Th e Th irteenth Number: then, there/ here and now omens referred to the number of moons, female witchcraft , and that the thirteenth of something should be somehow diff erent from the other twelve. In the movie, there is an old woman identifi ed as the "angel of death" who was assigned to the job of the sacrifi ce of one of the deceased king's slaves. Th e "angel of death" appears clearly in the Ibn-Fadlan account as well: "Survint une femme âgée appelée l'Ange de la Mort qui fi t le lit; elle

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... était chargée de coudre et d'arragner le tout et c'est elle qui sacrifi ait les femmes esclaves. Je vis que c'était une sorcière, corpulente et rébarbative. " (Fadlan 61) However, in the movie, there is an additional scene, in which the angel of death is called upon for supernatural advice regarding the future. Th e gathered warriors have all heard the plea from the son of "Rothgar "to help rid his people of a monster, and have turned to the sorceress for advice. Th e instructions given from the sorceress was that the war party must be of twelve Norse warriors, and one person who was not like the others. It is the defi ning moment of the fi lm, and it is also one that has many precedents in folklore. But not, interestingly, in either the accounts of Ibn-Fadlan, or in Beowulf. To understand this, I suggest a turn towards a comparative view. Th irteen is of prime symbolic importance not just to European cultures, but to several diverse and distinct cultures around the world. Why is this? Why not eleven, also a prime number greater than ten, or fourteen, its numeric neighbor? Why would Michael Crichton's "Angel of death" prophecy be understandable within our culture, or, even more interestingly, in other cultures as well, such as the Aztec or ancient Tibetan? Such complex cases of polygenesis are rarely studied, or even acknowledged in the modern fi eld of folklore, most folklorists either favoring the Finnish historic-geographic method or avoiding origin studies altogether. While "independent invention" is recognized, there are relatively few studies on the complexities of such occurrences. Many cultures with traditions on thirteen are mentioned by writers. To formulate my study, I narrowed down my investigation into four (possibly fi ve) groups, all with very prominent symbolic traditions on thirteen. Th e fi rst was the early European tradition, with its rich modern (including cinematic) descendants. Th e second was the Aztec and Meso-American traditions. Th e third were several North American Native traditions, and the fourth was the pre-Buddhist Tibetan tradition, which Robert Ekvall had theorized as being connected to the Mongolian (the "possible fi ft h" ). Interestingly, there are many observable regularities and similarities amongst these traditions. Among the most common are connections with the moon and the calendar. It should be noted that attempting a comparative study across such a wide variety of cultures holds both promises and diffi culties. Th e chief diffi culty is that one must rely on secondary sources, on the experts themselves (it is rather unrealistic to expect any folklorist to have fl uency in the widely-varying cultures exhibiting the data) . Deciding who the expert is, of course, is not always without contention. I can only say that I have in all culture areas relied on the standardly accepted sources. Where considerable controversy exists (for example, in the case of interpreting megalithic structures in Europe) I give a brief synopses of the debate. In none of my examples, however, is there much contention over the issues covered in the current paper. My role was not to challenge experts in their own fi eld, but rather to compile the data in order to illuminate the puzzling similarities that the area experts themselves have elucidated.