conclusion with ourselves—that they were foreign to the genius of the Scythians. We may adore what we _fear_; but we never adore what we _hate_, still less what we _despise_. The same may be observed in regard to the magical rites of the two people. Of _dark_ magic we read every where amongst the people of the former race. We meet with it in districts where the Scythian Goth never inhabited—in the more remote districts of Lapland and Finland. The rites, the opinions, of the people in these districts, were also, we believe, the rites, the opinions, of all the people that inhabited Norway and Sweden. Some of them, we know, were disliked by the followers of Odin. It was not Odinian, that is Gothic, or _white_ (innocent) magic, that was professed by Raude of Norway.[44] It was not Odinian, or Gothic, magic that caused Harald Harfager to be captivated so long and so fatally by the daughter of the Finnish Swaso.[45] In the latter case, nothing can be more evident than that it was the native, black magic, which produced this effect. Hence the detestation with which that monarch, pagan as he was, regarded the art.[46] It was not Odin’s magic which Egill practised when he left Norway, outlawed by Eric of the Bloody Axe. Before he finally left the coast, he fixed the head of a horse on one of the oars of the vessel, and raising it aloft, exclaimed, “Here I erect the rod of vengeance against king Eric and queen Gunhilda!” Turning the horse’s head in another direction, he exclaimed “I direct this curse also against the tutelary deities of Norway, that they shall wander, in pain, and have no rest for the soles of their feet, until they have expelled the king and queen!” This strange imprecation he then carved in runic characters upon the oar, and placed it in the cleft of a rock, where it was not likely to be found, or the spell to be dissolved. It was native magic that distinguished Gunhilda, wife of Eric with the Bloody Axe.[47] More than one king who worshiped Odin punished with death the observers of these rites. And in most of the Gothic writers, pagan or christian, the palm of superiority in magic is awarded to native professors. The magic of the latter might be darker, more inhuman, more diabolical, but it was also admitted to be more profound and more potent. We agree with Magnussen in the conclusion that there was a union, more or less complete, of two schools of magic, as well as of two religions. But there were tenets which could _not_ be reconciled, and the natives, by adhering to their own, caused a system to be perpetuated essentially at variance with that of the conquerors.