Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) by Mitchell Stephen A

Author:Mitchell, Stephen A. [Mitchell, Stephen A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

The Medieval Legacy

The preceding chapters have in different ways all addressed a single, central issue: What happened in Catholic Scandinavia as Christian ideology, with its own developing views of witchcraft and demonic magic, encountered and merged with native Nordic traditions of sorcery? How did these cultural categories meld and evolve in the four centuries before the Reformation? Inevitably, research of this sort has traveled discursively into such areas as popular culture, theology, legal thinking, and so on, and among other issues investigated are the following:

• magic’s role in the pre-Christian era, at least as represented in Christian writings;

• the relationship between Christian and pagan magic and their potential as shared discourse;

• the consequences of the fact that the Conversion was accomplished only over a lengthy period, with some functions within the magical orbit shifting from pagan forms to Christian counterparts;

• the variety of learned strains of magic in medieval Scandinavia, including not only elite Christian thinking but also Jewish magical traditions and alchemy;

• the evidence of both regional and pan-European traditions of charm magic in medieval Scandinavia;

• the operational aspects of charm magic, arrived at through close readings of the material evidence and literary presentations (e.g., Skírnismál);

• how a spectrum of objects—from unique to quotidian, from gemstones to breast milk—could be used in charm magic to influence romance, weather, and health; to peer into the future; and to curse;

• how the presentation in native texts of seiðr, galdr, and other forms of magic can sometimes preserve historical data;

• how these texts also employ magic as a “mere” literary device, to, for example, suggest differences between the contemporary world of the writer and the ancient pre-Christian world;

• how the same tendency toward using magic as a cipher for the past is also true of native Latin works and translated texts from abroad;

• how mythologies about witchcraft—the diabolical pact, the sabbatic journey to Blåkulla, the milk-stealing witch—evolved in the Nordic Middles Ages;

• how the secular laws—of Sweden and Norway in particular—treat witchcraft beliefs, frequently in the context of slander, underscoring the importance of reputation as a defense against accusations of witchcraft;

• how the legal codes suggest differences from our earliest records in the treatment of witchcraft in the differing national polities;

• how church laws focusing on superstition, magic, and witchcraft map onto presentations of these practices in sagas, trials, and other sources;

• how the arrangement of the laws, especially the crimes with which witchcraft is associated, changes over time;

• how medieval Nordic trials involving witchcraft and related crimes demonstrate a pattern in which females are charged with witchcraft involve sexuality and given relatively light sentences, whereas men are charged with more serious crimes and executed;

• how witchcraft is best understood in a gendered context, underscoring that the central idea of the witch as “evil woman” provided social control to various communities; and

• how the cultural construction of witchcraft affects our understanding of Nordic attitudes toward gender, power, and issues of masculinity and effeminacy.

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