In Saxo Grammaticus's account of Ragnar Lodbrog, this event seems to be reflected in the story of an expedition of Ragnar's to Bjarmaland or Perm in Russia.
For Bjarmaland, though it gained a local habitation, is also in Norse tradition a wholly mythical and mythological place, more or less identical with the underworld (Niflhel, mist-hell).
So it appears in the history given by Saxo Grammaticus of the voyage to Bjarmaland of one " Gorm the old."
We see then that in virtue of some quite historical misfortune to the viking invaders, connected with a mist and with a great sickness which invaded the army, the place they have come to (in reality Paris) is in Scandinavian tradition identified with the mythic Bjarmaland; and later, in the history of Saxo Grammaticus, it is identified with the geographical Bjarmaland or Perm.
When Erik Blood-axe, son of Harold Haarfager, visited Bjarmaland in 922, he found Gunhild, daughter of Asur Tote, living among the Lapps, to whom she had been sent by her father for the purpose of being trained in witchcraft; and Ivan the Terrible of Russia sent for magicians from Lapland to explain the cause of the appearance of a comet.