Note 43 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

Light may be incidentally thrown on the question of the transition from burial to cremation by such a story as that which an Icelandic Saga tells of a man who is buried by his own wish before the door of his house; “but as he returned and did much mischief his body was exhumed and burnt and the ashes scattered over the sea” (Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, 499). We often read in old stories how the body of a dead man who goes about as a vampire is burnt. His soul is then exorcized and cannot come back again.