Ynglings- Norse GroupCollective"Royal House of Sweden"

Freyr at Uppsala

Freyr, the Vanir god who had come to rule at Uppsala after Odin departed northward, gave the Swedes peace and good harvests for as long as he lived. When he died, his followers did not announce it. They built a mound with a door and three holes, carried his body inside, and for three years poured in gold and silver and copper, one metal through each opening. The offerings kept coming. The seasons stayed kind. When the Swedes finally learned their king was dead and the good years continued, they decided Freyr's presence in the earth was what held the luck. They kept the mound and worshipped at it. His son Fjölnir became the first mortal king of the line.

The Deaths of Kings

Fjölnir visited the Danish king Friðfróði and was given a bedchamber above the hall. That night he rose in the dark, drunk and half-asleep, wandered to the wrong door, and fell into a vat of mead. He drowned in it. The skalds recorded the death and moved on to the next king.

The pattern held. Vanlandi abandoned his wife Drífa in Finland, and she paid a seiðr-witch named Huld to send a mara that trampled him to death in his sleep. Vísburr refused to return his sons' mother's bride-price, and they burned his hall around him.

The worst death came during famine. When the harvests failed under King Domaldi, the Swedes sacrificed oxen at Uppsala. The famine continued. They sacrificed men. Still the crops would not grow. The third autumn they killed Domaldi himself and reddened the altar with his blood. Þjóðólfr of Hvinir preserved each of these deaths in the skaldic poem Ynglingatal, and Snorri Sturluson later retold them in prose in the Ynglinga saga.