In 872CE, King Harald Fairhair gathered all of Norway on the shore of Hafrsfjord and created one Kingdom. The ensuing Battle of Hafrsfjord between Hararld and the other Viking kings finally unified the clans under King Harald around 880CE. The monument to this eight year war are three giant bronze swords called Sverd I Fjell (Swords in Rock). The hilts are replicas of Viking swords of the time. They represent peace, unity and freedom.
The horn of a unicorn is a great treasure, in part because of its rarity but also, more importantly, for its many wonderful properties. Powdered unicorn horn can be used as an aphrodisiac and to treat a variety of ailments. The horn can also detect poison, which often bubbles in its presence. If the horn is dipped in poisoned food or drink, it will neutralize the toxin.
Ctesias (5th Century BCE, Greek) proclaimed the horn’s ability to do this in his book Indica. As was true of many encyclopedists at a time when travel was very difficult, he learned this information secondhand while living at the Persian court for seventeen years. “There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses, and larger,” Ctesias wrote.
“Their bodies are white, their heads dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on the forehead which is about a foot and a half in length. The dust filed from this horn is administered in a potion as a protection against deadly drugs. The base of this horn, for some two hands’-breadth above the brow, is pure white; the upper part is sharp and of a vivid crimson; and the remainder, or middle portion, is black. Those who drink out of these horns, made into drinking vessels, are not subject, they say, to convulsions or to the holy disease [epilepsy]. Indeed, they are immune even to poisons if, either before or after swallowing such, they drink wine, water, or anything else from these beakers.”
~ Ctesias
Two thousand years later, no one questioned Ctesias’s description. Vessels made from unicorn horn were most valuable in the royal courts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when the world was rife with political plotting and power changed hands at the drop of a poison potion. Throughout history there are numerous descriptions of people owing their lives to the unicorn horn’s remarkable ability to detect and neutralize poison.
Source: The Unicorn Handbook. Carolyn Turgeon.
Morgan le Fay first steps into Arthur’s mythos in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, written in 1150. Here, she is the eldest of the nine sisters who rule the ethereal isle of Avalon and is a powerful healer. This Morgan could shape shift into animals, manifest as a crone or a maiden and fly. She’s also clever – a skilled mathematician and astronomer. Arthur’s men trust Morgan and take their mortally injured king to her to be healed. Geoffrey’s portrayal of her is sympathetic and he creates a strong, rounded female character.
In Chrétien de Troyes’ French romantic interpretation of the myth, she is presented as Arthur’s sister and described as ‘Morgan the Wise’. She is no longer the ruler of the island, but is in a relationship with its ruler, Lord Guigomar. And so her power starts to be subsumed, manipulated by medieval writers, reluctant to believe a woman could be knowledgeable, powerful or clever.
She remains a relatively benign character until Arthur’s tale is dramatically rewritten in the French Vulgate Cycle (c. 1210–30), thought to be composed by fundamentalist Cistercian monks. Cistercians were crusaders, dedicated to eradicating heretics. They despised women – some even argued against the existence of a female soul – and used the Arthurian tales as propaganda for the Christian religion. Morgan embodied everything that terrified them about the old forms of worship – a knowledgeable, gifted woman, unashamed of her flesh and desires, existing in a society that acknowledged a female presence. They twisted the benevolent character of Morgan Le Fay into a more sinister seductress and obsessive witch.
Using her looks and sexuality, she persuades Merlin to teach her the dark arts. She exposes Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot and later tries to seduce the knight. In the order’s later works, Morgan’s character becomes more overtly evil: she uses her powers to steal the magical sword Excalibur and its scabbard to use against Arthur and plots his downfall, only to be thwarted by the new witch Ninianne, the Lady of the Lake. However, at the end of Vulgate Cycle, Morgan is one of the ladies who escort Arthur on his final trip to Avalon.
By 1485, when the definitive Arthur book, Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, appears, the Cistercian template is set. Malory’s Morgan is even more reductive. There is no affair that initiates her conflict with Guinevere; instead she’s just a fundamentally wicked person, malevolent, Arthur’s nemesis, a mistress of the dark arts, manifesting the medieval world’s fear of the knowledge and power of women.
In Germany, the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was about to be published near-simultaneously and these books helped to whip up anti-magic fervour and presaged a spike in UK witch trials. One last vestige of Morgan’s earlier incarnation remains – she is permitted to transport Arthur’s body to Avalon.
Morgan has remained a powerful figure in literature – she appears in Italian Renaissance poems, French literature and English writer Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queen. She has smouldered on the big screen, memorably portrayed by Helen Mirren in Excalibur (1981).
Her character is strong enough to bear endless reworking. The image of a sexually confident woman, clever, and gifted with magical healing abilities has been reimagined from benevolent to evil, yet still retains its power. Medieval authors turned Morgan into an evil, vengeful caricature – the only way they could deal with her independence, her power, her sexuality.
Sources: Warriors, Witches, Women
With a name like Sleepy Hollow Road, is it any real surprise this Kentucky road is said the be haunted?
Sleepy Hollow Road is a little ominous without the ghost stories thanks to the dense forest that surrounds it and casts it in shadow. The road has many supernatural tales associated with it, but there’s one you won’t have to seek out. It’ll find you.
A black hearse is said to often appear seemingly out of nowhere and follow other cars driving on the winding curves of the isolated road. The hearse will continue to follow, increasing its speed along the way. Many drivers have claimed to see the hearse and been run off the road by it, only for it to disappear without a trace after.
There’s a lot of bridges in the South with a ghost tale attached to them, and Stuckey’s Bridge is no exception.
The 157-year-old bridge runs over the Chunky River and is rumored to be haunted by a gang member named Stuckey who murdered and robbed travelers during the early nineteenth century in the area of where the bridge would eventually be built, reports The Meridian Star.
Stuckey was eventually caught, put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging at the bridge he is now said to haunt.
Since then, folks have claimed to see the apparition of a man hanging from the bridge as well as heard unexplained splashing they claim is the sound of his body hitting the water.
At the popular Poogan’s Porch restaurant in Charleston, you might not just experience a delicious meal; you may experience the supernatural as well.
The Victorian house that now serves as the home of Poogan’s Porch was built in 1888 and two sisters, Elizabeth and Zoe St. Amand, once resided there. The women were said to be incredibly close, so much so that when Elizabeth passed away, it sent the elderly Zoe into a mental breakdown.
After neighbors found her roaming the street calling out for her dead sister, she was taken to a local hospital where she lived out the rest of her life. It appears Zoe felt her afterlife, on the other hand, should be lived out at her former home.
Stories of folks spotting the ghost of Zoe on the street and inside the house, calling out and looking for Elizabeth, started shortly after her death, but became much more frequent once it was converted into a restaurant in 1976.
Oh, and did I mention a dog named Poogan, the restaurant’s namesake, also happens to haunt its rooms? Yep.
While Moon River Brewing Co. in Savannah, Ga., is a good place to relax and have a beer, it’s also rumored to be a good place to spot the supernatural.
The Brewing Co. opened in 1999 in the building that once housed The City Hotel, which was built in 1821 and closed in 1864. During its short time in operation, several deaths took place inside the hotel, and many believe the spirits of the deceased are still there today.
Staff and guests at the bar and restaurant have reported seeing bottles thrown on their own as well as felt an invisible force push them. Others say they have seen a glowing white apparition on the building’s upper floors.
Considering how many workers lost their lives at Sloss Furnaces’ in Birmingham, Ala. when it was in operation, is it any surprise that the former industrial site is said to be haunted?
Working at the furnace, which was in use for nearly 100 years, was considered to be very dangerous, and employees met grisly deaths — either by being incinerated, poisoned by carbon monoxide or falling victim to steam pipes that often burst unexpectedly — on a regular basis.
While the furnace, which was named a National Historic Landmark in 1981, may have closed up shop in 1971, it seems not all of its former employees left, according to The Travel Channel. At night, visitors have claimed to hear the screams of those who died, seen shadowy figures and heard the calls of a foreman deriding his crew.
Like a lot of ghost stories, the tale of Henry Vignes, who is said to haunt New Orleans’ St. Louis Cemetery, is a sad one.
Vignes, a sailor during the nineteenth century, trusted the wrong person with keeping his important documents, including the deeds to his family tomb, according to Ghost City Tours’ website.
The swindler sold the deeds and Vignes died before he could reclaim ownership. Instead of being placed in his family tomb, the sailor was buried in an unmarked grave in the St. Louis Cemetery.
Since his death, visitors of the cemetery have claimed to see Vignes looking for his grave. Some even say his ghost will approach the living and ask if they know where the Vignes tomb is. Others said his apparition can be heard saying “I need to rest!” as he wanders through the tombs.
Hellenistic Tesserakonteres: Largest Human-Powered Vessels In History
During the Hellenistic era, heavy polyremes warships such as hexaremes, septiremes, etc, became fairly common and were definitely used in battle, although the pentere remained the main line-of-battle galley.
“Appearing at the end of the fourth century BC in the fleet of Demetrios Poliorketes, these super-galleys expanded quickly to reach the level of twenty and thirty rows of oars and culminate, towards the end of the third century BC, with the forty of Ptolemy IV Philopator powered by 4000 rowers.”
~Patrice Pomey.
During the war between Ptolemaios Keraunos and Antigonos Gonatas, the Heraklean fleet (which fought on Keraunos’ side) was made up of “hexaremes, penteres and an octere”. The latter, probably the flagship, had 1600 oarsmen and 1200 soldiers and mariners on the decks, and two helmsmen. Memnon states that this giant ship was actually effective during the battle.
“These warships resembled to floating fortresses, very similar in size to the modern battleships and aircraft carriers. The tessarakonteres had a crew of 6.000 men (officers, oarsmen, sailors, marines and others), as many as a modern aircraft carrier.”
~Periklis Deligiannis.
Stats of the tesserakonteres: Length: 130 m. Beam: 17 m per catamaran hull. Longest rowing oars: 17 m. Oarsmen: 4,000, officers, ratings, deckhands: 400, Marines: 2,850.
Source & Illustration: Paweł Moszczyński for Mówią Wieki Magazine, Feb. 2010.
Mark Bere Peterson’s Hauntings, Urban Legends, Paganism & Witchcraft 