Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages by Stephen A. Mitchell (review)

In his chapter exploring the daily life of the medieval Nordic world, Professor Stephen A. Mitchell sharply dissects a major tension surrounding the role of magic in that society: “Relief through magic,” he says, “and relief from magic were both important means of addressing the stresses of everyday life in the Middle Ages” (p. 51). Mitchell’s clear, direct prose—reflected in the above quote—applies techniques from folkloristics and comparative literature to understand the spiritual conflicts that shaped the cosmological worldview of medieval Nordic peoples. Mitchell views magic as a type of artifact, a potsherd of culture, infiltrating many layers of the society in which it is found. He breaks the book into six rough parts, which occasionally overlap with one another, to reveal the character of Nordic sorcery and folk magic. Beginning with a look at materials and sources, the author continues with a grounded examination of vernacular practices. He then explores performance and narrative, theological interpretations, and the presence of magic in legal documents, before finishing with a brief but insightful perspective on the sometimes misrepresented role of gender in discussions of medieval witchcraft.

The book’s initial chapters examine the inherited view of magic for the Nordic peoples and its continuing relevance in medieval daily life. The paucity of direct source material predating the Christian conversion of pagan Scandinavia does not hamper Mitchell’s examination, as he astutely turns to comparative literary techniques to gain perspective on what sorts of magical practices were associated with earlier Nordic societies—perspectives of one group revealing the heathenry of another. The Finns in particular have a broadly painted association with magic, to the point where a term, finnfor, “meant to visit the Samí [a Finnish tribe] in order to inquire about the future” (p. 54). The author manages to capture a society in transition. The defined role of magic has not been completely hedged-in, and various levels of “outlawry” are ascribed to different magical acts in different places at different times. These chapters draw most heavily on the study of folklore to reveal the characteristics of magic in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and other Scandinavian countries. Mitchell cites the work of Dag Strömbäck and parallels folklore and philology as he parses out the evidence for oral traditions in later Nordic literature such as the sagas. The strain between factions of pagan and Christian magicians forms a centerpiece for the early sections of the book, with the unconverted sorcerers using the power of dyeffuolen Oden—a phrase that literally means “the devil Odinn”—to engage in competitions with the clerical enchanters. The latter always win, of course. He explores how the literature attributes powers to a divine source and ways that the narration questions the importance of different divine sources in these stories. His interpretation of these elements marks a sea change from a time when magic existed as a commonplace element of Scandinavian life to a time when it is a narrative device from an ancient past. What magic remains in the world after the conversion becomes forever suspect, an element of a pagan holdout in a Christian society. As Mitchell notes, “even when it [magic] worked—and there is little doubt but that medieval observers believed it could be effective—its nature was corrupt” (p. 55).

By the time the major literature of the period is recorded, magic has become a motivator and a foil for action within stories, legends, and songs. The same tensions between Christians and pagans that appear in the first two chapters resurface, but now the struggle over faith is taken for granted in the narratives. The stories that Mitchell relates in his chapter on the sagas and poetry that retain magical elements are reinterpreted through a theological lens in the following chapter. Saints’ legends become interwoven with tales of night-riding trollkona witches. Biblical themes are narrative tropes for defining moral and immoral magical acts. In some cases...