even dogs and horses hang beside human beings. (A certain Christian told me that he had seen seventy-two of their bodies hanging up together.) The incantations, however, which are usually sung in the performance of a libation of this kind are numerous and disgraceful, and it is better not to speak of them. In the scolia, there is an additional description: Near that temple is a very large tree with widespread branches which are always green both in winter and summer. What kind of tree it is nobody knows. There is also a spring there where the pagan are accustomed to perform sacrifices and to immerse a human being alive. As long as his body is not found, the request of the people will be fulfilled. A golden chain encircles that temple and hangs over the gables of the building. Those who approach see its gleam from afar off because the shrine, which is located on a plain, is encircled by mountains so situated as to give the effect of a theatre. For nine days feasts and sacrifices of this kind are celebrated. Every day they sacrifice one human being in addition to other animals, so that in nine days there are 72 victims which are sacrificed. This sacrifice takes place about the time of the vernal equinox. The 16th century Johannes Magnus, the Archbishop of Uppsala, asserted that the city was anciently founded by, and named for, an early Swedish king named Ubbo (Uppsala = Ubbo's Hall), who would have supposedly reigned . However, in the absence of any corroborating evidence, Magnus' accounts no longer enjoy widespread acceptance among scholars today. It was a symbolic moment when Pope John Paul II visited Scandinavia in 1989 and held an open-air mass at the royal mounds in Gamla Uppsala, as this was a Norse religion cultic centre, which became Sweden's first archbishopric in 1164. In 2000, the Swedish AsatruSociety restarted the tradition of holding blóts at Gamla Uppsala. History It is a testimony to the sanctity of the location in the mindset of followers of medieval Norse religion that Gamla Uppsala was the last stronghold of pre-Christian, Norse Germanic kingship. During the 1070s and 1080 there appears to have been a renaissance of Norse religion with the magnificent Temple at Uppsala described in a contested account through an eye-witness by Adam of Bremen. Adam of Bremen relates of the Uppsala of