The list of named valkyrjur given above includes their usage as synonyms in the heiti, but one of the most dramatic contemporary demonstrations of them in context is their employment in the battle-kennings of the skalds. These are listed by Meissner (1921), but catalogued and indexed in a manner which makes primary reference to the meaning of the kenning rather than to its individual components (for example, it is easy to locate all the kennings for ‘sword’, but very difficult to find all the kennings for other things which incorporate words for sword). Isolating those kennings which incorporate valkyrja names has therefore been a laborious task, and I do not claim that the references in my valkyrja-list above are exhaustive.
In particular, I have deliberately omitted kennings which use valkyrja names as cognates for ‘man’ (especially in the sense of ‘warrior’) and ‘woman’. These are firstly very numerous (see Meissner 1921: 243–350 & 395–421 for general man/woman kennings, and especially his pp. 273, 309, 405–8 for valkyrjur). More importantly they do not relate to the specifics of combat which are my purpose in analysing the kennings here. For similar reasons I have not included the very small number of kennings which refer to valkyrjur in a violent context unconnected with warfare (such as the presence of Hrund and Hrist in sea-kennings that stress the turbulence of the waves, as in Einarr Skúlason’s lausavísur 13).
By examining the precise contexts and connotations of the valkyrja battle-kennings, and especially through relating these both to individual valkyrjur and the date of the skaldic poems, it may be possible to throw some light on how these beings were perceived during the late Viking Age and the following centuries.
The battle-kenning associations of the valkyrjur with storms and loud noise form probably the most common theme. Meissner (1921: 181, 183) lists 32 of these battle-kennings relating to bad weather, with another four that do not mention valkyrjur by name but instead through additional kennings. The named valkyrjur include Gondul (9 examples), Hildr (7), Gunnr (4), Hlokk (3), Mist (3), Hrist (3), Skogul (2) and Hrund (1). The imagery used includes reference to battle as the valkyrjur’s showers, hail, rain, frost, gales, blasts of wind, storm and tempest. There are 15 valkyrja-kennings in the skaldic corpus that refer to battle by association with noise (Meissner 1921: 189, plus one from his section on ravens [another kenning comes from Eddic poetry and is thus not considered here] – see below). The named valkyrjur include Gunnr (6 examples), Gondul (2), Hildr (2), Skogul (2) and one each for Hrund, Ilmr [Íma?] and Valþogn.
As examples we may look at verse 5 of Þórbjorn hornklofi’s Glymdrápa from c.900, describing battle as dyn Skoglar, ‘Skogul’s din’. Around 1030 Gizurr gullbrárskald portrayed battle as gogl Skoglar, ‘Skogul’s storm’ (Skjaldedigtning B I: 192), while a verse attributed to Ragnarr loðbrók in Háttatal 54 has it as Skoglar veðri, ‘Skogul’s wind’. In Háttatal 59, combat is referred to as Hristar hreggold, ‘Hrist’s storm-time’, while five verses earlier we read of Hildar hlemmidrífu, ‘Hildr’s resounding storm’ which Faulkes glosses as ‘rain of weapons’. The same image is probably implied in Háttatal 62, when battle is Mistar regni (‘Mist’s rain). In the twelfth-century we find glymvindi… Gondla[r], ‘Gondul’s crashing wind’ (Einarr Skúlason’s unprovenanced verses, Skjaldedigtning B I: 452).
The storm images tend to be rendered banal by the paucity of English words that can be used to translate them, submerging the variety and inventiveness of the Old Norse. The assignment of terms like ‘gale’, ‘tempest’ and so on has an unfortunately arbitrary quality that again does little justice to the original. We can also note that beyond the valkyrjakennings the range of storm images for battle is truly immense in the skaldic poetry (see Meissner 1921: 176–83 for literally hundreds of examples). Much the same problem arises with the kenning evocations of the noise of battle, but the use of both metaphors does serve to emphasise two important aspects of early medieval warfare that it is easy to overlook today. The kennings are of course constructions of poetic finesse, but we should remember that the skaldic verses were declaimed to audiences that included people for whom battle was a well-known reality, not a literary abstraction. The valkyrja-kennings tell us that to such men the experience of combat was dominated by an impression of tempestual, chaotic force and an overwhelming crescendo of sound – it is not hard to imagine that they felt the wings of Óðinn’s demons swooping about them in the melée.
Other valkyrja-kennings relating to the experience of battle are more direct, such as a small group that describe it in terms of actual attacks by these female beings. In Goþþormr sindri’s tenth-century Hákonardrápa (8), battle is described as geirvífa snerra, ‘Geirvífa’s onslaught’, and the same term is used of Hlokk in a twelfth-century anonymous verse (Skjaldedigtning B I: 599). On the same pattern, around 1025 Þórmóðr Bersason Kolbrúnarskáld describes battle as Gunnar svipr, ‘Gunnr’s whip’ (Þórgeirsdrápa 6).
If the latter image suggests the valkyrjur urging on the combatants to greater effort, a milder version of this can be seen in another group of kennings which depict battle as something ordained by them. Focusing on words for meetings and counsel sessions (mót, þing, þingmót, dómr, etc), these terms portray fighting as a gathering of men brought together in confrontation, with a sense of irony in that the domestic use of these terms implies peaceful settlement as opposed to the killing that the valkyrjur inspire. A typical example comes from Hásteinn Hrómundarson halta’s mid-tenth-century lausavísur (2), in which battle is called Gunnþing, ‘Gunnr’s þing’. Seven of these are known (Meissner 1921: 196), though other kennings exist which employ the same imagery without implicating the valkyrjur. The named individuals are Gunnr (3 examples), Gondul (2) and a single mention apiece for Hlokk and Mist.
The valkyrjur’s delight in carnage is reflected in kennings that depict battle as their ‘play’. Eight of these are known (Meissner 1921: 199), of which a full seven relate to Hildr, and one to Hrund. Another dimension of this links them to beasts of battle, who continue the sequence by revelling in the aftermath of what the valkyrjur enjoy creating. It is interesting that the valkyrjur are rarely found in the skaldic rider-kennings for wolves, which instead always depict these animals as the mounts of female trolls and sorceresses (though see the runic material below). However, the valkyrjur in Volundarkviða live in Úlfdal, ‘Wolf-Dale’, and dwell beside Úlfsiár, ‘Wolf-Lake’, which does provide associations with these beasts of battle. In the kennings, the valkyrjur instead predominate among those for ravens, of which Meissner (1921: 121) lists 23 with valkyrja-names. There are two more in which he reads what is usually now interpreted as gogl (‘storm’) as gagl (‘small bird’, ‘gosling’). Another four raven-kennings do not mention valkyrja-names, but instead incorporate other kennings for the valkyrjur as a type. The named valkyrjur are Gunnr (16 examples), Gondul (1), Hildr (2), Hlokk (3) and Mist (1). Perhaps Gunnr, one of the early type of battle-women in Darraðarljóð, became especially associated with flight?
The valkyrjur were also employed in images of weaponry. Hrund and Hlokk appear in two axe-kennings, both of them from the twelfth century and later (Meissner 1921: 148). They were a much more popular element in sword-kennings, of which 37 valkyrja forms are known (ibid: 158). Nine valkyrjur are named there, including Gunnr (8 examples), Hildr (7), Hlokk (7), Mist (5), and Skogul (4), together with one mention each for Gondul, Hrist, Hrund and Valþogn. The swords are imagined as flames, glowing embers, ice and frost in the hands of the valkyrjur, all images relating to the flashing light from a moving blade: for example, Gunnr appears in a sword-kenning by the tenth-century poet Holmgongu-Bersi Véleifsson, hyrrunnum…Gunnar, ‘bushes [warriors] of Gunnr’s fire [sword]’ (lausavísur 6), and in Háttatal 61 a warrior’s sword is frost Mistar (‘Mist’s frost’). In Háttatal 85 they are Mistar lauka (‘Mist’s leeks’), which brings to mind the sexual overtones of this vegetable as we have seen in Volsa þáttr, yet another example where this is combined with combat.
Similar patterns are seen in valkyrja-kennings for armour. Nine are known for mail-coats (Meissner 1921: 165). These name Skogul (3 examples), Hildr (3), and one mention each of Gunnr, Gondul and Geir-Róta; the latter is the only mention of this valkyrja, who may be a version of the Róta from Gylfaginning 36. Meissner includes a kenning that names Rindr, but I know of no source which places her among the valkyrjur rather than the giantesses. The mail is almost always seen as an item of clothing, as if it represents the everyday attire of the valkyrjur (e.g. Skoglar serks, ‘Skogul’s shirt’ in Háttatal 64).
The shield-kennings are also very numerous. Meissner (1921: 172) lists some 49 that include valkyrja-names. These are divided between Hildr (15 examples), Gunnr (14), Gondul (7), Skogul (6), Hlokk (5), and one each with Hrund and Þrúðr. Five other shield-kennings allude to valkyrjur without naming them. The imagery is very varied, and the shields are described primarily in terms of shelter or enclosure as the valkyrjur’s fences, gates, walls, tents, ground, yards. Other kennings allude to the shields’ slightly bowed and circular shape, as the valkyrjur’s moons, clouds, sails, boards, wheels, drums, and so on. The kenning Hildar vett from Þjóðólfr’s Haustlong (1), is especially interesting here, as it firstly portrays the valkyrja using the same instrument or tool that the volur employed for sorcery (see chapter 3), and secondly it does so in the context of a metaphor for defensive combat. Some are more dramatic still, such as the shield as Hildr’s ‘resounding wheel’ (verse 2 of Bragi’s Ragnarsdrápa) which perhaps also carries drum-like associations.
Some poets had their favourite valkyrjur and themes, while sometimes the same valkyrja could be viewed in very widely diverging ways. We see this with Hlokk, for example, in a sense of battle (skúrum Hlakkar, ‘Hlokk’s showers’, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar 74–5), shields (Hlakkar tjalda, ‘Hlokk’s curtains’, Grettir Ásmundarsson, lausavísur 9; Hlakkar segli, ‘Hlokk’s sails’, Einarr Helgason skálaglamm. Vellekla 8) and swords (Hlakkar eldar, ‘Hlokk’s flames’, Háttatal 57; glóð Hlakkar, ‘Hlokk’s glowing embers’, Háttatal 50). There are also a number of raven-kennings, such as hamdøkkum Hlakkar hauk, ‘Hlokk’s dark-coated hawk’ in Háttatal 5, and svan Hlakkar, ‘Hlokk’s swan’ in a fragmentary poem by the early eleventh-century Icelander Gizurr gullbrárskald (Skjladedigtning B I: 192).
Occasionally named valkyrjur are referred to indirectly, as in Háttatal 49 which contains a number of allusions to Hildr, employing her familial ties instead of her name (e.g. ‘Hogni’s daughter’). Sometimes one valkyrja-name is employed as part of a kenning to represent another, as in the verse accompaniment to the description of the battle of Hjaðningavíg in Skáldskapamál 50. We have already seen how Snorri’s prose account focuses on Hildr’s re-animation of the previous day’s dead, and in verse 9 from Bragi’s mid-ninth-century Ragnarsdrápa she is described as bœti-Þrúðr…dreyruga benja, ‘bloody-wound-curing-Þrúðr’.
In Table 6.2 we see all the battle-kennings with valkyrja-names plotted by subject and date (the anonymous verses omitted from the name-lists above have been included here, as have the kennings referring to un-named valkyrjur). A further dimension is added in Table 6.3 by making the same chronological associations for the named valkyrjur in the kennings. To these we may then add the correlations between named valkyrjur and specific kennings (Table 6.4).
We also find valkyrja-kennings on actual monuments from the Viking Age, including one mentioning the same Þrúðr, on the Karlevi stone (Öl 1; Fig. 6.3) set up on Öland around the year 1000. The runic inscription, which is the only one bearing a complete stanza in dróttkvætt, includes the phrase dólga Þrúðar draugr, which is difficult to translate but means something like ‘executor of battle-Þrúðr’ and referring to a warrior who carries out her wishes. S. B. F. Jansson (1987: 134ff) interprets Þrúðr to refer to the goddess named in Skáldskapamál and elsewhere as a daughter of Þórr, but it could equally – and, I think, more likely in this context – refer to the valkyrja of the same name. Another example comes from the ninth-century runestone from Rök (Ög 136). Here the ‘horse of Gunnr’ appears as a kenning for ‘wolf’, referring to a beast of battle seeing its food on the field ‘where twenty kings lie’.
Table 6.2 Battle-kennings incorporating valkyrja-names plotted by connotation and date.
Table 6.3 Named valkyjur appearing in battle-kennings plotted by date.
Fig. 6.3 The Karlevi runestone (Öl 1) from the island of Öland, bearing one of the few inscriptions to mention a valkyrie’s name. Here, a warrior is described as carrying out the wishes of battle-Þrúðr [Battle-Power], and thus performing his violent duties as expected (photo by Jochka, Creative Commons).
Table 6.4 Correlations between named valkyrjur and their connotations in battle-kennings.
In contrast to the idealised beauties found in the later Eddic poems, at least one scholar (Damico 1990: 181) has claimed that the valkyrjur of the kennings have been “neutralised from characters of volition to elements of heroic machinery”. I feel that this is to miss the point, because the latter would seem to have been their function from the earliest period of their ‘battle-demon’ incarnations. These beings were war machines – a modern term that fits them perfectly – and we know that the heroic perception of combat was a staple of Scandinavian military ideology for centuries before the Viking Age. The valkyrjur seem to have been not so much characters of volition as specialised personalities, and it is surely their Romantic archetype as ‘shield-maiden’ that is the later addition.
The variety of their functions paralleled the variety of skilled specialists among their human sorcerer counterparts, but in neither case should this blind us to the fact that both valkyrjur and magic-workers can be categorised. It is in this light that aspects of the skaldmeyjar tradition can be seen as deriving from earlier patterns, principally through an original emphasis on a sexual relationship to warriors being expressed later as romantic attachment.
Is it possible that from the beginning the valkyrjur were essentially personified attributes of Óðinn? Just as the ravens Huginn and Muninn seem to have been aspects of the god’s mind that he sent out to obtain information, perhaps these battle demons represented something similar for his other skills. If Óðinn wished to cause a man to freeze in battle, which we know was among his skills, perhaps he sent Herfjotur the ‘War-Fetter’ to effect his will. If not actually part of himself, the valkyrjur may instead have been special spirits summoned and unleashed for specific purposes, just as we have seen in Siberia. The combinations of the valkyrjur’s names, abilities and kenning associations strongly suggest some such aspect of their nature.
Before we leave the valkyrjur to look at other kinds of supernatural agency in battle, we can note that the term is also known from Anglo-Saxon texts, where it appears as wælcyrge and variants thereof (see Damico 1990 for an extensive analysis of valkyrjur in Old English sources, with particular reference to Beowulf). It is found a number of times in the vocabularies and word lists, some from as early as the 700s, where it is glossed with the names of the Furies – Tisiphone, Allecto and Eurynes. The latter is a version of one of their collective names, and also a personal name. Wælcyrge is also glossed with Bellona, the goddess of war, and with a reference to the Gorgons (Wright 1884). At this date and in a non-Nordic context, it is striking that the nature of the valkyrjur was clearly understood through reference to female beings of fate and destruction from the Classical world. Even here, however, the Anglo-Saxon sources retain imagery which is otherwise unknown from English (and Mediterranean) culture and seems distinctly Nordic in tone. For example, the ‘Gorgons’ described in Narratiunculae Anglice conscriptae (34: 6) have eight legs – like Sleipnir? – and wælcyrigean eagan, ‘the eyes of the valkyrie’. The latter seems related to the piercing, aggressive stare characteristic of kings and princes in Norse poetic convention (cf. Marold 1998). The presence of valkyrja-like female beings in Saxon battle-charms is taken up further below.
By the late Saxon period, the term had been subsumed into a popular meaning of mortal witches or sorceresses in general, as in Archbishop Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (l. 171) from the early eleventh century, where it occurs in a list of various evils claimed to be afflicting the land. A similar term appears in the poem Exodus (l. 164) but it clearly refers there to a raven or some other carrion bird.
The Anglo-Saxon sources also shed a little light on the oblique reference to Freyja’s valkyrja-like functions in Grímnismál 14, which describes her ‘choosing the slain’. In one version of Aldhelm’s De laudibus virginitatis (4449) we find wælcyrie glossed as veneris. To my knowledge this is the only explicit link between the valkyrjur and the goddess of love and sexuality, but in view of the other Saxon glosses and their closeness to Norse understandings of these beings, this makes an interesting case for such a connection going beyond a mere functional resemblance. We have already seen the associations between Óðinn and Freyja in the seiðr complex, and on the battlefield, so some ‘sharing’ of the valkyrjur should not really surprise us.
Besides the valkyrjur, others of the female beings that we have encountered could also take on an explicitly violent function.
In the ‘Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls’ section of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, for example, the dísir carry out a similar night-time attack on a hall as is prosecuted through seiðr in Laxdæla saga (35), with the same result of a boy’s death.
A similar phenomenon could also be associated with the fylgjur, as we have seen. A good example of this comes from Njáls saga (12), in the fight between Þjóstólfr and the friends of Þorvaldr, a man that he has slain. Þjóstólfr has taken refuge with some kinsmen far from the scene of the crime, when news of the killing reaches the dead man’s friends. One of their number, a certain Ósvífr, surmises where the fugitives have gone and declares his intention to be revenged. At that moment, far away, one of Þjóstólfr’s allies begins to yawn uncontrollably, and declares, nú sœkja at fylgjur Ósvífrs, ‘now Ósvífr’s fylgjur are attacking us’. In response, the yawning man goes outside, whirls a goat-skin around his head and begins to chant:
| Verði þoka | Let there be fog |
| ok verði skrípi | and let there be monsters |
| ok undr ollum þeim, | and all these wonders, |
| er eptir þér sœkja | to hinder your seekers |
Njáls saga (12); my translation
Ósvífr and his men suddenly find themselves engulfed first in a rolling fog bank and then by a sudden darkness, blinding them and causing them to drop their weapons. Ósvífr declares his intention to quit his attack if he can find his horse and weapons, whereupon the strange weather ceases. However, when he nevertheless resumes his ride towards Þjóstólfr, the same thing occurs again, until he is forced to break off the attack and return home. Later on, the two sides are reconciled through a legal compensation. We should note that the two men who thus duel with sorcery are not depicted as sorcerers proper, merely as warriors with additional gifts. The terminology of magic is also noticeably avoided.
A similar episode appears in Sturlunga saga, when Sturla Sighvatsson is warned by a woman to leave his farm quickly because men are approaching to attack him there. She says that her premonition was caused by the úfriðarfylgjur of the men, which she can feel approaching. This is a curious term and hard to translate – úfrið means literally ‘unpeace’, and so these beings could perhaps best be described as ‘fylgjur of disquiet’ (cf. Strömbäck 1989: 22f).
Beyond the specific categories of supernatural entities that intervened in combat, the Old Icelandic sources also mention a number of other beings whose agency was sometimes believed to have been felt on the battlefield. In the sagas such creatures are often included in the generic labels troll, flagð, and so on, used for any unspecified malevolent being of supernatural character. Sometimes different terms are employed to describe the same individual. In modern English, the word ‘monster’ in its vaguest meaning probably comes closest to the sense in which these terms were used in the period of the sagas’ composition, and it is probably unwise to fasten too much upon the exact selection of the individual labels attached to these beings.
The perfect illustration of the kind of agency that I describe in this chapter is the intervention at the Battle of Hjorungavágr in 986 by the enigmatic being called Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr. Jómsvíkinga saga (73) relates how Jarl Hákon, seeking aid to fight the Jómsvíking fleet that is coming against him, retires to an island and, facing northwards, prays to Þorgerðr who is described as his fulltrua, meaning something like ‘patron deity’ or someone in whom one places confidence. She is angered by his entreaties and rejects his successive attempts at sacrifices, even refusing a human offering. At last Hákon offers the life of his seven-year-old son, which Þorgerðr accepts; on Hákon’s orders, the boy is killed by a slave. As the jarl returns to his ships he urges his men to fight more strongly, because he has heítit til sigrs oss a þ?r baðar systr Þorgerði ok Irpu, ‘invoked for our victory both the sisters Þorgerðr and Irpa’. The description of Þorgerðr’s actions in the battle (echoed in Bishop Bjarni Kolbeinsson’s Jómsvíkingadrápa, composed prior to 1222) is worth quoting at length, as it contains a number of crucial elements for our understanding of supernatural agency in combat and how it was perceived both in the Viking Age and in the Middle Ages of the sagas’ composition:
Nu geingr Iarl a skip sitt. ok buaz um af ny io. ok siðan greiða þeir atróðrinn. ok tekz þar nu af nyio enn grimmazti bardagi. ok þui næst te kr ueðrit at þyckna inorðr ok dregr yfir skiótt. liðr ok a daginn. þui næst flugu elldingar ok reíðar. ok þui næst gorir a él mikit þeir Iomsuikingar attu at uega igegn ueðrinu. þetta el var með sua micklum bysnum at menn mattu uarla standaz. Enn menn hofðu aðr farit af klęðu num fyrir hita sakir enn nu tók at kólna. sękia þo bardagann frýio laúst. ok þo at þeir Iomsuíkingar kastaði grioti eða vápnum eðaskyti spiótum. þa bar ueðrit þat aptr a þa allt ok þar með vápna gangr sinna ouina Hauarðr haugguanndi sa fyrstr Haulga brúði iliði Hákonar Iarls. ok margir sa ofreskir menn. ok þa er líttað linaði elino. sa þeir at aur fló af huerium fingri flagðino ok varð maðr fyrir huerri ok segia þeir Sigvalldas. ok hann mællti. Eigi þicki mer þa sem ver berimz við menn eina enn þo ere nauðsyn at huerr dugi sem má þa er nockut linaði elino heitr Hakon Iarl iannat sinn á Þorgeirði ok quez nu hafa mikit til unit. Nu tekr i annat sinn at rauckua at elino ok er nu mycklo meíra ok harðara enn fyr ok þegar i aunndverðu élino þa ser Havarðr hogguanndi at.ij. konur erukomnar a skipIarls ok hafa eítt atferli. Sigvalldi mællti þa. Nu uil ek brutt flýia ok gori sua allir minir menn. Ecki streingðu ver þess heít at beriaz við traull er nu ok þui ver ra enn aðan at nu eru. ij. flaugð.
Then the jarl boarded his ship and prepared for the fight, and the fleet rowed to the attack, and again there was the most furious battle. And soon the weather began to thicken in the north and clouds covered the sky, and the daylight waned. Next came flashes of lightning and thunder, and with them a violent shower. The Jómsvíkings had to fight facing into the storm, and the squall was so heavy that they could hardly stand up against it. Men had cast off their clothes, earlier, because of the heat, and now it was cold. Nevertheless, no one needed to be urged on to do battle. But although the Jómsvíkings hurled stones and other missiles and threw their spears, the wind turned all their weapons back upon them, to join the shower of missiles from their enemies. Havarðr Hacker was the first to see Holgabrúðr in the fleet of Jarl Hákon, and then many a second-sighted man saw her. And when the squall abated a little they saw that an arrow flew from every finger of the ogress, and each arrow felled a man. And they told Sigvaldi, and he said, “It seems we are not fighting men alone, but still we should do our best.” And when the storm lessened somewhat Jarl Hákon again invoked Þorgerðr and said that he had done his utmost. And then it grew dark again with a squall, this time even stronger and worse than before. And right at the beginning of the squall Havarðr Hacker saw that two women were standing on the Jarl’s ship, and doing the same things as before. Then Sigvaldi said, “Now I am going to flee, and let all my men do so. I did not vow to fight against trolls, and it is now worse than before, as there are two ogresses.”
Jómsvíkinga saga 73–4; tr. after Hollander 1955: 101–2.
The Jómsvíking fleet breaks up and the battle is won for Hákon. After the fighting, some of his men weigh the hailstones to gauge the power of his patrons, and they are found to weigh an ounce each. Although Jómsvíkinga saga is the most detailed account, elements of the same tale are also found in other sources: the blinding hail is mentioned in Oddr Snorrason’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, and in Jómsvíkingadrápa (32) which also states that it came from the north; both the storm and Hákon’s sacrifice are mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus (10:IV:2–3); the arrows from Þorgerðr’s fingers are mentioned in Þórkell Gíslason’s Búadrápa (10).
These are some of the most dramatic images in all of saga literature, and something of an archetype for the praxis of battle magic: a chill darkness blots out the sun as the ships course through showers of rain and hail, lightning flashes as the Jómsvíkings fight into the teeth of the storm; the unnatural wind throws all their missiles back into their faces, while their men fall to arrows flying from the fingers of Hákon’s demons, beings dimly visible through the gale only to those with the ability to see into other realms.
This question of visibility is important. The effects of supernatural intervention are evident to all, but the agents of it are not. It is also significant that Sigvaldi, one of the Jómsvíking commanders, has to be told that Þorgerðr is fighting in Hákon’s host – the implication is that he cannot see her himself. Again, the other world from which these beings come is accessible only to a gifted few. This ability is not necessarily an attribute of high status, simply of ‘second-sighted men’.
What kind of being is Þorgerðr? A number of sources claim that she is a goddess of some kind (the references to Þorgerðr are summarised in McKinnell 2001: 408–12, 2002; see also the extensive discussion in Laidoner 2014: 194–206). Snorri locates her in Hálogaland in Norway, and the idea that she was a divine object of local veneration here is also found in Færeyinga saga, the greater saga of Óláfr Tryggvason, Þorleifs þáttr jarlaskálds, and Jómsvíkinga saga. Storm (1885) considered her to be some kind of family deity linked to Hákon’s clan. In Njáls saga (88) her temple is again located in Gudbrandsdal, where her idol, as large as a man, is set up besides images of Þórr and Irpa. This latter figure, mentioned only here and in Jómsvíkinga saga 73–5, is said to be Þorgerðr’s ‘sister’ but nothing else is known of her; she is obviously the creature called up as reinforcements after Hákon invokes his patron a second time. The Njáls saga description mentions the clothes and gold (arm?)rings of the idols, and the very interesting detail that Þorgerðr’s image is hooded (the phrase used is fald á hofði, which implies something that actually encloses the head, cf. hjálmi faldinn, ‘wearing a helmet’) – we can compare this with the note on masks in chapter 3. Only one source, Harðar saga Grímkelssonar, locates Þorgerðr’s temple in Iceland, where she is claimed to have issued unwelcome prophecies.
However, besides being mentioned as a goddess, in Ketils saga h?ings her name is also found in the lists of þulur for trolls and giantesses (Trollkvenna heiti, a context discussed by Chadwick in 1950), and it is more likely that she is a being of this kind than that she may be counted among the divine families. This idea is strengthened by the alternative forms of her name: whereas Snorri’s Edda and Jómsvíkinga saga have her as Holgabrúðr, other sources use the forms Horða-, Horga- and Holða- combined with the suffix -troll (Halvorsen 1976a: 383). She also seems to be associated with the north, the direction that Hákon faces to pray to her and the direction from which the storm comes upon the Jómsvíking fleet: this might imply a connection with Jotunheim, the abode of the giants.
There is also a suggestion that Þorgerðr was a being of great sexual power, because her client Hákon was known for his extraordinary promiscuity – a very unusual quality for a nobleman in the Norse sources. In the Ágrip (12) and Fagrskinna (22) he is described as sleeping indiscriminately with women all over his realm, including the wives, sisters and daughters of the local chieftains. In Snorri’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (45) the jarl’s reign is said to have been characterised by good harvests and peace, but his insatiable sexual appetites are also brought up again. This argument is developed at greater length by McKinnell (2001: 411f, also referencing Richard North’s work), but there is a strong suggestion that Þorgerðr was some kind of fertility being, who passed on her fecundity to the land via the person of the jarl, who in turn transmitted this in his sexual conquests at every level of society. Once again, we therefore see a connection between sexuality and a powerful supernatural being of destruction.
It is worth emphasising that many of the sources in which Þorgerðr appears are relatively early – Þórkell’s Búadrápa (twelfth-century), Bjarni’s Jómsvíkingadrápa (before 1222), Oddr’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (c.1200), and Jómsvíkinga saga itself, which in its composition is thought to predate both Fagrskinna and Heimskringla. However, none of the skaldic poems contemporary with the battle mention either Þorgerðr or the storm that she is alleged to have caused (Halvorsen 1976a). The number and variety of sources that mention Þorgerðr leave little doubt that she is not a medieval invention, but on balance it would seem likely that her divinity is a later addition (cf. de Vries 1957: §562). If the saga writers embellished an oral tradition about some kind of supernatural ‘helper’ in Hákon’s service, then she appears far more likely as a troll or giantess, and not as a goddess. The idea of a temple (hov) to her and her sister must be included in the medieval literary motifs built up around her, leaving the participation of malevolent spirits on the Norwegian side at Hjorungavágr as the only element of the story that may have Viking-Age roots.
The later sources do however seem to have preserved intact some of the attributes with which she was associated, and which can be recognised from the wider analysis of battle magic given here and in preceding chapters. For example, there are implications of incest in Snorri’s relation that King Holgi was the father of Þorgerðr, when her name – Holgabrúðr – clearly states that she was his bride (Skáldskaparmál 42). This is yet another link to the complex of sexual overtones and transgression of social boundaries that we have seen repeatedly in connection with the combination of sorcery and battle. Simek (1993: 327) observes that if her actions on the battlefield are reminiscent of the valkyrjur, then her role in the temple as a provider of prophecy brings to mind the volur: once again, the same links as we see between seiðr and its operatives, battle, and the projection of destruction. Her ability to summon the storm and control the weather are also paralleled by Óðinn’s skills.
Other supernatural beings of destruction resemble the valkyrjur, but are separate from them. One such appears in Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar (80–1), in the form of a strange creature that appears in premonitions of disaster dreamt by two men in King Haraldr’s fleet as it sails to attack England in 1066. In one case, the man sees a trollkona mikil, ‘a great troll-woman’, holding a sword in one hand and a trough (trog) in the other, looking out over the fleet. On every ship’s prow sits a bird of carrion, and the troll-woman chants a verse making it clear that the Norwegians’ corspes will soon be feeding the ravens. The second man’s dream is more specific, and he sees the troll-woman riding on a wolf in front of the English army as it advances to meet the Vikings. A man’s bloody corpse hangs from the wolf’s jaws, and one by one the troll-woman feeds it with every man who opposes her. All the while she chants a verse reminiscent of the Darraðarljóð, describing how the army will feed the wolf and the king will fall.
In Helgakviða Hiorvarðssonar 13–19, the hero Atli talks of his ships coming under attack from fálor, ‘troll-women’, against which the hulls of his vessels have been reinforced with iron plates. He leads the defence against them himself: Úrgan stafn ek hefi opt búit/ok kvalðar kveldriðor!, ‘I’ve often stayed at the dew-washed prow/ and tormented night-riders!’ (ibid: 15). In strophe 18 another hála, ‘ogress’, is described as blocking a fjord with the intention of sending all the ships’ crews to Ran, i.e. to sink and drown them.
Such troll-women appear very frequently in the written sources, often as rather conventionalised motifs, but occasionally we find very specific examples which also tie in to the other themes that we have examined here. A being of this kind can be found in the thirteenth-century dream poem in Stjornu-Oddadraumr, when a she-troll is described as undergoing a sorcerous transformation in battle. As the creature enters combat, her head suddenly changes into that of a wolf. At the same time she becomes invisible, unless looked at under a warrior’s left hand (cf. McKinnell 2001: 403).
There are many other examples of similar beings in the Eddic poems and the sagas, some of them reduced to confused generalisations by the Christian filter of medieval writers. It is in this light that we may see Queen Skuld’s preparations for her assault on Hrólfr, when we read that she employs a ‘powerful seiðr’ to summon álfar ok nornir ok annat útolulegt illþýði, suá at mannlig náttúra má eigi slíkt standaz, ‘elves and norns and countless other vile creatures, a force which no human power could withstand’ (Hrólfs saga kraka 32). Indeed, there are one or two instances in which such creatures themselves employ seiðr, such as the two trolls in Halfdanar saga Bronufóstra.
A third major category of supernatural agency in a conflictual context may be traced in the complex of mythological stories concerning the so-called Wild Hunt of Óðinn. There are variations on the precise form of the legends, but they all concern a body of spirits who ride the storms of the midwinter sky during the nights of Yule (in the pagan period broadly definable as lasting from mid-November to early January), terrorising the population and sometimes carrying people away. In all versions of the tale the spirits are associated with the dead, often in the form of ghosts, and more often still they are described as an army or a band of warriors.
In the south and west of Norway, the Hunt was known as the Oskoreidi, the original derivation of which has been the subject of some debate (Hægstad 1912). Some have seen it as stemming from an earlier form óskreið, ‘wish-ride’, and thereby connecting with the valkyrjur in their aspect as wish-maidens, as discussed above. Others link the name to Ásguðsreið, ‘ride of the Æsir god [i.e. Óðinn]’, and the name could equally mean simply ‘ride of terror’ (de Vries 1957: §167, 309, 335, 401). The southern Swedish and Danish name, Odensjakt, contains an obvious link to the god (de Vries 1957: §167), and similar associations are found further south in the Germanic world, where the Hunt was known as Wuotanes her, ‘Woden’s army’, and later the Wildes Heer or Wilde Jagd led by der Schimmelreiter (see Huth 1935; de Vries 1963). In fact, these stories are found throughout northern Europe in remarkably similar forms, and even beyond the Germanic cultures we find that legends of ghostly horsemen in the midwinter sky also feature in Celtic mythology (see Ginzburg’s survey, 1990: 101f). Some of these traditions continued even into the nineteenth century, with prophetic processions of spirits such as the ‘church porch watch’ in Britain, which identified those who would die in the coming year (Menefee 1989).
The Wild Hunt tales proper are of medieval and later date, and are linked to the role played by Óðinn in folklore long after the period of active belief in the old gods. However, these medieval tales can be traced back to a more general belief in the Viking Age, in which various kinds of supernatural riders could be encountered singly or in groups, and whose appearance was often associated with a premonition of doom, a warning, or as a sign of great events taking place. One of the most graphic examples is Hildiglúmr’s vision in Njáls saga:
Hann gekk út dróttinsnótt, þá er tólf vikur váru til vetrar. Hann heyrði brest mikinn, ok þótti honum skjálfa bæði jorð ok himinn. Síðan leit hann í vestrættina, ok þóttisk hann sjá hring ok eldslit á ok í hringinum mann á gram hesti. Han bar skjótt yfir, ok fór hann hart; hann hafði loganda brand í hendi. Hann reið svá nær honum, at hann mátti gorla sjá hann; honum sýndisk hann svartr sem bik ok heyrði, at hann kvað vísu með mikilli raust:
Ek ríð
hesti hélugbarða,
úrigtoppa,
ills valdanda.
Eldr er í endum,
eitr er í miðju;
svá er um Flosa ráð
sem fari kefli,
ok svá er um Flosa ráð
sem fari kefli.
Þá þótti honum hann skjóta brandinum austr til fjallanna, ok þótti honum hlaupa upp eldr svá mikill, att hann þóttisk ekki sjá til fjallanna fyrir. Honum sýndisk sjá maðr ríða austr undir eldinn ok hvarf þar. Síðan gekk hann inn ok til rúms síns ok fekk langt óvit ok rétti við ór því. Hann munði allt þat, er fyrir hann hafði borit, ok sagði foður sínum, en hann bað hann segja Hjalta Skeggjasyni; hann fór ok sagði honum. Hjalti mælti: ”Þú hefir sét gandreið, ok er þat ávallt fyrir stórtíðendum”.
He [Hildiglúmr] went out on the Sunday night twelve weeks before winter. He heard a tremendous crash, and it seemed to him that both the earth and the sky shivered. Then he looked out westwards, and he thought he saw a circle of fire, and in the circle was a man on a grey horse. He passed swiftly over, and he was riding hard; he had a burning brand in his hand. He rode so close to him that he could see him clearly; he seemed to him as black as pitch, and he could hear how he spoke a verse with a great roar:
I ride a horse
frost-battered,
ice-topped,
evil-bringing.
Fire at the ends
poison in the middle;
so it is with Flósi’s state
as this firebrand goes,
and so it is with Flósi’s state
as this firebrand goes.
It seemed to him that he shot the brand east to the mountains, and there seemed to him to spring up a fire so great that he thought he could not see the mountains behind. The man appeared to ride east under the flames and there he disappeared. Then he [Hildiglúmr] went indoors and to his bed, where he fainted and lay unconscious for a long time. When he recovered he could remember every detail of the apparition he had seen, and told his father about it. His father asked him to tell it to Hjalti Skeggjason. He [Hildiglúmr] went to him and told him. Hjalti said, ‘You have seen the witch-ride [gandreið], and that is always a portent of disaster.’
Njáls saga 125
My translation after Orchard 1997: 182–3 and Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson 1960: 260–1
Here we have an example of yet another meaning of a term we have encountered before, because the gandreið is of course the ‘riding of gandir’. Linking as we have seen both to wolves, helping spirits, and the steeds of female sorcerers, here we see them in the new context of the riders in the night sky. The passage from Njáls saga combines two of the main functions of the gandreið when met in this sense, in that the vision prophesies not only a man’s doom – in this case that of Flósi Þórðarsson – but also that the prophecy is made before the deed which will bring that fate upon him (in this instance, Flósi’s orchestration of the burning of Njál, something perhaps intimated by the horseman’s flaming brand). Typical too is the fact that the warning of momentous events to come is not made in such a way as to enable them to be averted. We may note that the identity of the rider, the pitch-black man, is obscure – he could be a spirit of some kind, or Óðinn himself.
Another example from the same saga is more laconic, but shows the dangers associated with such riders, and their link to battle. Towards the end of the tale, as the Viking forces of Dublin march to their catastrophic defeat at Clontarf, various premonitions of the disaster are felt throughout the North. It is in this context that the Darraðarljóð is related, but also a number of other visions:
Sá atburðr varð í Orkneyjum, at Hárekr þóttisk sjá Sigurð jarl ok nokkura menn með honum. Tók Hárekr hest sinn ok reið til móts við jarl, ok sá menn, at þeir fundusk ok riðu undir leiti nokkurt. Sásk þeir aldri síðan, ok engi ørmul fundusk af Háreki.
It so happened that in the Orkneys, Hárekr thought he saw Jarl Sigurðr and some of his men with him. Hárekr took his horse and rode to meet the Jarl, and it was seen that they met up and then rode away behind a hill. They were never seen again, and no trace was found of Hárekr.
Njáls saga 157; my translation
The chieftain that Hárekr thinks he sees riding in the Orkneys has of course already been killed at the battle in Ireland. Here in the thirteenth-century prose we apparently see the riders as the spirits of the violently slain, luring others with them on their journey to the next world.
Some have argued that the riders reflect a general concept of the community of the dead, combined with a belief in midwinter as a time when this was physically closest to the world of the living, and also coinciding with the howling storms of the season (Simek 1993: 373). However, the association with warriors and a military retinue seems also important, and is strikingly similar to the Sámi beliefs connected with the Northern Lights, as discussed in chapter 4.
It is interesting to note that the same theme of armies fighting in the sky was recorded by Ibn Fadlan on his travels in the Volga region, when he describes a heavenly phenomenon that was probably the Aurora Borealis (Risala 49; Lund Warmind 1995: 132).
For the Viking Age itself, the meaning and origin of these spirit-warriors riding in the sky was further explored by Otto Höfler in his 1934 thesis, who argued that the hunt was a memory of the secret military brotherhoods that take up the bulk of this work. The associations of heavenly warriors with Óðinn’s chosen slain, the einherjar, is obvious here.
The concept of projecting misfortune and injury has a rich history among the Norse, as in other northern cultures. A related theme is the idea of magical projectiles (cf. Lid 1958), encompassing a variety of sorcerous darts and weapons sent at an enemy. Sometimes this takes the form of a physical attack by a spirit, either summoned up or sent out as an aspect of the sorcerer’s own essence. We have encountered these beings already in chapter 3, with the shapes of sorceresses ‘riding’ their victims, and in the concept of the mara, the Nightmare.
At times we see the direct employment of seiðr for these purposes, as in Ynglingasaga 13–14 when the volva Hulðr kills two kings through the use of this sorcery. In the first instance, she conjures up something called a vitta véttr, a curious term that means approximately ‘creature of magic tools’ (see Dronke 1997: 132). In many ways this being seems identical to the mara, and its purpose in this instance is to trample King Vanlandi to death. This is the same incident as recorded in strophe 3 of the Ynglingatal, quoted in the same chapter. On the second occasion, the same volva performs an unspecified seiðr ritual which enables King Vísburr’s sons to kill him in his hall at night – apparently a spell which brings its victim (and his retainers?) off-guard. The vitta véttr reappears in the slaying of yet another king, Aðils, in Ynglingasaga 29 (see Sundqvist 2002: 224–9). A similar example from Eyrbyggja saga 53 has been cited above in chapter 3, where a shepherd is attacked by the undead spirit of the seiðr-worker Þorgunna.
There may have been an element of these beings that was actually the assistant spirit of the performer herself. In chapter 3 we have drawn attention to Voluspá’s internal dialogue between a volva and her alter-ego, but it is noticeable how this second being first appears in strophe 21 in connection with the struggle between the Æsir and Vanir. It even begins Þat man hón fólkvíg, ‘She remembers the war’, and as the poem relates the violent sorcery of Gullveig and Heiðr it may be that this aspect of the volva was especially connected with the projection of destruction. McKinnell has argued that second element of Gullveig’s name actually means ‘military strength’ (2001: 407). The volva in the poem also addresses Óðinn by some of his war-names (Valfoðr, Herfoðr, Sigfoður etc), which enhances the connotation here.
Related to these malevolent beings is the widespread idea of sickness personified as a corporeal entity attacking the sufferer. We have observed this above with the ‘flying fever demon’ of the Hemdrup rune-staff, and find it again in small runic amulets of silver and bronze intended to be worn around the neck for protection. A dramatic object of this kind was found in Viking-Age deposits from central Sigtuna, with a double-sided inscription to ward off a ‘wound-fever’ which is even given a name, Þurr, and characterised several times as taking wolf-form (Ros 1990: 135f). Other similar amulets are known from the Rus’ settlements of Staraja Ladoga and Novgorod, and also from Roskilde in Denmark (Roesdahl & Wilson 1992: 302).
As we have seen in chapters 4 and 5, all these phenomena are entirely in keeping with the beliefs and practices of the circumpolar cultures. The important difference among the early medieval Scandinavians is that these concepts were extended into the sphere of military combat. Some exemplary instances that combine both the external projection of misfortune and its warlike context are seen very clearly in the pagan Anglo-Saxon charms, written down in the period c.950–1050 (collected and edited by Griffiths 1996: 173– 204; see also Jolly 1996: ch. 5 and A. Hall 2007, for a more extensive treatment).
These include a complex spell to protect crops from sorcerous attack (the ‘Land Ceremonies Charm’, Griffiths 1996: 173–8), and long lists of herbs and other ingredients. A long formula against poison (the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’, ibid: 178–83), repeatedly characterises infection and sickness as something externally projected: nu magon þas VIIII wyrta wið nygon wuldorgeflogenum, ‘now these nine herbs avail against nine great spirits’. The medicinal herbs will wreceð heo wraðan, ‘drive away the evil ones’, and they will be ‘put to flight’. Woden (i.e. Óðinn) is also mentioned, on heofonum…hongode, ‘hanging in heaven’, and the god uses VIIII wuldortanas, ‘nine twigs of glory’ against sorcerous hostility. Another charm Wið Dweorh, ‘Against a Dwarf’ (ibid: 187ff), ascribes the onslaught of fever to an attack by this being.
The most dramatic and relevant here is probably the charm Wið Færstice, ‘For a Sudden Stitch’ from the end of the tenth century (ibid: 189ff). It is worth quoting in full:
Hlude wæran hy, la, hlude, ða hy ofer þone hlæw ridan; wæran anmode, ða hy ofer land ridan.
Scyld ðu ðe nu, þu ðysne nið genesan mote.
Ut, lytel spere, gif her inne sie!
Stod under linde, under leohtum scylde,
þær ða mihtigan wif hyra mægan beræddon
and hy gyllende garas sændan;
ic him oðerne eft wille sændan,
fleogende flane forane togeanes.
Ut, lytel spere, gif hit her inne sy!
Sæt smið, sloh seax lytel,
[...] iserna, wund[rum] swiðe.
Ut, lytel spere, gif her inne sy!
Syx smiðas sætan, wælspera worhtan.
Ut, spere næs in, spere!
Gif her inne sy ise[r]nes dæl,
hægtessan geweorc, hit sceal gemyltan.
Gif ðu wære on fell scoten oððe wære on flæsc scoten
oððe wære on blod scoten oððe wære on lið scoten, næfre ne sy ðin lif atæsed;
gif hit wære esa gescot oððe hit wære ylfa gescot
oððe hit wære hægtessan gescot, nu ic wille ðin helpan.
Þis ðe to bote esa gescotes, ðis ðe to bote ylfa gescotes,
ðis ðe to bote hægtessan gescotes; ic ðin wile helpan.
Fle[oh] þær on fyrgenh[ea]fde!
Hal westu, helpe ðin drihten!
Nim þonne þæt seax, ado on wætan.
Loud were they, lo, loud, when they rode over the burial mound;
they were fierce, when they rode over the land.
Shield yourself now [so that] you might survive this evil attack.
Out, little spear, if here [any] be within!
[I] stood beneath a linden [i.e. shield], under a light shield,
where the mighty women revealed their power,
and they, yelling, sent forth spears;
I to them another one back will send,
a flying arrow straight towards [them].
Out, little spear, if it be here within!
The smith sat, hammered out a little knife,
[an article of] iron, very wondrously.
Out, little spear, if [any] here be within!
Six smiths sat, made killing-spears.
Out, little spear, not in, spear!
If there be here within a portion of iron,
the work of hags, it shall melt away.
If you were in the skin shot or were in the flesh shot or were in the blood shot
or were in a limb shot, never be your life jeopardised;
whether it was Æsir’s
shot or it was elves’ shot or it was hags’ shot, now I shall help you.
[Let] this [be] a remedy for you for Æsir’s shot, this a remedy to you for elves’ shot,
this a remedy to you for hags’ shot; I shall help you.
Flee there to the mountain-head!
May you be healthy, may God assist you!
Then take that knife, put [it] in liquid.
Wið Færstice l. 1–10; text and translation after Griffiths 1996: 189ff
The parallels to the Norse sources are manifold and obvious: the stitch as a weapon (a spear); its onset as an attack; the role of weapons (the cloud of spears, the shield, the knife); the valkyrjur-like women who seem to lead the attack; the arcane role of the smith; the idea of counterattack; the explicit mention of the ‘shot’ as the work of hags (i.e. sorceresses or witches), the elves or even of the Æsir themselves (this later pairing is echoed in the formula that heralds Ragnarok in Voluspá 49). That the whole charm fits the pattern of ‘magical projectiles’ is equally clear.
The same features are found in other Anglo-Saxon charms, such as that against wæterælfadle, ‘the water-elf disease’ which is thought to be chicken pox or measles (Griffiths 1996: 193f). The blisters of the disease are ‘wounds’, and the poultices laid upon the afflcited are beadowræda, ‘war-bandages’. The mighty women of the charm against stitch occur in another context too, which gives us a startling image of their appearance. In a mid-eleventh-century charm against bee-stings (ibid: 195f), the swarm of bees is hailed as ge sigewif, ‘you war-women’: the depiction of a boiling cloud of female battle beings is striking. Amongst other charms dealing with cattle theft, injury to horses, protection on a journey and so on, we find not only the idea of external attack but also a curious and unexplained item of protective equipment – a sigegyrd, ‘rod of victory’ (‘Journey Charm’; ibid: 201), which will protect the bearer from confusion and nightmares. Is this a dim reflection of the staffs reviewed in chapter 3?
From this individual level of assault we can move to the expression of similar concepts at a larger scale, on the battlefield itself. As we have done in chapter 3 with the ‘domestic’ functions of seiðr and its related Óðinnic rituals, it is also possible to isolate what is effectively a repertoire of war-spells, forming the ‘second branch’ of Nordic sorcery as discussed above. They can be summarised as follows:
•instilling fear and confusion
•conferring courage and clarity of mind
•instilling physical weakness
•conferring physical strength
•magically hindering the body’s movements
•breaking or strengthening weapons and armour
•providing invulnerability in battle
•killing people
•resurrecting dead warriors to fight again
•providing protection from sorcerers
•fighting or killing sorcerers
These spells and charms appear to have operated at two levels, concerning respectively warriors and sorcerers. We shall examine them here in turn.
The ritual dimensions of battle could begin before the commencement of hostilities. One example of this occurs in Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa, presenting one of several versions of the Battle of Fyris Plains fought outside Uppsala in the late tenth century between the Swedish king Eiríkr and his kinsman Styrbjorn. King Eiríkr has been a faithful follower of Óðinn, and after making offerings to the god he is approached by a man in a broad-brimmed hat – a classic Óðinn figure. He gives the king a reed (reysproti), and tells him to cast it over Styrbjorn’s army as it advances, at the same time calling out Óðinn á yðr alla, ‘you all belong to Óðinn’. As he throws the reed it turns into a spear, Styrbjorn’s men are blinded and – somewhat improbably in the environs of Uppsala – a mountain falls on them. This is not merely the dedicatory ritual of Óðinn’s spear that we have seen in chapter 3, it is an active war-spell that results in the destruction of an army.
It is also in Óðinn’s powers that we see the greatest number of battle spells, set out at length in the Ljóðatal section of Hávamál. Jens Peter Schjødt’s argument (2001: 574ff) that Óðinn cannot simultaneously operate as a shaman-figure and a god of the warrior elite seems puzzling in this light, as the shamanic complex actually provides the perfect meeting-place of these roles. We can examine the different war spells in turn, comparing them with their analogues from other sources.
Firstly we see spells used by Óðinn to dull the edges of his enemies’ weapons:
| Þat kann ek it þriðja: | This third I know: |
| ef mér verðr þorf mikil | if I have real need |
| hapts við mína heiptmogu, | to hold my foes in check, |
| eggjar ek deyfi | I blunt the blades |
| minna andskota, | of my adversaries, |
| bítat þeim vápn né velir. | their weapons and staffs cannot bite. |
Hávamál 148;
translation after Page 1995: 213 with my amendments
The conferrence of magical invulnerability is also found among Óðinn’s skills in Ynglingasaga 6, which from its phrasing is almost certainly based on the strophe from Hávamál. In the same vein, in Sogubrot af fornkonungum (374) a ‘great seiðr’ is laid upon King Haraldr to ensure that he will not fall in battle and that no iron can bite him.
The idea of fettering is also particularly striking among the war-spells, and is played out in several senses. On the one hand this refers to dexterity, and the idea of either increasing that of one’s own warriors or inducing fatal clumsiness – ‘binding’ the limbs – in one’s enemies. On the other hand it can refer to literal fetters, to freeing prisoners or capturing and immobilising opponents. These notions have already been encountered both in Óðinn’s names (e.g. Haptaguð, ’Fetter-God’) and in those of the valkyrjur (e.g. Herfjotur, ‘War-Fetter’). The catalogue of chants in Hávamál includes one of Óðinn’s spells relating to this:
| Þat kann ek it fjórða: | This fourth I know: |
| ef mér fyrðar bera | if men put shackles |
| bǫnd at bóglimum, | on my limbs, |
| svá ek gel | my chant will |
| at ek ganga má; | let me go free; |
| sprettr mér af fótum fjǫturr | the fetter springs from my legs |
| en af hǫndum hapt. | and the bonds from my hands. |
Hávamál 149;
translation after Page 1995: 213 with my amendments
In comparison, from the Continental Germanic sources we can also consider the First Merseburg Charm (de Vries 1957: §230; Neckel 1913: 83), recorded in a tenth-century manuscript but certainly of older date. This spell in Old High German enlists the aid of supernatural women called Idisi (dísir?) to release warriors from their chains and to obstruct an enemy force:
| Eiris sâzun idisi, | Once the Idisi sat, |
| sâzun hera duoder; | sat here and there; |
| suma hapt heptidun, | some bound fetters, |
| suma heri lezidun, | some hampered the army, |
| suma clûbôdun | some untied |
| umbi cuoniouuidi: | fetters: |
| insprinc haptbandun, | escape from the fetters, |
| invar vîgandun. | flee from the enemies. |
Text after de Vries 1957: §230; translation after Simek 1993: 171
Whether these bonds are literal or mental is unclear, but there seems little doubt that this charm is related to the ‘war-fetter’ of Viking sorcery. The Idisi have been interpreted as a form of valkyrjur, preserved in a Germanic tradition earlier than most of the Norse sources (Kögel 1892), and we can also see obvious links with the Anglo-Saxon charm against stitch discussed above. On the Continent at least these beings, and their valkyrja-like function, would seem to be of great antiquity. This is seen, for example, in the name Idisiaviso, ‘Plain of the Idisi’, that Tacitus gives to the battlefield near the Weser where the Roman imperial forces under Germanicus fought Arminius’ Cherusci in AD 16 (Annales II: 16). Simek tentatively suggests (1993: 170f) that the name Idisiaviso may correspond to the Norse Iðavollr, the plain on which the gods assemble in the new world that comes into being after Ragnarok – an interesting association for a battlefield.
The magical mastery of the field also extends to active intervention to control the movement of weapons. Here we see another of Óðinn’s chants from Hávamál:
| Þat kann ek it fimmta: | This fifth I know: |
| ef ek sé af fári skotinn | if I see shot in enmity |
| flein í fólki vaða, | an arrow flying in battle, |
| flýgra hann svá stinnt | it will not speed so surely |
| at ek stǫðvigak, | that I cannot stop it, |
| ef ek hann sjónum of sék. | if once I get my eye on it. |
Hávamál 150;
translation after Page 1995: 213 with my amendments
Spells could also be laid directly on weapons, for example in Þorsteins saga Víkingassonar when the sword Angrvaðill is given killing powers through seiðr. Similarly, in Njáls saga (30) we read that,
Hallgrímr hefir atgeir þann, er hann hefir látit seiða til, at hánum skall ekki vápn at bana verða nema hann; þat fylgir ok, at þegar veit, er víg er vegit með atgeirinum, því at þá syngr í honum áðr hátt; svá hefir hann náttúru mikla með sér.
Hallgrímr carries a heavy spear*, on which he has had seiðr worked so that no other weapon can kill him; and furthermore one can tell that the spear will shortly kill a man by the loud ringing sound that it makes; such is the greatness of its supernatural power.
Njáls saga (30), my translation * atgeir is often translated as ‘halberd’, but this medieval weapon was unknown in the Viking Age and in all probability a kind of heavy spear for close fighting is meant
This seiðr-spear plays a significant role in the saga after its acquisition by the hero Gunnarr, and its supernatural qualities are mentioned several times (see McTurk 1992: 106–11; Roy 2009 has many interesting comments on the binding of magical power into objects).
There are also suggestions that sorcerers could be involved in the actual manufacture of weapons. In Gísla saga Súrssonar (11), the great sword Grásiða has been broken in combat (its name means ‘Greyflank’ and is puzzlingly in the feminine; perhaps it originally applied to some other weapon). Many years later, its shards are reforged into a pattern-welded spearhead by the seiðskratti Þórgrímr, who is described as being ‘skilful with iron’. He shuts himself up in his forge to remake the blade, and there is a strong suggestion that he applies more than his metal-working skills to the task. The same sorcerer is later commissioned by the friends of a slain warrior, and is asked to use sorcery to ensure that there should be no help, rest or shelter given to the killer, ‘however much men might want to give it to him’ (ibid: 18).
Another kind of sorcerous strength or advantage in combat can be seen in the resistance of seiðr-workers to intense heat. In Eddic poetry we may think of Óðinn between the fires in Grímnismál, and the sorceress Gullveig in Voluspá 21. It should not be forgotten that the use of fire was a regular feature in Viking-Age combat that took place around buildings, and the burning of people inside a hall is a recurring motif in the saga literature (the death of Njál is the best-known example). An explicit link between the Óðinnic ability to withstand heat and the capacity to extract victory from a hall-burning is made in Hrólf’s saga kraka. Hrólfr and his men, who have already been tested by Aðils’ fires, survive the latter’s attempt to burn them in their hall by cutting their way out through the side-walls and fighting in the open. We can compare this with another spell in the Ljóðatal:
| Þat kann ek it sjaunda: | This seventh I know: |
| ef ek sé hávan loga | if I see a great hall |
| sal um seessmǫgum, | blazing over bench-mates, |
| brennrat svá breitt | that fire cannot spread so far |
| at ek honum bjargigak; | that I cannot save it; |
| þatt kann ek galdr at gala | I know the galdrB62 to chant. |
Hávamál 152;
translation after Page 1995: 213 with my amendments
The idea of invulnerability is also a constant theme, the intent to protect one’s own forces while attacking those of the enemy. This recurs in two more spells from Hávamál:
| Þat kann ek it ellipta: | This eleventh I know: |
| ef ek skal til orrostu | if I to battle |
| leiða langvini, | shall lead old friends, |
| undir randir ek gel, | under shields I chant, |
| en þeir með ríki fara | and in strength they go |
| heilir hildar til, | safe into battle, |
| heilir hildi frá, | safe from battle, |
| koma þeir heilir hvaðan. | every time they come back safe. |
| Þat kann ek it þrettánda: | This thirteenth I know: |
| ef ek skal þegn ungan | if I get to sprinkle |
| verpa vatni á, | a young lad with water, |
| munat hann falla, | he will not fall |
| þótt hann í folk komi; | if he goes into battle; |
| hnígra sá halr fyr hjǫrum. | that fighter will never fall to the sword. |
Hávamál 156, 158;
translation after Page 1995: 214 with my amendments
Of course, several of these functions also reappear in Snorri’s words from Ynglingasaga:
Óðinn kunni þá íþrótt, svá at mestr máttr fylgði, ok framði sjálfr, er seiðr heitir, en af því mátti hann vita ørlog manna ok óorðna hluti, svá ok at gera monnum bana eða óhamingju eða vanheilendi, svá ok at taka frá monnum vit eða afl ok gefa oðrum.
Óðinn knew the skill from which follows the greatest power, and which he performed himself, that which is called seiðr. By means of it he could know the futures of men and that which had not yet happened, and also cause death or misfortune or sickness, as well as take men’s wits or strength from them and give them to others.
Ynglingasaga 7; my translation
Battle magic could also take quite other forms, and tackle different kinds of combat-related problems. Hrólfs saga kraka (32) presents a case in which sorcery is used to deceive an entire army in camp, lulling the troops collectively into a false sense of security in advance of an attack by their opponents. As we have seen before, the sorcery is performed by a high-ranking individual, in this case Queen Skuld who leads the attacking army in person and later actually participates in the fighting.
This account also contains sexual elements. Skuld uses galdrar and gerningar to conceal the approach of her army from Hrólf and his champions. Although it is not stated explicitly, this magic seems to take the form of a carnal lassitude that oppresses its victims, as the soldiers in the targeted army devote their time exclusively to sexual games with their women. Even when the enemy are actually upon them, the troops simply ignore them in favour of visiting the tents of their mistresses. One of Hrólfr’s champions, Hjalti, breaks the spell in a very strange fashion. Having had sex with his partner, he asks her if she would prefer two twenty-year-olds or a man of eighty – when she chooses the former he calls her a whore and bites off her nose. This bizarre episode, which is very hard to explain in its unsettling mixture of sexual sorcery and sudden, brutal violence, at last frees Hrólfr’s troops to engage Skuld and her army (Saxo has a similar version of the tale).
Different rules seem to have applied when sorcerers fought each other. Duels of this kind, such a common feature of both Sámi and circumpolar belief, are also found in the Old Norse sources. A graphic example of the motif in its most exaggerated form can be found in the fourteenth-century fantasy Gongu-Hrólfs saga (33), describing a battle in northern Russia in which the sorcerers of each side engage each other and the enemy troops. While encased in a narrative that is clearly of the Romance tradition, the account of the sorcerers’ duel and its components has many earlier parallels, and is worthy of closer study. The description occupies most of a chapter in the saga, but here we can profitably isolate the key events in sequence. The two forces have been fighting for two days, with Hrólfr’s army protected by the dwarf sorcerer Mondull, and that of their enemy King Eiríkr watched over by the evil sorcerer Grímr Ægir, who has the power to raise the dead to fight for him. The third day of battle begins, and we can follow the two sorcerers’ actions in parallel:
Several key themes will be familiar here from earlier accounts related above: the shape-changing opponents, the sinking into the earth, the enlistment of supernatural aid from elsewhere (Mondull’s mysterious underground ‘friends’), the power of a sorcerer’s saliva, the magically-strengthened weapons and armour. The killing eye of a dying sorcerer also occurs in relation to the same family of seiðmenn described above from Laxdæla saga, when both of Kotkell’s sons have bags placed over their heads before being executed. The reasons for this are made clear when a small rip is found in one of the bags, enabling Stígandi to catch a glimpse of the hillside across the valley. The text tells us that:
…þar var fagrt landsleg ok grasloðit; en því var líkast, sem hvirfilvindr komi at; sneri um jorðunni, svá at aldregi síðan kom þar gras upp. Þar heitir nú á Brennu.
It was a fine stretch of land and rich with grass; but suddenly it was as if a whirlwind came, and turned over the earth so that no grass came up there again. The place is still called Brenna [‘Burnt’].
Laxdæla saga (38); my translation