The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia by Neil Price (review)

This is the long-awaited second edition of Neil Price's dissertation, originally published in 2002. Despite its positive reception, high demand, and even nearcult status among Viking Age enthusiasts, the first edition has been out of print for years and very difficult for those interested to acquire. As with the first edition of The Viking Way, this book examines magic and sorcery in the context of the spiritual worldview of the Scandinavian Viking Age.

In this new edition, Price summarizes and comments upon much of the literature that has emerged on relevant topics since the publication of the first edition, corrects typos, and also adds some new material, including a new eighth chapter on Magic and Mind. While the additions amount to a considerable 35,000 words in length, Price maintains the same theoretical framework to achieve his goal of making the original version of the book available to meet the widespread demand.

Chapter 1, "Different Vikings? Towards a Cognitive Archaeology of the Later Iron Age," provides a brief overview of the Viking Age and its reception by previous schools of archaeologists, and places The Viking Way in the theoretical framework of cognitive archaeology. Price's approach focuses on archaeology and uses textual sources to help interpret archaeological finds. The chapter also explains the treatment of the problematic concepts of "religion" and "war," which were far closer entwined with each other in Late Iron Age Scandinavia than the modern concepts convey, and proposes they are better described by the term "belief system."

Chapter 2, "Problems and Paradigms in the Study of Old Norse Sorcery," provides a rough sketch of the pre-Christian Scandinavian worldview, including the different types of supernatural beings and the ideas of the human soul. Price also makes mention of the textual sources for the study of Old Norse mythology and the source criticism that must be taken into consideration for each. Here Price also introduces the different types of sorcery in the Viking Age and summarizes previous scholars' work on seiðr in particular.

In Chapter 3, "Seiðr," Price delves into the seiðr complex beginning with an exploration of Óðinn, his aspects as a magic practitioner, and an examination of 204 of his names to gain a broad scope of his associations in the minds of Late Iron Age Scandinavians. Next, Price establishes a comprehensive terminology and names for sorcerers found in Old Icelandic literature. The result is a list of terms organized by the gender of the practitioner on p. 83–84. Following this is a thorough description of twelve excavated graves from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Isle of Man that contained bodies of suspected sorcerers or persons who could have been involved in seiðr due to the presence of possible magic staffs or hallucinogens for religious rituals. Several graves were also found to contain objects conventionally associated with the opposite gender, which appears to support the associations of gender transgression seiðr has in textual sources. Then follows a description of various objects that likely played a role in seiðr rituals: amulets, performance platforms, masks, and special emphasis on the somewhat controversial iron and wooden staffs. Last discussed in this chapter are the sexual concept of ergi, its apparent connection to seiðr rituals, and the functions of seiðr magic such as divination, weather magic, and healing.

Chapter 4, "Noaidevuohta," broadly examines shamanism in pre-conversion Sámi society, and the connection between seiðr and the Sámi "nearest equivalent" noaidevuohto. Here Price begins by emphasizing the close contact with the Norse in large areas of Scandinavia, based on archaeological finds and DNA evidence from graves. He then provides an overview of the Sámi spiritual worldview, spirits and gods inhabiting the physical landscape, historical terms for noaidi or shamans, and related terms for magical acts and...