A mythology is the comment of … one particular age or civilisation on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories … their perception of the inner realities.
Hilda Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964: 9)
When we think of ‘religion’ in pre-Christian Scandinavia, or read about it in our syntheses of the Viking Age, a number of familiar elements are always present. Our knowledge of this mythology is primarily based on a small number of written sources – the poems of the elder Edda and Snorri’s prose expositions in Gylfaginning, hints in skaldic poetry and the sagas – but this is backed up with contemporary narrative art from archaeological contexts, and the excavated detritus of everyday belief.
The outline of the Viking myth cycle is well-known, but worth reviewing to draw out points of relevance for the present discussion.
Some aspects of it belong to a level of over-arching scheme and cosmological order, such as the creation story which begins with Ginnungagap, the ‘yawning void’ filled with magical powers. The tales are sometimes contradictory, but Snorri tells us of two realms of ice and fire, Niflheimr and Muspell. Eleven or twelve rivers, named in the Grímnismál, flow out from these places into the emptiness, mixing and condensing in the mist. Perhaps the giant Ymir is born from this, or perhaps he was already there; in some ways the giants seem to predate it all. The great cow, Auðhumla ‘the hornless one rich in milk’, appears also at this time. Her milk provides food for Ymir, but she also licks the salty rime that has formed in the void. Under her tongue the first god slowly emerges from the ice. Somehow this being, Búri, produces a son, from whose union with a giantess comes the first of the Æsir. Óðinn has been born. Together with his brothers Víli and Vé he turns on Ymir and kills him, and then they begin to create the earth from his flesh. The seas come from his blood, the bowl of the heavens from his empty skull. Grímnismál says that the clouds were fashioned from his brain. Ymir’s hair becomes the trees, from two of which the gods shape the first humans, Askr and Embla.
At this time the worlds are also formed, but their number is unclear – at least nine levels of the underworld and possibly more, with a shadowy image of other realms in tiers above the sky (though this is probably a later addition following the Christian concept of heaven). There may have been others still, such as the water-world mentioned in two of the Eddic poems.
The sources also mention the coming of the divine families, the Æsir joined by the Vanir who seem to be somehow older, from an earthier, more fertile tradition. The realm of the gods is split by civil war, until the families join their forces.
They lived in Ásgarðr, a broad landscape dotted with buildings and fields. Óðinn resided in Valholl, the ‘hall of the slain’ with its roof thatched with shields, resting on rafters of spears. Each god and goddess had a magnificent homestead, shining with silver, gold and other ornament, set on its own land. The abode of humans was nearby in Miðgarðr, the ‘middle place’ connected to the home of the gods by Bifrost, the bridge of the rainbow. The dispersed settlement pattern of the gods in Ásgarðr duplicated and enhanced that of humans in this world. Beneath Miðgarðr, the many halls of the dead stretched down into the earth to Niflhel, nine leagues deep. In the east was Útgarðr, the home of demonic powers, trolls and other horrors. To the north was Jotunheimr, ‘Giant-Land’. Sometimes this place appears in the plural, so the primordial giants may also have had several worlds to dwell in.
Fig. 2.1 An animal with ‘tree-antlers’ depicted on a Viking Age wall-hanging (weave II) from Överhogdal in Härjedalen. This may be one of the four stags that graze in the branches of Yggdrasill, the World Tree (photographer unknown, Creative Commons).
Connecting them all was the ash Yggdrasill, the ‘World Tree’ (Fig. 2.1). We know of the creatures that lived on its trunk – the eagle at the top, the dragon underneath, and the squirrel that ran from one to the other carrying insults. Four harts grazed on the boughs, but Yggdrasill was refreshed daily from the well that lay under its roots. The latter stretched into every world, providing a hazardous route for travelers between them.
Other myths concern the inhabitants of these places, and their servants – the gods and goddesses, of course, but also the valkyrjur, nornir and other supernatural beings. They are surrounded by animals, each with its own special place in the cosmological scheme: cockerels, snakes and deer, goats, cats, hawks and ravens, wolves and dogs. At another level still we find the darker forces in the shadows of the Viking belief system – ambiguous subterranean creatures like the dwarfs and elves. Here too is the trickster Loki and his children, the wolf Fenrir, the ‘World Serpent’ Miðgarðsormr (or Jormungandr – it has several names), and Hel who had custody of the anonymous dead.
The majority of the myths relate the stories that weave them all together: the many conflicts with the giants, some comic, some brutally violent; the skilful cunning of the dwarfs and their commissions from Ásgarðr; the gods’ marvellous transportation – their horses, including Óðinn’s eight-legged steed Sleipnir, Freyr’s collapsible ship, the chariots of Þórr and Freyja; the theft and recovery of Molnir, Þórr’s hammer; Loki’s treachery and shape-changing; the fettering of Fenrir and the loss of Týr’s hand; Freyr giving his sword to Skírnir; the erotic tales of Óðinn’s seductions and Freyja’s many infidelities; Þórr fishing for the World Serpent; the stealing of Iðunn’s apples; and many, many more. At the centre of them run Óðinn’s quests for wisdom, and the awful predictions he receives of the end of all things. From these stem the death of Baldr, the flyting of Loki and his subsequent capture to be bound in the entrails of his son, all the long preparations for the last conflict.
This is one of the most crucial aspects of Norse mythology for any understanding of the Viking world-view. The end is always the same: the final battle at the Ragnarok, the ‘doom of the gods’ and the terrible things that will be unleashed to fight it (Fig. 2.2). In the words of Voluspá, the ‘Seeress’s Prophecy’ that we shall consider extensively below, it begins with a time of fear:
| skeggold, skálmold | an axe age, a sword age |
| – skildir ro klofnir – | – shields are riven – |
| vindold, vargold – | a wind age, a wolf age – |
| áðr verold steypiz. | before the world goes headlong. |
Voluspá 44; translation after Dronke 1997: 19
Fig. 2.2 A scene from weave Ia from Överhogdal, possibly depicting events from the Ragnarok. At the bottom may be the World Tree Yggdrasill, with above it the wolf Fenrir opening his jaws. In front of Fenrir may be Naglfar, the ‘Nail Ship’ bringing the dead to the last battle (photographer unknown, Creative Commons).
Three years of war will first shake the earth, followed by the fimbulvetr, a period of three winters with no summers between. The bonds of kinship, the social cement which held the Vikings’ world together, begin to dissolve: brothers kill brothers, cousins sleep with cousins, families are destroyed in the worst nightmare that the Norse mind could conceive.
Then the cataclysms begin, as the earth shakes, the trees and mountains fall, and Yggdrasill itself shivers. All bonds are broken, Loki is released and Fenrir runs free. Great wolves race across the sky: Skoll swallows the sun, while his companion Hati attacks the moon. The land begins to sink beneath the sea, whipped to a froth by the World Serpent as it writhes its way out of the waters and onto Vígríðr, the plain of battle.
In Ásgarðr the cockerel Gullinkambi, ‘Golden Comb’, is rousing the gods. Watching for danger at the head of the Bifrost bridge, Heimdallr blows his horn. Now is the time for Óðinn to take counsel with the oracles that he has been collecting against this day. He talks to the severed head of Mímr the sage, and is told what the future holds. Like him, every being in all the various worlds knows their fated role, that they will fall at the last, as the cosmos disintegrates around them.
Roosters are also crowing among the dead and in the realm of the giants. The armies of Hel march back from the grave. Fenrir’s many children are let loose from Járnviðr, the ‘Iron Wood’ in the east where the troll-women have bred them. The trolls’ shepherd, Eggþér the giant, sits on his burial mound and plays his harp, smiling to himself as the end that he has waited for at last arrives. The dwarfs are also awakened, and start to howl outside the rocky doors of their halls under the mountains. The elves too are on the move. Every giant of fire and frost, all the trolls and underground things, all hasten to the Ragnarok to fight out their age-old enmity with the gods.
Breaking loose from its moorings on the seabed, with Loki at its helm, we find surely the most terrible vessel from any mythology – Naglfar, ‘Nail-Ship’, made from the fingernails of the dead and crewed by all those who have ever drowned. We can picture a longship vast beyond imagining, muddy and rotten with weed, salt water pouring off its decks as it breaks the surface after the long rise from the bottom. As its cargo Naglfar brings the hosts of destruction to their appointed places.
Everyone is making for Vígríðr, where the battle will be joined. The armies of evil are championed by Surtr the fire giant, with his sword that is brighter than the sun. Leading the sons of Muspell he rides through a hole that they have ripped in the sky. Flames dance on every side as they cross over the rainbow, the Bifrost bridge, which cracks and collapses behind them. At the same time Fenrir bounds onto the plain, his lower jaw touching the ground while his upper jaw stretches to scrape the heavens. Fire springs from his eyes and beside him the Miðgarðsormr spits poison over the earth.
Óðinn mobilises his troops, puts on his golden helmet, and then leads the Æsir and Vanir to war. According to the Grímnismál, from each of Valholl’s five hundred and forty doors stride eight hundred warriors, each of whom once died valiantly in Miðgarðr and was rewarded with a place in Óðinn’s hall. An equal number have dwelt with Freyja in Sessrumnir, her hall on Fólkvangr in another part of Ásgarðr. In all, eight hundred and sixty-four thousand warriors will now fight for the gods, earning the hospitality that they have received. The number may be even greater because the Norse did not use the decimal system, and their ‘hundred’ was probably a hundred and twenty. This would mean that the gods have 1,228,800 troops at their disposal.
Against them stands the great mass of the ordinary dead, risen from their beds in Hel under Loki’s command. The frost giants are there with Hrymr at their head – they also arrived in Naglfar. The fire giants from Muspell are drawn up separately in a great battle array: “it will be very bright”, says Snorri. The plain of Vígríðr stretches a hundred leagues in every direction, and it is entirely covered with the armies gathered to fight at the Ragnarok.
When the battle is finally joined, the gods themselves are in the thick of it. Each of them is matched against a creature of the underworld. As he rides from Valholl, Óðinn makes directly for the wolf, Fenrir. Þórr tries to help him, but soon has his hands full as the Miðgarðsormr attacks. Around them, all across the plain, millions are fighting. The human dead of every kind are locked in combat, as is every other being from all the worlds.
As the killing wears on and on, the mortals fall again, meeting a second and final death. The same fate waits for all the other creatures, those who have dwelt in stones and deep in the forests, in water and fire, in the ice and in the air. Even the gods are dying. Many opponents slay each other in the duels taking place around the field – Týr and the hell-hound Garmr, Heimdallr and Loki. Þórr smashes the World Serpent with his hammer, but with a dying spasm it covers him with a fatal spray of venom. Even Óðinn does not escape his fate: he snags his foot in Fenrir’s jaws, and the lord of the gods is gulped down and eaten. Víðarr avenges his father by ripping the wolf apart. Surtr kills Freyr, helpless without his sword, and then lights the final fire that will consume all the realms.
The Norse world ends not with a whimper, but with a very big bang indeed. All the gods, all the giants, trolls and other monsters, all the mortals and every other living thing lie dead – either upon the field of Vígríðr or elsewhere. Nothing is mentioned of the goddesses and the human women who have presumably stayed behind while their menfolk fight, but perhaps they have remained in their homes. Wherever they are, they do not escape. All the great halls of the gods are burning, and the houses of every realm wither to ash in Surtr’s self-immolating fire. The stars fall into the sea, their heat turning the waters into a steaming mist that covers what remains of the world. Flames touch the sky and consume the heavens, and all of creation melts back into the void. Everything everywhere spins down to destruction, towards what has always been inevitable, the only possible end.
Under Christian influence, a myth of rebirth seems to have been added to the Ragnarok story as we see it in the closing strophes of Voluspá and Vafþrúðnismál. The earth rises again from the sea, and a son of Óðinn returns from the dead to find golden chess pieces sparkling in the green grass. Corn grows in the fields without being sown, and a hall for heroes stands on the plain: “there shall the worthy/ warrior bands dwell/and all their days of life/enjoy delight” (Voluspá 61, in Dronke’s 1997 translation). There is little to suggest that this was an original part of the Norse belief system, and its contradictions are clumsily unresolved – how can there be any “worthy warrior bands”, if everyone is dead? In the eleventh century or later it was probably added to the cycle of tales on which the composer of Voluspá drew.
We are left with a sobering conclusion, which is that the Vikings created one of the few known world mythologies to include the pre-ordained and permanent ruin of all creation and all the powers that shaped it, with no lasting afterlife for anyone at all. The cosmos began in the frozen emptiness of Ginnungagap, and will end in fire with the last battle. Everything will burn at the Ragnarok, whatever gods and humans may do. The outcome of our actions, our fate, is already decided and therefore does not matter. What is important is the manner of our conduct as we go to meet it.
The psychological implications of this and other aspects of the Norse ‘religion’ bear thinking about.
The mythological summary above draws on many sources. The Poetic Edda and Snorri’s Edda have already been mentioned, while overviews can be found in Davidson (1964) and other texts taken up in detail in this and subsequent chapters, including contentious points of interpretation. There are many guides and syntheses, but see Larrington (2017) for the latest scholarly overview, with an interesting alternative in Kure (2010); differing views of the Ragnarok can be found in Gunnell & Lassen (2013) and Hultgård (2017).
Research into these myth cycles of the Norse has been continuous since the beginnings of Viking studies, and has affected every perception of the Nordic past. In 1997 David Wilson explored the fascination that early medieval Scandinavia has exerted over the artistic imagination from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, and it was no accident that he chose as his title the double-emphasis of Vikings and Gods in European Art. A preoccupation for the mythologies of the North, and their extraordinary cast of supernatural characters, can be traced in every Western country (for an overview of this process, see Mjöberg 1980; Roesdahl & Meulengracht Sørensen 1996; Raudvere et al. 2001, 2005; Arvidsson 2007; O’Donoghue 2010; Jón Karl Helgason 2017). Óðinn, Þórr and the rest have been seen as everything from archetypes of Victorian values (Wawn 2000) to ideal subjects for more modern narrative media such as adventure novels, movies and comic books (Djupdræt 1998 for Danish work; Garrec’s 1996 exhibition catalogue for the French popular reception of the Vikings; Ward 2000 and Barnes 2001 on North American responses).
Within the academic sphere we can trace the study of Viking-Age religion along two parallel streams. One of these runs naturally within the discipline of history of religions, and the other within the equally important mainstream of Old Norse philology and saga studies which provides so much of the primary data. A detailed overview of this field would be inappropriate to the present work, but as background to a history of research for Nordic sorcery we can make a few general observations.
The question of source criticism has of course been central to this discussion from the beginning, especially concerning the reliability of the medieval Icelandic texts as evidence for the Viking Age that they describe. Until at least the midnineteenth century they were regarded as essentially true relations of the Nordic past, a literary counterpart to the great archaeological discoveries that were then being made in Scandinavia (Mjöberg 1980: 225–30). As the sagas began to appear in critical editions, chiefly under the editorship of Icelandic philologists, the discussion on their dating, origin and integrity also expanded. From the 1850s onwards the veracity of the sagas came under ever more intense scrutiny, with early contributions to the debate made by scholars such as Keyser (1866), Maurer (1869) and Heusler (1914), and later Liestøl (1929). By the time that Dag Strömbäck wrote his thesis in 1935, he could summarise a polarised situation where on the one hand the sagas were regarded as faithful oral histories preserved essentially intact since the Viking Age, and on the other dismissed as hopelessly compromised products of the medieval imagination.
As the historical view of saga research was gradually eclipsed by the source-critical approach, by the 1950s the sagas had come to be seen almost exclusively as literary constructs, analysed as to form, motif and composition in a similar manner to the medieval European Romance tradition. It is within this field that the majority of research on Old Norse prose has been undertaken in the last half-century.
From the early 1980s onwards, however, a new paradigm began to emerge in saga research in the form of a combined historical-literary approach. Influenced by the French Annales school discussed in chapter 1, a new generation of researchers began to explore the sagas in terms of the cognitive environments of their creation. Thus instead of seeking Viking-Age mentalités, the texts were seen as reflections of the world-views current in the thirteenth century and later, the Iceland of the Sturlungas in which scholar-politicians like Snorri played such a prominent role. Researchers such as Byock (1982, 1988, 2001), Hastrup (1985, 1998) and Miller (1990) have played a prominent part in this movement, alongside leading exponents from the ‘source-critical school’. Of the latter, Clunies Ross has probably made the most extensive contribution with her two-volume study Prolonged Echoes (1994, 1998a), which is taken up in chapter 3 alongside the work of another important historical-literary scholar, the late Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (e.g. 1983, 2000). The discussion on the sagas as sources for the Viking Age continues, needless to say, and Strömbäck’s observation that “it is now more perilous than ever to adopt a fixed and consistent position” (1935: 4) remains just as true today – especially for an archaeologist looking at textual material.
Parallel with the philological debate, and to some extent dependent upon it, was the interpretation of the Old Norse texts as source material for the specific study of religion. Here too, it is possible to trace a changing pattern of analysis over the last two hundred years. We shall examine specific works in detail below in considering research on Nordic sorcery, but we can briefly review some of the main trends here. Comparative theology also had its ‘historical school’, though its effects lasted a little longer. This was the same paradigm as that pursued in archaeology by Nerman and Lindqvist, as discussed in chapter 1. Here we see the same intensification of source-critical approaches, leading to a similar emphasis on the unreliability of the texts as evidence for Old Norse belief. As with mainstream saga studies, historians of religion also moved into a phase of literary-philological critique, which gathered momentum in the 1960s. Especially critical of the later medieval sources, this work focused on the creation of explanatory models.
Developing partly in phase with the literary critics, another school of comparative study took shape, which sought cross-cultural parallels for the components of ancient Scandinavian belief. Much of this work focused around the ideas of Georges Dumézil who placed greater reliance on Snorri than many of his contemporaries (see especially 1939, 1959 and the posthumous collection of essays from 2000). Dumézil’s influence has not declined, though some of the interpretations that are most central for his work are not generally supported today. These include his famous tripartite division of Indo-European religious culture, which has long been rejected in a Scandinavian context. In applying structuralism to religion, Dumézil and his followers like Folke Ström, E. O. G. Turville-Petre and, for a time, Bruce Lincoln pioneered an approach that is still relevant today, and has led to a number of separate avenues of enquiry.
The detail of much of this work will be considered below, but before turning to the specific questions of Nordic sorcery, we need to seek general patterns of consensus as to the nature of pre-Christian religion in the North – how was it organised, by and for whom was it operating? Although they do not form the primary focus of this book, these structures serve as a vital background against which the complex of sorcery can be considered.
The first observation we must make is that, beyond the convenience of disciplinary terminology, very few scholars still speak of Nordic ‘religion’ at all. In chapter one we encountered the notion of a ‘belief system’, perhaps a better term as it sets spirituality where it belongs alongside everything else that the Norse thought about, mixed together with every other aspect of their lives both sacred and profane.
Still, the notion of a system of any kind is misleading here. At present we in fact know very little about the detailed practice of Old Norse religion, but it is symptomatic that we conceptualise it as ‘pagan’, which both in English and the Scandinavian languages (hedendom etc) is taken to mean any set of rites and ceremonies deemed non-Christian in inspiration. Interestingly, we are by no means sure exactly what a northern European Christian would have thought and believed in the eighth to eleventh centuries. By formulating our ideas on early Norse religion by reference to that which it was not – Christianity – we are missing an essential point. It is problematic to apply what is effectively a monotheistic framework of interpretation to a whole pantheon of gods, and this also ignores the whole host of other supernatural entities that were at least as important as the Æsir and Vanir. Viking ‘paganism’ was probably never a consistent orthodoxy such as writers like Snorri tried to present, and may never have been systematically understood by those who practised it.
This applies not least to the inhabitants of Ásgarðr, and their relationship with human beings. In the same spirit as Philip Vellacott’s description of the gods of classical Greece (1973: 30f), the ‘worship’ required by the Norse pantheon was not adoration, or gratitude, or even unreserved approval, and was thus utterly unlike the Christian relationship to the divine. The religion of the Æsir and Vanir demanded only a recognition that they existed as an integral and immutable part of human nature and society, and of the natural world, and that as such they possessed an inherent rightness – perhaps even a kind of beauty. If one wished to avoid disaster, it was necessary to come to terms with the gods, and the terms would be theirs, not those of their followers. This is an important point in relation to the interpretations that I will develop in the following chapters, because a refusal to acknowledge the gods in this way could have dire consequences. It would also involve a contradiction, as such an act would be a denial of the undeniable. The question of ‘believing in’ the Norse gods was probably irrelevant.
In fact it is clear that their mythology was far from static, and changed both regionally and over time. It was influenced by Christianity, in different ways at different periods, and in different places. It may have been peripherally affected by Islam, and closer to home by the more familiar religions of the Sámi. The Vikings also encountered the spiritual beliefs of the Balts and Slavs, and the nomadic peoples of the western Asian steppe. In the west they met the indigenous inhabitants of Greenland and Canada’s eastern seaboard, though it is doubtful that any of their beliefs were absorbed.
All this is particularly visible in the archaeology, both in the material culture of spiritual belief – amulets, charms and so on – and in the evidence of mortuary behaviour. On the basis of burial ritual alone, we see variation not just on a regional scale but almost from one community to the next, expressed in differing opinions of what was the proper way to send the dead from this world to another. Not least, the ceremonies for the departed were the concern of the living, and may be in part read as such – with an eye for status, conspicuous consumption and a signalling of allegiance or politics. This is, of course, an old and familiar debate in archaeological circles (see Parker Pearson 1999 and Tarlow & Nilsson Stutz 2013 for overviews; Price 2008c for the Viking Age).
In sorting out this mass of perspectives, an essential first step is to ask exactly what kinds of supernatural beings we are dealing with. We also need to understand the balance between the ‘worship’ of the gods, in the sense described above, and other scales of relationship with the supernatural. Discussions of Norse religion tend to focus on the higher beings such as the Æsir and Vanir, but this overlooks a much broader range of creatures that may in fact have been more important to ordinary people. Some of these have a central role to play in the system of sorcery with which this book is concerned, and we may briefly review them here.
Beyond the gods themselves, what we might call the ‘invisible population’ of Scandinavia can be classified in six broad groups:
•servants of the gods
•beings of cosmological purpose
•giants
•supernatural beings of nature
•‘spirits’
•projections of the human soul
We can examine them in turn.
Firstly, many of the gods have ‘servants’ in the form of animals, often working for them as beasts of burden, steeds or in pulling their various vehicles. To some extent they also seem to symbolise the respective gods, and were the animals of choice for their sacrifices. Some of these are discussed in more detail in the following chapters, and all are described by Snorri in Gylfaginning; the animals that appear in the Eddic poems are interestingly discussed by von Hofsten (1957).
•Óðinn’s ravens, Huginn (‘Mind’) and Muninn (‘Memory’)
•Óðinn’s wolves, Freki and Geri (both meaning ‘Greedy One’)
•Óðinn’s eight-legged horse, Sleipnir (‘Sliding One’)
•Þórr’s goats, Tanngrísnir (‘Snarl-Tooth’) and Tanngnóstr (‘Gnash-Tooth’)
•Freyja’s un-named cats
•Freyja’s boar, Hildisvíni (‘Battle-Swine’)
•Freyr’s boar, Gullinborsti (‘Golden-Bristles’)
•Heimdallr’s ram? (the god may simply be associated with this animal)
Besides these we find one category of being directly connected with the gods, and with Óðinn in particular – the valkyries. Acting as ‘choosers of the slain’ and bringing the valiant dead to Valholl, the valkyries thereafter wait on them, carrying mead to their benches. They are discussed at length in chapter 6, but see Boyer (2014) for an overview.
•valkyrjur, ‘valkyries’
Beyond the named characters who generically belong to the different types of beings listed in the rest of this section, the Norse mythos contains a very great number of individual creatures with a specific place in the cosmos. Examples here include the various animals that live on and around the World Tree, the cockerels that act as guardians in the different realms, and so on. Common to them all is that they play little or no part in anything outside their precise function. While some of them are discussed later in the book, the majority will not be treated further here (an overview of these beings may be found in any of the general syntheses on Norse religion).
Three exceptions to this are the nornir who live in a shining hall by the roots of Yggdrasill (Halvorsen 1967b; Bek-Pedersen 2011). They water the tormented tree every day and coat its trunk with clay from the spring of knowledge. In Voluspá 20 the three maidens are named:
| Urð héto eina, | Urðr [‘Had to be’] they called one, |
| aðra Verðandi | the second Verðandi [‘Coming to be’] |
| – skáro á skíði – | – they incised the slip of wood – |
| Skuld ena þriðio. | Skuld [‘Has to be’] the third. |
| Þær log logðo, | They laid down laws, |
| þær líf kuro | they chose out lives |
| alda bornum, | for mankind’s children, |
| ørlog seggia. | men’s destinies. |
Voluspá 20; translation after Dronke 1997: 12
As embodiments of Past, Present and Future, the names of the nornir include an edge of necessity that alludes to their function as the mistresses of fate. Here they use wooden lots to decide human futures, though other sources describe them weaving a cloth for each life, in which every strand represented an event or moment – a great fabric of an individual’s fate, finished by the cutting of the final thread (though see Bek-Pedersen 2006 for a critical review of this material). Their fingernails each bear a rune. In addition to the three principal beings of this kind, Snorri mentions that many more nornir exist, both good and evil. These are described in Gylfaginning 15 as being of three different ancestries, descending from the Æsir, elves and dwarfs. As we shall see in chapter 6, the nornir share several characteristics with the valkyrjur and dísir (see Ström 1954).
•nornir, ‘norns’
Alongside the gods, probably the most important mythological beings were the giants. As we have seen, they play a major role in the Norse cosmogony and in their dealings with Ásgarðr. The giants seem to have been viewed as in some way beings of nature, embodiments of the elements and natural phenomena, and also as representative of all that stood outside the circle of human experience or culture (see Motz 1982 for an overview). It is as this vision of threat personified that they appear in opposition to the gods in the mythological stories. The same picture is revealed by their numerous names that survive, describing the giants and giantesses as “dirty, hairy, ugly, stupid and especially loud” (Simek 1993: 107; cf. Motz 1981; the names are listed in Orchard 1997: 191–5). The giants are rarely described in detail, though their strength and cunning is a consistent feature. There are, however, some exceptions, as the giants are occasionally learned. At least some of the giantesses are objects of desire for the gods, just as many giants want goddesses as sexual partners (see Clunies Ross 1994: 107–40). They have few dealings with mortals. In several important studies that have partly re-shaped our view of Norse mythology, the historian of religions Gro Steinsland (1986b, 1991) has suggested a cultic role for the giants, and that the frequent sexual alliances between them and the gods represent a constant theme in Nordic kingship, symbolising the unification of different social forces in a sacred marriage. They may also represent other cultures, such as the Sámi, though this would imply a very pejorative view of them on the part of the Norse.
•jotnar, ‘giants’
The dwarfs were also important beings in the Norse mythos, and frequently appear in the stories of the gods (de Vries 1957: §181; Halvorsen 1958). More than a hundred of their names are recorded in the þulur and in the so-called ‘catalogue of dwarfs’ interpolated in Voluspá (10–16). They are generally helpful beings, though occasionally devious. The dwarfs are seen as often very wise, and as guardians of knowledge. They are skilled miners and craftworkers, especially in metals, and as in many cultures this transformation of ore into steel takes on a mystical, magical quality in the Norse myths. Many of the gods’ tools, instruments, items of jewellery and vehicles are of dwarfish manufacture. The dwarfs live underground, mostly in mountains, and their ‘apartness’ may again be significant. There is little evidence that they played any part in cultic ceremonies, but they could interact with humans, mostly in a positive way; they may also be referenced in the ritual space of the Icelandic hall (Gunnell 2001). In Snorri, they are seen as a sub-category of elves, svartálfar or ‘black elves’. There is little direct evidence as to their appearance, but the modern connotations of small stature inherent in their name were not current in the Viking Age and first appear in the medieval period.
•dvergar, ‘dwarfs’
The elves formed a more general category of being, playing little role in the mythos as such (though they do appear occasionally, as in Loki’s accusation that Freyja has slept with every elf in Ásgarðr – Lokasenna 30). They appear in many different guises, and often had contact with humans. There is some suggestion of links to Óðinn, and that they were in some way offered to in a similar fashion to the dísir (see below). For example, the skaldic poem Austrfararvísur by Sigvatr Þórðarson, dating to c.1019, mentions an álfablót to Óðinn held in a hall, a ceremony over which a woman seems to preside; there are also two saga accounts of such ceremonies (de Vries 1932; 1957: §184). The elves are seen as bringers of good and bad fortune, as omens of luck or doom, as helpers and hinderers, and as bringers of sickness or health. They were also one of the longest-lived elements of pre-Christian beliefs, persisting even today in folklore. Along with the dwarfs, trolls and other similar creatures they have been subsumed into the more general concept of the huldufólk, ‘hidden people’, who take many different regional forms and names (Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1998a: 136–139).
•álfar, ‘elves’
On a different level, occurring in the sources in contexts which bring them into contact with ordinary humans, were other giant-like beings of many different kinds. Usually evil or ill-tempered, they are sometimes a manifestation of the undead, and are also occasionally associated with a degree of sexual deviancy. They are described as living in rocks or mountains, in streams and rivers, or generally underground. Collectively the trolls and their kind form the most common type of supernatural creature in the sources (see Hartmann 1936 and Lindow 2014 for comprehensive surveys of these creatures). There are no secure depictions of trolls in late Iron Age material culture (though how could we tell?), but one may perhaps turn to the strange little monsters made of stamped gold that have been found on Bornholm (Laursen & Watt 2011: 9; Kaul 2018).
•þurs, ‘ogres’
•troll, ‘trolls’
Perhaps the broadest, and least defined, category of supernatural being can best be termed ‘spirits’. Again, following their introduction here many of them are discussed in later chapters.
Among the foremost of these were the dísir (Ström 1954, 1958; de Vries 1957: §311, 528f). Always female, they seem to have been part deity and part spirit. There are references to sacrificial festivals in their honour, and even special buildings – dísarsalir – where these were held (Gunnell 2000). They appear in place-names, including a Dísaþing, and are also occasionally connected with particular gods, especially Óðinn. Poems seem to have been composed as tribute to them. Several of the Eddic poems, such as Atlamál in grœnlenzko, strongly imply that the dísir were the souls of dead women, serving a function similar to the valkyrjur. Dísir could also ‘belong’ to a person or their family, and in some saga accounts they appear almost identical to the fylgjur discussed below, communicating messages and warnings in dreams (spádísir). The element -dís is found in compound words in the sense of both ‘goddess’ and ‘woman’, adding further dimensions to these complex beings. The same element is found occasionally in female personal names, sometimes tellingly combined with the names of gods, as in Þórdís and Freydís. In a unique case we also know of a woman called Óðindís, commemorated by the Hassmyra runestone from Västmanland (Vs 24; Gräslund 1995: 462–6). The dísir also appear in other variants, including the landdísir, who seem to have lived in rocks.
•dísir
•landdísir, ‘land-dísir’
•spádísir, ‘prophecy-dísir’
There were also spirits of the land, the landvættir, which appear to have been some kind of guardian beings of place (de Vries 1957: §185; Solheim 1965). They appear occasionally in sagas, and in other medieval sources. They could be aroused to anger by trespass, but could also be frightened away – Landnámabók records the Ulfljóts law code that required the figureheads to be removed from ships’ prows when approaching Iceland, so as not to scare the landvættir. There may have been some congruence between these spirits and the landdísir.
•landvættir, ‘land spirits’
Two further types of spiritual beings could be summoned in the course of sorcerous performances, and were known as gandir and verðir (Tolley 1995a), who may have been subsumed in a general word for such beings, náttúrur. Little is known of their form or origin, but they could be employed to provide their summoner with knowledge of the future or distant events, as intermediaries with the dead (the verðir in particular may even be the spirits of the departed, at least in some form), or as agents of destruction. A crucial element of Old Norse sorcery, these beings are discussed at length in chapter 3.
•spágandir, ‘spirits of prophecy’?
•verðir, ‘spirits’?
•náttúrur, ‘spirits’?
Other entities served more specific functions, such as mara, the Nightmare which ‘rode’ people in their sleep. This terrible creature appears in a number of Old Norse sources, and by comparison with similar spiritual beings it has been very well-studied (Tillhagen 1960, 1966; Raudvere 1991, 1993; see also Ginzburg 1990: ch. 3/2 for a brilliant overview of nightmare traditions in Europe). It is described most often as a threatening dream-creature, sometimes a horse. Occasionally it is the spirit-form of an evil sorcerer, and sometimes an agent of supernatural destruction unleashed upon an enemy. The mara was another of the longest-lived of the beings in which the Viking-Age Norse believed, and can be traced far into the post-medieval period. It is discussed below in chapters 3 and 6.
•mara, the ‘Nightmare’
In the Viking-Age Norse understanding of reality, human beings also possessed dimensions beyond the physical body. In modern works these have been discussed in terms of soul beliefs, but it is important to emphasise that in many ways these aspects of early medieval Scandinavians were actually separate beings, with their own concerns and their own independent existences (early overviews are provided in Storm 1893, Blum’s 1912 book on protective spirits, and Falk 1926; one of the most comprehensive summaries may be found in Ellis 1943: ch. 5; see also Turville-Petre 1964: 221–30, Strömbäck’s 1975 & 1989 essays on Nordic soul beliefs; and Gräslund 1994 for an archaeological analysis of possible earlier archetypes).
One of these human projections was the fylgja, literally ‘follower’ but more often translated ‘fetch’ (Rieger 1898; Lagerheim 1905; de Vries 1957: §162; Ström 1960; Mundal 1974). These appear either in dreams or to those gifted with powers of second-sight, most often in contexts of warning or as premonitions of doom. Crucially, the fylgjur were always female, even those of a man. They could take animal form, though often retaining some human element, especially about the eyes. The word may be related to fulga, ‘caul’ and fylgja, ‘afterbirth’, suggesting that these beings may have been seen as a sort of detached aspect of a human (special beliefs relating to those born with a caul are common throughout Europe, as we shall see in chapter 6). The fylgjur could be inherited, and the same individual fylgjur were attached to a constant family line. However, they were also independent beings, and could ‘reject’ a person whom they did not favour. Some fylgjur seem to have ‘moved on’ at a person’s death, to lead entirely separate lives. In essence they seem to have been a sort of spirit guardian, perhaps a dead ancestress, protecting an individual with supernatural force. It is interesting that one of the formal grades of concubine in early medieval Iceland was called a fylgikona – a ‘follower woman’ – and her relationship with her patron was called fylgilag, but we do not know exactly why (Auður Magnúsdóttir 2001: 109–19). Many Icelanders still believe in the fylgjur today, running in families just as before. We shall encounter them several times in the following chapters.
•fylgjur, ‘fetches’, ‘followers’
Related to the fylgjur, and similarly connected with concepts of destiny, was the hamingja (de Vries 1957: §161; Solheim 1961). This was the personified luck of a person, and represented a spirit of good fortune. It was a separate being, and again like the fylgja it could be inherited, though it could also be transferred outside a particular family. The motif of a person’s luck deserting them or returning recurs in the sagas, and the movements of the hamingjur could be seen by those with special powers of perception.
•hamingjur, ‘luck-spirits’, ‘guardian-spirits’?
Another aspect of the Viking-Age human personality was the hamr, the ‘shape’ (de Vries 1957: §160f; Ström 1961a). The hamr was what changed in the course of shape-shifting, linked to the lycanthropic beliefs in werewolves, bear-men and other transformations that we shall consider in chapter 6. As such it seems to have represented the body’s physical form – not just in terms of superficial appearance but as the shell which held all the other aspects inside it. The Old Norse verb for shape-shifting, skipta homum, thus conveys something far more fluid and ‘real’ than our modern equivalent, implying the fundamental restructuring of the self. The word hamr is also related to hamingja, and it is possible that the latter represents an independently mobile form of the ‘shape’. If the hamr was destroyed in this separate form, the physical body died at the same time.
•hamr, ‘shape’, ‘shell’
To some extent representing aspects of all the above was the hugr, a word difficult to translate but probably meaning something rather abstract such as ‘soul’ or even ‘mind’ (de Vries 1957: §160; Solheim 1962). The hugr has been described as combining “personhood, thought, wish and desire” (Raudvere 2001: 102). It seems to have represented the essential nature of a human being, and Strömback (1975) argues that it had a kind of aura that others could feel intuitively. Thus in Volsunga saga the evil King Atli (i.e. Attila the Hun) is described as having an úlfshugr, the ‘essence’ of a wolf. The word for a foreboding was hugboð, and as with the premonitions that accompany the movements of the fylgjur it seems that the hugr could visit others to give warning. As we shall see in chapters three and six, when a sorcerer traveled in ethereal form it was both their hugr and their hamr that were left behind. This may also be reflected in Voluspá 18, in the difference between the breath of mortal life that inhabits a body, and the soul which may be renewed (cf. Dronke 1997: 123f).
•hugr, ‘soul’?, ‘essence’, ‘mind’?
The human dead were also feared as corporeal beings, as Norse revenants were not insubstantial ghosts in the modern sense, but physically reanimated corpses (Klare 1934; Ellis 1943: ch. 6; Turville-Petre 1964: ch. 15; Sayers 1996). They were almost always evil and destructive, regardless of the person’s character when alive, and in death had often gained additional powers such as great strength or sorcerous ability. The unquiet dead form a consistent theme in the written descriptions of Viking-Age sorcery, and we will examine a number of examples in the following chapters.
•draugar, ‘ghosts’, the ‘undead’
•aptrgangur, ‘revenants’
Thus far we have reviewed the supernatural inhabitants of the Norse mythology, but how did the people of the Viking Age bridge the gap between their world and that of the others? A brief consideration of the over-arching structure of Norse religion is necessary before beginning the investigation of its sorcerous parallel that comprises our main theme.
In some senses, as with the mythology, the structure of Nordic pre-Christian religion is well-known. The general syntheses give a thorough grounding in the cults of the gods, and in the practical reflections of the cosmology considered above (the latest of these is Steinsland 2005, but see also earlier overviews such as Ström 1961b and Holtsmark 1992 [1970], DuBois 1999; Lindow 2001; Näsström 2002a; others are considered later in the chapter). However, of the physical structures of religion, the material culture of places of ‘worship’, the landscapes in which they were set, and the functionaries who served there, far less is known.
The work that set the pattern for studies of Nordic cult buildings was Olaf Olsen’s Hørg, hof og kirke (1966), which placed the majority of pre-Christian rituals in open-air enclosures and sacred groves that would leave minimal archaeological trace. Olsen proposed a hierarchy of cult sites, with the hof as a permanent religious centre in a building, and the horgr as a less elaborate ‘holy place for nature-worship’ (ibid: 282). To these were added other, less easily defined, sites for religious observance, such as the vé sanctuaries that were tentatively identified with the kind of massive stone settings found under the royal mounds at Jelling, and at Lejre. Olsen’s views fitted neatly with the occasional excavated traces of ‘temples’, such as the structural remains found beneath the churches at Mære (Lidén 1969) and Gamla Uppsala (excavated by Lindqvist in 1926 and reported by Nordahl in 1996). Together these formed a composite picture of a few major ‘cult centres’, often under the patronage of elites or serving the needs of fledgling kingdoms, surrounded by a more dispersed network of local places of reverence (though see Brink 1992 and Gräslund 1992 for important critique of Olsen’s concept of cult continuity).
Fresh material appeared in the late 1980s, when the boom in Scandinavian infrastructure development led to large numbers of rural excavations in advance of pipelines, motorways and rail links. As a result of this work, which has continued ever since, a number of new structures have been found which support the idea of small-scale, local cultic and votive activities carried out at special sites. The modest buildings and enclosures found in these contexts resemble Olsen’s idea of the horgr or something similar. In Sweden such structures have so far been found as part of extended farmstead complexes of the Viking Age at Sanda and the Migration period at Säby, both in Uppland (Åqvist 1996), and on a Viking period farm at Borg in Östergötland (Nielsen 1997); interesting work has also been undertaken in Norway from a landscape perspective (Heide 2014). More ephemeral stone constructions, often bounded with posts and with deposits of offerings have been found at Helgö (Zachrisson 2004), Götavi (Svensson 2010), and Lilla Ullevi (Bäck et al. 2008; Hållans Stenholm 2010) amongst others (Price 2014a & b). There are also more spectacular exceptions, such as the extraordinary cult building – really, almost a ‘temple’ – with several centuries of occupation at the proto-urban site of Uppåkra in Skåne, the predecessor to Lund (Larsson 2004, 2006, 2007).
At the same time, new studies of sources for the Gamla Uppsala ‘temple’ have suggested that it may have been a very large feasting hall in which pagan festivals took place at certain times, rather than a dedicated religious building in its own right (see Dillmann’s article and other papers in Hultgård 1997; Alkarp & Price 2005; Sundqvist & Vikstrand 2013; Eriksson 2018). Olsen’s hof would fit this pattern, with the slight change that the cultic rituals were held actually in the homes of the leading families – or in the royal hall, in the case of Gamla Uppsala. The notion of prominent buildings taking on a temporary role as ‘temples’ for blót ceremonies or other rituals is now generally accepted, and has gained further support from the new programme of excavations to re-evaluate earlier findings at the famous Icelandic site of Hofstaðir. The cultic functions do not not seem to be clearly reflected in the architecture of the admittedly high-status hall, but the building was decorated by the skulls of oxen sacrificed in seasonal rituals (Lucas & McGovern 2007; Lucas 2009).
The final and most elusive component of this cultic landscape, that of the open-air sanctuaries, has also left some remarkable physical traces. For a long time the only known example came from the island of Frösö in the Storsjö lake near Östersund in Sweden, where excavations in the mid-1980s under the floor of the medieval church uncovered the remains of what appears to be a Viking-Age sacrificial grove (the find is summarised in Hildebrandt 1989, the osteological material is treated in Iregren 1989 and Magnell & Iregren 2010; Näsström 1996 provides a general comment). Directly under the site of the medieval altar was found the badly-decayed remains of a birch tree, with a trunk approximately 0.5 m in diameter and root systems spreading out up to 3 m. The tree had clearly been deliberately felled. Spread over an area of 9 m2 around the stump was a very large assemblage of animal bones, which on stratigraphic grounds could be seen to have accumulated while the tree was still standing. The bones were mostly from quite young animals, primarily game. They were not from ordinary food remains or slaughter-waste, though a few of them bore traces of butchery. Some animals were represented by the whole body, while others were present only as skulls. In total, the following remains can be reconstructed:
•5 bears (whole body)
•6 elks (heads only)
•2 stags (heads only)
•5 sheep/goats (primarily heads, very few bones from legs and feet)
•11 pigs (primarily heads, very few bones from legs and feet)
•2 cows (primarily heads, very few bones from legs and feet)
•Bones from reindeer, squirrel, and teeth from horse and dog
Radiocarbon dates were obtained from the deposits with the bones (920 ± 140 cal. AD) and the latest roots of the tree (1060 ± 75 cal. AD), suggesting that the site was in use in the tenth century and the tree probably cut down in the eleventh. Two large Viking-Age burial mounds survive in what is now the churchyard, and would have lain only a few metres from the tree. It is also possible that these were part of a larger cemetery, now removed by the modern graves.
Everything points to the Frösö tree as being the site of animal offerings, perhaps deposited there as the remains of feasts, or actually hanging from the boughs and later falling to the ground as the bodies decayed. The latter would seem to fit the five whole animals (the bears), while the others could also have been set up as hides with the cranium and hooves attached (the domestic livestock), or present as severed heads (the elk and deer). The place-name associated with the church is Hov (i.e. hof ), and Frösö means ‘Freyr’s Island’, both of which are at least of Viking-Age date and would perfectly fit a cult site. The whole complex is also situated at the highest point of the island, with a viewshed far over the surrounding lakelands and mountains.
The Frösö example has now been joined by the major, and perplexing, sacrificial complex at Lunda in Södermanland, Sweden (Andersson 2006; Andersson et al. 2004, 2008), where a low hill has been the scene of repeated and long-term rituals of discard and offering but without a clear spatial focus. Scatterings of material, including manufacturing waste, have been strewn through trees and among the rocks in what was clearly a special place with a long continuity in the life of its communities – a different kind of lunda (grove) but perhaps just as important. A nearby sequence of buildings also preserves ritual deposits in the form of gilded figurines, adding to the engima of the site. To this can be added the growing study of ritual deposits in lakes, rivers and wetlands, another dimension of open-air ritual (e.g. Lund 2008, 2009; Raffield 2014).
All the above can be combined to give us the structural components of the cultic landscape – the temple-halls, the open-air sanctuaries of the horgr and vé, and the sacred groves with their offerings (Carlie 2006; Mattes 2008; Nordberg 2011; Sundqvist 2016; Kaliff & Mattes 2017; Holst et al. 2017). However, an important dimension of this that is only now beginning to be recognised is the way in which such places were also reflected in the organisation of the landscape itself. Our point of access to this is through the place-names, and by extension to what they once represented in terms of physical settlement.
These approaches have been extensively developed over many years by Stefan Brink (e.g. 1990, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2013), who presents a series of case-studies from all over Sweden examining the social development of landscape during the Viking Age. He has argued that the small polities from which early kingdoms developed were built up effectively as a series of components, spatially distinct in a functionally-zoned landscape of settlement. The name of each place reflects a different political or social function, and together they build a network of religious and secular power imprinted on a careful spatial organisation. In the various areas that Brink presents, we see that the names of the sacred landscape cluster around those of the political one. Thus we find central-place signals such as husa, tuna and sal alongside the sacral names of lunda, vi, harg, hov, *al and åker. The theophoric names have also been focused upon by Per Vikstrand, with a case study of the area around Storsjö lake in Jämtland (1996), and broader syntheses in 2001 and 2004 on the sacred patterning of space.
At the broadest level we can thus perceive a landscape of ‘religious’ functions, interwoven with the structures of secular power. From archaeology we can also reconstruct what some of these sites of cultic centres may have looked like in reality. The missing element is that of the human practitioners and functionaries who served at these places, and through whom the system of Viking religion worked.
In my remarks above on the nature of religion, I drew a distinction between the modern popular understanding of this term – its connotations of orthodoxy and controlled interpretation – and the belief systems of the Viking Age. However, this statement can be qualified in some ways, because there is also direct evidence of social stratification in the access to supernatural knowledge. These people are known partly from the later written sources – occasional mentions in the sagas and þættir – but also from runestones and place-names. Some of the latter reflect the offices of those who served there.
At one level are the secular, political names, beginning with the power-holding individuals from the king (konungr) through the highest stratum of chieftains such as the drótt, jarl and hersir. Here we also find the second tier of terms for military retinues and local administrators – karlar, rinkar, drængar, svennar and so on (Brink 1996: 267f and references therein). Alongside these we find much more shadowy traces of what seem to have been cultic leaders. Included in this were a number of figures whose precise function is somewhat obscure – the vivil, erilaR, þulr and véseti – along with others such as the *lytir, who appear to have had some divinatory or lot-casting associations. The concept of a ‘priesthood’ is probably misleading here, as there is no evidence of formal initiations into the requirements of a specific office, but rather an emphasis on directed skills in finite contexts. What little evidence there is suggests that some or all of these individuals possessed a knowledge of runic lore, the recitation of magical formulae, and perhaps a responsibility for the maintenance of oral record-keeping (the main sources are summarised by Brink 1996: 266f and Sundqvist 1998, 2007, while a more cursory overview may be found in Näsström 2002b: 92–101).
Some of these people spanned the divide between spiritual and secular power, the most profound manifestation of which has been put forward in the notion of sacral kingship (a complete summary of the considerable research in this field may be found in Sundqvist 2002). Though there is little evidence to suggest that the early Nordic kings were actually thought to be divine, the royal appropriation of religious roles and associations was clearly central to the long process of state formation and the consolidation of centralised power.
The same pattern was played out at a more mundane level, in the form of the goði (Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1998b). These were the wealthy landowners and chieftains who also seem to have fulfilled a kind of ‘priestly’ function as officiaries in cultic performances. It was probably these men whose great feasting halls were what was meant by the hof that we have seen above, and in Ynglingasaga 5 Snorri specifically mentions hofgoðar. The evidence for these figures is overwhelmingly Icelandic in origin, though the sagas place them in other countries too, such as Norway. Outside Iceland the term is known only from two Danish runestones, with inscriptions that hint at the goðar having once had a purely ritual function, their political power developing over time (Brink 1996: 267; Näsström 2002b: 94ff).
The goði also had a female equivalent, the gyðja, whom we will encounter again in the context of sorcery. The role of women in the officialdom of cultic practice was taken up relatively early in Viking studies, especially in relation to fertility rituals (e.g. Phillpotts 1914), and it is clear that some of the gyðja enjoyed a very high status in the apparatus of cult. Several factors suggest a connection to Freyja and the Vanir, and both the goði and the gyðja could have responsibility for the sacrificial blót (cf. Näsström 2002b: 97f; Ljungkvist 2011).
A constant element in the written descriptions of all these ‘offices’ and ‘titles’ is that they could occasionally be combined with additional roles – again, this merging of secular and ‘religious’ power. There are suggestions that the inner access to the gods and their servants was relatively restricted, but more along lines of social standing than of initiation into the mysteries. Similarly, the various ‘officials’ mentioned above do not seem to have had a priest-like monopoly on communication with otherworldly powers, and this is important when we come to consider sorcery below. It is also clear that behind the cultic rites and those responsible for them, there was another level of popular belief and unarticulated superstition.
Here we find the mythology reflected in small ways, in everyday practices corresponding to everyday beliefs – though the latter may be far from mundane. In Gylfaginning (51) Snorri gives us a glimpse of this, relating to two aspects of the Ragnarok story. In the account above we have seen the ‘Nail-Ship’, Naglfar, and the vital role it plays in ferrying the armies of evil to fight against the gods. Because it is made from the fingernails of the dead, Snorri explains that this is why one should be very careful to trim the nails of a dying person – there is no reason to hasten the ship’s construction by contributing the raw materials. The exact corollary of this is mentioned later in the same passage, in relation to Víðarr’s shoe. After Fenrir has swallowed Óðinn, his son Víðarr plants his foot on the wolf’s lower jaw, which he presses down while forcing its mouth wider and wider. Fenrir is torn in two, and Óðinn is avenged. The animal’s jaws are enormous, stretching from the earth to the sky, so Víðarr obviously needs some impressive footwear: Snorri tells us that his shoe is sewn from all the tiny scraps of leather left over when anything is made here in Miðgarðr. One should therefore be careful to throw these away, because every little helps.
The same process is probably visible in the archaeology of pendant ‘amulets’ and ‘charms’ of the kind that we shall consider in chapter 3. Occasionally we are given a small window onto a broader scene, in which we can perceive not just objects but actions taken with them. A good example emerged at Birka in the excavations of the early 1990s, when a number of amulets of different kinds were found built into the make-up of a road through the town. Too many of these were found within a small area for there to be any question of accidental loss, and it seems certain that an amulet ring, Þórr’s hammer and a miniature weapon were deliberately laid down while the road was undergoing one of its periodic repairs (see Price 1995b: 75f).
The fabric of religious belief and practice in Viking-Age Scandinavia can be seen to have been nuanced, multi-scalar and far from static, with a degree of regional variation and change over time. Seen against this pattern of semi-structured spirituality, how does sorcery fit in?
In 1986 when the French Viking specialist Régis Boyer published his study of Old Norse magic, he chose as his title Le monde du double, ‘the world of the double’. As he makes clear in his introduction, it often comes as a surprise to realise just how fundamental a role the practice of magic played in the Scandinavian mental universe. In his concept of the ‘Double’, he tries to frame this as a kind of parallel belief, a mirror held up alongside the more elevated apparatus of Viking ‘religion’ proper. To some extent I would agree with his assessment, though I feel that the two worlds are more closely linked than he credits. The reason for this lies once again in terminology and what we understand by it.
We have already seen how our modern concepts of ‘religion’ are not necessarily compatible with those of the Viking Age. We can make the same observation about the social environment of sorcery at the same period. The first problems come at the level of apparently simple definition, which on closer inspection turns out to be far from straightforward (e.g. Raudvere 2003: 25–88). Today we speak fluidly of ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’, the working of ‘spells’ and ‘charms’, all performed by ‘sorcerers’, ‘witches’, ‘warlocks’, ‘wizards’ and so on. In popular parlance there is little to choose between any of these terms, but no-one would link them with formal religion as it is generally perceived. In the early medieval period the situation was very different, in two ways.
Firstly, there seems to have been a very precise vocabulary of sorcery, encompassing its forms, functions, practice and practitioners. Secondly, through intimate links with divinities such as Óðinn and Freyja, and also in its underlying principles which included some of the soul beliefs reviewed above, the whole structure of sorcery was interlaced with that of cult. Simek (1993: 199) has perhaps come closest to illuminating this relationship when he writes of magic as “the mentality [and] the practices with which the mechanisms of supernatural powers are set into motion”.
When defined in this way, it is clear from the written sources that one concept above others lay at the core of Old Norse concepts of magic. Its name was seiðr, and its closer study will be central to much of this book.
Seiðr would have been pronounced approximately ‘saythe’, rhyming with the modern English ‘swathe’, but with a slightly inflected ‘r’ sound at the end in the nominative form (similar to ‘the’ when spoken before a consonant, thus ‘sayther’). Several scholars have noted that etymologically it seems to belong to a group of Indo-European words with connotations of ‘binding’, especially in a sorcerous context (e.g. Dronke 1997: 133).
It is described at length in a number of Old Norse sources, and circumstantially in a great many more. These are all reviewed in detail below, but at this point we can simply note that it seems to have been a collective term for a whole complex of practices, each serving a different function within the larger system of sorcery. There were seiðr rituals for divination and clairvoyance; for seeking out the hidden, both in the secrets of the mind and in physical locations; for healing the sick; for bringing good luck; for controlling the weather; for calling game animals and fish. Importantly, it could also be used for the opposite of these things – to curse an individual or an enterprise; to blight the land and make it barren; to induce illness; to tell false futures and thus to set their recipients on a road to disaster; to injure, maim and kill, in domestic disputes and especially in battle.
More than anything else, seiðr seems to have been an extension of the mind and its faculties. Even in its battlefield context, rather than outright violence it mostly involved the clouding of judgement, the freezing of the will, the fatal hesitation. It was also closely linked to the summoning of spirits and other beings of various kinds, who could be bound to the sorcerer’s will and then sent off to do her or his bidding. In line with the ‘invisible population’ we have encountered above, an important category of these beings were also extensions of the individual in its manifestations of a multiple soul – the fylgjur, hamingjur and so on.
The link to cultic practice comes primarily through the god Óðinn, who as we shall see is named in several sources as the supreme master of seiðr, along with Freyja from whom he learnt its power. The Vanir provide a clue to another important aspect of this sorcery, in their role as divinities of fertility and sexual potency. Not only do many seiðr rituals seem to have been sexual in their objectives, but they may also have been so in the nature of their performance. Beyond the practices with specific carnal intentions, this emphasis on sexuality is also often found in a surprising number of seiðr’s other functions reviewed above. By extension, the enactment of these rites seems to have placed so great a demand on their performers as to mark them with a different form of gender identity, outside the conventional norms of Viking-Age society.
It is in connection with all these elements that seiðr has consistently been viewed as a Norse counterpart to what has elsewhere been called shamanism. This, together with the social context and functions of seiðr, forms the subject of the following chapters. We shall look especially at seiðr’s employment in warfare and as part of what we might call a divinely-inspired ideology of martial valour, backed up by the constructions of sexuality and gender with which it was underpinned. However, seiðr is far from the only form of sorcery mentioned in the Old Norse sources, and before proceeding further we first need to pose a question as to the nature of these other magics, their relationship with seiðr, and the degree to which they may be considered collectively.
