Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages

383 Pages·2010·3.19 MB·English

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
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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
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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