Books by Stephen Mitchell
Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia, 2023
Mitchell, Stephen A. 2023. Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval... more Mitchell, Stephen A. 2023. Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
The medieval northern world consisted of a vast and culturally diverse region both geographically, from roughly Greenland to Novgorod and culturally, as one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. Old Norse Folklore explores the complexities of this fascinating world in case studies and theoretical essays that connect orality and performance theory to memory studies, and myths relating to pre-Christian Nordic religion to innovations within late medieval pilgrimage song culture.
Old Norse Folklore provides critical new perspectives on the Old Norse world, some of which appear in this volume for the first time in English. Stephen A. Mitchell presents emerging methodologies by analyzing Old Norse materials to offer a better understandings ofunderstanding of Old Norse materials. He examines, interprets, and re-interprets the medieval data bequeathed to us by posterity—myths, legends, riddles, charms, court culture, conversion narratives, landscapes, and mindscapes—targeting largely overlooked, yet important sources of cultural insights.
In recent years, the field of memory studies has emerged as a key approach in the humanities and ... more In recent years, the field of memory studies has emerged as a key approach in the humanities and social sciences, and has increasingly shown its ability to open new windows on Nordic studies as well. The entries in this book document the work-to-date of this approach on the pre-modern Nordic world (mainly the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, but including as well both earlier and later periods). Given that memory studies is an ever expanding critical strategy, the nearly eighty contributors in this volume also discuss the potential for future research in this area. Topics covered range from texts to performance to visual and other aspects of material culture, all approached from within an interdisciplinary framework. International specialists, coming from such relevant fields as archaeology, mythology, history of religion, folklore, history, law, art, literature, philology, language, and mediality, offer assessments on the relevance of memory studies to their disciplines and show it at work in case studies. Finally, this handbook demonstrates the various levels of culture where memory had a critical impact in the pre-modern North and how deeply embedded the role of memory is in the material itself.
-Interdisciplinary volume on memory studies in Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia
-Texts and images illustrating the awareness of memory in, and the role of memory studies for, the Old Norse world
-Entries and case studies by nearly eighty specialists representing a wide variety of fields
Hermann, Pernille, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Amber J. Rose, eds. 2017. Old Nor... more Hermann, Pernille, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Amber J. Rose, eds. 2017. Old Norse Mythology—Comparative Perspectives. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 3. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
What was the everyday context of magic and witchcraft in the medieval, early modern and modern pe... more What was the everyday context of magic and witchcraft in the medieval, early modern and modern period in the Nordic countries? How did people pass on their magical knowledge? What was the dialectics between magical knowledge as beneficial on one hand and dangerous on the other within the different communities? In what way and by whom were traditional methods of folk healing practices considered to be a crime? And how does this relate to general ideas on magicin the communities? By asking these questions the intention of this volume is to provide studies communicating and discussing with as well as challenging the long line of research on magic.
Another intention of this volume is to explore and problematize texts as a source: How do we read texts? Whose voices do we interpret? What is the relationship between the magical beliefs and practices we are studying
- and the texts? In the study of magical beliefs and practices in Nordic cultural history, a great variety of textual sources are available. In this volume, Fredrik Skott studies magic by making use of juridical laws and trials documents, Stephen Mitchell and Ane Ohrvik investigate individual manuscript writings, Catharina Raudvere uses ethnographic fieldwork notes and Laura Stark reads personal memoirs, while Clive Tolley and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir study Old Norse literature. This diversity of textual sources represents official, “private”, academic, and artistic texts written by individuals and groups from different social and cultural backgrounds. By highlighting texts as a source we thereby give attention to how we use texts in our investigating process and thus explore and explain our methodological apparatus and the potential ideological and material properties in texts.
Building on and applying the theoretical debates developed in /Memory and Remembering: Past Aware... more Building on and applying the theoretical debates developed in /Memory and Remembering: Past Awareness in the Medieval North/, ed. Pernille Hermann and Stephen A. Mitchell, special issue of /Scandinavian Studies/, 85:3 (2013)—itself the result of a 2012 Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar—the articles in this volume deal with the vocabulary, concepts, and functions of memory in medieval Norse texts (e.g., sagas, myths, skaldic poems, laws, runic inscriptions, historiographical writings), with reference to international memory studies. Drawing on these emerging theoretical tools for studying—and conceptualizing—memory, the collection looks at new ways of understanding medieval cultures and such issues as transmission and media, preservation and storage, forgetting and erasure, and authenticity and falsity. Despite its interdisciplinary and comparative basis, the volume remains grounded in empirical studies of memory and memory-dependent issues as these took form in the Nordic world.
CONTENTS: JÜRG GLAUSER, “Foreword” vii; PERNILLE HERMANN, STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, and AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture” 1; Part I. Memory and Narration —PERNILLE HERMANN, “Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature” 13; JOHN LINDOW, “Memory and Old Norse Mythology” 41; MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, “Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse” 59; KATE HESLOP, “Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts” 75; RUSSELL POOLE, “Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’” 109; Part II. Memory and History — RUDOLF SIMEK, “Memoria Normannica” 133; STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, “The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland” 155; GÍSLI SIGURÐSSON, “Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri” 175; STEFAN BRINK, “Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases” 197; AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Legal Culture and Historical Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland” 211; Index 231""
The 2012 Radcliffe Seminar, “The Ambiguities of Memory Construction in Medieval Texts: The Nordic... more The 2012 Radcliffe Seminar, “The Ambiguities of Memory Construction in Medieval Texts: The Nordic Case,” inspired a series of theoretically-oriented essays which have now appeared as Memory and Remembering: Past Awareness in the Medieval North, containing the following essays: "Constructing the Past. Introductory Remarks" (Pernille Hermann and Stephen Mitchell, pp. 261-66); “Places, Monuments and Objects. The Past in Ancient Scandinavia” (Anders Andrén, pp. 267-81); “Memory, Mediality, and the ‘Performative Turn’: Recontextualizing Remembering in Medieval Scandinavia” (Stephen Mitchell, pp. 282-305); “Ethnomemory: Ethnographic and Culture-Centered Approaches to the Study of Memory” (Thomas A. DuBois, pp. 306-31); “Saga Literature, Cultural Memory and Storage” (Pernille Hermann, pp. 332-54); “Hegemonic Memory, Counter-Memory and Struggles for Royal Power: The Rhetoric of the Past in the Age of King Sverrir Sigurðsson of Norway” (Bjørn Bandlien, pp. 355-77); “Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Time” (Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, pp. 378-99); and “Past Awareness in Christian Environments: Source-Critical Ideas about Memories of the Pagan Past” (Gísli Sigurðsson, pp. 400-10).
See: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14800.html
“impressively interdisciplinary”—Edward Be... more See: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14800.html
“impressively interdisciplinary”—Edward Bever, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History
“comprehensive and enlightening”—Thomas DuBois, JEGP
"an impressive book”—Jenny Jochens, Speculum
“deft use of the full array of sources”—Michael Bailey, American Historical Review
“challenges established views”—Rune Blix Hagen, Historisk tidsskrift
“excellent study of ‘religious’ change”—Nicolas Meylan, Jrnl of Religion
“excellent overview”—Lars Lönnroth, Svenska Dagbladet
“how other shelves in the library of cultural history can be reorganized”—John Ødemark, Arv
“of great value not only to scholars of Scandinavia but to anyone interested in the complex history of European witch-beliefs”—Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore
---
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.
Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland.
By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
Stephen A. Mitchell is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University and author of Heroic Sagas and Ballads."
From the Preface: "In the modern world artistic creativity necessarily implies originality; as a ... more From the Preface: "In the modern world artistic creativity necessarily implies originality; as a rule, we have great difficulty assessing the works of an age in which such notions were for the most part still quite distant. The heroic sagas taken up in the present volume, the so-called fornaldarsögur (literally, 'sagas of antiquity'; singular fornaldarsaga), reflect a different kind of literary artifice, a kind of creativity practiced in medieval Iceland which drew heavily on commonly known and widely used narrative traditions. It should not be assumed, however, that genius and artistic excellence do not enter into a discussion of the legendary fiction of thirteenth-, fourteenth-, and fifteenth-century Iceland -- they do, but the value modern readers place on the originality and uniqueness of a character or an episode makes a very poor standard for evaluating the literary merits of such texts as those taken up in the chapters that follow. One consequence has been that these tales are often relegated to the status of "poor cousins" within the family of Icelandic literature; another is that they are more likely to yield results to extraliterary consideration than to conventional literary criticism."
From the Introduction: "Almost all scholarly treatments of the sagas can be characterized as gravitating toward one of two poles, namely, belief in either oral or written sagas. Of course, such terms as the 'oral saga' or the 'written saga' connote much more than the simple equation of the medieval texts with the acts of speaking or writing. The question might be phrased as follows: is the background to the sagas' art to be conceived of as native and essentially spoken (or verbal, or performed, or recited), or is the background based on foreign models in which the key aspects of composition have been shaped by literacy? Neither of these positions is absolute: proponents of the oral saga readily concede that the available works have come down to us in a written medium that cannot have failed to impart something to the text, and even the most strident advocates of the written saga will agree that the texts are frequently informed by oral traditions. In general, these orientations reflect preoccupations with "the folk" and "the court." In the history of the field, these two views have been called many things, but while the labels change, the positions shift, and the interpretations their adherents place on the evidence vary, the divisions (if not their centers of gravity) are not much different now from what they were at the turn of the century…"
Sammanfattning
Till de märkligaste litterära produkterna från Stormaktstiden hör Agneta Horns ... more Sammanfattning
Till de märkligaste litterära produkterna från Stormaktstiden hör Agneta Horns självbiografi. Antagligen skriven mitt på 1650-talet, kort efter hennes mans död, beskriver sin författarinnas "wandringestidh," en fras Agneta Horn (AH) använder både bokstavligen och metaforiskt. Föreliggande studie an Agneta Horns leverne tar upp en hittills obeaktad aspekt av AH:s författarskap, bibelcitaten som följer den berättande texten i handskriften, UUB X240 (Horn). Trots den svenska litteraturens mycket introspektiva karaktär under flera århundraden, har ganska litet skrivits om självbiografin som genre i ett nordiskt sammanhang. En följd av detta är, att Agneta Horns leverne uppfattas enbart som biografiskt dokument. Man förbiser därvid, att texten även förtjänar att läsas som ett obestridligen högt personligt, men ändå litterärt verk, styrt av speciella genre-regler. Kanske är det därför som hela handskriften av Agneta Horns leverne aldrig har publicerats, d.v.s., de 548 raderna med bibelcitat på de sju sista bladen av UUB X240 (Horn) saknas i alla tidigare utgåvor av självbiografin.
Efter en diskussion av citatens ursprungliga ordningsföljd (de är nu felaktigt sammanbundna), följer själva citaten från handskriften samt den motsvarande texten from Karl X:s Bibel, som var förebilden till AH:s projekt. Genom framställningen av citaten kan det visas, att sista delen av Agneta Horns leverne är avsevärt mer an anteckningar skrivna av en uttråkad och from änka—deras ordningsföljd tyder på att AH vill beskriva sitt liv en gång till, men nu med samma ord som används i Job och Psaltaren för att uttrycka Jobs och Israels lidande. Med hjälp av bibelcitaten från Karl X:s Bibel som terminus a quo för handskriften, kan det påvisas att Agneta Horns leverne i UUB X240 (Horn) inte kan vara äldre än från år 1655 och förmodligen härstammar från år 1657. Samma år skrev AH i Kerstin Posses stambok en liten dikt vars ordalag återklingar i självbiografin (det skall dock anmärkas att AH säkerligen utnyttjade gamla dagböcker och liknande dokument under utarbetandet av texten, en möjlighet redan Magnus von Platen framkastade 1959).
Monografin tar också upp AH:s berättarstil, som får anses vara relativt modern. För att underlätta denna diskussion, jämförs Agneta Horns leverne med drottning Kristinas memoarer. Det påvisas att AH:s användning av dialog, karakterisering, o.s.v. är nästan utan parallell före 1700-talet. Slutligen diskuteras Agneta Horns leverne som helhet, d.v.s. både den berättande texten och bibelcitaten, och dess anknytning till svensk andaktslitteratur, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielms Nosce te ipsum i synnerhet.
Articles by Stephen Mitchell
Western folklore, Jan 1, 2000
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Antiquity, 2010
Archaeology, consistently warned off religion by wise old heads, here rushes deeper into the thic... more Archaeology, consistently warned off religion by wise old heads, here rushes deeper into the thicket to tackle the thorny topic of ancient witchcraft. The occasion was a seminar at Harvard organised by Stephen Mitchell and Neil Price to mark the twentieth anniversary of Carlo Ginzburg's influential book on the connections between witches and shamanism – and by implication the possible connections with prehistoric ritual and belief. Archaeology was by no means the only voice at the meeting, which was attended by scholars active in history, literature, divinity and anthropology. The discussions revealed much that was entangled in the modern psyche: ‘don't let's tame strangeness’ was one leitmotiv of this stimulating colloquium. A romantic attachment to the irrational is a feature of our time, especially among academics. But maybe taming strangeness is an archaeologist's real job…
Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Myth, ed. Kimberley C. Patton, 2022
Mitchell, Stephen A. 2022. "Óðinn's Twin Ravens, Huginn and Muninn." In Gemini and the Sacred: Tw... more Mitchell, Stephen A. 2022. "Óðinn's Twin Ravens, Huginn and Muninn." In Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Myth. Ed. Kimberley C. Patton. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Folklore and Old Norse Mythology, 2021
Old Norse Poetry in Performance, 2022
"This chapter first surveys the contributions to Performance Theory (or Performance Studies) of t... more "This chapter first surveys the contributions to Performance Theory (or Performance Studies) of the so-called ethnography of speaking, as well as the importance to the evolving performance field of other aspects of linguistic anthropology, understood broadly (e.g., ethnolinguistics, ethnobotany, folkloristics), especially as viewed cross-culturally. It further considers the significance of the subsequent performative (or behavioural) turn in folkloristics as the discipline evolved away from its former text-centredness to its present more inclusive socially and behaviourally situated perspective. As understood here, this approach encourages researchers to consider generative models of social conduct, according to which speech acts, gestures, and other actions are understood as surface manifestations of society’s deep ‘institutional’ codes, transformed or actualised by individuals in specific situations. The second part of the chapter then applies this approach to a feasting and drinking scene in one of the Old Norse/Icelandic sagas, Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, especially the saga’s presentation of ritualised exchanges of taunting poetic barbs between the attendees. How the rules for such games are variously observed and violated, and with what consequences for the narrative, are examined, as is the text’s capacity to negotiate, or ‘perform’, questions of status, social mobility, kinship ties and so on."
Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 2022
ABSTRACT: In 1290, Margrete, the 7-year-old daughter of King Eiríkr II Magnússon of Norway and Ma... more ABSTRACT: In 1290, Margrete, the 7-year-old daughter of King Eiríkr II Magnússon of Norway and Margaret, the daughter of King Alexander III of Scotland, begins a journey from Norway to Scotland. Unfortunately, Margrete, the heir presumptive to the throne of Scotland, dies en route, sparking a series of international and dynastic calamities. When, a decade later, a woman arrives in Bergen claiming to be the deceased princess, she is condemned to judicial immolation and burned at Nordnes. Surviving evidence strongly suggests that a popular cult developed around this Margrete of Nordnes (also called the ‘False Margrete’). This essay explores the extent to which the West Norse legacy of this so-called “folk saint” can be identified from what Jens Peter Schjødt calls the “jigsaw pieces” that history has bequeathed to us in a variety of narratives and historical documents.
RESUME: I 1290 sætter Margrete, den 7-årige datter af kong Eiríkr II Magnússon af Norge og Margarete, datter af kong Alexander III af Skotland, ud på en rejse fra Norge til Skotland. Desværre dør Margrete, den forventede arving til Skotlands trone, undervejs, hvilket udløser en række internationale og dynastiske katastrofer. Ti år senere ankommer en kvinde til Bergen og hævder at være den afdøde prinsesse. Hun bliver dømt til brænding på bål og brændt på Nordnes. Overleverede vidnesbyrd tyder på, at der udviklede sig en populær kult omkring denne Margrete af Nordnes (også kaldet ’den falske Margrete’). Dette essay undersøger, i hvilket omfang de vestnordiske traditioner angående denne såkaldte ”folkehelgen” kan identificeres ud fra det, Jens Peter Schjødt kalder de ”puslespilsbrikker”, som historien har overleveret til os i en række forskellige fortællinger og historiske dokumenter.
Samsø – et sted af betydning, 2021
Filologia Germanica / Germanic Philology, 2021
Magic often plays a significant role in medieval European narratives, where it can be used in a v... more Magic often plays a significant role in medieval European narratives, where it can be used in a variety of ways, including as a literary tool. In this essay, I briefly consider magic as a narrative device and propose a typology of modes of presentation (general, detailed, and explicit), and argue that Old Norse-Icelandic literature appears to engage in an especially wide array of narrative presentations of magic, particularly when contrasted with comparable materials from elsewhere in northern Europe.
Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 2020
'A Matter of Honour: Evolving Moral Codes in the Sagas'. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16 (2020... more 'A Matter of Honour: Evolving Moral Codes in the Sagas'. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16 (2020): 137-156.
John Miles Foley's World of Oralities: Text, Tradition, and Contemporary Oral Theory. Ed. Mark C. Amodio, 2020
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, 2020
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Books by Stephen Mitchell
The medieval northern world consisted of a vast and culturally diverse region both geographically, from roughly Greenland to Novgorod and culturally, as one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. Old Norse Folklore explores the complexities of this fascinating world in case studies and theoretical essays that connect orality and performance theory to memory studies, and myths relating to pre-Christian Nordic religion to innovations within late medieval pilgrimage song culture.
Old Norse Folklore provides critical new perspectives on the Old Norse world, some of which appear in this volume for the first time in English. Stephen A. Mitchell presents emerging methodologies by analyzing Old Norse materials to offer a better understandings ofunderstanding of Old Norse materials. He examines, interprets, and re-interprets the medieval data bequeathed to us by posterity—myths, legends, riddles, charms, court culture, conversion narratives, landscapes, and mindscapes—targeting largely overlooked, yet important sources of cultural insights.
-Interdisciplinary volume on memory studies in Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia
-Texts and images illustrating the awareness of memory in, and the role of memory studies for, the Old Norse world
-Entries and case studies by nearly eighty specialists representing a wide variety of fields
Another intention of this volume is to explore and problematize texts as a source: How do we read texts? Whose voices do we interpret? What is the relationship between the magical beliefs and practices we are studying
- and the texts? In the study of magical beliefs and practices in Nordic cultural history, a great variety of textual sources are available. In this volume, Fredrik Skott studies magic by making use of juridical laws and trials documents, Stephen Mitchell and Ane Ohrvik investigate individual manuscript writings, Catharina Raudvere uses ethnographic fieldwork notes and Laura Stark reads personal memoirs, while Clive Tolley and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir study Old Norse literature. This diversity of textual sources represents official, “private”, academic, and artistic texts written by individuals and groups from different social and cultural backgrounds. By highlighting texts as a source we thereby give attention to how we use texts in our investigating process and thus explore and explain our methodological apparatus and the potential ideological and material properties in texts.
CONTENTS: JÜRG GLAUSER, “Foreword” vii; PERNILLE HERMANN, STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, and AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture” 1; Part I. Memory and Narration —PERNILLE HERMANN, “Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature” 13; JOHN LINDOW, “Memory and Old Norse Mythology” 41; MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, “Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse” 59; KATE HESLOP, “Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts” 75; RUSSELL POOLE, “Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’” 109; Part II. Memory and History — RUDOLF SIMEK, “Memoria Normannica” 133; STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, “The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland” 155; GÍSLI SIGURÐSSON, “Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri” 175; STEFAN BRINK, “Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases” 197; AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Legal Culture and Historical Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland” 211; Index 231""
“impressively interdisciplinary”—Edward Bever, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History
“comprehensive and enlightening”—Thomas DuBois, JEGP
"an impressive book”—Jenny Jochens, Speculum
“deft use of the full array of sources”—Michael Bailey, American Historical Review
“challenges established views”—Rune Blix Hagen, Historisk tidsskrift
“excellent study of ‘religious’ change”—Nicolas Meylan, Jrnl of Religion
“excellent overview”—Lars Lönnroth, Svenska Dagbladet
“how other shelves in the library of cultural history can be reorganized”—John Ødemark, Arv
“of great value not only to scholars of Scandinavia but to anyone interested in the complex history of European witch-beliefs”—Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore
---
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.
Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland.
By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
Stephen A. Mitchell is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University and author of Heroic Sagas and Ballads."
From the Introduction: "Almost all scholarly treatments of the sagas can be characterized as gravitating toward one of two poles, namely, belief in either oral or written sagas. Of course, such terms as the 'oral saga' or the 'written saga' connote much more than the simple equation of the medieval texts with the acts of speaking or writing. The question might be phrased as follows: is the background to the sagas' art to be conceived of as native and essentially spoken (or verbal, or performed, or recited), or is the background based on foreign models in which the key aspects of composition have been shaped by literacy? Neither of these positions is absolute: proponents of the oral saga readily concede that the available works have come down to us in a written medium that cannot have failed to impart something to the text, and even the most strident advocates of the written saga will agree that the texts are frequently informed by oral traditions. In general, these orientations reflect preoccupations with "the folk" and "the court." In the history of the field, these two views have been called many things, but while the labels change, the positions shift, and the interpretations their adherents place on the evidence vary, the divisions (if not their centers of gravity) are not much different now from what they were at the turn of the century…"
Till de märkligaste litterära produkterna från Stormaktstiden hör Agneta Horns självbiografi. Antagligen skriven mitt på 1650-talet, kort efter hennes mans död, beskriver sin författarinnas "wandringestidh," en fras Agneta Horn (AH) använder både bokstavligen och metaforiskt. Föreliggande studie an Agneta Horns leverne tar upp en hittills obeaktad aspekt av AH:s författarskap, bibelcitaten som följer den berättande texten i handskriften, UUB X240 (Horn). Trots den svenska litteraturens mycket introspektiva karaktär under flera århundraden, har ganska litet skrivits om självbiografin som genre i ett nordiskt sammanhang. En följd av detta är, att Agneta Horns leverne uppfattas enbart som biografiskt dokument. Man förbiser därvid, att texten även förtjänar att läsas som ett obestridligen högt personligt, men ändå litterärt verk, styrt av speciella genre-regler. Kanske är det därför som hela handskriften av Agneta Horns leverne aldrig har publicerats, d.v.s., de 548 raderna med bibelcitat på de sju sista bladen av UUB X240 (Horn) saknas i alla tidigare utgåvor av självbiografin.
Efter en diskussion av citatens ursprungliga ordningsföljd (de är nu felaktigt sammanbundna), följer själva citaten från handskriften samt den motsvarande texten from Karl X:s Bibel, som var förebilden till AH:s projekt. Genom framställningen av citaten kan det visas, att sista delen av Agneta Horns leverne är avsevärt mer an anteckningar skrivna av en uttråkad och from änka—deras ordningsföljd tyder på att AH vill beskriva sitt liv en gång till, men nu med samma ord som används i Job och Psaltaren för att uttrycka Jobs och Israels lidande. Med hjälp av bibelcitaten från Karl X:s Bibel som terminus a quo för handskriften, kan det påvisas att Agneta Horns leverne i UUB X240 (Horn) inte kan vara äldre än från år 1655 och förmodligen härstammar från år 1657. Samma år skrev AH i Kerstin Posses stambok en liten dikt vars ordalag återklingar i självbiografin (det skall dock anmärkas att AH säkerligen utnyttjade gamla dagböcker och liknande dokument under utarbetandet av texten, en möjlighet redan Magnus von Platen framkastade 1959).
Monografin tar också upp AH:s berättarstil, som får anses vara relativt modern. För att underlätta denna diskussion, jämförs Agneta Horns leverne med drottning Kristinas memoarer. Det påvisas att AH:s användning av dialog, karakterisering, o.s.v. är nästan utan parallell före 1700-talet. Slutligen diskuteras Agneta Horns leverne som helhet, d.v.s. både den berättande texten och bibelcitaten, och dess anknytning till svensk andaktslitteratur, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielms Nosce te ipsum i synnerhet.
Articles by Stephen Mitchell
RESUME: I 1290 sætter Margrete, den 7-årige datter af kong Eiríkr II Magnússon af Norge og Margarete, datter af kong Alexander III af Skotland, ud på en rejse fra Norge til Skotland. Desværre dør Margrete, den forventede arving til Skotlands trone, undervejs, hvilket udløser en række internationale og dynastiske katastrofer. Ti år senere ankommer en kvinde til Bergen og hævder at være den afdøde prinsesse. Hun bliver dømt til brænding på bål og brændt på Nordnes. Overleverede vidnesbyrd tyder på, at der udviklede sig en populær kult omkring denne Margrete af Nordnes (også kaldet ’den falske Margrete’). Dette essay undersøger, i hvilket omfang de vestnordiske traditioner angående denne såkaldte ”folkehelgen” kan identificeres ud fra det, Jens Peter Schjødt kalder de ”puslespilsbrikker”, som historien har overleveret til os i en række forskellige fortællinger og historiske dokumenter.
The medieval northern world consisted of a vast and culturally diverse region both geographically, from roughly Greenland to Novgorod and culturally, as one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. Old Norse Folklore explores the complexities of this fascinating world in case studies and theoretical essays that connect orality and performance theory to memory studies, and myths relating to pre-Christian Nordic religion to innovations within late medieval pilgrimage song culture.
Old Norse Folklore provides critical new perspectives on the Old Norse world, some of which appear in this volume for the first time in English. Stephen A. Mitchell presents emerging methodologies by analyzing Old Norse materials to offer a better understandings ofunderstanding of Old Norse materials. He examines, interprets, and re-interprets the medieval data bequeathed to us by posterity—myths, legends, riddles, charms, court culture, conversion narratives, landscapes, and mindscapes—targeting largely overlooked, yet important sources of cultural insights.
-Interdisciplinary volume on memory studies in Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia
-Texts and images illustrating the awareness of memory in, and the role of memory studies for, the Old Norse world
-Entries and case studies by nearly eighty specialists representing a wide variety of fields
Another intention of this volume is to explore and problematize texts as a source: How do we read texts? Whose voices do we interpret? What is the relationship between the magical beliefs and practices we are studying
- and the texts? In the study of magical beliefs and practices in Nordic cultural history, a great variety of textual sources are available. In this volume, Fredrik Skott studies magic by making use of juridical laws and trials documents, Stephen Mitchell and Ane Ohrvik investigate individual manuscript writings, Catharina Raudvere uses ethnographic fieldwork notes and Laura Stark reads personal memoirs, while Clive Tolley and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir study Old Norse literature. This diversity of textual sources represents official, “private”, academic, and artistic texts written by individuals and groups from different social and cultural backgrounds. By highlighting texts as a source we thereby give attention to how we use texts in our investigating process and thus explore and explain our methodological apparatus and the potential ideological and material properties in texts.
CONTENTS: JÜRG GLAUSER, “Foreword” vii; PERNILLE HERMANN, STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, and AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture” 1; Part I. Memory and Narration —PERNILLE HERMANN, “Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature” 13; JOHN LINDOW, “Memory and Old Norse Mythology” 41; MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, “Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse” 59; KATE HESLOP, “Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts” 75; RUSSELL POOLE, “Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’” 109; Part II. Memory and History — RUDOLF SIMEK, “Memoria Normannica” 133; STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, “The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland” 155; GÍSLI SIGURÐSSON, “Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri” 175; STEFAN BRINK, “Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases” 197; AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Legal Culture and Historical Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland” 211; Index 231""
“impressively interdisciplinary”—Edward Bever, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History
“comprehensive and enlightening”—Thomas DuBois, JEGP
"an impressive book”—Jenny Jochens, Speculum
“deft use of the full array of sources”—Michael Bailey, American Historical Review
“challenges established views”—Rune Blix Hagen, Historisk tidsskrift
“excellent study of ‘religious’ change”—Nicolas Meylan, Jrnl of Religion
“excellent overview”—Lars Lönnroth, Svenska Dagbladet
“how other shelves in the library of cultural history can be reorganized”—John Ødemark, Arv
“of great value not only to scholars of Scandinavia but to anyone interested in the complex history of European witch-beliefs”—Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore
---
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.
Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland.
By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
Stephen A. Mitchell is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University and author of Heroic Sagas and Ballads."
From the Introduction: "Almost all scholarly treatments of the sagas can be characterized as gravitating toward one of two poles, namely, belief in either oral or written sagas. Of course, such terms as the 'oral saga' or the 'written saga' connote much more than the simple equation of the medieval texts with the acts of speaking or writing. The question might be phrased as follows: is the background to the sagas' art to be conceived of as native and essentially spoken (or verbal, or performed, or recited), or is the background based on foreign models in which the key aspects of composition have been shaped by literacy? Neither of these positions is absolute: proponents of the oral saga readily concede that the available works have come down to us in a written medium that cannot have failed to impart something to the text, and even the most strident advocates of the written saga will agree that the texts are frequently informed by oral traditions. In general, these orientations reflect preoccupations with "the folk" and "the court." In the history of the field, these two views have been called many things, but while the labels change, the positions shift, and the interpretations their adherents place on the evidence vary, the divisions (if not their centers of gravity) are not much different now from what they were at the turn of the century…"
Till de märkligaste litterära produkterna från Stormaktstiden hör Agneta Horns självbiografi. Antagligen skriven mitt på 1650-talet, kort efter hennes mans död, beskriver sin författarinnas "wandringestidh," en fras Agneta Horn (AH) använder både bokstavligen och metaforiskt. Föreliggande studie an Agneta Horns leverne tar upp en hittills obeaktad aspekt av AH:s författarskap, bibelcitaten som följer den berättande texten i handskriften, UUB X240 (Horn). Trots den svenska litteraturens mycket introspektiva karaktär under flera århundraden, har ganska litet skrivits om självbiografin som genre i ett nordiskt sammanhang. En följd av detta är, att Agneta Horns leverne uppfattas enbart som biografiskt dokument. Man förbiser därvid, att texten även förtjänar att läsas som ett obestridligen högt personligt, men ändå litterärt verk, styrt av speciella genre-regler. Kanske är det därför som hela handskriften av Agneta Horns leverne aldrig har publicerats, d.v.s., de 548 raderna med bibelcitat på de sju sista bladen av UUB X240 (Horn) saknas i alla tidigare utgåvor av självbiografin.
Efter en diskussion av citatens ursprungliga ordningsföljd (de är nu felaktigt sammanbundna), följer själva citaten från handskriften samt den motsvarande texten from Karl X:s Bibel, som var förebilden till AH:s projekt. Genom framställningen av citaten kan det visas, att sista delen av Agneta Horns leverne är avsevärt mer an anteckningar skrivna av en uttråkad och from änka—deras ordningsföljd tyder på att AH vill beskriva sitt liv en gång till, men nu med samma ord som används i Job och Psaltaren för att uttrycka Jobs och Israels lidande. Med hjälp av bibelcitaten från Karl X:s Bibel som terminus a quo för handskriften, kan det påvisas att Agneta Horns leverne i UUB X240 (Horn) inte kan vara äldre än från år 1655 och förmodligen härstammar från år 1657. Samma år skrev AH i Kerstin Posses stambok en liten dikt vars ordalag återklingar i självbiografin (det skall dock anmärkas att AH säkerligen utnyttjade gamla dagböcker och liknande dokument under utarbetandet av texten, en möjlighet redan Magnus von Platen framkastade 1959).
Monografin tar också upp AH:s berättarstil, som får anses vara relativt modern. För att underlätta denna diskussion, jämförs Agneta Horns leverne med drottning Kristinas memoarer. Det påvisas att AH:s användning av dialog, karakterisering, o.s.v. är nästan utan parallell före 1700-talet. Slutligen diskuteras Agneta Horns leverne som helhet, d.v.s. både den berättande texten och bibelcitaten, och dess anknytning till svensk andaktslitteratur, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielms Nosce te ipsum i synnerhet.
RESUME: I 1290 sætter Margrete, den 7-årige datter af kong Eiríkr II Magnússon af Norge og Margarete, datter af kong Alexander III af Skotland, ud på en rejse fra Norge til Skotland. Desværre dør Margrete, den forventede arving til Skotlands trone, undervejs, hvilket udløser en række internationale og dynastiske katastrofer. Ti år senere ankommer en kvinde til Bergen og hævder at være den afdøde prinsesse. Hun bliver dømt til brænding på bål og brændt på Nordnes. Overleverede vidnesbyrd tyder på, at der udviklede sig en populær kult omkring denne Margrete af Nordnes (også kaldet ’den falske Margrete’). Dette essay undersøger, i hvilket omfang de vestnordiske traditioner angående denne såkaldte ”folkehelgen” kan identificeres ud fra det, Jens Peter Schjødt kalder de ”puslespilsbrikker”, som historien har overleveret til os i en række forskellige fortællinger og historiske dokumenter.