A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

It will be a protection to him against every poison and envy. It will be an armor to his soul after his death. Patrick sang this at the time that the snares were set for him by Loegaire, so that it appeared to those who were lying in ambush that they were wild deer and a fawn after them.”[432]

The Barbarians brought with them their own superstitions, whether transmitted from the prehistoric Aryan home, or acquired in the course of their wanderings, and they readily added to these such as they found among their new subjects, whether they were under the ban of the Church or not. They had parted from their brethren before the religious revolution caused by Zoroaster’s dualistic conception of Hormazd and Ahriman, and their religions have no trace of a personification of the Evil Principle. Loki, its nearest representative, was rather tricky than incorrigible. It is true that there were evil beings, such as the Hrimthursar, Trolls, or Jotuns, the Jotun-dragon Fafnir, the wolf Fenrir, Beowulf’s Grendal and others, but they were none of them analogous to the Mazdean Ahriman or the Christian Satan, and when the Teutonic races adopted the latter they came to represent him, as Grimm well points out, rather as the blundering Jotun than as the arch-enemy. To how late a period the ancestral conceptions of the spirit-world prevailed in Germany may be seen in the answers of the learned Abbot John of Trittenheim to the questions of Maximilian I.[433]

The Teutonic tribes had little to learn from the conquered peoples in the wide circle of the magic arts, for in no race, probably, has the supernatural formed a larger portion of daily life, or claimed greater power over both the natural and the spiritual worlds. Divination in all its forms was universally practised. Gifted beings known as menn forspair could predict the future either by second sight, or by incantations, or by expounding dreams. Still more dreaded and respected was the Vala or prophetess, who was worshipped as superhuman and regarded as in some way an embodiment of the subordinate Norns or Fates, as in the case of Veleda, Aurinia, and others who, as Tacitus assures us, were regarded as goddesses, in accordance with the German custom of thus venerating their fatidical women; and in the Volüspa the Vala communes on equal terms with Odin himself.[434] For those not thus specially gifted there was ample store of means to forecast the future.

The most ordinary method was by necromancy, either by placing under the tongue of a corpse a piece of wood carved with appropriate runes, or by raising the shades of the dead precisely as the Witch of Endor did with Samuel, or as was practised in Rome.[435] The lot was also used extensively, whether to ascertain the divine will, like the Hebrew Urim and Thummim, or to ascertain the future with a bundle of sticks, apparently almost identical with the Chinese trigrams and hexagrains.[436] As in Greece and Rome, sacrifices were often offered to the gods in expectation of a response; auguries were drawn from the flight of birds as carefully as by the Roman augurs, while the sacred chickens were replaced with white horses consecrated to the gods, whose motions and actions when harnessed to the sacred chariot were carefully observed.[437] Saving the Etruscan haruspicium and the omens derived from sacrificial victims, Hellenic and Italiote divination had little to distinguish it from that of the Teutons.

As regards magic, scarce any limit can be set to the power of the sorcerer. In no literature do his marvels fill a larger space, nor are the feats of wizard or witch received with more unquestioning faith than in what remains to us of the sagas of the North. Especially were the lands around the Baltic regarded as the peculiar home and nursery of sorcerers, whither people from every land, even from distant Greece and Spain, resorted for instruction or for special aid. In Adam of Bremen’s “Churland” every house was full of diviners and necromancers, while the people of northern Norway could tell what every man in the world was doing, and could perform with ease all the evil deeds ascribed to witches in Holy Writ. Both Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturlason, in their widely differing Euhemeristic accounts of the origin of the Æsir, or gods, agree that the founders of the Northern kingdom owed their deification solely to the magic skill which led their subjects and descendants to venerate them as divine.[438]

Norse magic was roughly classified into that which was legitimate, or galder, and that which was wicked, or seid. To the former belonged the infinite powers of runes, whether sung as incantations or carved as talismans and amulets. Their invention was attributed to the ancient Hrimthursar or Jotuns, and it was his profound knowledge of this magic lore which enabled Odin to achieve his supremacy. Runes it was that kept the sun upon his course and maintained the order of nature. All runes were mingled together in the sacred drink of the Æsir, whence were derived their supernatural attributes, and some have been allowed to reach man, which were carefully classified and studied.[439] As an adjunct of these was the seidstaf, or wand, so indispensable to the magician of all races. The Icelandic Yala Thordis had one of these known as Hangnud, which would deprive of memory him whom it touched on the right cheek and restore it with a touch on the left cheek. Philtres and love-potions, causing irresistible desire or indifference or hatred, were among the ordinary resources of Norse magic. Pricking with the sleep-thorn produced magic sleep for an indefinite time.

Magicians could also throw themselves into a deep trance, while the spirit wandered abroad in some other form: women who were accustomed to do this were called hamleypur, and if the ham, or assumed form, were injured, the hurt would be found on the real body—a belief common to almost all races.[440] The adept, moreover, could assume any form at will, as in the historical case of the wizard who in the shape of a whale swam to Iceland as a spy for Harold Gormsson of Denmark, when the latter was planning an expedition thither; or two persons could exchange appearances, as Signy did with a witch-wife, or Sigurd with Gunnar, when Brynhild was deceived into marrying the latter.[441] Enchanted swords that nothing could resist, enchanted coats that nothing could penetrate, caps of darkness which, like the Greek helm of Pluto, rendered the wearer invisible, are of frequent occurrence in Norse legendary history.[442]

All this was more or less lawful magic, while the impious sorcery known as seid or trolldom was based on a knowledge of the evil secrets of nature or the invocation of malignant spirits, such as the Jotuns and their troll-wives. Seid is apparently derived from sjoda, to seethe or boil, indicating that its spells were wrought by boiling in a caldron the ingredients of the witches’ hell-broth, as we see it done in Macbeth. It was deemed infamous, unworthy of men, and was mostly left to women, known as seid konur, or seid wives, and as “riders of the night.” In the oldest text of the Salic law, which shows no trace of Christian influence, the only allusion to sorcery is a fine imposed for calling a woman a witch, or for stigmatizing a man as one who carries the caldron for a witch.[443] Scarce any limit was assigned to the power of these sorcerers. One of their most ordinary feats was the raising and allaying of tempests, and to such perfection was this brought that storm and calm could be enclosed in bags for use by the possessor, like those which Æolus gave to Ulysses. As Christianity spread, this power gave rise to trials of strength between the old and the new religion, such as we have seen when Constantine overcame Licinius. St. Olaf’s first expedition to Finland barely escaped destruction from a dreadful tempest excited by the Finnish sorcerers.

Olaf Tryggvesson was more fortunate in one of his missionary raids, when he defeated Raud the Strong and drove him to his fastness on Godo Island in the Salten Fiord—a piece of water whose fierce tidal currents were more dreaded than the Maelström itself. Repeated attempts to follow him were vain, for, no matter how fair was the weather outside, inside Raud maintained a storm in which no ship could live. At length Olaf invoked the aid of Bishop Sigurd, who promised to test whether God would vouchsafe to overcome the devil. Tapers and vestments and holy water and sacred texts were too much for the evil spirits; the king’s ships sailed into the fiord with smooth water around them, though everywhere else the waves ran high enough to hide the mountains: Raud was captured, and, as he obstinately refused baptism, Olaf put him to the most cruel death that his ingenuity could devise.[444]

The sorcerer also had endless power of creating illusions. A beleaguered wizard could cause a flock of sheep to appear like a band of warriors hastening to his assistance. Yet this would appear superfluous, since by his glances alone he could convulse nature and cause instant death. Gunhild, who married King Eric Blood-Axe, says of the two Lap sorcerers who taught her magic: “When they are angry the very earth turns away in terror and whatever living thing they look upon falls dead.” When she betrayed them to Eric she cast them into a deep sleep and drew sealskin bags over their heads, so that Eric and his men could despatch them in safety. Similarly when Olaf Pa surprised Stigandi asleep he drew a skin over the wizard’s head. There chanced to be a small hole in it through which Stigandi’s glance fell upon the grassy slope of an opposite mountain, whereupon the spot was torn up with a whirlwind and living herb never grew there again.[445]

One of the most terrifying powers of the witch was her fearful cannibalism, a belief which the Teutons shared with the Romans. This is referred to in some of the texts of the Salic law and in the legislation of Charlemagne, and the unlimited extent of popular credulity with regard to it is seen in an adventure of Thorodd, an envoy of St. Olaf, who saw a witch-wife tear eleven men to pieces, throw them on the fire, and commence devouring them, when she was driven off.[446]

The trolla-thing, or nocturnal gathering of witches, where they danced and sang and prepared their unholy brewage in the caldron, was a customary observance of these wise-women, especially on the first of May (St. Walpurgis’ Night), which was the great festival of pagandom.[447] We shall see hereafter the portentous growth of this, which developed into the Witches’ Sabbat. It is a feature common to the superstition of many races, the origin of which cannot be definitely assigned to any.

That the practice of this impious sorcery was deemed infamous is clear from the provision of the Salic law, already alluded to, imposing a fine of eighty-nine sols for calling a free woman a witch without being able to prove it. Yet the mere addiction to it in pagan times was not a penal offence, and penalties were only inflicted for injuries thus committed on person or property. In extreme cases, where death was encompassed, there seems to have been a popular punishment of lapidation, which was the fate incurred, after due sentence, by three noted sorcerers, Katla and Kotkel and Grima. The codified laws of the barbarians, however, never prescribed the death penalty, fines being the universal retribution for crime, and in a later text of the Salic law two hundred sols is designated for the witch who eats a man. Yet individual cases can be found of persecution, such as that by Harald Harfaager, whose early experience had inspired him with intense hatred of the art. One of his sons, Rögnvald Rettilbein, received from him the government of Hadeland, where he learned sorcery and became a great adept; so when Vitgeir, a noted wizard of Hordeland, was ordered by Harald to abandon his evil ways he retorted: