Note 249 — Chapter XXI · RELIGION.—ALTARS, TEMPLES, HIGH-SEAT PILLARS, ETC.

Saxo writes that the Danish king Halfdan journeyed to Upsala in order to find out the cause of his daughter’s sterility, and was answered that he must first satisfy the spirit of his brother, whom he had unwittingly slain; this he did, and then she, in accordance with the promise of the oracle, bore Harald Hilditönn.

At the present old Upsala church there were discovered the foundations of an old building, a mass of coals, molten copper and silver pieces, with small traces of pure gold, as well as a rusty nail with a little gold on it, and finally skulls of pigs and hawks, and cheekbones and teeth of horses, all of which tend to show that the old heathen temple of Upsala, so famous during pagan times, stood there. (Verelius Notæ in epist. def. Shefferi, p. 16.)