TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

218 FRO.
midland he longs to be away where the swans sing on the cool
shore; a water-plant, the spongia marina, bears the name of Niarcfar
vottr, Niorft s glove, which elsewhere was very likely passed on to
his daughter Freyja, and so to Mary, for some kinds of orchis
too, from their hand-shaped root, are called Mary s hand, lady-hand,
god s hand (Dan. gudshaand).
As Dionysus stands outside the ring of the twelve Olympian
gods, so NiorSr, Freyr and Freyja seem by rights not to have been
reckoned among the Ases, though they are marshalled among
them in Sn. 27-8. They were Vanir, and therefore, according to
the view of the elder Edda, different from Ases ;
as these dwelt in
Asgar5, so did the Vanir in Vanaheim, the Alfar in Alfheim, the
lotnar in Ibtunheim. Freyr is called Vaningi, Seem. 86 b . The
Vanir were regarded as intelligent and wise, Seem. 36 a ; and they
entered into intimate fellowship with the Asen, while the
Alfs and lotuns always remained opposed to them. Some have
fancied that the Alfs and lotuns stand for Celtic races, and the
Vanir for Slav; and building chiefly on an attempt in the Yngl.
saga cap. 1 to find the name of the Tanais in Tanaqvisl (or Vana-
qvisl !), they have drawn by inference an actual boundary-line
between Aesir and Vanir = German! and Slavi in the regions
formerly occupied by them (see Suppl.). And sure enough a
Eussian is to this day called in Finnish Wenailainen, in Esth.
Wennelane ; even the name of the Wends might be dragged in,
though the Vandili of Tacitus point the other way. Granting that
there may be some foundation for these views, still to my mind
the conceptions of Aesir, Vanir, Alfar in the Edda are sketched on
a ground altogether too mythical for any historical meaning to be
got out of them ;
as regards the contrast between Ases and Vanir,
I am aware of no essential difference in the cultus of the several
gods ; and, whatever stress it may be right to lay on the fact that
Frouwa, Freyja answers to a Slavic goddess Priye, it does not at
all follow that Fro, Frouwa and Nerthus were in a less degree
Germanic deities than the rest. Tacitus is silent on the German
Liber, as he is on our Jupiter, yet we are entitled to assume a
universal veneration of Donar, even though the Gothic fairguni is
better represented in Perkunas or Peruri ;
so also, to judge by what
clues we have, Frauja, Fro, Freyr appears so firmly established,
that, considering the scanty
information we have about our