the wide gulf which existed between himself and the gods. He believed,
too, in wraiths and fetches and guardian spirits, who followed
particular persons, and belonged to certain families--a belief which
seems to have sprung from the habit of regarding body and soul as two
distinct beings, which at certain times took each a separate bodily
shape. Sometimes the guardian spirit or fylgja took a human shape; at
others its form took that of some animal fancied to foreshadow the
character of the man to whom it belonged. Thus it becomes a bear, a
wolf, an ox, and even a fox, in men. The fylgjur of women were fond of
taking the shape of swans. To see one's own fylgja was unlucky, and
often a sign that a man was "fey," or death-doomed. So, when Thord
Freedmanson tells Njal that he sees the goat wallowing in its gore in
the "town" of Bergthorsknoll, the foresighted man tells him that he has
seen his own fylgja, and that he must be doomed to die. Finer and nobler
natures often saw the guardian spirits of others. Thus Njal saw the
fylgjur of Gunnar's enemies, which gave him no rest the livelong night,
and his weird feeling is soon confirmed by the news brought by his
shepherd. From the fylgja of the individual it was easy to rise to the
still more abstract notion of the guardian spirits of a family, who
sometimes, if a great change in the house is about to begin, even show
themselves as hurtful to some member of the house. He believed also that
some men had more than one shape; that they could either take the shapes
of animals, as bears or wolves, and so work mischief; or that, without
undergoing bodily change, an access of rage and strength came over them,
and move especially towards night, which made them more than a match for
ordinary men. Such men were called hamrammir, "shape-strong," and it was
remarked that when the fit left them they were weaker than they had been
before.

This gift was looked upon as something "uncanny," and it leads us at