Note 118.1 — Chapter XIX · THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN MÄRCHEN.

The instrument of enchantment in this Iroquoian tradition is not the magical fetter, but the magical word; whereof we seem to find a reminiscence (perhaps of the fetter also) in the sequel of Thorkill’s second voyage as recounted in the veracious pages of Saxo. Gorm Haraldson, king of Denmark, having grown old, was tormented with the question that still troubles mankind of the immortality and fate of the soul. Wherefore he sent Thorkill, who had in former days led him and three hundred of his warriors through mysterious regions, for certain information to Utgard-Loki, his god. On the hero’s return it was prophesied to Gorm that he would suddenly die if he learnt the tidings Thorkill had brought. Men were accordingly hired by the king’s command to put the adventurer to death. But he foiled the design and reproached his master for the ingratitude he displayed. The king, then, overcome by curiosity, bade Thorkill relate in order what had happened to him. Thorkill had such unfavourable revelations to make of Utgard-Loki that Gorm Haraldson could not endure to hear them. “His very life could not brook such words, and he yielded it up in the midst of Thorkill’s narrative. Thus,” piously adds the chronicler, “whilst he was so zealous in the worship of a false god, he came to find where the true prison of sorrows really was. Moreover, the reek of the hair, which Thorkill plucked from the locks of the giant,” and brought back with him, “to testify to the greatness of his own deeds, was exhaled upon the bystanders, so that many perished of it.”118.1