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"Lapland Sorcerers" 21 9
a rival. He carries something in a sack. Inger catches
sight of what it is, breaks into a sob and sinks to the
threshold. It is a hare. Sure enough, when Inger's
girl-child is born, it too has a hare-lip. She kills it.
Clearly readers of Scandinavian literature, mediaeval or
modern, are not surprised by the phrase "Lapland
sorcerers". What is surprising is Shakespeare's use of it.
Where did he get it from? Shakespeare had small Latin
and less Greek, and enough of the fashionable vernaculars
to use them in his plays. But his knowledge of Old Norse
was surely slight. However, early Scandinavian reports
of Lapland sorcerers were not kept in the decent obscurity
of an unfashionable dead language. Several mediaeval
Latin accounts, deriving directly or ultimately from
Scandinavia, survive. Adam of Bremen's Gesta H ammaburgensis
Ecclesiae Pontificum, completed between 1073
and 1°75, describes Norwegian Christianity, admitting
that it does not exist among those:
qui trans arctoam plagam circa occeanum remoti sunt. Eos
adhuc fertur magicis artibus sive incantationibus in tantum
praevalere, ut se scire fatearitur, quid a singulis in toto orbe
geratur. Tunc etiam potenti murmure verborum grandia
cete maris in litora trahunt, et alia multa, quae de maleficis in
scriptura leguntur, omnia illis ex usu facilia surrt.v!
Book IV of Adam's history was first printed in
E. Lindenbruch's edition of 1595, so Shakespeare, at the
date of The Comedy of Errors, could scarcely have known
its contents, at least directly. The Historia Norwegiae, a
text of unknown provenance written about A.D. 1200,
has a chapter de Finnis, which describes their way of life
and includes an account of their magical practices.
Sunt namque quidam ex ipsis, qui quasi propheta- a stolido
vulgo venerantur, quoniam per immundum spiritum, quem
gandum vocitant, multis multa pra-sagia ut eveniunt quandoque
percunctati prredicent.w
Gandum is clearly ON gandr, a word of varying meaning,
U G. H. Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores VII (r846),
382 .
'0 G. Storm, Monumenta Historica Noruegia: (1880), 85.