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Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages PDF

383 Pages·2010·3.19 MB·English
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Witchcra f t and Magic in the Nord ic Midd le A ges THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Witchcra f t and Magic in the Nord ic Midd le Ages Stephen A. Mitchell university of pennsylvania press philadelphia . oxford Publication of this volume was aided by a gift from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy. Copyright 䉷 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mitchell, Stephen A., 1951– Witchcraft and magic in the Nordic Middle Ages / Stephen A. Mitchell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4290-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Witchcraft—Scandinavia—History. 2. Magic—Scandinavia—History. I. Title. BF1584.S23M58 2011 133.4⬘309480902—dc22 2010022016 o my very supportive family and friends This page intentionally left blank C o n t e n t s Preface ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Witchcraft and the Past 16 Chapter 2. Magic and Witchcraft in Daily Life 41 Chapter 3. Narrating Magic, Sorcery, and Witchcraft 74 Chapter 4. Medieval Mythologies 117 Chapter 5. Witchcraft, Magic, and the Law 146 Chapter 6. Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Gender 175 Epilogue: The Medieval Legacy 201 Notes 207 Works Cited 297 Index 353 Acknowledgments 367 This page intentionally left blank P r e f a c e This study examines the responses in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages to the belief that there existed people capable of manipulating the world through magical practices. To date, there have been no comprehensive evaluations of Nordic witchcraft beliefs between 1100 and 1525, whereas studies of Scandinavian witchcraft in the eras both before and after this period abound. The reasons for this situation are many. In large part, it is explained by the tendency for many of the late medieval materials, such as the Icelandic sagas, to be appropriated to discussions of the much earlier Viking Age; moreover, there is a view among some specialists that nothing much happened with respect to Scandinavian witchcraft before circa 1 1400. I argue, on the contrary, that much was happening and that an evalua- tion of this important meeting ground of church doctrine and vernacular belief systems in the period between the Viking Age and the early modern era has long been a desideratum, both for the study of witchcraft in Scandina- 2 via itself and for the study of witchcraft in Europe more broadly. The current work thus presents an account of developments in witchcraft beliefs through- out Scandinavia in the later Middle Ages, of how elite and nonelite, native and imported constructions of witchcraft evolved during the centuries before the Reformation, an era of profound and widespread changes that set the stage for the early modern crazes. A phrase like ‘‘Nordic witchcraft,’’ especially when framed by specific dates, suggests a highly bounded entity, a set of orthodox views held by a homogenous culture, but nothing could be further from the truth. What we know and what we can reconstruct about the world of Northern Europe from the early Iron Age through the Middle Ages says that it was always a heterogeneous and dynamic world, and, importantly, seen from the perspec- tive of the people we tend to think of as ‘‘Scandinavians’’ or ‘‘proto-Scandina- vians,’’ a world in which their neighbors, the Sa´mi, with their shamanic

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