ABSTRACT
HOW proficient some women among the people of the North once were in magical skills I shall show by means of a few instances. Hagberta, daughter of the giant Vagnhofthi, could change the 171shape of her body as she pleased, giving extraordinary appearances to her size: sometimes she would dwindle to a small, thin, shrivelled object, at other times she would swell to huge proportions. At one moment she would be tall enough to reach the sky, then contract into a person of dwarfish dimensions. 1 She was believed able to bring down the heavens, hang up the earth, solidify springs of water, melt mountains, lift ships into the air, bring low the gods, put out the stars, and light up the underworld. 2 3 When King Hading was at dinner, another woman who was skilled in the same art, carrying stalks of hemlock, was observed to raise her head from the ground near to a brazier and, extending the lap of her garment, to ask in what part of the world such fresh plants had grown in winter-time. As the king desired to know, she wrapped him in her mantle and vanished away with him under the earth. When she had shown him the wonders of the lower regions she at last restored him to the upper world.
Hagberta, a polymorph
Marvellous power of magic
King Hading
Fresh plants in wintertime King led under the earth
