I know a twelfth spell. If I see hanging from a tree.

I know a twth spell.

If I see hanging from a tree, a dead man's corpse, I carve some ruins and paint them.

And then that corpse will walk and speak with me.

This stanza, which is taken from the Edic poem Havamal demonstrates just one of the many ways in which life

after death is portrayed in Old Norse literature.

In this case, we can see that the God Odin,

through his extensive knowledge of the occult,

is able to coerce hidden knowledge from the swollen tongues of the recently hanged.

Now as a powerful runic sorcerer, and for that matter a deity, it is perhaps unsurprising

that Odin is believed to be able to exert such control over the dead.

But for mere mortals, the behavior of those who had died was understood to be far, far outside the realm of their control.

With Halloween coming up, the time is ripe for us to explore this spooky, supernatural aspect of the

Icelandic sagas.

Today, we are going to gather around the campfire and

here one of the creepiest most haunting ghost stories which is found in the sagas of the Icelanders. The story of Thorolf Twistfoot, as it is told in the

saga of the people of oilery.

Hello everyone and welcome back to a very special Halloween episode of the Viking Age

podcast. This is the story of Thorolf Twistfoot.

Thorolf immigrated to Iceland alongside his mother Garet following the death of his father,

Bjorn.

When they arrived in Iceland, Gareid's brother, who had established extensive land claims along the southern

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