s dwelling.

Besides the faithful Skirnir, Frey had two other attendants, a
married couple, Beyggvir and Beyla, the personifications of mill
refuse and manure, which two ingredients, being used in agriculture
for fertilising purposes, were therefore considered Frey's faithful
servants, in spite of their unpleasant qualities.

The historical Frey

Snorro-Sturleson, in his "Heimskringla," or chronicle of the ancient
kings of Norway, states that Frey was an historical personage who bore
the name of Ingvi-Frey, and ruled in Upsala after the death of the
semi-historical Odin and Nioerd. Under his rule the people enjoyed such
prosperity and peace that they declared their king must be a god. They
therefore began to invoke him as such, carrying their enthusiastic
admiration to such lengths that when he died the priests, not daring
to reveal the fact, laid him in a great mound instead of burning his
body, as had been customary until then. They then informed the people
that Frey--whose name was the Northern synonym for "master"--had
"gone into the mound," an expression which eventually became the
Northman's phrase for death.

Not until three years later did the people, who had continued paying
their taxes to the king by pouring gold, silver, and copper coin
into the mound through three different openings, discover that Frey
was dead. As their peace and prosperity had remained undisturbed,
they decreed that his corpse should never be burned, and they thus
inaugurated the custom of mound-burial, which in due time supplanted
the funeral pyre in many places. One of the three mounds near Gamla
Upsala still bears this god's name. His statues were placed in the
great temple there, and his name was duly mentioned in all solemn
oaths, of which the usual formula was, "So help me Frey, Nioerd,
and the Almighty Asa" (Odin).

Worship of Frey

No weapons were ever admitted in Frey's temples, the most celebrated
of which were at Throndhjeim in Norway, and at Thvera in Iceland. In
these temples oxen or horses were offered in sacrifice to him, a heavy
gold ring being dipped in the victim's blood ere the above-mentioned
oath was solemnly taken upon it.

Frey's statues, like those of all the other Northern divinities,
were roughly hewn blocks of wood, and the last of these sacred images
seems to have been destroyed by Olaf the Saint, who, as we have seen,
forcibly converted many of his subjects. Besides being god of sunshine,
frui