“The Sviar, who migrated with the historic Odin, achieved no forcible conquest over their national brethren of the Gothic tribe, by whom they had been preceded. The ascendancy of Odin and his followers over their predecessors was acquired and maintained by superstition, and their supposed superiority in magic and the other arts which win the confidence or influence the fears of a barbarous nation. The older worship of the primitive inhabitants, and of their conquerors, was modified by this new prophet, who, taking advantage of the pre-existing belief in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the incarnation of divine spirits, so widely diffused among the ancient people of the earth, pretended to be the former Odin, who had again descended among his faithful Goths.[39] His worship thus soon supplanted that of the more ancient Odin, and the attributes and actions of both were gradually confounded together in the apprehension of the Scandinavians. But it did not supplant that of Thor, whom the primitive people of the north regarded as the elder and most beneficent of the deities. In him they worshipped the goodly elements of nature,—the light, the heat, and especially the thunder, shaking and purifying the atmosphere. This deity was principally revered in Norway; and, after its discovery and settlement, in Iceland: but he maintained his recognised equality with the other superior gods even in the great temple of Upsal, the principal seat of the northern superstition. His votaries formed a distinct sect, who were often engaged in deadly strife with the peculiar worshippers of Odin. The next deity in the Scandinavian hierarchy was Freyer, who represented the prolific powers of Nature, and, with his sister Freya, the Venus of this mythology, was principally revered in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland; whilst Odin and his son, Balder, were adored both at Upsal and Ledra as the peculiar national deities of the Gothic Danes and Sviar. The religion of the north, as it was at last modified by this new dispensation, in the conjoint adoration of Thor, Odin, and Freyer, bore a strong family likeness to the three principles of Schamanism, or the faith professed by the votaries of the Dalai Lama in central Asia. This correspondence points most significantly to its origin; and the filiation of religious creeds and forms of worship thus combines with that of language to trace the present people of the north to the remotest regions of the East.”[40]