LANDVÆTTIR Ttir in Old Norse means literally "land wights," the guardian spirits of an area. The Landnámabók (the Icelandic "book of settlements," extant in thirteenth-century redactions but based on still older traditions) tells of a tenth-century settler who struck a deal with one of the landvættir and thereafter became a wealthy man. The same text cites an ancient law warning that the dragon-head ornament on a ship's prow should be removed before land is sighted, so as to avoid frightening off the landvættir. The early-thirteenth-century Egils saga tells that Egill once erected a pole with a horse's head and uttered a magic formula intended to arouse the landvættir to drive off the land's king. The Óláfs saga helga (Saga of Olaf the Saint, in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla), reports that Harald II once sent a man...