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DIVINATION. 296
wise many accounts in the Sagas. Certain omens,
it was believed, were repeated before events of a
corresponding character. Thus it was thought to
denote a near-approaching violent death when a
person saw his own Fylgja bloody. The wise Ice-
landic chieftain Nial said to his workman Thord,
when the latter seemed to see a goat lie bleeding in
" That is neither a goat nor anything else,
his yard :
but thou art a doomed man; thou hast seen thy
Fylgja."* The same was the case when any one
seemed to see blood upon the table instead of food,
or when the portion of food assigned to him vanished.
It was a universal belief that as an omen of a nearapproaching
bloody battle, blood sometimes dripped
from axes, swords, or spears, or that there was a
loud singing in those weapons when men were tak-
ing them up to arm themselves. With this class of
omens may be reckoned the so-caUed Urdar Moon
(urfiarmani) which was believed to forebode a great
mortality in the place where it appeared. This appearance
is described in the Eyrbyggja Saga : " One
evening as the people of Froda (an estate in western
Iceland)- were sitting around the fire, they saw a
half-moon upon the wall. AU who were in the
house could see it. This moon passed backward
from the sun around the house, and did not vanish
so long as the people sat by the fire. Thorodd, the
master of the house, asked Thorir Tr6f6t what this
could indeed mean. Thorir answered that it was
Urdar moon, and that it foreboded death. On every
* KiSls S. 41.