{"product_id":"the-viking-way-magic-and-mind-in-late-iron-age-scandinavia-9781842172605","title":"The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia\u003c\/strong\u003e by Price, Neil. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781842172605.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMagic, 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 womens power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the mens 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 Sámi 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.\n\nTable of Contents\n\nList of figures and tables\nAbbreviations\nPreface and acknowledgements to the first edition\nPreface and acknowledgements to the second edition\nA note on language\nA note on seid\n\n1. Different Vikings? Towards a cognitive archaeology of the later Iron Age\nA beginning at Birka\nTextual archaeology and the Iron Age\nThe Vikings in (pre)history\nThe materiality of text\nAnnaliste archaeology and a historical anthropology of the Vikings\nThe Other and the Odd?\nConflict in the archaeology of cognition\nOthers without Othering\nIndigenous archaeologies and the Vikings\nAn archaeology of the Viking mind?\n2. Problems and paradigms in the study of Old Norse sorcery\nEntering the mythology\nResearch perspectives on Scandinavian pre-Christian religion\nPhilology and comparative theology\nGods and monsters, worship and superstition\nReligion and belief\nThe invisible population\nThe shape of Old Norse religion\nThe double world: seiðr and the problem of Old Norse ‘magic’\nThe other magics: galdr, gandr and ‘Óðinnic sorcery’\nSeiðr in the sources\nSkaldic poetry\nEddic poetry\nThe sagas of the kings\nThe sagas of Icelanders (the ‘family sagas’)\nThe fornaldarsögur (‘sagas of ancient times’, ‘heroic sagas’)\nThe Bishop’s sagas (Biskupasögur)\nThe early medieval Scandinavian law codes\nNon-Scandinavian sources\nSeiðr in research\n3. Seiðr\nÓðinn\nÓðinn the sorcerer\nÓðinn’s names\nFreyja and the magic of the Vanir\nSeiðr and Old Norse cosmology\nThe performers\nWitches, seeresses and wise women\nWomen and the witch-ride\nMen and magic\nThe assistants\nTowards a terminology of Nordic sorcerers\nThe performers in death?\nThe performance\nRitual architecture and space\nThe clothing of sorcery\nMasks, veils and head-coverings\nDrums, tub-lids and shields\nStaffs and wands\nStaffs from archaeological contexts\nNarcotics and intoxicants\nCharms\nSongs and chants\nThe problem of trance and ecstasy\nEngendering seiðr\nErgi, níð and witchcraft\nSexual performance and eroticism in seiðr\nSeiðr and the concept of the soul\nHelping spirits in seiðr\nThe domestic sphere of seiðr\nDivination and revealing the hidden\nHunting and weather magic\nThe role of the healer\nSeiðr contextualised\n4. Noaidevuohta\nSeiðr and the Sámi\nSámi-Norse relations in the Viking Age\nSámi religion and the Drum-Time\nThe world of the gods\nSpirits and Rulers in the Sámi cognitive landscape\nNames, souls and sacrifice\nNoaidevuohta and the noaidi\nRydving’s terminology of noaidevuohta\nSpecialist noaidi\nDiviners, sorcerers and other magic-workers\nThe sights and sounds of trance\n‘Invisible power’ and secret sorcery\nWomen and noaidevuohta\nSources for female sorcery\nAssistants and jojker-choirs\nWomen, ritual and drum magic\nFemale diviners and healers in Sámi society\nAnimals and the natural world\nThe female noaidi?\nThe rituals of noaidevuohta\nThe role of jojk\nThe material culture of noaidevuohta\nAn early medieval noaidi? The man from Vivallen\nSexuality and eroticism in noaidevuohta\nOffense and defence in noaidevuohta\nThe functions of noaidevuohta\nThe ethnicit\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Oxbow Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666031501365,"sku":"ByrdShop_1842172603","price":96.72,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781842172605_ee5d0129-db47-40ec-9538-a940ef027be6.jpg?v=1782451090","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-viking-way-magic-and-mind-in-late-iron-age-scandinavia-9781842172605","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}