SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

122 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
even into historical times to show that the fiamines were
once most venerable and influential priests. It is a
precarious enterprise to try to reconstruct the original
character of Indo-European priesthood, and it may be
an alluring idea that at the dawn of this civilization
priesthood was a rather modest affair, the more so since
we like to consider it as of a more or less democratic
type. We can indeed build lofty hypotheses about the
primordial state of affairs. But at the moment the Indo­
European peoples become, however faintly, visible to
our scrutinizing eyes, we discern a form of society that
is highly organized as a system of clear-cut classes. The
religion is in many respects its counterpart. The gods
are balanced in a coherent system which corresponds to
that of the social structure. Perhaps we may conclude
that the peoples issuing from the common stock showed
the same character of social and religious structure,
although it may not have been as pronouncedly rigid as
it was among the Vedic Indians or the Gauls.
Perhaps the crucial question is not how and why in
Gaul the druidic organization got its peculiar form, but
on the contrary how an originally complex system had
disintegrated among the Germanic peoples. The royal
families, the aristocratic warrior-class, the mass of
peasants and craftsman, they are all present in their
original form and validity; only the priesthood seems to
have fallen off. This is a problem of great interest, which
I will here only touch upon. It seems to me in the light
of the Celtic conditions that we should seek carefully
for evidence showing a higher standard of Germanic
priesthood. Therefore I should like to remind you of
the Old Norse julr, a priestly personage, whom we see
rather hazily through very scant traditions. Moreover,
there existed in Gaul a functionary with the name of
gutuater; it seems tempting to draw a line from him to
the Scandinavian gooi. If the more practical mind of
the Germanic peoples contrived to keep down the high