THE SCENE: When Odin temporary stepped down from his throne, a trickster magician took up his mantle of godhood. When he was finally killed, the people took special precautions with his body that would be familiar to any vampire-hunter.
THE TEXT: A certain Mithothyn, a famous illusionist, was animated at his departure as if by a gift from heaven and snatched the chance to pretend divinity himself. His reputation for magicianship clouded the barbarians minds with a new superstition and led them to perform holy rites to his name. He asserted that the gods’ wrath and the profanation of their divine authority could not be expiated by confused and jumbled sacrifices; so he arrange that they should not be prayed to as a group, but separate offering be made to each deity. When Odin returned, the other no longer resorted to his conjuring but went off to hide in Fyn where he was rushed upon and killed by the inhabitants. His wickedness even appeared after his decease; anyone nearing his tomb was quickly exterminated, and his corpse emitted such foul plagues that he almost seemed to leave more loathsome reminder of himself dead than when alive, as though he would wreak punishment on his murderers. The citizens, oppressed by this evil, disinterred the body, decapitated it and impaled it through the breast with a sharp stake; that was the way the people cured the problem.
– Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus, 12th Century AD
