The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia
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The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia
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 Sámi 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 Vikings in (pre)history The materiality of text Annaliste archaeology and a historical anthropology of the Vikings The Other and the Odd? Conflict in the archaeology of cognition Others without Othering Indigenous archaeologies and the Vikings 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 Philology and comparative theology Gods and monsters, worship and superstition Religion and belief The invisible population The shape of Old Norse religion The double world: seiðr and the problem of Old Norse ‘magic' The other magics: galdr, gandr and ‘Óðinnic sorcery' Seiðr in the sources Skaldic poetry Eddic poetry The sagas of the kings The sagas of Icelanders (the ‘family sagas') The fornaldarsögur (‘sagas of ancient times', ‘heroic sagas') The Bishop's sagas (Biskupasögur) The early medieval Scandinavian law codes Non-Scandinavian sources Seiðr in research 3. Seiðr Óðinn Óðinn the sorcerer Óðinn's names Freyja and the magic of the Vanir Seiðr and Old Norse cosmology The performers Witches, seeresses and wise women Women and the witch-ride Men and magic The assistants Towards a terminology of Nordic sorcerers The performers in death? The performance Ritual architecture and space The clothing of sorcery Masks, veils and head-coverings Drums, tub-lids and shields Staffs and wands Staffs from archaeological contexts Narcotics and intoxicants Charms Songs and chants The problem of trance and ecstasy Engendering seiðr Ergi, níð and witchcraft Sexual performance and eroticism in seiðr Seiðr and the concept of the soul Helping spirits in seiðr The domestic sphere of seiðr Divination and revealing the hidden Hunting and weather magic The role of the healer Seiðr contextualised 4. Noaidevuohta Seiðr and the Sámi Sámi-Norse relations in the Viking Age Sámi religion and the Drum-Time The world of the gods Spirits and Rulers in the Sámi cognitive landscape Names, souls and sacrifice Noaidevuohta and the noaidi Rydving's terminology of noaidevuohta Specialist noaidi Diviners, sorcerers and other magic-workers The sights and sounds of trance ‘Invisible power' and secret sorcery Women and noaidevuohta Sources for female sorcery Assistants and jojker-choirs Women, ritual and drum magic Female diviners and healers in Sámi society Animals and the natural world The female noaidi? The rituals of noaidevuohta The role of jojk The material culture of noaidevuohta An early medieval noaidi? The man from Vivallen Sexuality and eroticism in noaidevuohta Offense and defence in noaidevuohta The functions 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 encounter The earlyethnographies: shamanic research in Russia and beyond Shamanism in anthropological perspective The shamanic world-view The World Pillar: shamanism and circumpolar cosmology The ensouled world The shamanic vocation Gender and sexual identity Eroticism and sexual performance Aggressive sorcery for offence and defence Shamanism in Scandinavia From the art of the hunters to the age of bronze Seiðr before the Vikings? Landscapes of the mind The eight-legged horse Tricksters and trickery Seiðr and circumpolar shamanism Two analogies on the functions of the seiðr-staff The shamanic motivation Towards a shamanic world-view of the Viking Age 6. The supernatural empowerment of aggression Seiðr and the world of war Valkyrjur,skaldmeyjar and hjálmvitr Female warriors in reality The valkyrjur in context The names of the valkyrjur The valkyrjur in battle-kennings Supernatural agency in battle Beings of destruction Óðinn and the Wild Hunt The projection of destruction Battle magic Sorcery for warriors Sorcery for sorcerers Seiðr and battlefield resurrection Seiðr and the shifting of shape Berserkir and ulfheðnar The battlefield of animals Ritual disguise and shamanic armies Ecstasy, psychic dislocation and the dynamics of mass violence Homeric lyssa and holy rage Predators and prey in the legitimate war Weaving war, grinding battle: Darraðarljóð and Grottas˛ongr in context The ‘weapon dancers' 7. The Viking way A reality in stories The invisible battlefield Material magic Viking women, Viking men 8. Magic and mind Receptions and reactions Cracks in the ice of Norse ‘religion' Walking into the seiðr: contested interpretations of Viking-Age magic Questioning Norse ‘shamanism' Staffs and spinning Queering magic? The social world of war The Viking mind: a conclusion
References Primary sources, including translations Pre-nineteenth-century sources for the early Sámi and Siberian cultures Secondary sources Sources in archive Index
