Efnisyfirlit

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Abbreviations
• Preface to the first edition, 2002
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements to the second edition
• A note on language
• A note on seid and its analogues
• 1.  Different Vikings? Towards a cognitive archaeology of the later Iron Age
• A beginning at Birka
• Textual archaeology and the Iron Age
• The Vikings in (pre)history
• The materiality of text
• Annaliste archaeology and a historical anthropology of the Vikings
• The Other and the Odd?
• Conflict in the archaeology of cognition
• Others without Othering
• Indigenous archaeologies and the Vikings
• An archaeology of the Viking mind?
• 2.  Problems and paradigms in the study of Old Norse sorcery
• Entering the mythology
• Research perspectives on Scandinavian pre-Christian religion
• Philology and comparative theology
• Gods and monsters, worship and superstition
• Religion and belief
• The invisible population
• The shape of Old Norse religion
• The double world: seiðr and the problem of Old Norse ‘magic’
• The other magics: galdr, gandr and ‘Óðinnic sorcery’
• Seiðr in the sources
• Skaldic poetry
• Eddic poetry
• The sagas of the kings
• The sagas of Icelanders (the ‘family sagas’)
• The fornaldarsögur (‘sagas of ancient times’, ‘legendary sagas’)
• The biskupasögur (‘Bishops’ sagas’)
• The early medieval Scandinavian law codes
• Non-Scandinavian sources
• Seiðr in research
• 3.  Seiðr
• Óðinn
• Óðinn the sorcerer
• Óðinn’s names
• Freyja and the magic of the Vanir
• Seiðr and Old Norse cosmology
• The performers
• Witches, seeresses and wise women
• Women and the witch-ride
• Men and magic
• The assistants
• Towards a terminology of Nordic sorcerers
• The performers in death?
• The performance
• Ritual architecture and space
• The clothing of sorcery
• Masks, veils and head-coverings
• Drums, tub-lids and shields
• Staffs and wands
• Staffs from archaeological contexts
• Narcotics and intoxicants
• Charms
• Songs and chants
• The problem of trance and ecstasy
• Engendering seiðr
• Ergi, níð and witchcraft
• Sexual performance and eroticism in seiðr
• Seiðr and the concept of the soul
• Helping spirits in seiðr
• The domestic sphere of seiðr
• Divination and revealing the hidden
• Hunting and weather magic
• The role of the healer
• Seiðr contextualised
• 4.  Noaidevuohta
• Seiðr and the Sámi
• Sámi-Norse relations in the Viking Age
• Sámi religion and the Drum-Time
• The world of the gods
• Spirits and Rulers in the Sámi cognitive landscape
• Names, souls and sacrifice
• Noaidevuohta and the noaidi
• Rydving’s terminology of noaidevuohta
• Specialist noaidi
• Diviners, sorcerers and other magic-workers
• The sights and sounds of trance
• ‘Invisible power’ and secret sorcery
• Women and noaidevuohta
• Sources for female sorcery
• Assistants and jojker-choirs
• Women, ritual and drum magic
• Female diviners and healers in Sámi society
• Animals and the natural world
• The female noaidi?
• The rituals of noaidevuohta
• The role of jojk
• The material culture of noaidevuohta
• An early medieval noaidi? The man from Vivallen
• Sexuality and eroticism in noaidevuohta
• Offence and defence in noaidevuohta
• The functions of noaidevuohta
• The ethnicity of religious context in Viking-Age Scandinavia
• 5.  Circumpolar religion and the question of Old Norse shamanism
• The circumpolar cultures and the invention of shamanism
• The shamanic encounter
• The early ethnographies: shamanic research in Russia and beyond
• Shamanism in anthropological perspective
• The shamanic world-view
• The World Pillar: shamanism and circumpolar cosmology
• The ensouled world
• The shamanic vocation
• Gender and sexual identity
• Eroticism and sexual performance
• Aggressive sorcery for offence and defence
• Shamanism in Scandinavia
• From the art of the hunters to the age of bronze
• Seiðr before the Vikings?
• Landscapes of the mind
• The eight-legged horse
• Tricksters and trickery
• Seiðr and circumpolar shamanism
• Two analogies on the functions of the seiðr-staff
• The shamanic motivation
• Towards a shamanic world-view of the Viking Age
• 6.  The supernatural empowerment of aggression
• Seiðr and the world of war
• Valkyrjur, skaldmeyjar and hjálmvitr
• Female warriors in reality
• The valkyrjur in context
• The names of the valkyrjur
• The valkyrjur in battle-kennings
• Supernatural agency in battle
• Beings of destruction
• Óðinn and the Wild Hunt
• The projection of destruction
• Battle magic
• Sorcery for warriors
• Sorcery for sorcerers
• Seiðr and battlefield resurrection
• Seiðr and the shifting of shape
• Berserkir and ulfheðnar
• The battlefield of animals
• Ritual disguise and shamanic armies
• Ecstasy, psychic dislocation and the dynamics of mass violence
• Homeric lyssa and holy rage
• Predators and prey in the legitimate war
• Weaving war, grinding battle: Darraðarljóð and Grottasǫngr in context
• The ‘weapon dancers’
• 7.  The Viking way
• A reality in stories
• The invisible battlefield
• Material magic
• Viking women, Viking men
• 8.  Magic and mind
• Receptions and reactions
• Cracks in the ice of Norse ‘religion’
• Walking into the seiðr: contested interpretations of Viking-Age magic
• Questioning Norse ‘shamanism’
• Staffs and spinning
• Queering magic?
• The social world of war
• The Viking mind: a conclusion
• References
• Primary sources, including translations
• Pre-nineteenth-century sources for the early Sámi and Siberian cultures
• Secondary works
• Sources in archive