THE SCENE: It’s exceeding rare for the medieval sagas (almost always written by Christians) to contain legitimate information about pagan practices. So sit back and enjoy this description of a pagan ritual that involved speaking to (and seeing) the dead.
THE TEXT: Next Thrandur instructed a blazing fire be made in the fire-house, and he had four metal grates placed in a square, and Thrandur himself scored nine furrows in the earthen floor, making nine concentric circles around the square, and he sat down on a stool between the fire and the grated pen. He asked his men not to speak to him, and they stood silently by.
For a long while Thrandur sat there.
After some time had passed, a man entered the fire-house. He was all wet. Everyone recognized the man as Einar South-Islander. Einar went up to the fire and warmed his hands; he stood there a long while; then he turned and left. More time went by, and another man came into the firehouse. He went to the fire, warmed his hands, and then departed. So after Thorir had left, a third man came into the fire-house, a great man covered in blood, who carried his head in his hands. They all recognized him as Sigmundur Brestirsson. Sigmundur halted at a certain spot on the floor for a time, then he made his departure.
After this Thrandur rose from his stool and drew a deep, painful breath. Finally he spoke, “Now it should be clear to you how these men met their deaths. Einar perished first, having frozen to death or drowned; he was always the weakest of them, anyways. Thorir must have died next. Sigmundur would have helped Thorir as much as possible, and we ought to respect him for that. At any rate, Sigmundur would have made it to shore utterly exhausted, where these men must have killed him, seeing as how his ghost was spattered with blood and headless.”
Thandur’s men all agreed that was what must have happened.
– The Faroe-Island (Færeyinga) Saga, 13th Century AD
