A Description of the Northern Peoples, 1555 I

The Swedish scholar and prelate Olaus Magnus issued his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus from Rome in 1555. It is an ethnographic essay on an encyclopedic scale, touching on a vast variety of topics -snowflakes and sea-serpents, sables and saltpetre, watermills and werewolves. Much of it was culled from ancient authorities, much from Magnus's own travels (his account of the Lapps has attracted particular attention). It is still a prime sourcefor information on the material culture, social history and folklore of pre-Reformation Sweden and Scandinavia as a whole. This is the first English translation of the whole work.