Historia gentis Langobardorum I,7-9.
    Excerpt from Paul of  Warnfriet  (Paulus "Diaconus" ) :
"7: After the Vinnili [= Langobards] had emigrated from Scadinavia under the leadership of Ibor and Aion, they came to the part called Scoringa where they stayed for several years. For at that time
Ambri and Assi, chiefs the Vandals, harried all the provinces in the vicinity with war, and puffed up with pride over the many victories they had won, they sent a message to the Vinnili that they should either pay taxes to the Vandals, or else make ready for war.
 Then Ibor and Aion agreed, on the admonition of their mother, Gambara, that it were better to defend their freedom by arms than to mar it by paying taxes. and they sent messengers to the Vandal to tell them that they would rather fight than become thralls. At that time all the Vinnili were in the flowering of youth, but only few in number, for they had made out only one third of the population of a not very large island (= Scadinavia).
8: And here the old tell a ridiculous fable, that the Vandals went to Godan (= Odin) and asked for victory over the Vinnili, and that he answered that he would give victory to the party he would see first when the sun rose.
Then Gambara had visited Godan's wife Frea (= Frigga) and had asked for victory for the Vinnili, and Frea had advised her that the women of the Vinnili should let down their hair and arrange it around the face so
that it would look like beards, and come early in the morning together with the men and stand on the spot where Godan used to look first, when he saw the rising sun through the window.
 And thus it happened. But when Godan saw them at sunup, he said "who are these longbeards?" Frea had answered that to those whom he had given a name he must also give victory, and thus Godan had let the Langobards win.
 This is ridiculous and not worth considering, for victory is not in the hands of men, but rather given by Heaven.
 It is certain that the Langobards got this, their later name, from their long  beards, untouched by scissors, while they were first called Vinnili, for in their language "lang" means long and "bart" means beard. But
Wotan, whom they called, with the addition of one letter, Godan, is the same god whom the Romans call Mercurius [= Greek Hermes] and who is worshipped by all Germanic peoples as a god; but he did certainly not live in these times, but far earlier, and not in Germania, but in Greece. " Vai alla Pagina Principale CO