Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/365

 magical sign in connexion with storms of wind and rain.

King Olaf, Longfellow tells us, when keeping Christmas at Drontheim— O’er his drinking-horn, the sign He made of the Cross Divine, As he drank, and mutter’d his prayers; But the Berserks evermore Made the sign of the Hammer of Thorr Over theirs.” Actually they both made the same symbol.

This we are told by Snorro Sturleson, in the Heimskringla, when he describes the sacrifice at Lade, at which King Hakon, Athelstan’s foster-son, was present: “Now, when the first full goblet was filled, Earl Sigurd spoke some words over it, and blessed it in Odin’s name, and drank to the king out of the horn; and the king then took it, and made the sign of the cross over it. Then said Kaare of Greyting, ‘What does the king mean by doing so? will he not sacrifice?’ But Earl Sigurd replied, ‘The king is doing what all of you do who trust in your power and strength; for he is blessing the full goblet in the name of Thorr, by making the sign of his hammer over it before he drinks it.’”