THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

I
INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL. 521
therefore probably the kings, employed cremation, a practice
confined also in Sweden to the kings and nobles. But the
Teutonic chieftain families all
trace their descent from Odin, as
the Thracian kings did from the so-called Hermes.
The Scandinavians, like the Getae, often selected victims
for Odin from among themselves by lot, as is exemplified in the
well-known story of king Vikar. As the Celts sacrificed captives
taken in war, so the Scandinavians used to dedicate to
Odin the souls of the vanquished.
Though the Scandinavians do not seem to have impaled
their victims, as did the Oetae and Celts, yet a favourite mode
of sacrificing
to Odin was to hang the victims on a tree or
gallows, from which Odin derived one of his titles. Thus
Helgi, after slaying Thorgrimr in "
:
battle, sang I have given
the brave son of Thorinorr to Odin have offered him a
;
sacrifice to the Ruler of the Gallows and his corpse to the
ravens'."
The readiness of the Getae to wage war even against
heaven reminds us of the Cimbri, who, when their land was
invaded by the ocean, used to "take up ai'ms against
we
a sea of
troubles and by opposing" inevitably meet their end'"^ {cf. p. 39G).
But we saw reasons for believing that the Getae, and
Trausi, as well as the fair-haired ruling element in Thrace, had
passed from cc'utral Europe into the Balkan, and were therefore
closely connected with the fair-haired races of upper Europe.
If this were so, they ought to have some religious ideas in
common with the latter. J:5ut as such a resemblance has just
been ]jointed out Ix'tween the cults of Zalmoxis and Odin, it
is not ini[)robable that in Zalmixxis, Gebelei/cis, the Thracian
Hermes, and
Odin, we have the same divinity under ditferent
ap))ellatiotis.
As creniatiou entered (Jreece fi'oni th