This study offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and contextualized investigation of the figure of the völva, situating her in the wider context of pre-Christian Nordic religion, culture, and ritual practices.
Old Norse literature abounds with descriptions of magic acts that allow ritual specialists of various kinds to manipulate the world around them, see into the future or the distant past, change weather conditions, influence the outcomes of battles, and more. While magic practitioners are known under myriad terms, the most iconic of them is the völva. As the central figure of the famous mythological poem Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Völva), the völva commands both respect and fear. In non-mythological texts similar women are portrayed as crucial albeit somewhat peculiar members of society. Always veiled in mystery, the völur and their kind have captured the academic and popular imagination for centuries.
Bringing together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume aims to provide new insights into the reality of magic and its agents in the Viking world, beyond the pages of medieval texts. It explores new trajectories for the study of past mentalities, beliefs, and rituals as well as the tools employed in these practices and the individuals who wielded them. In doing so, the volume engages with several topical issues of Viking Age research, including the complex entanglements of mind and materiality, the cultural attitudes to animals and the natural world, and the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. By addressing these complex themes, it offers a nuanced image of the völva and related magic workers in their cultural context. The volume is intended for a broad, diverse, and international audience, including experts in the field of Viking and Old Norse studies but also various non-professional history enthusiasts.
The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World is a key output of the project Tanken bag Tingene (Thoughts behind Things) conducted at the National Museum of Denmark from 2020 to 2023 and funded by the Krogager Foundation.
Author(s): Leszek Gardeła; Sophie Bønding; Peter Pentz
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: xi; 515
City: Oxford ; Philadelphia
Tags: Viking and Old Norse studies; Old Norse religion; Old Norse literature; Magic; Religious specialists; Viking Age--Religion--Beliefs and Rituals; Viking Age--Religion--Beliefs and Rituals--Animals; Viking Age--Religion--Utensils; Viking Age--Gender and Sexuality; ;
The Norse Sorceress
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
The Vǫlva and Her Sisters: A Foreword by Neil Price
Introduction Leszek Gardeła, Sophie Bønding & Peter Pentz
Part 1 Rituals, Myths, and Material Culture
1 The Vǫlva’s Ritual Repertoire: Between Magic and Divination
2 Between the Material and Immaterial: Burial Objects and their Nonhuman Agencies
3 Gender in the Viking World
4 Folklore and Prophecy
Part 2 Places and Spaces: Rituals and their Settings
5 Places and Spaces of Pre-Christian Religion: An Introduction to Part 2
6 Cult Buildings and Ritual Sites: A View from Gamla Uppsala
7 Of Bodies and Buildings: Rituals in the Halls of the Vikings
8 Ritual Activities Involving Domestic Work and Outhouses
9 Rituals in the Open Landscape
10 Pre-Christian Rituals at Elite Sites
11 Processions and Ritual Movement in Viking Age Scandinavia
12 Ritualised Executions and Human Sacrifices in the Viking World
13 Women and Sacrifice: Roles and Connections
14 Surely Every Live Man Fades Among the Dead: Fear and Desire in the Afterlife of Viking Age Graves
Part 3 Animals in Ritual Practices
15 Animals in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religion: An Introduction to Part 3
16 Human–Avian and God–Avian Relations in Viking Age Religion and Mythology – as Mirrored by Contemporary Pictorial Art
17 The Roles of Horses in Viking Age Ritual Action
18 Conjuring Canids: Wolves and Dogs in Viking Age Sorcery
19 The Oseberg Wagon: Reopening the Case
Part 4 Ritual Specialists
20 Ritual Specialists in the Viking World: An Introduction to Part 4
21 Gender, Prophecies, and Magic: Cult Specialists in Denmark before the Viking Age
22 Women of Another World: Some Reflections on Religious Aspects of Pre-Christian Scandinavian Female Names
23 The Fyrkat Vǫlva Revisited
24 The Fyrkat 4 Grave
25 The Textiles from the Fyrkat 4 Grave
26 The Birka Sorcerers
27 The Vǫlva from Gutdalen: Identity, Belief, and the Performance of Power in Viking Age Western Norway
28 Burials of Ritual Specialists? Case Studies of the Graves from Trekroner-Grydehøj and Gerdrup, Sjælland
Part 5 The Sorcerer’s Toolkit and Other Ritual Paraphernalia
29 Religious Paraphernalia, Amulets, and Other Elements of the Sorcerer’s Toolkit: An Introduction to Part 5
30 Magic Staffs in the Viking World
31 Necklaces and the Sorcerer’s Toolkit in the Viking Age
32 Miniature Chairs: On Seeresses, the Future, and Conflict
33 Wheels for Freyja’s Chariot? Wheel-shaped Pendants from the Viking Age
34 Miniature Weapons in the Viking World: Small Things with Great Meaning
35 Wearing a Banner: Cloak Pins with Miniature Weathervanes
36 The Magic of the Mask
