Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

The second volume of Old Norse Folklore explores medieval and early modern Nordic magic and witchcraft, covering syncretism, continuity, survival, and the reconstruction of pagan beliefs and cultic practices in this last area of western Europe to be Christianized. This volume not only considers these issues but also pulls back the curtain on more obscure, yet important, corners of Nordic magico-religious tradition.

In these chapters, Stephen A. Mitchell draws on materials from many different periods of the vast Nordic world, stretching from Greenland to the Baltic, and examines such diverse witnesses as sagas, judicial records, ballads, synodal statutes, runes, proverbs, church murals, leechbooks, and the language used to discuss magic and its actors. Old Norse Folklore addresses how theology helped to shape the Nordic magical world and how language can reveal this world, how magic was used as a practical matter in (and what it meant philosophically to) the medieval Nordic world, and how inherited traditions between and among the historically connected societies of northern Europe impacted cultural developments in late medieval Scandinavia.

1144898505
Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

The second volume of Old Norse Folklore explores medieval and early modern Nordic magic and witchcraft, covering syncretism, continuity, survival, and the reconstruction of pagan beliefs and cultic practices in this last area of western Europe to be Christianized. This volume not only considers these issues but also pulls back the curtain on more obscure, yet important, corners of Nordic magico-religious tradition.

In these chapters, Stephen A. Mitchell draws on materials from many different periods of the vast Nordic world, stretching from Greenland to the Baltic, and examines such diverse witnesses as sagas, judicial records, ballads, synodal statutes, runes, proverbs, church murals, leechbooks, and the language used to discuss magic and its actors. Old Norse Folklore addresses how theology helped to shape the Nordic magical world and how language can reveal this world, how magic was used as a practical matter in (and what it meant philosophically to) the medieval Nordic world, and how inherited traditions between and among the historically connected societies of northern Europe impacted cultural developments in late medieval Scandinavia.

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Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

by Stephen A. Mitchell
Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

Old Norse Folklore: Magic, Witchcraft, and Charms in Medieval Scandinavia

by Stephen A. Mitchell

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Overview

The second volume of Old Norse Folklore explores medieval and early modern Nordic magic and witchcraft, covering syncretism, continuity, survival, and the reconstruction of pagan beliefs and cultic practices in this last area of western Europe to be Christianized. This volume not only considers these issues but also pulls back the curtain on more obscure, yet important, corners of Nordic magico-religious tradition.

In these chapters, Stephen A. Mitchell draws on materials from many different periods of the vast Nordic world, stretching from Greenland to the Baltic, and examines such diverse witnesses as sagas, judicial records, ballads, synodal statutes, runes, proverbs, church murals, leechbooks, and the language used to discuss magic and its actors. Old Norse Folklore addresses how theology helped to shape the Nordic magical world and how language can reveal this world, how magic was used as a practical matter in (and what it meant philosophically to) the medieval Nordic world, and how inherited traditions between and among the historically connected societies of northern Europe impacted cultural developments in late medieval Scandinavia.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501777516
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 02/15/2025
Series: Myth and Poetics II
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 318
File size: 6 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Stephen A. Mitchell is the Robert S. and Ilse Friend Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University. His research centers on the Nordic world in the medieval and early modern periods, and employs a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, including performance theory, memory studies, anthropological linguistics, and other folklore-centered perspectives. He is the author of Heroic Sagas and Ballads and Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages.

What People are Saying About This

Louise Nyholm Kallestrup

The second volume of Old Norse Folklore is a crucial contribution to Old Norse scholarship and a model of how interdisciplinarity drives scholarship forward. This volume is fundamental for our understanding of the period that followed—when magic and witchcraft came in the persecuting eye of the authorities.

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