Crows had a prophetic power.  The eagle sailing through the air, recalled to her that deathless bird which sits on the boughs of Ygdrasil, the tree of the world.  A secret spring, hidden amid the woods, seemed to her the emblem of that deep spring in which the Nornas spin and cut the thread of life.  To these traditions, far older than Christianity, she united the popular legends of the middle age.  If night, the whistling of the wind, the rattling of the rain, the murmur of the trees, made a confused murmur in her ears, she fancied that she heard the barking of dogs, the sound of horns, and the cry of the wild huntsman sentenced to wander forever from vale to vale, from mountain to mountain, because he had violated a Sabbath or saints’ day.  If, on some calm day, she looked at the golden and purple surface of the lake, she fancied that she saw, in the depth of the water, the spires and roofs of the houses of some city which God had punished for impiety, by burying it beneath the waves.

If she stood on the banks of a rapid stream, at the foot of a cascade, she said that the sounds she heard came from Stromkarl.  The Stromkarl has a silver harp, on which he plays wild melodies.  If his favor be gained, by any present, he teaches the listener his songs.  Wo, however, to the man who hears him for the ninth time.  He cannot shake off the supernatural charm, and becomes a victim to his imprudent temerity.

One evening all the family was collected around the earthen stove.  Eric was there.  Suddenly the sky, which in the morning had been dark and cloudy, was lit up as if by the blaze of a immense conflagration.  The aurora-borealis, that wonderful phenomenon of the north, glittered in the horizon, and gradually extended its evolutions from the east to the west.  Sometimes all the colors of the rainbow were visible, and again it glittered like a mass of fusees, or transformed itself into a vast white cloud, sparkling like the milky-way.  Again it would assume the most splendid blaze, and appear like a mantle of purple and gold.  For one moment the rays would be alligned, and gradually disappear in the distance; then they would cross each other like network.  Again they would arrange themselves in bows, dart out with arrowing points, shoot into towers and form crowns.  It might have been fancied the creation of a kaleidescope, into which the hand of a magician had cast jets of life, oscillating and floating under every form.  At the same time, there was heard in the air a sound like that accompanying the discharge of fireworks.

Eric, who had been asked to give an explanation of this phenomenon, analyzed the various theories of philosophers on the subject.  He especially referred to those of the Society of Copenhagen.  He said this was one of the phenomena which no philosopher had as yet explained; that of all the hypotheses on the matter, the most specious was that which ascribes the aurora-borealis to the reflection of the northern ices.