“Suppose we pretend that we are in the feast hall of one of the old
guest houses of the Norsemen long, long ago,” said one teacher to her
children after they had visited an open-air museum.
Then as the teacher told the children about an evening in a guest house
such as they had seen at the museum, they imagined people seated around
the long table eating from the rude bowls and drinking from an old
drinking horn, while they listened to a tale told by a wandering
story-teller.
A story-teller in those northlands was an important person in the old
days before stories had been written in books for people to read for
themselves. In those days, story-tellers went about from place to place
telling tales. They were always welcome guests in any home, for people
had little entertainment.
In the very earliest days, people knew little about why things happen as
they do on the earth. They did not know why we have day and night, or
summer and winter. They did not know why the rains fall, or the
lightning and thunder come. Since they did not know the true reasons for
these things, they made up stories to tell why they happen as they do.
They said that many gods ruled over the earth. One god, called Wodin,
caused the day. Since day has but one sun, Wodin had but one eye. The
god Thor caused the lightning and thunder. Another god ruled over the
summer, bringing the warm days when plants could grow. He was called
Frey. And the god Tye ruled over war and brought victory in battle.
We use the names of the four gods, Tye, Wodin, Thor, and Frey, even
today. From them we got the names for four of the days of the week:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—Tye’s day, Wodin’s day, Thor’s
day, and Frey’s day.
Those early people believed, too, that huge giants lived on the
mountaintops and tiny dwarfs lived under the ground. The old
story-tellers told many tales about fights between the gods and the
giants. One of the favorite tales was about Thor, the god of thunder and
lightning. The tale that Norwegian teacher told her pupils was about
Thor and his Hammer. Her pupils listened almost as eagerly as those old
Viking families had listened around the feast table hundreds of years
ago.