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306 EELIGION OF THE NOETHMEN.
tence of law. The decree was posted upon the
principal door of the house where the specters made
their appearance. In the Eyrhyggja Saga, which
is very rich in traces of the heathen anperstitionsj
we find the description of a judicial process of this
kind, which it seems was held on tTie estate of Fro84
in Iceland, where a whole troop of ghosts had ap-
peared every evening for a long time and scared the
people of the house away from the fire, in order to
get a seat by it themselves. The sentence of banish-
ment, it is stated, was passed on' each specter in
particular, by expressly calling him by name, whereupon
the ghost had to take his departure through
the opposite door, however reluctant he might be to
go.
It was a consequence of their ideas of a future
state, to bury with the dead in the grave, not only
useful implements with which they could busy them-
selves when the spirit at night visited the home of
the body and clothed itself for a season in the cast-
off earthly form, but also gold and ornaments with
which they could shine in the halls of Hel, or else
splendid armor with which the spirit, which was
never conceived of as being quite deprived of all
bodily form, could make an honorable entrance into
Yalhalla. These treasures, which, when very rich,
were thoughtvto betray themselves by nocturnal
fires which burned above the mounds (haugeldar),
often allured bold men to break open and rob the
graves. But these mound-breakers had to go pre-
pared for a hard struggle with the inhabitant of the
mound (haugbui) or the ghost of the bxu-ied man?
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