In the holy grove at Upsala men and animals were sacrificed by being hanged upon the sacred trees. The human victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or by a combination of hanging or stabbing, the man being strung up to a tree or a gallows and then wounded with a spear. Hence Odin was called the Lord of the Gallows or the God of the Hanged, and he is represented sitting under a gallows tree. Indeed he is said to have been sacrificed to himself in the ordinary way, as we learn from the weird verses of the Havamal, in which the god describes how he acquired his divine power by learning the magic runes:
'I know that I hung on the windy tree
For nine whole nights,
Wounded with the spear, dedicated to Odin,
Myself to myself.'
James George Frazer
The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
World Classics
A new abridgement from the second and third editions
Robert Fraser [ed.]
Chapter entitled "The Hanged God" pp.355-6
Exploring The Waste Land
-
[Home]
[E-mail]
File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002