#forseti

eye of the storm

surviving myths where Forseti is active come from Frisia, where he is thought to have been the chief deity. according to the story “Van da tweer Koningen, Kaerl ende Radbod” (“Of the two kings, Charles [Martel] and Radbod”; Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsquellen, vol 1, pp. 439-440), when the Frankish king Charles conquered Frisia, he demanded that the Frisians reveal their laws to him, so that he could judge them. the twelve Foerspreken (fore-speakers) stall him twice, but finally are forced to admit that they cannot reveal their laws, and Charles punishes them by setting them adrift in a rudderless ship.

suddenly a thirteenth man appears in the stern. the thirteenth man carries an axe, which he uses as a rudder to steer them; in some versions of the story, the axe is golden. when they reach land, he throws the axe, which slices off a piece of turf and makes a new spring burst forth at a site called Axenthoue, “axemound.”

the party walks from shore to the spring along a path called Eeswey, “way of the gods / Æsir,” and the twelve Foerspreken learn the law from the thirteenth man as they sit around the spring. Schwartz interprets the Foerspreken to be gods, corresponding to the Æsir. the thirteenth man is not actually named, but an episode in Alcuin’s Vita sancti Willibrordi 10-11 (transl. Talbot, pp. 199-200) strongly suggests that he is Forseti. In the early 700s, the English missionary Willibrord and his companions were driven by a storm onto an island called Fositeland, near the border between Denmark and Frisia.

the island and everything on it were sacred to Fosite: no one could disturb the animals, and anyone who drew water from the holy spring had to maintain silence. willibrord slaughtered some of the island’s cattle for food and baptized three men in the spring. king Radbod captured the party and drew lots every day to decide who would die, but Willibrord’s company mostly escaped death and returned to the Franks.

the island setting with a sacred spring matches the legend of the Foerspreken. Forseti’s holy spring itself may have been a place of capital punishment; the Vita Wulframi, an account of a different missionary to the Frisians, states that drowning was a legal means of execution among them. incidentally, a third missionary to the Frisians, Liudger, visited Fositeland again in the year 790, destroyed the temple to Fosite, and built a church on the site (Nijdam and Knottnerus, “Redbad,”pp. 89-90)

pretend that Lewyn is Forseti there