The Norse Sorceress

Mind and Materiality in the Viking World

ed. Lezek Gardeła, Sophie Bønding, Peter Pentz

Oxbow Books 2023

Hb, 515pp, £60, ISBN 9781789259537

“If you don’t know what it’s for, it must be ritual.” It’s the oldest archaeology joke in the world, and archaeologists never tire of hearing it. The problem with this hilarious gag is that quite a lot of archaeological deposits, especially in burial contexts, are ritual, and these can be quite challenging to interpret. Take the case of “magical” objects in graves from early mediaeval Scandinavia: certain patterns of items found in burials, mostly of women, suggest magical or ritual uses, but the meaning of these deposits can be very challenging to interpret. How far do they line up with descriptions of pre-Christian ritual or sorcery in the textual sources, and how far can these sources be relied on, given that they are mostly later in date and written by Christian authors?

These are the questions tackled by the 36 chapters of The Norse Sorceress, a collection of articles by a range of scholars focused on exploring magic and ritual in the Viking world. Following in the footsteps of Neil Price’s ground-breaking

The Viking Way (FT378:64), this volume focuses on the image of the völva, (pl. völur), a familiar seeress or sorceress from Old Norse poetry and sagas. Each article covers a different topic, grouped into five sections. Broadly, the first section covers the thought of the period, addressing topics like gender, the role of the völva, concepts of magic and more. The second section covers the places where ritual activities took place, while the third deals with the roles of animals in ritual practices. One key point shared between these sections is the idea of the agency of non-human things – animals and even objects were understood to act on the world around them in symbolic or magical ways.

Readers who want to get into the specifics of these burials will find the fourth and fifth sections most interesting. These cover specific burials that have been interpreted as the burials of völur,

as well as the artefacts found in these burials, including pendants, pins, masks, textiles, miniature weapons and the enigmatic metal “magic staffs” that have become one of the most prominent symbols of a renewed focus on magic in Viking-age archaeology over the last 20 years.

This structure makes The Norse Sorceress a more interesting read for the non-archaeologist. Although much of the writing is still quite technical, beginning with sections that outline relevant context before moving on to deal with specific burials or artefact types makes the book much more accessible to readers interested in ritual or burials but not immersed in the material culture of the Viking world. Each chapter also contains helpful annotations that identify when a concept is discussed in more detail elsewhere in the book, avoiding the lack of interconnectedness that can sometimes be a problem with edited volumes.

Packed with detail and representing up-to-date research on an area where much remains to be done, The Norse Sorceress

is an absolute must for anyone interested in magic or ritual in the early Middle Ages or in the history of these topics more generally. James Holloway

★★★★★