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Shamanism in Medieval Scandinavian Literature
- Central European University Press
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SHAMANISM IN MEDIEVAL SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE PETER BUCHHOLZ “On ne peut pas tout lire.” A quotation. It is not very penetrating or original. It need not be quoted at all. Yet it is true. It is a short formulation of a feeling that all scholars, at least in the twentieth century , have experienced. The inevitable consequences of this statement in terms of what we usually call the development of science need not concern us here. (Preliminary studies are, no wonder, lacking.) The quotation is from page 15 of Mircea Eliade’s Le chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase published in 1951. Since then, the topic of shamanism has enjoyed the attention of scholars of different disciplines, and its attraction is apparently ever increasing. It is an interesting topic for the public, probably because people are searching more and more desperately for a way out from the cul-de-sac of sterile rationalism; they might also be guided by the less noble aim of providing a respectable legitimization to drug addiction. In Berkeley, and probably elsewhere as well, introductory and “initiation” courses are held into practical shamanism . When in 1988 I was spending my Sabbatical in the University of California, Berkeley, I excused myself from the participation at such a “course”. I had after all read scholarly literature on this topic and seen accounts of séances gone askew and ending in death. Fortunately, these cases are exceptional. The direction in which our civilization developed was predicted as early as 1951 by the renowned Romanian historian of religions, Mircea Eliade. To quote him: “We believe that such a study can be of interest not only to the specialist but also to the cultivated man, and it is to the latter that SHAMANISM IN MEDIEVAL SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE 235 this book is primarily addressed. […] We make bold to believe that a knowledge of it is a necessity for every true humanist; for it has been some time since humanism has ceased to be identified with the spiritual tradition of the West, great and fertile though that is” (1964, pp. xix–xx). This is the case with shamanism: a religious and/”or”1 magical, a magico-religious phenomenon, which is based on ecstasy and the techniques necessary for attaining it; more specifically, a state of ecstasy in which a contact is established with the other world. According to the archaic world-view, this other world exists in the sky as well as under the earth—yes, even on the earth. To get there, one has to surmount obstacles, to cross a border or a river, to pass through a forest. To accomplish this eventually, one had to possess by birth (or through initiation) certain qualities (as a hero of tales, epic figure, protagonist of sagas—literature “or” reality?), or one had to use techniques of ecstasy that could be learned, although we should not forget that according to our literary sources, their acquisition was facilitated by supernatural help such as dreams. The hero’s receptiveness to these is often depicted as hereditary in the sources. Here follows Eliade’s first definition of shamanism: “A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy” (1964, p. 4). In the ensuing parts of the chapter, Eliade does not bring up any precise definition that can be useful for the peoples living outside the regions of “Shamanism in the strict sense” (1964, p. 4), i.e. Siberia and Central Asia. But, in Eliade’s interpretation, this is not a shortcoming, because the author wanted to discover shamanistic traits, and the synthetic approach of the researcher may obviously bring in individual components. Since the 1950s, the research on shamanism can be divided into two schools. The first one treats shamanism as a purely Siberian and Central Asian phenomenon, although it includes the Lapps as well. In my opinion, it is not accidental that the scholars belonging to this group are in a minority. Although ethnologists including the Soviet scholars are quite convinced that in these regions shamanism has reached “its most advanced degree of integration” (Eliade, 1964, p. 12), they acknowledge that shamanism may be recognized [44.192.247.185] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:18 GMT) 236 COMMUNICATING WITH THE SPIRITS in other parts of the world as well. Anna-Leena Siikala, a Finnish scholar wrote in this spirit in a basic work from 1978 entitled The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman: “...the most relevant...