Supernatural
The Ghosts of Iceland
“These spectres make those who are ignorant of their death receive them as though they were alive and offer their right hands; nor is the mistake detected before the shades have vanished.” […]
Olaus Magnus
Human Affairs
The Dangerous World of Ice-Skating
“You are never in greater peril or nearer to death than when you set off skating while the ice is covered with even the thinnest layer of snow.” […]
Supernatural
Doomed to the Dance of Lust
“This nocturnal play of supernatural being the natives call ‘the dance of the elves’, and this is their belief about them: that the souls of people who devote themselves to bodily pleasures (becoming as it were their servants), giving way to the incitements of their lusts and profaning the laws of God and man, assume corporeal form and are whirled about the earth.” […]
Supernatural
Deliver us from Gilbert
“It was done like this: a small staff, engraved with certain Gothic characters, was thrown towards him by his master, and when Gilbert caught it in his hands he remained fettered and unable to move. Nor could he free himself when he applied his teeth to it, for it was as if they were stuck together with an adhesive pitch, nor with his feet when, on the crafty advice of his master, he tried to use them.” […]
Supernatural
Hail the Viking Wizard-Pirate
“Therefore, to avoid stooping to a trial of strength with pirates at sea, he would cause the waves and winds to rage by means of his sorcery and induce them to wreck his foes.” […]
Supernatural
The Place is Packed with Wizards
“The wizard then enters a room, satisfied to have with him his wife and one other companion, and strikes over an anvil a prescribed number of blows with a hammer on a copper frog or serpent.” […]
Supernatural
What Shall We Do About All this Magic?
” There was a time when the Finns, among other pagan delusions, would offer wind for sale to traders who were detained on their coasts by offshore gales, and when payment had been brought would given them in return three magic knots tied in a strap not likely to break.” […]
Medieval Mentality
Wisdom of the Snake
“A Norwegian woman, intending to provide for the future good fortune of her son Roller, prepared a dish of food, into which she let drip the putrid saliva of three vipers hanging above it from a slender cord.” […]
Human Affairs
The Martial Glory of the Snowball Fight
“Absconders, however, and any timid creatures who quit the field, have snow put down their backs between their skin and clothing when they have been caught and, after being chastened with insults and abuse, are set free.” […]
Supernatural
Reign of the Old Gods
“The Goths always sought to appease Odin with the harshest rites, that is to say with the death of their prisoners, supposing that the presider over wars was more fitly appeased with human blood.” […]