The Viking way : magic and mind in late Iron Age Scandinavia

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Bibliographic Information

The Viking way : magic and mind in late Iron Age Scandinavia

Neil Price

Oxbow Books, 2019

2nd ed., fully rev. and expanded

  • : hardcover ed

Available at  / 1 libraries

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References: p. [345]-386

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women's power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men's physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. In this fully-revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sami with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings' bedrooms and on their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade. Combining archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables Abbreviations Preface and acknowledgements to the first edition Preface and acknowledgements to the second edition A note on language A note on seid 1. Different Vikings? Towards a cognitive archaeology of the later Iron Age A beginning at Birka Textual archaeology and the Iron Age The Other and the Odd? An archaeology of the Viking mind? 2. Problems and paradigms in the study of Old Norse sorcery Entering the mythology Research perspectives on Scandinavian pre-Christian religion Gods and monsters, worship and superstition The shape of Old Norse religion The double world: seidr and the problem of Old Norse 'magic' Seidr in the sources Seidr in research 3. Seidr Odinn Freyja and the magic of the Vanir Seidr and Old Norse cosmology The performers The performance Engendering seidr Seidr and the concept of the soul The domestic sphere of seidr Seidr contextualised 4. Noaidevuohta Seidr and the Sami Sami-Norse relations in the Viking Age Sami religion and the Drum-Time Rydving's terminology of noaidevuohta Women and noaidevuohta The rituals of noaidevuohta The ethnicity of religious context in Viking-Age Scandinavia 5. Circumpolar religion and the question of Old Norse shamanism The circumpolar cultures and the invention of shamanism The shamanic world-view Shamanism in Scandinavia Seidr and circumpolar shamanism 6. The supernatural empowerment of aggression Seidr and the world of war Valkyrjur, skaldmeyjar and hjalmvitr Supernatural agency in battle The projection of destruction Battle magic Seidr and the shifting of shape Berserkir and ulfhednar Ecstasy, psychic dislocation and the dynamics of mass violence Weaving war, grinding battle: Darradarljod and Grottas ongr in context 7. The Viking way A reality in stories Viking women, Viking men 8. Magic and mind Receptions and reactions Cracks in the ice of Norse 'religion' Walking into the seidr: contested interpretations of Viking-Age magic Queering magic? The social world of war The Viking mind: a conclusion References Primary sources, including translations Pre-nineteenth-century sources for the early Sami and Siberian cultures Secondary sources Sources in archive Index

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