SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

lIS Saga-Book of the Viking Society
I should like to add another remarkable scene in this
battle. Before engaging in it Lug performs a curious
rite: standing on one foot and closing one eye, he went,
whilst he sang a charm, round about the army of the
Tuatha De Danann. This, of course, was a magical
act, intended to protect the army of the gods and to ward
off evil influences. But why was it performed in such
a curious way?
Master of magic was the Scandinavian god Odin likewise.
He too is depicted as having only one eye.
Formerly it seemed quite natural to regard this as a
characteristic of the Sungod, who wandered as a watchful
eye through heaven. But nowadays we reject such
naturalistic explanations. How are we to understand
this single eye? Odin is a god with high spiritual
qualities. The single eye may denote this feature: losing
the eye for visible things of the world, he got the gift
of deeper insight into the problems of the cosmos. At
any rate, the loss of one eye (sometimes even total blindness)
is of particular interest for the understanding of
Odin. We have some instances of mortal men, such as
Egi11 Skallagrimsson, a fervent adorer of Odin, who strove
to be similar in this respect to the god. Now it seems to
me of peculiar importance that the Irish hero Cuchulainn,
who is said to have been a son of the god Lug, shows
in his famous riastrad or distortion a countenance of just
the same kind: he drew one eye deep into his head, so
that a crane would not have been able to reach it, and
he protruded the other one so far that it seemed to lie
on his cheek. No one will like to consider such cases
of analogy as pure whims of accident; we are facing in
such cases a mythical structure common to Lug and Odin
alike.
We know that the sacred bird of Odin was the raven.
Two of these birds, it is said, came every evening flying
to him and perched on his shoulders, whispering into
his ears what they had seen during the day. Curiously