Note 270 — Chapter XV

The Continental examples are, of course, very numerous. In Denmark alone, according to J. M. Thiele, tradition points out as chambered mounds "two hills, Mangelbierg and Gillesbierg, in the environs of Hirschholm, on Hösterkiöb Mark": "a hill called Wheel-hill, at Gudmandstrup, in the Lordship of Odd": "a large knoll called Steensbierg, at Ouröe, near Joegerspriis": "the high ridge on which the church stands, at Kundebye, in the Bailiewick of Holbeck"; and, in the same bailiewick, at a place between the towns of Mamp and Aagerup, "near the Strand": Gultebierg also supplies another to the list: while "between Jerslöse and Söbierg, lies Söbierg bank, which is the richest knoll in the land." (For similar references in this neighbourhood, see also Mr. W. G. Black's "Heligoland.") And Thorpe's "Northern Mythology" specifies many such mounds. M. Pol de Mont (in his Flemish "Volkskunde," ii. 5, pp. 89-90) points out an "Aschberg," at Casterlé, in the province of Antwerp, which is said to have held fifty bergmannetjes, or hill-dwarfs. (With this may fitly be compared three Eskimo "mounds" at Hopedale, Labrador, which, though they are now deserted, "more than one hundred persons of both sexes and all ages are said to have inhabited.") But every Continental "Venusberg," into which men of the taller race were tempted by the attractions of the dwarf women, and every "berg" that is affirmed to have been the residence of a "berg-fee," comes under the same denomination as the special examples already cited.