abominable sacrifices were accompanied with various ceremonies. When the victim was chosen, they conducted him towards the altar where the sacred fire was kept burning night and day; it was surrounded with all sorts of iron and brazen vessels. Among them one was distinguished from the rest by its superior size; in this they received the blood of the victims. When they offered up animals, they speedily killed them at the foot of the altar; then they opened their entrails to draw auguries from them, as among the Romans; afterwards they dressed the flesh to be served up in a feast prepared for the assembly. Even horse-flesh was not rejected, and the chiefs often eat of it as well as the people. But when they were disposed to sacrifice men, those whom they pitched upon were laid upon a great stone, where they were instantly either strangled or knocked on the head. The bodies were afterwards burnt, or suspended in a sacred grove near the temple. Part of the blood was sprinkled upon the people, part of it upon the sacred grove; with the same they also bedewed the images of the gods, the altars, the benches and walls of the temple, both within and without.

Near the temple of Upsal there was a grove of this sort, of which every tree and every leaf was regarded as the most sacred thing in the world. This, which was named Odin's Grove, was full of the bodies of men and animals who had been sacrificed. In whatever manner they immolated men, the priest always took care in consecrating the victim to pronounce certain words, as, I devote thee to Odin." I send thee to Odin." Or, "I devote thee for a good harvest; for the return of a fruitful season." The ceremony concluded with feastings, in which they displayed all the magnificence known in those times. They drank immoderately; the kings and chief lords drank first, healths in honour of the gods; every one drank afterwards, making some vow or prayer to the god whom they named. Hence came that custom among the first Christians in Germany and the North, of drinking to the health of our Saviour, the apostles, and the saints; a custom which the church was often obliged to tolerate. The licentiousness of these feasts at length increased to such a pitch as to become mere bacchanalian meetings, where, to the sound of barbarous music, amidst shouts, dancing, and

I

indecent gestures, so many unseemly actions were committed, that the wisest men refused to assist at them.

The same kinds of sacrifices were offered, though perhaps with less splendour, in Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Let us hear on this subject an historian of the eleventh century, Dithmar, bishop of Merseburg *. "There is," says he, "in Zealand a place which is the capital of Denmark, named Lederun (this is now Lethra or Leyre, of which I shall speak hereafter). At this place, every nine years, in the month of January, the Danes flock together in crowds, and offer to their gods ninety-nine men, as many horses, dogs and cocks, with the certain hope of appeasing the gods by these victims." Dudo of St. Quentin, a French historian, attributes the same practice to the Normans or Norwegians; but he informs us that it was in honour of Thor that these sacrifices were made. Arngrim Jonas, an Icelandic author, who has written with great learning upon the antiquities of his nation, remarks that there were formerly in Iceland two temples in which they offered up human victims, and a famous pit or well in which they were thrown headlong. There are still in Friesland, and in several places of Germany, altars composed of such large stones that they could neither be destroyed by the ravages of time, nor by the zeal of the first converts to Christianity. These altars, according to the tradition of the inhabitants, and the reports of credible historians, have served for the same horrid purposes. The Gauls for a long time offered men to their supreme god Esus. The first inhabitants of Italy, and Sicily, the Britons, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and all the nations we know of in Europe and Asia, have been covered with the same reproach. And can we wonder at it? Every nation buried in ignorance must inevitably fall into error, and from thence into fanaticism and cruelty. Men are born surrounded with dangers and evils, at the same time that they are weak and naked. If, as they grow up to manhood, the arts of civil life and the security of laws do not disperse their fears, soften their dispositions, and diffuse through their minds calmness, moderation, and the social affections, they become a prey to a thousand gloomy * Dithm. Merseburg. Chronic. lib. i. p. 12. Dudo Quint. sub init.

J. Arngr. Crymog. lib. i. c. 7.

terrors, which paint out all nature to them as full of dangers and enemies, and keep them perpetually armed with ferocity and distrust. Hence that thirst of revenge and destruction which barbarous nations cannot lay aside: hence that impious prejudice which makes them imagine the gods to be as sanguinary as themselves. It is the unhappiness of our nature, that ignorance suggests fear, and fear cruelty. They must therefore be very little acquainted with human nature, and still less so with history, who place the golden age of any people in the age of its poverty and ignorance. It is so true that men are everywhere alike in this respect, that nations who have never had any commerce with those of Europe, have run into the same excesses with equal fury. The Peruvians anciently offered human sacrifices. The Mexicans once offered up to their gods, upon one single occasion, five thousand prisoners of war. Multitudes of people, half unknown and wandering in the deserts of Africa or forests of America, do to this day destroy each other, from the same principles and with the same blind fury.

Tacitus informs us that, among the Germans, the power of inflicting pains and penalties, of striking, and binding a criminal, was vested in the priests alone. And these men, so haughty, who thought themselves dishonoured if they did not revenge the slightest offence, would tremblingly submit to blows and even death itself from the hand of the pontiff, whom they took for the instrument of an angry deity. In short, the credulity of the people, and the craft and presumption of the priest went so far, that these pretended interpreters of the Divine will dared even to demand, in the name of Heaven, the blood of kings themselves; and they obtained it. succeed in this, it was only requisite for them to avail themselves of those times of calamity, when the people, distracted with sorrow and fear, lay their minds open to the most horrid impressions. At those times, while the prince was slaughtered at one of the altars of the gods, the others were covered with offerings, which were heaped up on all sides for their ministers.

To

I have already observed, that the ancient religion of the northern nations made the deity to interpose in the most indifferent events, as well as the most considerable; and they only considered the elements as so many organs by which he

66

66

manifested his will and his resolves. This opinion once admitted, interest or superstition quickly drew from thence a consequence natural enough: namely, that by studying with care the phenomena of nature, or, to speak in the spirit of that religion, the visible actions of that unseen deity, men might come to know his will, inclinations, and desires: in one word, they entered into a kind of commerce with him; oracles, auguries, divinations, and a thousand practices of that kind, quickly sprung up in crowds, from this erroneous prin ciple. Accordingly, in all our ancient fables and chronicles, we see the northern nations extremely attached to this vain science. They had oracles, like the people of Italy and Greece, and these oracles were not less revered, nor less famous, than theirs. It was generally believed, either that the gods and goddesses, or, more commonly, that the three destinies, whose names I have given elsewhere, delivered out these oracles in their temples. That of Upsal was as famous for its oracles as its sacrifices. There were also celebrated ones in Dalia, a province of Sweden; in Norway and Denmark. It was," says Saxo the Grammarian, a custom with the ancient Danes to consult the oracles of the Parcæ, concerning the future destiny of children newly born. Accordingly Fridleif, being desirous to know that of his son Olaus, entered into the temple of the gods to pray; and, being introduced into the sanctuary, he saw three goddesses upon so many seats. The first, who was of a beneficent nature, granted the infant beauty and the gift of pleasing. The second gave him a noble heart. But the third, who was envious and spiteful, to spoil the work of her sisters, imprinted on him the stain of covetousness." It should seem that the idols or statues, themselves, of the gods and goddesses delivered these oracles vivá voce. In an ancient Icelandic chronicle we read of one Indrid, who went from home to wait for Thorstein, his enemy. Thorstein," says the author, "upon his arrival, entered into the temple. In it was a stone (cut probably into a statue) which he had been accustomed to wor ship; he prostrated himself before it, and prayed to it (to inform him of his destiny). Indrid, who stood without, heard the stone chaunt forth these verses: It is for the last time, it is with feet drawing near to the grave, that thou art come to this place for it is most certain, that, before the sun

66

ariseth, the valiant Indrid shall make thee feel his hatred."» The people persuaded themselves, sometimes, that these idols answered by a gesture or a nod of the head, which signified that they hearkened to the prayers of their supplicants.

I shall not enter into a description of the other kinds of oracles. Enough has been said to convince the discerning reader, that here was the same credulity on the one side, and the same imposture on the other, as had formerly procured credit to the oracles of Greece and Asia. There is no essential difference between those of the two countries, though so far distant from each other. If the luxury of the southern nations set theirs off with more pomp and magnificence than comported with the simplicity of the rude inhabitants of the North, the latter had no less veneration and attachment to their own oracles than they. It has been thought to be no less for the interest of religion to attribute these of the North to the artifices of the devil than the others, as well as the pretended science of magic, of which the North has passed so long for the most celebrated school and peculiar country. It is true that men have not advanced on the subject of the northern oracles, as they have done with respect to those of the south, that they ceased at the birth of Christ, although the assertion is as true of the one as the other: but for want of this proof, an ill-grounded zeal hath found plenty of others; as if the advantages resulting from true religion were less important, or our gratitude less due, because the evils, from which it has delivered mankind, did not proceed from supernatural causes.

Oracles were not the only efforts made by the curiosity of the Scandinavians to penetrate into futurity, nor the only relief imposture afforded them. They had diviners, both male and female, honoured with the name of prophets, and revered as if they had been such. Some of them were said to have familiar spirits, who never left them, and whom they consulted under the form of little idols; others dragged the ghosts of the departed from their tombs, and forced the dead to tell them what would happen. Poetry was often employed for the like absurd purposes, and those same Skalds or bards, who, as we shall see hereafter, enjoyed such credit among the living,

* Holmveria saga apud Bartholin. lib. iii. c, 11