“Years after conversion to Christianity, Saxon noblemen still danced with weapons in honor of the dead. In the mid-eleventh century, Bishop Gunther von Bamberg wore a mask of Theoderic the hero as he performed a spear-and-sword dance. Two hundred years later, knights of the Hohenstaufen emperors watched war dances that came down from heathen, cultic performances more than a thousand years earlier.” — Michael Speidel, Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas