More intriguing than Brigid's mythical stories are the parallels between this pagan goddess and her sixth-century namesake, St. Brigid (450 CE-523 CE), who blinded herself in order to avoid an arranged marriage and become a nun. The goddess Brigid is known for her generosity, and St. Brigid became one of Ireland's patron saints, known for her miraculous ability to feed people and perform endless acts of kindness. St. Brigid also tended a fire that was said to burn continuously for hundreds of days, just as the goddess Brigid was associated with the ritual fires of purification. Finally, St. Brigid's feast day is celebrated on February 1, the same day that Imbolc, the festival of the goddess Brigid, had been celebrated.

Daghda Known as the "good god," Daghda is viewed by the Irish people as the "father of the gods," but could never be confused with a deity like Zeus. Think John Goodman: kindly, fat, and somewhat uncouth. Wearing an obscenely short tunic, Daghda drags around a gigantic weapon on wheels-a magic club with the power to kill at one end and restore life at the other. A god of magic, wisdom, and fertility, Daghda is also the "provider" god, who possesses an enormous and inexhaustible source of food that comes from the "cauldron of Daghda." His never-empty cauldron was later connected to the Holy Grail supposedly used by Jesus at the Last Supper and brought to the British Isles by Joseph of Arimathea.

The son of the great goddess Dana, Daghda freely mated with many goddesses, but his coupling with the battle goddess Morrigan was most significant, because it was thought to provide security to the Irish people. Most likely a localized version of the Celtic agricultural god Sucellos, Daghda had other names as well-Aed (fire), Ollathir (all-father), and Ruad Rofessa (lord of the great knowledge).

Dana (Danu) Mother of Daghda, Dana is the mother goddess of the entire divine race known as the Tuatha. In Irish myth, when the Tuatha are supplanted by the Celts, they retreat to underground hills and are transformed into the fairies, or "little people" of later Irish folktales. Dana finds underground residences for all of them, and these are the "fairy mounds" (sidh) that provide many legendary place-names around Ireland. Two famous mounds in County Kerry are known as the "paps [breasts] of Anu," another form of the great goddess's name.

Lugh Associated with sunshine and light, Lugh (pronounced loo) is the "shining god" as well as a fierce warrior, magician, and craftsman, related by blood to both the Tuatha De Danaan and the rival Fomorians. Among the many marvelous weapons he forges are a sword that cuts through anything and a spear that guarantees victory. Once the Tuatha are supplanted in Ireland and transformed into the legendary "little people," Lugh becomes the craftsman Lugh Chromain ("little stooping Lugh"), whose name was later Anglicized as the word "leprechaun."

Another vestige of his name is found, somewhat ironically, in the capital city of Ireland's colonial conqueror. The "fortress of Lugh" became Lugdunum, Latinized by the Romans into Londinium, which later became London.

Lugh's festival, called Lughnasa, was celebrated on August 1 and was one of four pivotal Celtic Irish holidays, meant to mark the beginning of the harvest. It plays a central role in Irish playwright Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa.

Morrigan (Nemhain, Badbh, Macha) Known as the "phantom queen," Morrigan (pronounced more-ree-an) is a shape-shifting goddess of horses and war, who can change from human being into animal forms. Whenever Morrigan appears as a raven, death is nearby, and she is often seen to be waiting at a river ford for warriors to pass so that she can determine which will die in battle that day. Standing in the river and washing the corpses of the dead, she is also called "the washer at the ford."

One of Morrigan's most important roles comes in the great Irish story the Tain, when she unsuccessfully attempts to seduce the hero Cuchulainn. (Pronounced koo-hool-n; see below.) Intent upon making war, not love, this warrior hero rejects her advances, and in doing so, seals his fate.

Nuadu (Nudd) Supreme king of the Irish Celtic pantheon, Nuadu is the legendary ruler of the Tuatha, but loses his arm in battle and must relinquish his kingship. Later given a magical arm of silver, he is able to reclaim the throne, but he loses his courage in later wars and has to retire, giving the throne over to Lugh.

MYTHIC VOICES.

The first warp-spasm seized Cuchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front. The balled sinews of his calves switched to the front of his shins, each big knot the size of a warrior's bunched fist. On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, a mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child. His face and features became a red bowl: he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheeks. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat.

-from the Tain, translated by Thomas Kinsella What was The Cattle Raid of Cooley?

This grim description of the transformation of a handsome young Irish hero into a dreadful killing machine is the picture of Cuchulainn, the greatest warrior of Irish myth and folklore, and a central character in the Ulster Cycle and one of its central stories, The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Tain Bo Cuailnge).

First written down in the Christian era, the Ulster Cycle has an overlay of Christian culture, but the stories are about an older, darker time in Ireland, hundreds of years before the arrival of St. Patrick and Christianity. Said to have taken place about the time of Jesus Christ, the Cycle has a slim basis in fact, since its stories may be a recounting of the actual struggles among early Irish groups. But the stories in the Cycle have been layered with myth, legend, and fantastic episodes of sex, drinking, and killing-in approximately equal measures.

Although there are conflicting versions of his birth, Cuchulainn's tale begins when Lugh, the chief of the gods, impregnates Deichtine, the sister (or daughter) of Conchobor (pronounced connor), legendary king of Ulster, in a dream. The child she bears-Setanta-possesses extraordinary power due to his divine parentage, and gains further strength when he is tutored by goddesses in the art of war. But the boy gets into hot water when he is attacked by the watchdog of the smith god, Culann, and kills the animal. Culann angrily demands restitution, and the boy agrees to stand in as watchdog until a new animal can be trained. As a result of this episode, Setanta's name is changed to Cuchulainn-" the hound of Culann."

When little Cuchulainn grows up, he is a strikingly handsome man and a ferocious warrior who turns into an appalling vision of terror when a battle frenzy-usually translated as the "warp-spasm"-seizes him. Armed with a magic spear called the Gae Bulga, which can inflict only mortal wounds, and accompanied by a charioteer who makes his chariot invisible, Cuchulainn is a fierce headhunter who always takes the most heads. To help him regain his mortal shape after battle, naked maidens are paraded in front of him and he is lowered into three successive barrels of icy water until he has cooled off-clearly the ancient Celtic version of the proverbial "cold shower."

In the Tain, the character of Cuchulainn is equaled only by Queen Medb (Maeve), the legendary warrior queen of Ulster's rival province, Connacht. Although here a mortal queen, the mythical Medb was also a powerful goddess of fertility-headstrong, powerful, dominating, and sexually ravenous. Her name meant "she who intoxicates"-figuratively and literally-and is closely connected to the medieval drink mead. As Celtic authority Miranda Jane Green put it, "Her rampant promiscuity symbolizes Ireland's fertility, and the association of her name with an alcoholic drink is linked with the concept of the union between goddess and mortal ruler...." Before a battle, she would calm the troubled warriors who knew they had to fight the next day. As Thomas Cahill writes-and this was no myth-"Insensate drunkenness was the warrior's customary prelude to sleep."

In the Tain, Medb only marries the older King Ailill because he has money. The Tain actually opens with a comic scene in which the king and queen are arguing in bed over who is the wealthier of the two. Ailill says, "It struck me today how much better off you are today than the day I married you." Medb replies that she brought him such a great dowry when they married that he is essentially a "kept man." Just as a petty argument in ancient Greece among Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena over which was most beautiful led to the Trojan War, this contentious "pillow talk" soon leads to wholesale bloodshed, destruction, and death.

When Medb's husband proves that he indeed owns more than she does-he has one more bull than she does, a special white one-the queen, determined not to be outdone, orders her men to steal a famous bull called Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, which is held in rival Ulster. But her men are thwarted by Ulster's hero, Cuchulainn, who single-handedly fights off the invaders. Frustrated by the hero of Ulster, Medb plots to kill him and employs army after army without success.

The story ends with grim irony. While all the blood is being shed by men, the Brown Bull of Cooley is off fighting with King Ailill's White Bull of the Connacht, an epic contest that rages all over Ireland. Finally, the Brown Bull-the prize first sought by Maeve-defeats the White Bull. But as it returns to Ulster, the exhausted animal dies, collapsing in blood, vomit, and excrement-not a pretty picture. All of the fighting and death have essentially been for naught, and the hero Fergus, Medb's lover and leader of the men of Connacht, offers a moral that could just as well have been applied to the Iliad: "We followed the rump of a misguiding woman. It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed."*

As the Tain ends, the story is not yet finished. Other tales in the Ulster Cycle complete the legend of Cuchulainn. Medb recruits sorcerers-children of a man that Cuchulainn has earlier killed-who will do away with the supernatural hero. Finally, either killed by his own magic spear or struck by a magic spear thrown by one of these sorcerers, Cuchulainn is mortally wounded. But he secures himself to a rock, so he can die in an upright position. For three days-the Celts did love the number three-he throws back the invaders, time and again. But even his courage and superhuman strength are not enough. Finally a raven, the symbol of the war goddess Morrigan, lands on Cuchulainn's shoulder, and Ulster's great hero expires. A legendary warrior, Cuchulainn grew in Irish folk stature until he came to be treated as a defender of all Ireland. At Dublin's main post office, scene of the famous 1916 Easter Uprising, in which Irish republican fighters battled British forces, there is a statue of the mythical hero in death, almost a Christlike figure from a Pieta, with the raven of death alighting upon his shoulder.

As for Medb, she dies when her nephew, using a sling, hits her in the head with a lump of hard cheese.

How does eating a mythical fish make you really smart?

For years, mothers told children to eat fish. "Brain food," they always called it. It was advice not lost on Finn MacCool, an Irish superhero who stars in the Fenian* Cycle of tales, set in the province of Leinster around 200 CE. One popular legend tells how MacCool came to possess great wisdom by burning his thumb while cooking the Salmon of Knowledge. Yes, you read that right. MacCool is a young man working for the Druidic poet Finnegas, when he is given a fish to cook. But it is no ordinary fish. The Salmon of Knowledge possesses all the world's wisdom, and the bard Finnegas has spent seven years trying to catch it. When the old poet gives the boy the fish with instructions on how to cook it, he warns young MacCool not to eat even a bite. But while cooking the fish, MacCool burns his thumb and puts it in his mouth to ease the pain. Finnegas realizes immediately that the boy will gain all the knowledge, and tells him to eat the rest of the magical salmon. From that day on, MacCool needs only put his thumb in his mouth when he has a problem, and the solution is revealed.

The Fenian Cycle includes other stories featuring MacCool. Among the most famous and popular stories is "The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne," a bittersweet tale of lost love in which MacCool is about to marry Grainne, the beautiful daughter of an Irish king. But when Grainne sees one of MacCool's warriors, Diarmuid, at her wedding ceremony, she instantly falls in love, leaves her fiance at the altar, and elopes with her new beau.

With a band of his best warriors, the Fianna, MacCool sets off in pursuit of the lovers, and much of the story describes the adventures of Diarmuid and Grainne as they flee MacCool, aided by Oenghus, the god of love. The chase goes on for sixteen years until the jilted MacCool relents and pardons the lovers, who settle down at Tara, legendary seat of Irish kings.

One day, Diarmuid is mortally wounded by a magical boar on a hunt with MacCool. MacCool has the power to save his friend's life simply by giving him water. But as he cups his hands and fills them with the water, it trickles through his fingers, and Diarmuid dies.

The tales in the Fenian Cycle also focus on MacCool's son, Oisin, and his grandson, Oscar. In one of the most prominent of these tales, Oisin, a handsome warrior-poet, is hunting when he encounters Niamh, the goddess of the Irish otherworld. The two are smitten and gallop off together to the Land of Forever Young-a place where sorrow, pain, and old age are unknown. The lovers have a child there, but Oisin is homesick for Ireland and misses his family. Niamh agrees to let him return and gives him her magic horse. But it comes with one condition: he must not dismount.

Once back in Ireland, Oisin realizes that three hundred years have passed since he left. Stopping to help some men move a boulder, he falls from his horse and immediately ages the three hundred lost years, crumbling in the dust. In another, clearly Christianized version of the story, Oisin ages horribly but does not die. Instead, he meets St. Patrick and Oisin recounts the stories of his father, compiled in another Irish collection, The Interrogation of the Old Men (c. 1200 CE).

As legendary Irish figures, both Finn MacCool and Oisin appear in the works of writers of generations of great Irish writers, notably in the poem "The Wanderings of Oisin" (1889) by William Butler Yeats. Perhaps most famous of all, Finn MacCool is the model for the character of Finn in James Joyce's experimental novel Finnegans Wake (1939).

What do the Celts have to do with Halloween?

In one of the legends of Finn MacCool, his first act as the guardian of the king's palace at Tara is to rid the court of the malicious goblin Aillen, who set fire to the palace every year at the festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Celebrated from the night of October 31 to November 1, this New Year festival traditionally marked the end of summer and the harvest as well as the beginning of the dark, cold winter. It was a time of year often associated with death, when animals were brought in from the fields and slaughtered.

It was also considered a time of great danger. During the festival, the barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead were broken, "the curtain was drawn back," and spirits from the "other world" could walk the earth. On the night of October 31, the spirits of the dead caused mischief and damaged crops. But their presence wasn't all bad-they made it easier for the Druids to make predictions about the future.

Like many Celtic festivals, Samhain spurred the Druids to build huge sacred bonfires, sacrifice animals, and gather people together to burn crops in honor of the Celtic gods. During this fire festival, the Celts wore masks and costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes.

Are you starting to get the picture? "Trick or treat for UNICEF" and "Elvira, Queen of the Night" got started two thousand years ago, at a pagan Irish bonfire.

When the Samhain celebration was over, the Celts relit their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire, to help protect them during the coming winter. Some scholars believe that the Lindow Man (see above) may have been a symbolic stand-in executed in a ritual slaying of the king, who was killed three times-by garroting, clubbing, and stabbing-during the feast of Samhain.

By 43 CE, the majority of Celtic territory was under Roman control. During the next four centuries, two Roman festivals were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced nowadays on Halloween is just one more vestige of our pagan past.

Of course, then as now, some Christians took a dim view of all this pagan frivolity. By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. Presumably the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead-masking it (get it?) with a related, but Church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse, meaning all saints' day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, came to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in 1000 CE, the church named November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated in a fashion similar to Samhain, with great bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations-the eve of All Saints' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day-were called Hallowmas. A similar convergence of native pagan beliefs and Catholicism around these dates took place during the Spanish conquest of Mexico and produces the "Hispanic Halloween," Dia de los Muertos ("the Day of the Dead") (See chapter 9, What is the "Day of the Dead"?) Another significant Celtic holiday was Beltane. Held on May 1 and heralding the arrival of summer and the planting season, Beltane was celebrated as a day of fiery purification when, the Celts believed, the fairies were especially active. In Roman Britain, Beltane was merged with a Roman festival called Floralia, which also honored the goddess of springtime, Flora. Eventually, the Celtic and Roman holidays were fused into May Day, a celebration that may date back to even older springtime festivals from ancient Egypt and India.

The modern image of May Day conjures up a merry vision of vernal innocence-children gaily dancing around a Maypole festooned with bright-colored ribbons and flowers. But originally, Beltane was a fertility festival, and the giant Maypole was an undisguised and unashamed phallic symbol. It was often the occasion for young men and women to turn their thoughts to more than just love. In a pre-Christian world, there were fewer moral constraints about sex, and lovers left the Beltane bonfires to wander off into the woods. Although the holiday was cleaned up into its G-rated version in Christian Europe, the May Day festival was not a tradition that appealed to America's Puritan Fathers, who must have had long memories of its pagan past. That is why May Day never took hold in early America while it continued to be more widely celebrated in Europe.

MYTHIC VOICES.

Llenllweag the Irishman seized Caledvwlch, swung it round in a circle and killed Diwrnach the Irishman and his entire retinue; the troops of Ireland came and fought, and when these troops were put to flight Arthur and his force boarded the ship in their presence, with the cauldron filled with the treasures of Ireland.

-"How Culhwch Won Olwen," from the Mabinogion (translated by Jeffrey Gantz) What is the Mabinogion?

Apart from these Irish myths and legends, the other significant body of Celtic literature was preserved in Wales, where the oldest myths were not written down for centuries. Again, it is probably a case of a Christian-era writer retelling these stories from his own point of view. Nonetheless, most of what is known of Welsh mythology is contained in a collection that is called The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, commonly known as the Mabinogion, compiled sometime in the twelfth century. These stories describe the mythical history of Wales, and many of the gods who appear in the Welsh mythology resemble the Tuatha De Danaan in Irish mythology. The suggestion is that Irish Celts may have migrated to Britain and brought their mythology with them. The stories are significant, because they offer the only view of earlier Welsh myths and include the first early references to characters and tales that would later evolve into the legend of King Arthur.

The first of four tales in The Four Branches of the Mabinogi tells the story of Pwyll, his wife Rhiannon, and their son, Pryderi. The goddess Rhiannon-who is possibly a vestige of the Celtic horse goddess Epona-is betrothed against her will, and wants to marry Pwyll, a king in southwestern Wales. When she dresses in gold and rides past him on a white mare, Pwyll is smitten by her beauty. They eventually marry, and their son, Pryderi, is born. But right after his birth, the baby is stolen, and Rhiannon's six attendants, in an attempt to clear themselves of any blame, kill a dog and smear its blood on Rhiannon's lips. The queen is charged with murdering her son and is forced to sit outside her husband's door, telling strangers of her crime and offering to carry them on her back, like a horse. In truth, Pryderi was never murdered but had been snatched and left near a stable. Raised by foster parents who eventually realize who he is, Pryderi is returned to his mother, and she is released from her punishment.

Links to Arthurian legend begin to appear in another part of The Four Branches of the Mabinogi. The tale of "Culhwhc and Olwen," which dates to approximately 1100 CE, includes many names and places later connected to Arthur, among them a reference to a sword whose Welsh name-Caledvwlch-means "battle breach." A weapon of great power, it was later identified with Excalibur, the legendary "sword in the stone." There is also mention of Arthur's father, Uthyr Pendragon, and his wife, Gwenhwyfar-later Anglicized as Guinevere. A reference to a cauldron, which, in some stories, acquired magical properties, is thought to be an old connection to the later idea of Arthur's search for the Holy Grail and may hark back to the Irish cauldron of the god Daghda, which provided a never-ending source of food.

The first references to Arthur found in the Mabinogion probably emerged from even earlier Irish myths. Traditional Irish hero stories may have been merged with those of Wales, resulting in the first legends of Arthur, a character who was probably based on a powerful Celtic chief who lived in Wales during the 500s CE and led the battle against the invading Saxons. (Others have made a case that he lived during Roman times and led the revolt against Roman rule around 400 CE. The Romans withdrew from Britain in 410 CE.) In any case, the stories of Arthur were exported to Brittany, another Celtic bastion in France, around 1000, where the renowned Breton minstrels then helped spread the tales all over Europe.

The legend of Arthur that endures today is mostly derived from the traditions set down by Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471), the English author who created the familiar Arthurian legend. No effete intellectual writer, Malory was a violent criminal who had committed robbery and murder. From 1451, he spent much of his life in prison, where he probably did most of his writing. Drawing from a variety of earlier legends and stories-such as an ancient "history" of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and a variety of other sources, including a group of eight romances originally called The Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table-Malory's legend of Arthur was printed with the more grandiose title Morte d'Arthur.

One of the central characters in Malory's Arthur not found in the Mabinogion is Merlin, the wizard in Arthurian legend who brings about the king's birth. In fact, Merlin's origins go even deeper into a Celtic past, to a Welsh wizard named Myrddin. Many authorities believe the roots of Merlin's character can be traced back to the Druidic tradition. Various traditions attributed great magical feats of power to Merlin, from overcoming dragons to the construction of Stonehenge. But his role in the Arthurian story-the magical bringing together of Arthur's parents, the raising of Arthur, the placement of Excalibur in the stone-was first recorded in the twelfth century. Nor does the Mabinogion relate anything of the half-sister of Arthur, Morgan le Fay (or Morgaine, Morgana), who was presented as a healer and shape-shifter by Geoffrey of Monmouth. By the time of Thomas Malory, she is the cause of Arthur's downfall. To round out the circle of Celtic connections, many scholars believe that Morgan is a version of the earlier Morrigan, the Celtic war goddess, who brought about the fall of Ireland's great hero, Cuchulainn.

MYTHIC VOICES.

Valhalla stands nearby, vast and gold-bright. Odin presides there, and day by day he chooses slain men to join him. Every morning they arm themselves and fight in the great courtyard and kill one another; every evening they rise again, ride back to the hall, and feast. That hall is easily recognized: its roof is made of shields and its rafters are spears. Breast-plates litter the benches. A wolf lurks at the western door, and an eagle hovers over it.

-from The Norse Myths, KEVIN CROSSLEY-HOLLAND It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made.

-English scholar ALCUIN (793 CE) What mythology besides Celtic came storming out of northern Europe?

Maybe your first taste came from Looney Tunes, when Elmer Fudd put on a horned helmet and sang "Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit" to music from Wagner's Ring Cycle. Or maybe it was the scene in Apocalypse Now, when American helicopters attacked a Vietnamese village as loudspeakers blared "The Ride of the Valkyries." Perhaps the Marvel Comics character Thor was your introduction. Or the video loop of the burning "Yule log" shown on television every Christmas. Or the Minnesota football team called the Vikings. Or the magical world of giants, dwarves, runes, magical swords, and powerful rings created by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (18921973) in Lord of the Rings.*

Powerful and popular, all of these images are based on the Norse and German myths of the Vikings.

Think "Viking," and perhaps you envision burly, bearded men with broadswords, horned helmets, and dragon boats, accompanied by out-sized women with names like Brunhilde. If so, you would be right. Each of these rich images represents the fierce Vikings, or Norsemen, who terrorized, raped, and pillaged their way across Europe for some three hundred years, from about 800 until 1100 CE, when they were Christianized and started to cut back on their hell-raising.

As we see from the English scholar Alcuin (above), who got his first taste of Viking handiwork when raiders sailed out of the fjords of Norway in June 793, the Norsemen were a force to be reckoned with. After looting a monastery off the northeastern coast of England, where monks had been serenely copying religious manuscripts on the island of Lindisfarne, the Viking raiders spent the next few centuries scorching other parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland. In 841, they established Dublin as a winter base and began to strike farther from home, looting and burning towns in France, Italy, and Spain, and spreading fear wherever they went.

If the Celts were frat-house boys gone bad, the Vikings were a gang of lawless bikers-"bad to the bone"-until they finally settled down and became the respectable, civilized Scandinavians they are today.

But was it all about pillage, rape, and destruction? Or was there a kinder, gentler Viking?

The answer is-not really. For most of their history, the Vikings were fierce pirates and warriors who descended from the Germanic peoples who had settled in northwestern Europe. Going as far back as 2000 BCE, some of these Germanic tribes had migrated to modern Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, where they put down roots as farmers and fishermen until overpopulation and a harsh northern environment led them to turn their considerable skills as oceangoing sailors to piracy and raiding. As early as the year 9 CE, Germanic tribes on the continent had destroyed and butchered more than 15,000 of Rome's finest legionnaires in one of the worst military disasters in Roman history. These tribes eventually helped bring down the Roman Empire.

Although separate Norse groups developed throughout northern Europe, all Norsemen shared the same way of life. It was a harsh culture, in which women and slaves were second-class citizens and unwanted children were exposed to the elements and left to die. This brutal culture had a mythology to match-of fierce war gods, often demanding blood sacrifice. There are stories of a sacred site to the Norse gods in Uppsala, in Sweden, where sacrificed men hung in trees. One account of a Viking king's burial includes the sacrifice of a slave concubine who is strangled and added to the funeral pyre after all of the dead king's companions had sex with her. The Vikings believed that a warrior's death ensured passage to a fighters' paradise called Valhalla. There, in the great Hall of the Slain, the Norsemen thought they would live among the gods, fight by day and feast by night, until the world came to an end in one all-encompassing, apocalyptic Battle of the Gods.

But the fighting didn't wait until after death for the Vikings. Known as "Danes," "Norsemen," or "Northmen," they terrified most of Europe as they conquered or looted parts of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The "Northmen" became "Normans" when they established a base in France (Normandy) and then invaded England under William the Conqueror in 1066. The Swedish branch of the Viking family tree settled in eastern Europe and was called the Rus, and Russia was named for them. The name "Viking" probably came later from Vik, in southern Norway. The expression "to go a-viking" meant to head off to fight as a pirate.

But in spite of their well-deserved reputation for ferocity, the great majority of Norsemen were simple farmers who lived in villages. These villages comprised a society that was roughly divided into three social classes-nobles, freemen, and slaves-who had little upward mobility. The freemen included farmers, merchants, and traders, and the slaves were often those who had been captured in Viking raids and battles. All Vikings spoke a Germanic language with two major dialects that everyone understood. They also had an alphabet system called runes, a strange script that was used primarily by priests for secret ritual purposes. Like the Celts, the Vikings didn't record any of their myths and legends until after they had been Christianized.

Even so, there is a vast body of Norse literature collected in two works called Eddas that were set down during the Christian era from an earlier oral tradition. The Poetic, or Elder, Edda is a collection of poems composed anonymously between 1000 and 1100 CE. Twenty-four of the thirty-eight poems in the Poetic Edda are heroic tales, many of which recount the exploits of the great hero and dragon slayer Sigurd (Siegfried in German; see below). The other fourteen poems include accounts of the creation and the end of the universe in a fiery conflagration known as Ragnarok, in which the gods die.

The second collection is the Prose, or Younger, Edda, written during the 1200s by Snorri Sturluson (11791241), an Icelandic poet, historian, and courtier. Sturluson's Prose Edda was designed as a primer, or textbook, for other poets, and consists of a preface and three sections. The first of these sections tells about the Norse deities, while the second and third parts provide techniques for aspiring poets. Besides the Prose Edda, Sturluson also wrote a history of the kings of Norway stretching from early times to his own day. A wealthy and powerful man in Iceland, as well as a medieval Icelandic poet, Snorri Sturluson became involved in Norway's court intrigues and was murdered in 1241, apparently on the orders of the Norwegian king.

A final source of Norse myths are the Skald (the Icelandic word for a type of minstrel or bard), a complex form of Icelandic poetry that survives from the period from 900 through the 1200s CE. Most court poets in Scandinavia came from Iceland, and hundreds of these poems-many of which deal with contemporary rather than mythic figures-are preserved in the Icelandic sagas of the 1100s and 1200s. However, the Skald were composed after the Scandinavian countries began the conversion to Christianity, and so, as with the Christian-era Celtic literature, many of these myths have been layered over with Christian traditions, symbolism, and interpretation.

How do a giant's armpit and a cow help create the Norse world?

According to the Eddas, two places exist before the creation of life-Muspel ("world's end"), a fiery region in the south, and Niflheim ("dark world"), a northern land of ice and freezing mists. Between them lies Ginnungagap-the "beguiling void"-a great emptiness where the two worlds of heat and ice collide, congeal, and all things are created. Out of the merging of these two places comes the first living thing, a primordial frost giant called Ymir, who is soon joined by a primeval cow named Audhumla, whose four streams of milk keep Ymir alive. In time, Ymir gives birth to three beings, born from the sweat of his armpits and from one of his legs. Meanwhile, a second giant, Buri, is released from the primordial salty ice blocks of Niflheim after the cow Audhumla licks him free. Buri creates a son named Bor, who marries the giantess Bestla, and they have three sons-Odin, Ve, and Vili-who begin the first race of gods.

In a story with echoes of the Greek Creation accounts, Odin grows to manhood, joins with his brothers, and kills Ymir. The incredible flow of the primal giant's blood creates a great flood that kills all of the frost giants except for Bergelmir and his unnamed wife, who escape the deluge in a boat and re-create the race of ice giants. Although the gods defeat the giants in this Creation battle, the giants' descendants plan revenge on their conquerors-an enmity between these two races that permeates all Norse myths. (It is not known if this Norse Flood story predates the Christian era, or is an example of a biblical influence on Norse traditions.) Having dispatched Ymir, Odin becomes-like Zeus-supreme ruler of the world, and goes on to create the earth from Ymir's body and the sky from his skull. The giant's blood becomes the oceans, his ribs the mountains, and his flesh the earth. The gods then happen upon two logs lying on the beach and turn them into the first two humans, Ask (ash) and Embla (elm or vine).

Supporting the entire creation is a giant ash tree known as Yggdrasil, which has three roots. One root reaches into Niflheim, the world of ice. Another grows to Asgard, the realm of the gods. The third extends to Jotunheim, land of the giants. Three sisters called Norns live around the base of the tree, and control the past, present, and future, determining the fates of men. A giant serpent, Nidoggr, loyal to the defeated race of giants, lives near the root in Niflheim and continually gnaws at the root, attempting to bring down the tree, and the gods of Asgard with it.

After the world is created, Odin and his brothers construct their heavenly home in Asgard. Odin and the other gods of Asgard are called the Aesir (the sky gods), but there is another race of lesser gods called the Vanir (earth gods), most likely fertility gods who existed before the Vikings took control of the region, though little is known of their origins. A bridge called Bifrost-usually described as a rainbow but sometimes associated with the Milky Way-connects Asgard to the earth, or Midgard, where men live. Within the walls of Asgard, the gods build their palaces and halls, including Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain. Here the kings and heroes fallen in battle are brought by the Valkyries-" choosers of the slain"-to spend their time feasting and fighting, but always ready to defend Asgard against attack by the giants. That day will come in the fearsome, apocalyptic battle called Ragnarok, literally the "fate of the gods," which is known in German as Gotterdammerung, or "the twilight of the gods." Fans of Wagnerian opera are familiar with these places, which appear in the Ring Cycle.

Ragnarok is somewhat unique in mythology, as it gives a complete account of the end of the world-a great battle fought between the gods and goddesses of Asgard and the giants who wait to avenge the attack of Odin on their ancestors during the Creation. When Ragnarok comes, most of the gods, goddesses, and giants are killed, and the earth is destroyed by fire. After the battle, the god Balder and his wife are reborn and with several sons of dead gods they form a new race of deities. During Ragnarok, a man and a woman also take refuge in the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and sleep through the battle. After the earth again becomes fertile, the couple awakens and begins a new race of humanity.

WHO'S WHO OF THE NORSE GODS Balder Known as "the good" or "the beautiful," Balder is the favorite son of the supreme god Odin and is famed for his good looks and wisdom. Eloquent and full of grace, he is otherwise an ineffectual god, whose death is the most important feature of his story. When Balder has troubling dreams, his mother, Frigg, sees he is fated to die and asks that every living thing and all other objects swear an oath not to harm her fair son. Knowing he is invulnerable, the other gods amuse themselves by hurling stones and other things at Balder, but he is unharmed. Envious of Balder's invincibility, the Trickster Loki discovers that mistletoe-considered the "all-heal" by the Celtic Druids-has not sworn the oath to Frigg. So, Loki forms a dart from a sprig of the plant and gives it to Balder's blind brother, Hod. As Loki guides Hod's aim, the mistletoe dart hits Balder, killing him instantly. As the gods mourn Balder's death, his wife, Nanna, instantly dies of grief and is burned with Balder on his funeral pyre. Hel, the goddess of the underworld, agrees to release Balder from death if every person and thing in the world weeps for him. But the malevolent Loki-now in the guise of an old giantess-refuses to cry and Balder remains in the underworld. It is said that when the world is made new after the Battle of Ragnarok, Balder-who fits the dying-and-reborn-god archetype-and Nanna will return to begin another golden age of the gods.

Bragi God of poetry and eloquence, Bragi is called the "braggart" by Loki, and the word "brag" is derived from his name. He is married to Idun.

Freyr (Frey) The god of agriculture, fertility, and plenty, Freyr ("lord") and his twin sister and consort, Freyja ("lady"), the goddess of love and fertility, are Vanir-or deities of earth and water rather than sky gods (Aesir). But they are significant enough to have a place among the other gods in Asgard. The twin children of Njord, the sea god, and Skadi, the goddess of mountains and forests, Frey ensures the success of a harvest, while Freyja blesses marriages.

As fertility gods, Freyr is associated with rites that may have involved orgies, while his sister, Freyja, is linked with sexual freedom in the pre-Christian world of Europe. A sexual free spirit in the mode of Inanna and other Near Eastern fertility and love goddesses, Freyja sleeps with four dwarves on successive nights in return for her prized possession, a "flaming necklace," the symbol of her fertility. In some accounts, Freyja is counted as the leader of the Valkyries, the women sent to choose who will die in battle, and bring them to Valhalla, where they become heavenly cocktail waitresses. Freyja also selects from among the dead warriors who will live with her in her palace at Asgard.

Frigg The mother goddess, Frigg is the principal wife of Odin, father of the gods. Ruler of sky and clouds, Frigg also protects the household and marriage and is the bestower of children. Choosing not to live with Odin, she resides in a modest home of her own, where she and her handmaidens spin golden thread and weave clouds. Clairvoyant, Frigg knows of events in the present and future, but cannot affect them. When she learns that her son Balder is fated to die, she tries to alter his destiny by extracting a promise from all things in creation not to harm him. But she neglects the mistletoe, thinking that it is too young and weak to threaten her son. Loki uses Frigg's omission to bring about Balder's death and his exile to the underworld. In some traditions, Frigg's tears become the berries of the mistletoe. When Frigg learns that Balder will be restored to life, she hangs the mistletoe and promises to kiss all those who walk beneath it-adding to the ancient source of the Christmas tradition of mistletoe, which, in Celtic rites, was a sign of goodwill.