( 90 )
of Odin many ages before, from this prince of the Ases, who usurped his name and the worship that was paid to him. All that one can just make shift to discover amidst so much darkness, is that the Scandinavians were not seduced by the impostures of the Asiatic Odin so far as to be generally persuaded, that he was the supreme God, whose name he had assumed, and to lose all remembrance of the primary belief. I think one may conjecture that it was principally the poets, who delighted to confound these two Odins for the better adorning the pictures they drew of them both[1]. Mention is sometimes made of an ancient Odin, who never came out of Scythia, and who was very different from that other Odin that came into Sweden, and caused divine honours to be paid him at Sigtuna. Some authors make mention also of a third Odin, so that it is very possible this name may have been usurped by many different warriours out of policy and ambition; of all whom posterity made in process of time but one single person; much in the same manner as hath happened with regard to Hercules, in those rude ages when Greece and Italy were no less barbarous than the
- ↑ Wormii Monumenta Danica. Lib. 1. p. 12. Therm. Torfœi Series Regum & Dynaft. Dan. Lib. 2. c. 3.
