Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (review)

In his Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, Stephen A. Mitchell provides a comprehensive and enlightening survey of beliefs and narratives concerning supernatural aggression in medieval Scandinavia. Spanning the years 1100 to 1525, Mitchell's study chronicles the development of textual accounts of witches from the period of Christianization down to the Reformation, surveying textual instantiations of the phenomenon in sagas, law codes, histories, and vitae in Old Norse, as well as other ecclesiastical products of the era written in Latin.

Mitchell's work consists of six chapters framed by an introduction and epilogue, and includes an extensive section of notes. Chapter 1 provides an examination of the cultures of the Nordic region, with particular attention to the kinds of texts produced and what they can tell us about popular belief. Mitchell situates his work within the philological tradition, but argues persuasively for an embrace of contemporary folkloristic perspectives, writing: "the field of medieval folkloristics . . . can no longer be understood as merely a branch of textual criticism but as something of an archaeology of past mentalities and a recontextualization of performance practices" (p. 25). Magic in the long-term process of Christianization becomes for Mitchell "a kind of discourse, or at least the possibility of discourse, between pagan and Christian, a meta-language that could communicate complex ideologies on a high plain" (p. 35).

Chapter 2 explores what such texts tell us of magical practices in Nordic daily life, surveying both pre-Christian figures and Christian saints, and exploring magical practices connected with romance, fortune, health, weather, and malediction. The chapter draws heavily on saga materials but integrates these in intriguing and enlightening ways with other examples from law codes, vitae, and learned Latin texts of science and healing.

Chapter 3, "Narrating Magic, Sorcery and Witchcraft," focuses on the ways in which accounts of magic are constructed in narratives, both avowedly secular and religious. The chapter surveys mythological materials concerning Óðinn in particular, saga accounts, and Christian vitae, homilies, and histories. Mitchell explains the ways in which stylistic and content-related norms shape various genres and affect the portrayals of magic and witches that we find in various texts. Mitchell offers insightful views of the differences in the portrayal of witchcraft in family sagas vs. contemporary sagas in particular (pp. 97-103), demonstrating the kind of textual agenda that underlies many depictions of medieval magic and witchcraft.

Chapter 4, "Medieval Mythologies," focuses on the worldviews of pre-Christian and Christian Scandinavia and the place magic and magical aggression occupied in each. Mitchell devotes particular attention in the chapter to tracing the arrival and evolution of continental motifs of witchcraft, such as the notion of a pact with the devil, transvection and sabbat (localized in Swedish tradition to the isle of Blåkulla), milk-stealing, and other purported misdeeds of witches that eventually become the mainstay of witchcraft accusations in the great trials of the eighteenth century. Of great interest is Mitchell's careful analysis of the way motifs like the gandreið (transvection) change over the course of centuries, coming to resemble less and less the pre-Christian phenomena reflected in certain eddic poems and resembling instead the continental images of witchcraft diffusing into the region along with religious tracts and practices for their suppression (pp. 132-33).

Chapter 5 examines the treatment of non-Christian activities, heresy, and witchcraft in medieval Nordic law tracts. Mitchell provides details on various and often-overlooked texts that legislate the definition, apprehension, and punishment of magic aggression, comparing the detailed laws of Norway and Iceland to the "thin gruel" (p. 164) of Danish and Swedish law codes, where witchcraft figures only sporadically and seldom with the specificity and fervor evinced in western materials. Predicting the focus of the subsequent chapter, Mitchell addresses differences in the prosecution of witchcraft along gender lines, noting that women tended to be accused of transgressions related to sexuality and treated with leniency, while men were accused...