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The Viking Way - Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Hardcover, 2 Rev Ed)
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The Viking Way - Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Hardcover, 2 Rev Ed)
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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. In
this fully-revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us
with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this
undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly
inhabitants, including the Sami with whom the Norse partly shared
this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the
mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew
between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their
spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings' bedrooms and on
their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through
their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade. Combining
archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive
studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this
multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen
them before.
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