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INFEEIOE DEITIES AS OBJECTS OF WOESHIP. 191
rocks facing the land, and fastened a horse's head
upon the stake. Thereupon he said, "Here do I
raise up a Nithing-post* and turn the disgrace
against King Eirik and Queen Gunhilda." He
turned the head toward the land and continued, " I
turn this disgrace against the Protecting Deities of
the Land which inhabit this country, so that they
shall all run wildly about, without ever being able
to find their homes, until they have driven out King
Eirik and Queen Gunhilda from the country."f
The enmity of the Landvsettir was thus believed to
be the cause of King Eirik's later misfortunes, when
with his wife and children he had to fly from
Norway.
On the other hand it was believed that the man
who enjoyed the favor of the Landvsettir was pecu-
liarly fortunate. Thus it is related of the Icelander
Bjorn, a son of Molda-Gnlip, one of the original
settlers, that he made a covenant with a mountain
spirit (bergbiii) which appeared to him in a dream,
and from that hour Bjorn's cattle multiplied in-
credibly. It was said, Inoreover, that clairvoyants
(ofreskir menu—men endowed with supernatural
vision, ghost-seers) could see how all the Guardian
Deities of the land accompanied Bjorn when he
* NiSstaung, a stake set up in disgrace of some one, which it
was believed had power to bring harm upon the party it was
directed against. It is probably derived, from ni 6, infamy, dis-
grace; A.-S. ni5, wickedness. The term NiSing, both among the
Iforthmen and Anglo-Saxons, conveyed ideas of consummate
wickedness, baseness, and contemptibleness, and was employed as
an expression of the highest degree of infamy and disgrace that
could be heaped upon any one.
t Egils S. 60.