Medieval legends

thumb|upright=1.2|Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Luilekkerland ("The Land of Cockaigne "), oil on panel (1567; [[Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]]

thumb|upright|Gambrinus in kingly garb sits casually on a beer cask as he regards a foaming chalice and balances a large pitcher on his thigh. An illustration from the catalogue of Ernst Holzweißig Nachf. (1898)

A merman (: mermen; also merlad or merboy in youth), the male counterpart of the mythical female mermaid, is a legendary creature which is human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes mermen are described as hideous and other times as handsome.

strategic pass or passes used by Alexander the Great

Prince of Wallachia

mythical figure common in western European legend

240px|thumb|Tannhäuser, from the Codex Manesse (about 1300).

ring worn by Solomon, in which was a stone from which, according to the Rabbins, he learned whatever he wished to know

mythical creature featuring in European folklore

fictional character

11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England

thumb | Mascot costumes of Grýla (left) and Leppaluði (right) In Icelandic folklore, Grýla is a monstrous entity who lives in the wilderness of Iceland. The name Grýla is first attested in medieval sources. The earliest unambiguous references to Grýla's gender and her association with Christmas, though, date only from the 17th century. In 17th-century poems about Grýla, she is generally represented as a hideous and greedy troll-like crone, who wanders between human settlements and demands charity from those she encounters, often asking for naughty children. Modern depictions of Grýla tend to f

thumb|right|Albrecht Duerer portrait of [[Charlemagne with Joyeuse]] In medieval legend, Joyeuse (; ; meaning 'joyous, joyful') was the sword wielded by Charlemagne as his personal weapon.

thumb|Alexander meets the Gymnosophists. [[Great Mongol Shahnameh, c. 1335. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery]] Gymnosophists (, gymnosophistaí, i.e. "naked philosophers" or "naked wise men" (from Greek γυμνός gymnós "naked" and σοφία sophía "wisdom")) were ancient Indian philosophers who pursued asceticism to the point of regarding food and clothing as detrimental to purity of thought. They are mentioned several times in Ancient Greek literature.

legendary character; ghost

mythical character from a medieval legend of the founding of Vilnius

legendary post-Roman king of north Britain

folklore character

second Isma'ili ruler of Alamut

body of literature and legendary material associated with the history of France, in particular involving Charlemagne and his associates

thumb|upright=0.7|Madog. Book illustration by A.S. Boyd, 1909.

thumb|right|A depiction of Sigmund by Arthur Rackham. In Germanic mythology, Sigmund ( , ) is a hero whose story is told in the Völsunga saga. He and his sister, Signý, are the children of Völsung and his wife Hljod. Sigmund is best known as the father of Sigurð the dragon-slayer, though Sigurð's tale has almost no connections to the Völsung cycle except that he was a dragonslayer.

dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged

creature/character in Irish mythology

medieval tale of a woman making a fool of an aged philosopher

phantom island in North Atlantic Ocean

in German legends, a Jewish nation that would invade Europe during the tribulations leading to the end of the world

legendary magical horse in chivalric romance

Arthurian legendary character

ramiro II of Aragon legend

legendary figure

mythical giant from Antwerp

ancient stone bridge in Greece

mercenary and pirate from France

concept in medieval and ancient philosophy referring to Fate

four times Lord Mayor of London (1354-1423)

13th-century French epic poem

literary cycle made up of Greek and Roman mythology

thumb|Amblett in a 17th-century Danish manuscript illustration Amleth (; Latinized as Amlethus) is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. Saxo's version is supplemented by Latin and vernacular compilations from a much later date. In all versions, prince Amleth (Amblothæ) is the

medieval legend

thumb|Rübezahl (Rübenczal) as a tailed demon, first known depiction by Martin Helwig, 1561

Italian saint

fairy creature from European mythology

protagonist of an early medieval travel account with cosmographical elements

motif in folklore and mythology

fictional knight in early French literature

13th-century Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston

literary work

Esclarmonde () is an opéra () in four acts and eight tableaux, with prologue and epilogue, by Jules Massenet, to a French libretto by Alfred Blau and Louis Ferdinand de Gramont. It was first performed at the Exposition Universelle on 15 May 1889 by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris.

thumb|Text from a manuscript of the Chanson de Guillaume: Tresque il vendreit de aurer Tervagant In the Middle Ages, Termagant or Tervagant was the name of a god that some European Christians believed Muslims worshipped. It originates in the eleventh-century Song of Roland.

legendary and allegorical figure of Carcassonne

Companion of St. Nicholas in folklore

legendary character, protagonist of the homonymous poem

thumb|Detail of choir (architecture)|choir windows in St Mary's church, [[Frankfurt (Oder), Germany (c. 1360s). The Red Jews wait at the banks of the river Sambation.]] According to rabbinic literature, the Sambation () is the river beyond which the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were exiled by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V (Sanchairev).

"Waldere" or "Waldhere" is the conventional title given to two Old English fragments, of around 32 and 31 lines, from a lost epic poem, discovered in 1860 by E. C. Werlauff, Librarian, in the Danish Royal Library at Copenhagen, where it is still preserved. The parchment pages had been reused as stiffening in the binding of an Elizabethan prayer book, which had presumably come to Europe following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England in the 16th century.

thumb|right|310px|Brendan discovering the Faroes and IcelandStamp sheet FR 252–253 of Postverk FøroyaIssued: 18 April 1994Artist: Colin Harrison

Iranian missionary

sword of Saint Ferdinand III, King of Castile

ninth-century Jewish merchant and traveller

German knight