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Examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, its meaning, function, and practioners.
The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia
List of figures and tables
Abbreviations
Preface and acknowledgements to the first edition
Preface and acknowledgements to the second edition
A note on language
A note on seid
1. Different Vikings? Towards a cognitive archaeology of the later Iron Age
A beginning at Birka
Textual archaeology and the Iron Age
The Other and the Odd?
An archaeology of the Viking mind?
2. Problems and paradigms in the study of Old Norse sorcery
Entering the mythology
Research perspectives on Scandinavian pre-Christian religion
Gods and monsters, worship and superstition
The shape of Old Norse religion
The double world: seidr and the problem of Old Norse 'magic'
Seidr in the sources
Seidr in research
3. Seidr
Odinn
Freyja and the magic of the Vanir
Seidr and Old Norse cosmology
The performers
The performance
Engendering seidr
Seidr and the concept of the soul
The domestic sphere of seidr
Seidr contextualised
4. Noaidevuohta
Seidr and the Sami
Sami-Norse relations in the Viking Age
Sami religion and the Drum-Time
Rydving's terminology of noaidevuohta
Women and noaidevuohta
The rituals of noaidevuohta
The ethnicity of religious context in Viking-Age Scandinavia
5. Circumpolar religion and the question of Old Norse shamanism
The circumpolar cultures and the invention of shamanism
The shamanic world-view
Shamanism in Scandinavia
Seidr and circumpolar shamanism
6. The supernatural empowerment of aggression
Seidr and the world of war
Valkyrjur, skaldmeyjar and hjalmvitr
Supernatural agency in battle
The projection of destruction
Battle magic
Seidr and the shifting of shape
Berserkir and ulfhednar
Ecstasy, psychic dislocation and the dynamics of mass violence
Weaving war, grinding battle: Darradarljod and Grottas ongr in context
7. The Viking way
A reality in stories
Viking women, Viking men
8. Magic and mind
Receptions and reactions
Cracks in the ice of Norse 'religion'
Walking into the seidr: contested interpretations of Viking-Age magic
Queering magic?
The social world of war
The Viking mind: a conclusion
References
Primary sources, including translations
Pre-nineteenth-century sources for the early Sami and Siberian cultures
Secondary sources
Sources in archive
Index
801 777 223
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