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Chapter 6. The Sky 145
they could age albeit very slowly, and are kept youthful only by eating the apples
of the giantess/ Goddess, Iðunn, wife of the God of Poetry, Bragi. They also knew
that their Gods held no immunity against death. Balder, son of Óðínn and Frigg,
was killed by the blind God, Höð, burnt on the funeral pyre, and now resides in the
underworld Halls of Hel, Goddess of the Land of the Dead. Ragnarök, the battle
that will destroy the Universe at the end of time will bring many of the great Gods
to the end of their lives.
How different from the all-powerful God of the Christians. So different, in fact,
that one of the great ecclesiastical questions supposedly to help convince the Heathen
to convert was “If your Gods are so powerful then why do they require sacrifice?”
The Christian answer to this question was obvious: “Since the Heathen Gods are not
omnipotent, and the ‘true God’ is, it follows that the Heathens are worshiping mortal
demons who have been deceiving the ignorant barbarian, and who are ultimately
subject to Jehovah’s judgement in the end times; therefore, it is Christian duty that
the Heathen barbarians be saved from eternal damnation as a public service of the
Mother Church.” In the year 1014 CE, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, preached the
following as part of his “Sermon on False Gods”:
“Many other Heathen Gods also were devised in various ways, and Heathen
Goddesses likewise held in great honor throughout the world to the ruin
of mankind; but these, though, are reckoned the most important in paganism,
although they lived foully in the world. And the scheming Devil, who always
deceives mankind, brought those Heathen men into profound error so that
they chose as Gods for themselves such vile men who had made their vile
lust a law for themselves and for as long as they lived spent all their lives in
uncleanness.
But blessed is he who completely scorns such affairs and loves and honors
the true God who created and fashioned all things.” 6
Differences, which were tolerated by the ignorant barbarian as belonging to a personal
viewpoint, were believed by the more enlightened Christian to be but evil
deceptions created by the Devil in his continuing befuddlement of mankind. It is
interesting to note that punishment or death for “heresy” and “blasphemy,” were
not punishable crimes during the Heathen Age; the burning of heretics was a phenomenon
which came later and was associated only with the Holy Mother Church
and the coming of the Prince of Peace to northern Europe.
Actually, the confusion suffered by the Christians as to why the Heathen so
tenaciously held onto his set of older beliefs rather than automatically converting
6 Swanton, Michael, translator and ed., Anglo-Saxon Prose (Everyman’s Library; London)
1993, p. 187.