The Viking way : religion and war in late Iron Age Scandinavia

by Neil S. Price

Paperback, 2002

Status

Available

Call number

936.3

Collection

Publication

Uppsala : Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History [Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia], Univ., 2002

Description

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women's power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men's physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. --… (more)

Media reviews

Creativity, a prodigious boldness in asking provocative questions ("What was it like to be [married to a] Viking who returned home from months of murderous rapine abroad?" 326) and proposing suggestive interpretations, has always been Price's forte. Such interventions can be immensely productive,
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as evident especially in his short articles, whether on Viking Age mortuary drama ("Passing into Poetry," 2010), on the Sutton Hoo helmet as an Óðinn mask ("An Eye for Odin?" with Paul Mortimer, 2014), or in a glorious overview of Norse religious attitudes ("Belief & Ritual," 2014; see https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/18825). Price 2019 lays bare the origins from which his seductive view of the viking world grew; for that alone it deserves a place of honor on any Nordicist's bookshelf. If it also highlights how thin the evidentiary ice on which Price's reconstructed viking world skates, this is a pity but also, in a sense, so much the better: informed debate requires delving into the proving process, not just responding sympathetically to the resonant end product.
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Original language

English

Physical description

435 p.; 30 cm

ISBN

9150616269 / 9789150616262

Local notes

DKR
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