A whole chapter might be written about the figure-heads of the Viking ships, for they were much more than mere ornaments. They each had some special signification, and were certainly connected with a most extraordinary superstition which prevailed among the Scandinavian peoples. It is best explained by an example from the saga of which one Egil was the hero. Pursued by a king answering to the suggestive name of Blood-axe, he escaped from Norway and took ship to Iceland. Before he set sail over the North Sea he determined to take it out of his enemy, Blood-axe, by a species of what we may call "wireless" witchcraft. Landing on an islet, he erected what was known as a "Nithstang", a "contraption" considered very pleasing to the Norse gods. The idea probably had something in common with the "lifting up" of the brazen serpent in the _Book of Numbers_. His installation was a very simple one: a hazel pole with a horse's head stuck on the top. He stuck it up in a crevice of the rocks, saying that he did so "as a curse" on Blood-axe and his Queen. Then he turned it round so as to point to the mainland, and announced that he also "fired off" his curse at the "Guardian Spirits" of the country, who were to get no rest till they had hustled King Blood-axe out of it. Finally he inscribed his curse in Runic characters on the pole, and continued his voyage to Iceland as pleased with himself as a German hero who had dropped a floating mine in the track of passenger vessels. [Illustration: A Dragon-head and a Representation of a "Nithstang". From a Saxon MS.] Now it appears that these same guardian spirits were extremely susceptible to this sort of "wireless", not only in Norway, but everywhere. And it also seems that--how or in what way I am unable to explain--the figure-heads of the Viking ships had much the same properties as the "Nithstangs". So it was that in Iceland, at any rate, there was a law that ships must remove their figure-heads before approaching the land, "and not approach it with gaping heads and yawning snouts", lest they might scare the guardian spirits of the land.[3] Having carried out this regulation, it was customary for the seamen to hoist a polished shield to the masthead and so flash the signal that the guardian spirits need not now be alarmed. That some connection existed between these "heads" and the "Nithstang" is further shown by a drawing in an old manuscript of that period, which depicts a human head set on a pole, which is fastened to a dragon figure-head. And again, in a wall-painting in the church of Tegelsmora in Upland, in which the famous King Olaf is seen waging a desperate battle with our old nursery friends the "Trolls", the bowsprit of his ship is adorned with the skull of an ox.