and the Tomb of Odin. Indeed, everywhere are there suggestions of temples and tombs, pagodas and pyramids, on a scale that no work of human hands can rival. "The grandest objects," says Major Dutton, "are merged in a congregation of others equally grand." With the wealth of form ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... sly in his deeds, eke stealing he loved and lying device; him 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
... to pay tribute to the Irish Ard-Righ. Hence all attempts to substitute the Scandinavian social system for that of the Irish septs and clans were forever frustrated. City life and maritime enterprises, together with commerce and trade, were as scornfully rejected as the worship of Thor and Odin. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... we not 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
... to take you for a good long drive to-morrow, and show you something; but the trouble is, the doctor and I are at variance as to what the something shall be. I want you to see Odin's Garden; and the doctor insists that you ought to go to the Cheyenne canyons first, because those are his favorites. Now, which shall it be? We will ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... 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 whom Odin had ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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 children (each born ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... 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. Poetry ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... blind to a certain distinction. The wretchedness of the masses, and their hopeless condition, had no relation whatever to religion; their murmurs and groans were not against their gods or for want of gods. In the oak-woods of Britain the Druids held their followers; Odin and Freya maintained their godships in Gaul and Germany and among the Hyperboreans; Egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and Anubis; the Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd and Ahriman, holding them in equal honor; in hope of the Nirvana, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... made himself ridiculous by showing off to Mrs. J— , and how she herself had once been overwhelmed by the laughter of the Wardour family for having rehearsed to poor Mrs. Brown all the characters of the gods of the Northmen—Odin, Thor, and all—when she had just learnt them. So she was more careful than before not to pour out all the little that she knew; and she was glad she had not committed herself, for she had very nearly volunteered the information ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thou spread 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 linger in the daisied vale, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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 its walls, over which were draped coats of mail. A huge wolf stood before its immense ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: "Immortality!" It flew at the minstrel competition, through ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... message—Frederick must come to Potsdam quickly if he is to see his father again. The son comes. "Am not I happy to have such a son to leave behind me?" says the dying king. On May 31 he dies. No baresark of them, nor Odin's self, was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... 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 that day the sun reaches ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 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 ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... that is, which could possess logically justifiable grounds for certainty about the constancy of the order of things, and therefore be in a position to declare that such and such events are impossible. Some of the old mythologies recognised this clearly enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there lay the unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one day or other, would crumple up them and the world they ruled to give place to a ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... was the golden calf, and so was Zeus; so were Thor and Odin, too. And yet they were struck down. (Catches sight of the Harlot.) Who's that woman? Oh, the one I tried to save by sending her in here. Tell me one thing, Olof. Have you ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... yes,—and kill me too into the bargain. Really I think it very shocking that we run to Greece, to Italy, to &c., &c., and leave all at home lying buried as a nonentity. Were I absolute Sovereign and Chief Pontiff here, there should be a study of the Old English ages first of all. I will pit Odin against any Jupiter of them; find Sea-kings that would have given Jason a Roland for his Oliver! We are, as you sometimes say, a book-ridden people,—a phantom-ridden people.—All this small household is well; salutes you and yours with ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population, (and indeed if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin,) are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty, I just ask ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the old Emperor. It would have 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
... kings the Lacedemonians met in large numbers and tore the flesh from their foreheads with pins and needles. It is said that when Odin was near his death he ordered himself to be marked with a spear; and Niort, one of his successors, followed the example of his predecessor. Shakespeare speaks of "such as boast and show their scars." In the olden times it was not uncommon for a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... he less celebrated for his prudence and wisdom. Two of his proverbs are yet remembered and repeated among Laplanders. To express the vigilance of the Supreme Being, he was wont to say, "Odin's belt is always buckled." To show that the most prosperous condition of life is often hazardous, his lesson was, "When you slide on the smoothest ice, beware of pits beneath." He consoled his countrymen, when they were once preparing to leave the frozen deserts of Lapland, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... answered Eigil. 'I know one lovelier still, and her name is Alruna. Odin does not love Freya so fondly ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... worship to Thor the next winter when I get back to Iceland." Then the king said and smiled, "It may be seen from the mien of Kjartan that he puts more trust in his own weapons and strength than in Thor and Odin." Then the meeting was broken up. After a while many men egged the king on to force Kjartan and his followers to receive the faith, and thought it unwise to have so many heathen men near about him. The king answered wrathfully, and ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... than nominal in most cases, though the king's religion was outwardly the tribe's religion. If, as happened among the East Saxons, the king forsook his old gods, returned to them again, and finally forsook them altogether, the tribe followed his lead, and, in public at least, worshipped Christ, Odin, or any other deity whom the king favoured for the moment; but there can be hardly any doubt that in private the mass of the people adhered to the old religion to which they were accustomed. This tribal conversion is clearly marked when a heathen king ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... 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 himself, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... strange island of 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 heroes, ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... King with a word for his mouth to say: "All hail to thee King Volsung, from the King of the Goths I come: He hath heard of thy sword victorious and thine abundant home; He hath heard of thy sons in the battle, the fillers of Odin's Hall; And a word hath the west-wind blown him, (full fruitful be its fall!) A word of thy daughter Signy the crown of womanhood: Now he deems thy friendship goodly, and thine help in the battle good, And for these will he give his friendship and his ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Christ, 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, to entreat ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Odin Bids Farewell to Brunhild before He Surrounds Her by a Barrier of Fire (Frontispiece) From the painting by ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... 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 ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of 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 ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration 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 Saxon nation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... notion on this point. Its mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they, too, were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and AEsir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost-Giants in AEschylean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... mythology, the grandfather of Odin. In the creation of the world he was born from the rocks, licked by the cow Andhumla (darkness). He was the father of Bor, and the latter, wedded to Bestla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn (evil), became the father of Odin, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... as wanderers from their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these races lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the right view of life: so, under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, which were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for instance, the Druidic or the Greek religion, the metaphysical content of which was little and shallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a special, one might almost say, an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... or mind, Blood, or beauty, Or lovely hue. Odin gave spirit, Heinir gave mind, Lothur gave ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... as I am, I seek the fight, and offer as the prize The untasted bait that bribed my soul, nor thou the boon despise; Else, like some worn-out beast of prey, Starkather soon must lie, Nor gain the bliss that Odin gives to men ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... fire-flies pulsed within the meadow mist Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Knight Sir 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
... Odin in Valhall I dare not beseech; For him I forsook in days of childhood. But the great new God in Gimle?— All that I had He ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... 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, or kind of elder brother, whose mission was to clear a way and prepare ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... when the nations of the East invaded Europe, the Scandinavians began to land on the coast of England. Their operations are little better known than those of the barbarians: they are hidden in the mysteries of Odin. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... World-mother, knowing all things, yet never herself revealing them, though ready to be called to counsel by the gods, it represents her in action, decked with jewels and gorgeously attended. But, says the Mythes, when she ascended the throne of Odin, her consort (Heaven), she left with mortals her friend, the Goddess of Sympathy, to protect them ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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. Whence ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... 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 ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... 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 ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... only one swam across. Sigurd chose him: his name was Grani, and he came of Sleipnir's breed, and was the best horse in the world. For Sleipnir was the horse of Odin, the God of the North, and was as swift ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... 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 of ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... bloody floor, Weeping and 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 a God. But he has met that doom, which long ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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 him on the throne. At the time that the Emperor Augustus made peace ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... epitome of all meanness like Rousseau; but if he shows superior force of any kind, that is the hallmark of his heroism, and before such an one humanity should bow down. Of real history, therefore, you will learn nothing from Heroes; neither will you get any trustworthy information concerning Odin, Mahomet and the rest of Carlyle's oddly consorted characters. One does not read the book for facts but for a new view of old matters. With hero-worshipers especially it ranks very high among the thought-provoking books ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... caste the symbol was the horse. The favourite, and therefore the chosen sacrifice of Odin, their ancestor and God, the horse's flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meal; the horse's head, hung on the ash in Odin's wood, gave forth oracular responses. As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden as impiety by the Church, while his oracles ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... imposing clangour of some half dozen regimental bands (all of them, mark you, playing different tunes!) which struck up simultaneously as my Lord ——, the then commander-in-chief, (whose spirit has since mingled with the shades of the heroes who had preceded him, not to the hall of Odin, but we trust to a more Christian place,) made his appearance, with his brilliant staff, on —— Moor; whither he came down ostensibly for the purpose of reviewing the troops—really, to marry his nephew ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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. Also, that she was watching the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... while, in her interior mind, she was busy with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and with his radiant blondeur—with the gold in his hair and beard, and the sea-blue in his eyes—he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga. He looks like-what's his name?—like Odin. I must really compel him to ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the Egyptians' worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing upon these shores, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... 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
... between 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, p. 171, note. For the discoveries by Pitt-Rivers, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population (and indeed, if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshippers of Odin), are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty,—I just ask ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... its blessed bounds, nor sought the barb'arous climes of barb'arous gods "Where Odin of the dreary North o'er hog and ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... in a very special and emphatic sense," said Turnbull. "I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us. It is that I do ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... be 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 ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... to 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 to it from Friday in Christian ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... 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 ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... a few minutes by some fierce down-draught of wind from the peak, and I get a strange, clear, sudden view right down to Ambas Bay. It is just like looking down from one world into another. I think how Odin hung and looked down into Nifelheim, and then of how hot, how deliciously hot, it was away down there, and then the mist closes over it. I shiver and go back to camp, for night is coming on, and I know my men will require intellectual support in the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... nature 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
... 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
... in music rolled The Havamal of Odin old, With sounds mysterious as the roar Of billows on a distant shore. Dead rides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... trees; you might almost suppose it an earl's home; 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 ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 to those fierce invaders, who overran without ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Beautiful of Iceland, and such, also, are Hector and Achilles of Troy. These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the heroic world In the Nibelungen-lied the final event is a great calamity that is akin to a half historical event of the North. Odin descends to the nether world to consult Hela; but she, like the sphinx of Thebes, will not reply save in an enigma, which enigma is to entail terrible tragedies, and lead to destruction the young hero who is ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Opimian. In 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 on ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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
... 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 the variation that the name is from St Gertrude's ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... enough, we want revenge. Odin and Thor will not know their children; our spears should not ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... "Right on the slayer of Odorik, the son of Odo, of the lineage of Odin, our guest, and of the ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the place of it in bulk, lest my works should be mistaken for the works of a flea, or a pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of poetry or prose: so, since my return hither, I put up about two ounces of stuff, viz., the "Fatal Sisters," the "Descent of Odin" (of both which you have copies), a bit of something from the Welch, and certain little Notes, partly from justice (to acknowledge the debt where I had borrowed anything), partly from ill temper, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its asphyxia, and the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... indifferently apart from the Church. They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one more historic institution for preserving myth and legend. To them the Christ-life has meant little more than the Beowa-myth, the Arthur-saga, the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales! Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the race-progress in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... circumstances, the only teachers that confer degrees of permanent value. They 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
... conquered England, were rude, barbarous, and cruel. The gods of their worship were bloodthirsty and revengeful. Odin, their chief divinity, in his celestial hall drank ale from the skulls of his enemies. In the year 596, the Monk Augustine, or Austin, was sent by Pope Gregory to attempt their conversion to Christianity. He ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... here 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 you all about it. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... with the mere semblance of a Representation, than to see them again drowning witches or burning 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
... cruel custom was in vogue amongst the followers of Odin. See Olaus Magnus, iii. 3, and Mallet, Northern Antiquities, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... that the earliest British legends recorded the glories of King Arthur—the defender of Christianity against the worshippers of Odin. The origin of these accounts have been traced by some to Scandinavian, by some to Arabian sources, but we may suppose them to have arisen among those ancient British people who inhabited Wales and Cornwall,[35] and passed over in the fifth and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 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
... 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 ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... (abbreviation for Siegfried) is not a Scandinavian, but a Southern, 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. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... and who has very much their own way of fighting—going into the clash of arms "when the hard steel rings upon the high helmets," and "the beasts of prey have ample spoil," like a veritable child of Odin—is clearly one whom it is best to let alone, at any rate so long as easy plunder and rich lands are to be found elsewhere, without such poison-mad fighting for every herd of cattle and rood of ground. Indeed, I think the careful reader may trace from the date of Ashdown a decided unwillingness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... 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 to the holy night; On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the mass was ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... in short, a most miscellaneous collection, in which there is whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps the single exception of original verse. One of the books opens with: "Vegtam's Kvitha, or The Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the death of Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern historians—Auctore ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... mental want; we hope, we fear, because we wish."[53-1] 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 to earth. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of this matter is found in his "Applied Sociology," and offers an illustration of a most rigorous and thorough application of the scientific method to the subject in question. The essential facts for the study were furnished by Odin in his work on the genesis of the literary men of France, although Candole, Jacoby and others are laid under contribution for data. Maps, tables and diagrams are used whenever they can be made to secure results. Odin's study covered the period of over five hundred years of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ho! for the torch straightway, In honour of Odin and Thor,— And the blazing night is as bright as the day As a gift to the gods of war; For down to the melting sand And over each flaring mast Those fifty and five they have burnt as they stand To the tune of the surf and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, High over Asgard, to light home the king. But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; And swift to Asgard, to the gate, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... of more classical climates. In the northern ideas of witches there was no irreligion concerned with their lore. On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and the spear. Their matrons possessed a high reputation ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... foreign. The surname 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, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... William Morris' "Sigurd the Volsung" (1877), but to Mallet belongs the 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
... tolerance—Apollo and the Muses, Zeus and the great ones of Olympus, Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe—Odin, Thor, Freya—are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South that we find the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris, or Fathers. The Chinese count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical times. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... The resemblance of this name to the Teutonic Wuotan or Odin is certainly striking and will afford a new argument to the enthusiastic Rafn, and other advocates of a Scandinavian colonization ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... soul! 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 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 I will tell no more of that business, save that Halfden and Thormod praised me, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... and Southey. 'Van Artevelde' is a tall, handsome young fellow. 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 that the rule ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... through the obvious vehicle of cognate speech, it reached the Norse, stirred the scalds, who repeated it in the Eddie sagas. Loki and his inferior fiends are, as there represented, quite as black as Ahriman and his cohorts. The conflict of good and evil is almost as fully dire. But Odin is a colourless reflection of Ormuzd. The aesir, the angels of the Scandinavian sky, are paler than the izeds. The figure of Baldr, the redeemer, faints beside that of Mithra. Valhalla, though perhaps less fatiguing ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... North Ronaldsay Firth, spied him as a fugitive, in hiding, far off on Rinarsey or Rinansey (Ninian's Island) now North Ronaldsay, and seized him, cut a blood-eagle on his back, severed his ribs and pulled out his lungs, and, after offering him as a victim to Odin, buried ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... Olympians and a Thlinkeet god there is all the difference that exists between the Demeter of Cnidos and an image from Easter Island. Again, the Scandinavian gods, when their tricks are laid aside, when Odin is neither assuming the shape of worm nor of raven, have a martial dignity, a noble enduring spirit of their own. Race comes out in that, as it does in the endless sacrifices, soma drinking, magical austerities, and puerile follies of Vedic and Brahmanic gods, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... day, And Superstition's clouds have rolled away; O'er Gallia's mounts and on Iona's shore The Runic altars roll their smoke no more; Fled is the Druid from his ancient oak, His harp is mute—his magic circle broke; And Desolation mopes in Odin's cells Where spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells. O'er Indian plains and ocean-girdled isles With brow of beauty Truth serenely smiles; The nations bow, as light is shed abroad, And break their idols for the living God. Where ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... flight of birds and the neighing of horses. They transacted no business, public or private, without being armed. They were warlike in all their habits and tastes, and the field of battle was the field of glory. Their chief deity was an heroic prince. Odin, the type-man of the nation, was a wild captain, who taught that it was most honorable to die in battle. They hated repose and inactivity, and, when not engaged in war, they pursued with eagerness the pleasures of the chase; yet, during the intervals of war and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... it did his heart good to feel he was not alone, but that these merry little companions were with him, lightening his way and guiding his course all the night through. And he thought too of luckless dwarfs whom Odin had condemned to dig and delve all day deep in the ground, and throw fuel on the great central fire of the earth, but who at night, like the fairies, might come above and revisit then old haunts. And even these mischievous little companions helped to cheer the heart of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Northern religion, Alfadur, or the All-Father, was a vague though supreme deity. Beneath him were among others Woden, or Odin, practically the supreme deity, and Woden's eldest son Thor, the God of War. Asgard, or heaven, was the dwelling-place of the Gods, whilst Midgard was the earth, or abode of man. The rainbow, or bridge of Bifrost, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... more Northern latitudes. It was brought to Britain by the German invaders, continued there till the seventh century, and was brought in again in a more Northern form by the Norsemen, who in their turn "gradually deserted Thor and Odin for the white Christ."[3] Bede tells hardly anything of the paganism which had been the religion of England a century before he wrote; in this he is like other Christian teachers who might have told but did not. But though it came to an end in England, Teutonic religion continued ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... our 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 possessions that ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... ideals of Teutonism. Men whose ancestors had worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience and the gratitude ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... inspired poet of the Hebrews: Homer, one of the earliest poets of the Greeks: Ossian, an ancient poet of the Scots: Taliesen, an ancient poet of the Welsh: and Odin, an ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers |
