Northern mythology

;
NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY. 179
bright-green grass. Her (but not Thor's) son is Ull
(winter), which proceeds from the mountains to the humid
valleys. He is Baldur^s (the summer's) brother, the deity
of the skate or snow-shoe, of the
chase, the bow and the
shield (which is called his ship), and runs in snow-shoes
out over the ocean.
Illustration.—As Frigg has reference to the cultivated
earth, so Thorns wife, Sif, denotes the mountains
that surround it, but which are uncultivated. Siva, the
corresponding deity of the Slaves and Wends, is, on the
contrary, represented with an abundance of beautiful hair
and crowned with a wreath of flowers, holding a golden
apple in one hand, and a bunch of grapes and a green leaf
in the other ^
Here she represented the cultivated earth
with its produce, while in the North she retains only her
golden hair, and is limited to be the goddess of grass only
while Frigg and Frey preside over the earth's fruitfulness.
This appears, too, from the circumstance that Ull is her
son. Haddr Sifjar (Sif s head of hair)^ is a periphrasis for
gold. In Saxo ^ there is a fragment of a myth of Oiler
(Ullur), which is there treated historically.
Odin is driven
from Byzantium (Asgrad) by Oiler, who tyrannizes over
Odin's subjects : the latter returns, wins back his dominion
by gifts, and Oiler is forced to flee to Sweden,
where, as it were in a new world, he endeavoured to
establish
himself, but was slain by the Danes.
This story has
justly been regarded as a myth of the good dispenser of
light, who is expelled by winter, but returns again to his
dominion. Saxo in his recital makes mention of a bone,
on which Oiler could cross the sea, which Finn Magnusen "*
1 See a representation of her in Arnkiel, Cimbrische Heyilen-Religion,
i. p. 120 ; also in Vulpii Ilandworterbuch der deutschen Volker, etc., 182G,
Tab. III. fig. 1. See also Lex. Mytbol. p. 681.
2 So read p. 34, note^. ^ Pages 130, 131.