Ribe healing-stick
The Ribe healing stick is a pinewood stick found at Ribe, Denmark, with a heavily pagan-inspired Christian spell. It dates to circa 1300 CE.
Description
Although ostensibly Christian, the charm written on the stick contains several native Germanic elements, such as alliteration and phrases also known from pagan poetry.The phrase 'nine needs' appears in several explicitly pagan charms, such as the Swedish Sigtuna plate 1 and the Icelandic spell-book Galdrabók. The term læknæshand is found in a pagan prayer in the Icelandic poem Sigrdrífumál, while the phrase "heavens above" or "high heaven" is used in Vǫluspá and in Old Saxon and Old English religious poetry as well as in the inscription on the Skarpåker Stone.