to the Elf-bolt, by the Norwegian peasantry, is _Tordenkiler_, or thunderstone,[154] so that we can feel little hesitation in assigning to the old Norse colonists of Orkney, the difference still discernible in these expressions of the same popular idea, and inferring from thence, what all other evidence confirms, that the Scottish Stone Period belongs to an era many centuries prior to the oldest date of her written history. The Elf-bolt is associated with many rustic fancies not yet altogether eradicated from the popular mind. It occupied no unimportant part among the paraphernalia of Scottish witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the occurrence of any sudden disease amongst cattle was ascribed until a comparatively recent period, to their having been shot by the fairies with Elfin arrows. This ancient superstition is not peculiar to Scotland. In Norway similar diseases, not only of cattle but of men, were called by the same name of _Alfskot_, and in Denmark, of _Elveskud_, that is, Elf-shot; though the flint arrow-head is not recognised as the bolt which furnishes for such purposes the quivers of the malignant elves. But other, and probably more ancient Scandinavian legends, prove the existence of similar northern associations with the primitive arrow-head of flint. In the "_Fornaldar Sögur Nordlanda_," or Legends from the primitive period of the North, derived from ancient manuscripts, Orvar Odd's Saga furnishes a curious evidence of this,-- Orvar Odd, who is already furnished with three iron arrows, the gift of Guse, a Fin king possessed of magic power, in the course of his wanderings is hospitably entertained by an old man of singular appearance. On the side where the old man sat he laid three stone arrows on the table near the dish. They were so large and handsome that Orvar thought he had never seen anything like them. He took them up and looked at them, saying, "These arrows are well made." "If you really think them to be so," replied his host, "I shall make you a present of them." "I do not think," replied Orvar, smiling, "that I need cumber myself with stone arrows." The old man answered, "Be not sure that you will not some time stand in need of them. I know that you possess three arrows, called the Guse's gifts, but, though you deem it unlikely, it may happen that the Guse's weapons prove useless, then these stone arrows will avail you." Orvar Odd accordingly receives the gift, and chancing soon after to encounter a foe who by like magic was impenetrable to all ordinary weapons, he transfixes him with the stone arrows, which immediately vanish.[155]