ABSTRACT
The new organised Christian religion based on south-eastern philosophy was facing an apparently disorganised religious system that was closely tied up with the elements. The fourth most informative source for Norse mythology is the earlier-mentioned History of the Danes, which was written in Latin in the early thirteenth century, by the Danish chaplain Saxo Grammaticus. The main gods and goddesses that the Vikings and their Anglo-Saxon predecessors seem to have actively worshipped when they were depositing bodies and weapons in Danish marshes and lakes in the early Iron Age and celebrating at the large-scale festivals of midwinter, midsummer and the start of winter and summer, which were later deftly transformed by the early spin doctors of the Christian Church into Christmas, St Johns Eve, Halloween and Easter. Skaldic poetry differs from Eddic in that it commonly takes the shape of occasional verse produced in complex metres by poets whose names survive.
