Spenser and Olaus Magnus: A Reassessment

Abstract

At several points in A View of the Present State of Ireland Spenser cites a work by the Swedish Catholic prelate Olaus Magnus, the Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus or “Description of the Northern Peoples” (Rome, 1555). Olaus’s Historia rarely features in discussion of Spenser’s use of sources, though it was clearly one of a number of texts he uses when constructing his depiction of Irish customs and tracing their origins in Scythian culture. This essay introduces Olaus’s life and work, and its relevance to Spenser, before reassessing earlier attempts at tracing his influence in The Faerie Queene. Focus then turns to the specific citations of the Historia made in the View and to the kind of text that Spenser believes he draws upon, in particular how he appears to read or remember Olaus’s work as offering a form of cultural or ethnological history of the Scythians. Understanding how Spenser read Olaus’s work—and possibly that of his brother Johannes Magnus—is thus fundamental to our comprehension of how he uses the Scythians to characterize Irish barbarity.