Old Norse Literature Research Articles

Cinderella in Old Norse Literature

AbstractAlthough ATU 510A, ‘Cinderella’, is known to have ancient origins, it was widely thought that the ash-name did not become a feature of the tale type until Giambattista Basile’s ‘La Gatta ce...

Medical practice, magic and religion - conjunction and development before and after Reformation

The conjunction between medical practice, religion and magic becomes rather visible when one peers into old scripts and ancient literature. Before the foundation and diffusion of universities of the continent, the european convents and cloisters were the centers of medical knowl-edge and -practice for centuries. Alongside the scholarly development of medical science, driven from the roots of the eldest scholarly medicial practice, the practice of folk-medicin flourished and thrived all over Europe, not least the herbal-medicine which is the original form and foundation for modern pharmacy. This article deals with the conjunction of religion, magic and medical practice in ancient Icelandic sources such as the Old-Norse literature, medical-scripts from the 12th - 15th century Iceland, and not least the Icelandic magical-scripts (galdrakver) of the 17th century. The last mentioned documents were used as evidence in several witch-trials that led convicted witches to suffer executions at the stake once the wave of European witch-persecutions had rushed ashore in 17th century Iceland. These sources indicate a decline of medical knowledge and science in the 16th and 17th century Iceland, the medical practice being rather undeveloped at the time - in Iceland as in other parts of Europe - there-fore a rather unclear margin between "the learned and the laymen". While common people and folk-healers were convicted as witches to suffer at the stake for possession of magical scripts and healing-books, some scholars of the state of Danmark were practicing healing-methods that deserve to be compared to the activities of the former ones. That comparison raises an inevitable question of where to draw the line between the learned medical man and the magician of 17th century Iceland, that is between Magic and Science.

On Some Pragmatic and Symbolic Features of Island Representation in Old Norse Literature

On Some Pragmatic and Symbolic Features of Island Representation in Old Norse Literature

The Sami People in Old Norse Literature

The Sami People in Old Norse Literature

On Some Survivals of Pagan Belief in Anglo-Saxon England

Thanks to the considerable surviving corpus of Old-Norse literature much is known about Old North-Germanic religious practices and beliefs; by comparison, our knowledge of corresponding matters in the West-Germanic area is meager. For England, historically and sociologically an offshoot of, and by the time of the earliest written records long separated from, the north-west German homeland, our best source of information is a rather miscellaneous collection of charms. Next probably come the epic poem Béowulf and the historian Bede, who especially in his Historia ecclesiastica passim furnishes some additional information. Otherwise one is dependent upon scattered materials, ranging from single words to such cult objects as the cenotaph ship excavated in 1939 at Sutton Hoo in Norfolk. In the face of this relative paucity of knowledge any little additional information may be welcome.