Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/419

 NORSE MAGIC. 403 to the gods in expectation of a response ; auguries were drawn from the flight of birds as carefully as by the Itoman augurs, while the sacred chickens were replaced with white horses conse- crated to the gods, whose motions and actions when harnessed to the sacred chariot were carefully observed.* Saving the Etrus- can 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 unques- tioning faith than in what remains to us of the sagas of the North. Especially were the lands around the Baltic regarded as the pe- culiar 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 north- ern 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 iEsir, 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.f Tacit. German, x. — Ammian. Marcellin. xxxr. 2.— Caroloinanni Capit. n. ad Lip- tinas. — Carol. Mag. Capit. de Parti bus Saxon, c. 23. t Adam. Bremens. iv. 16, 31. — Saxon. Grammat. Lib. i. — Ynglinga Saga, 6, 7 (Laing's Heimskringla). The Finns were not behind their neighbors in the powers attributed to spells and incantations. In the Kalevala, Louhi, the sorceress of the North, steals the sun and moon, which had come down from heaven to listen to Wainanioinen's singing, and hides them in a mountain, but is compelled to let them out again through dread of counter-spells. The powers of magic song are fairly summa- rized in the final contest between Wainamoinen and Youkahainen : " Bravely sang the ancient minstrel, Till the flinty rocks and ledges Heard the trumpet tone and trembled, And the copper-bearing mountains
 * Tacit. German, ix., x.