end
also shows Odin as the giver of victory.

Few heathen legends are told however by these early Christian writers,
and the Gods are seldom called by their German names. An exception is
the Frisian Fosite mentioned by Alcuin (who died 804) and by later
writers; he is to be identified with the Norse Forseti, the son of
(probably at first an epithet of) Baldr, but no legend of him is
told. It is disappointing that these writers should have said so
little of any God except the chief one. A very characteristic touch
survives in Gregory of Tours (died 594), when the Frank Chlodvig tells
his Christian wife that the Christian God "cannot be proved to be
of the race of the Gods," an idea entirely in keeping with the Eddic
hierarchy. Before leaving the Continental historians, reference may be
made to the abundant evidence of Germanic tree-worship to be gathered
from them. The holy oak mentioned by Wilibald (before 786), the sacred
pear-tree of Constantius (473), with numerous others, supply parallels
to the World-Ash which is so important a feature of Norse mythology.

A study of this subject would be incomplete without some reference to
the mythology of Saxo Grammaticus. His testimony on the old religion
is unwilling, and his effort to discredit it very evident. The
bitterness of his attack on Frigg especially suggests that she
was, among the Northmen, a formidable rival to the Virgin. When he
repeats a legend of the Gods, he transforms them into mortal heroes,
and when, as often happens, he refers to them accidentally as Gods,
he invariably hastens to protest that he does so only because it had
been the custom. He describes Thor and Odin as men versed in sorcery
who claimed the rank of Gods; and in another passage he speaks of
the latter as a king who had his seat at Upsala, and who was falsely
credited with divinity throughout Europe. His description of Odin
agrees with that in the Edda: an old man of great stature and mighty
in battle, one-eyed, wearing a great cloak, and constantly wandering
about in disguise. The story which Saxo tells of his driving into
battle with Harald War-tooth, disguised as the latter's charioteer
Brun, and turning the fight against him by revealing to his enemy Ring
the order of battle which he had invented for Harald's advantage, is
in thorough agreement with the traditional character of the God who
betrayed Sigmund the Volsung and Helgi Hundingsbane. Saxo's version
of the Baldr story has been