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286 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated • temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town and death of Odin. Religion of of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth re- presentations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple*. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric su- perstition are contained in the Edda, a system of my- thology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth cen- tury, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient traditions. Institutions Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons con- founded under the name of Odin ; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the in- vincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, has- tening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to sented that conqueror as the lineal successor of Alaric. Harte's History of Gustavus, vol. ii. p. 123. ' See Adam of Bremen in Grotii Prolegomenis, p. 104. The temple of Upsal was destroyed by Ingo, king of Sweden, who began his reign in the year 1075 ; and about fourscore years afterwards a christian cathedral was erected on its ruins. See Dalin's History of Sweden, in the Bibjioth^que Raisonnee.