THE SCENE: In the opinion of many medieval Scandinavians, Finnish people (as well as neighboring Lapps and Bothnians) were interested in one thing and one thing only: magic.
THE TEXT: Among the Bothnian people of the north, wizards and magicians were found everywhere, as if it were their particular home. By their immense skill in deceiving the eye they knew well how to disguise their own and other persons’ countenances with different appearances, and to render their true features unrecognizable by means of deceptive shapes. Not only champion fighters but women and delicate virgins would, at a wish, borrow from the thin air masks that were horrifying in their livid foulness and faces marked with a pallor not their own. Then they would dispel the mist of cloud that had overshadowed them and dissipate the darkness that had extended before their faces, to make them bright and clear once more.
They demonstrate their hocus-pocus as follows: anyone desiring to know the condition of his friends or enemies who are between five hundred and a thousand miles distant overland makes a present: for example, a linen garment or a bow, to a Lapp or a Finn adept in this business, and asks for a test to be carried out to discover where his friends or enemies are and what they are doing. 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; muttering spells, he spins this way and that and, suddenly falling, is caught in a trance, in which he lies for a short time as though dead. Meanwhile the companion I mentioned guards him very carefully against the touch of anything alive, whether it be a gnat, or fly, or any other creature. For by the power of his spells his spirit, led by an evil demon, brings back from far away tokens (a ring or knife) that his embassage or errand has been fulfilled. Rising up instantly he reveals these tokens, together with other relevant details, to the person who has engaged him. They are also said to be no less potent in destroying men with various sicknesses; for they make short magic darts of lead, about the length of a finger, and launch them over any distance they like against folk they seek vengeance on. These, infected by a cancerous growth in the leg or arm, die within three days in agonizing pain.
– A Description of the Northern Peoples, Olaus Magnus, 16th Century AD
