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"Lapland Sorcerers" 231
early times northern Scandinavia was peopled by giants.
To take a single example, Olaus Magnus entitled the fifth
book of his Historia "De Gigantibvs", and in several
places refers to the Gigantes septentrionales. As evidence
of their former existence in the extreme north, specifically
in Finmarchia, Biarmia, Scricfinnia, Helsingia, he cites,
quoting from Saxo Grammaticus, the colossal stone
monuments of those areas, which could not have been
made by men of human size. More curious than Marlowe's
is the allusion to Lapland in Nashe's The Terrors of the
Night or, a Discourse of Apparitions, published in 1594.
Nashe turns from the subject of dreams to that of the
powers of darkness in general. He speaks of Iceland and
the spirits, resembling the dead in form, which haunt that
dark country, conversing with the inhabitants as though
they were alive. Near Hekla are heard dreadful yells and
groans, which make some people suspect the volcano to be
the entrance to Hell. Winds are easily bought and sold ­
and Nashe uses the phrase "Three knots in a thred",
showing he refers to the Lapland material. He then
describes the glaciers in Iceland, diverging to an account
of the bottomless lake Vether and the deafening crack made
by its melting ice at the thaw. Over the ice-bound surface
no bird can fly, for it immediately freezes to death, nor
can any man stand on its ice. Finally, Nashe relates all
this material to "Island ... one of the chiefe kingdomes
of the night". 39 This passage, too, disturbs the
commentators, who cannot understand how the (Lapland)
sorcerers with their three knots got to Iceland, and how
lake Vattern got there too. The source is probably Olaus
Magnus's Historia, though much confused and garbled.
His chapters on Scandinavian witchcraft include one De
M ago ligato, about a magician bound by enchantment on
an island in lake Vattern. An admirable wood-cut with
the lake named WETERLACVS may have caught Nashe's
eye. After describing the magician's plight this chapter
39 R. B. McKerrow, The Works of Thomas Nashe (reprinted, 1958), 359-60.