Old Norse Sorcery

This paper argues that seiðr was about spinning a mind emissary, sending forth such a spun emissary, or attracting things or doing other things with such a mind emissary. Further arguments for this view can be read in my dissertation on gand(r). (Gand, seid og åndevind.)

This unfunded translation of the 1903 treatise by Ólafur Davíðsson, written and published in the German annual journal: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde under the title “Isländische Zauberzeichen und Zauberbücher”. 

This important work follows on from Jón Árnason’s Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri, discussing this significant aspect of Icelandic culture most prominent in the 17th century.

Many months in the making, mostly checking through original source material in antiquarian Icelandic manuscripts and publications, it is provided free here. However financial contributions towards this and future research can be made on my website http://users.on.net/~starbase/galdrastafir/galdrastafir.htm

The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships.

The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions.

Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.

This is an extract from the book, showing the table of contents, the introduction and Chapter 1. Published September 2015 by Avalonia. In this unprecedented work, Christopher A. Smith has meticulously studied no less than 6 original Icelandic manuscripts dating from 1500 to 1860 to extract a picture of the aims, tools and techniques of Icelandic sorcerers. Set against the context of the harsh economic, social and environmental conditions of this North Atlantic island, the book gives a detailed account of the types of spells that were used and the motivations behind them. Hundreds of items from the six books of magic have been analysed to present the reader with a clear idea of the methods that were used, including incantation, invocation of deities and use of the enigmatic magical staves (galdrastafir).  Furthermore, the book goes into great detail concerning the physical tools used by magicians and the kinds of objects that might have been found in a sorcerer’s ‘toolbox’.

The book is lavishly illustrated with images from the original manuscripts. Although it is not intended by any means as a book of instruction, one chapter does focus on workings of certain types and gives suggestions for those brave enough to try them out.

All in all, this work will be an indispensable item for anyone interested in the history of magic in general and of Icelandic magic in particular.

The Icelandic manuscript called “Huld”, meaning secrecy, was made by Geir Vigfússon in 1860.  It features a collection of runic alphabets in the first half and a small set of 30 "galdrastafir", magic symbols and sigils, in the second.

This presentation focuses only on the second and aims to provide a more complete and accurate English translation of the Icelandic text and secret codes, and which hopefully will be a platform from which further exploration can be embarked.

This is the original version. I have since added a few notes and a couple of corrections. That can be purchased for a very modest price on my website http://users.on.net/~starbase/galdrastafir/galdrastafir.htm

Gísli Súrsson’s Saga is one of the most popular outlaw sagas in the corpus of Icelandic literature. In this story, Gísli experiences a series of prophetic dreams where two mysterious female figures appear to foretell his fate. Although the identities of these figures are not revealed, they do contain some of the same qualities that parallel other sources that might identify them as the Norns of fate of Norse mythology. This short paper will summarize Gísli’s dreams, and then compare them with a few other sources in order to investigate this potential connection. Finally, a short critique will be provided on this correlation that might help us lend some insight into the purpose behind these mythical beings, as well as to provide a basis for later inquiry on the subject.

Author: Noel Braucher

Þórólfrgab derLandzungezwischendem Vigrafjordund Hofsvágr den Namen Þórsnes, "Thors Landzunge". Auf dieser Landzungebefindet sich ein Berg; fürd iesen Berg hatte Þórólfre ine so großeV erehrung, dass kein Mann ungewaschen seinen Blickd orthin richten sollte und manauf demBergnichts undniemandentötensollte, wederViehnoch Menschen, außerwennesselbstwegginge. Diesen Berg nannteerHelgafell,den "heiligen Berg", und glaubte, dasserdorthin gehenwürde,wenn er stirbt, undebensoalleseine Verwandten aufder Halbinsel. Die Eyrbyggja saga über Þórólfr Mostr-Bart,den ersten Landnehmerauf Þórsnesauf derHalbinselSnaefellsnes, und seinen heiligen Berg Helgafell.

Under Fly of Victory. King Sverrir and his Standard
Battle flag of the Norwegian King Sverrir, under which his supporters fought many times, was called ‘Fly of Victory’ (Sigrfluga), looking – to put it mildly – exotic even against the nontrivial names of weapons, ships and other military artefacts, known to us from sagas. The paper deals with the question of what could have been depicted on the banner with such an obscure name and the reasons of this choice for the insignia. Traditionally, the term Sigrfluga was considered by scholars as but a kenning of raven or eagle, but this explanation seems not entirely convincing. We attempt to provide an alternative interpretation of the its meaning and origin.

This article discusses the account of the settlement of Þórsnes by Þórólfr Mostrarskegg as it is presented in Eyrbyggja saga, relating it to the question of the applicability of current thinking on landscape to the interpretation of Old Norse literature. While current approaches both to landscape in general and to the construction of the landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga in particular tend to emphasise the function of ‘landscape’ as a medium conveying existential ‘meanings’, a close reading of the literary landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga rather suggests that much of the literary construction of this landscape should be seen as consciously grotesque and intended to be understood as  such by the saga’s contemporary audience. Central for this reading is an interpretation of the place-name Dritsker as meaning “Guano Skerry”. This translation is suggested by the lexical evidence but has been avoided by previous critics, who chose to adapt their interpretations
of the place-name to the story told about it in the saga and thus missed an arguably central clue for the interpretation of the saga episode. Some thoughts are also offered on the reasons for why a thirteenth-century author, perhaps working in the monastery at Helgafell, might have chosen to present the past of this area in a purposefully grotesque fashion.

Since the resurgence in popularity of pagan spirituality began, there has been a dramatic increase in interest pertaining to the mystical practices of cultures whose histories and traditions have largely been buried by time and dominance by foreign religions. One of the major aspects of Germanic spirituality and magical practice that has become popular over time is that of the runes. This paper presents an overview of the progress and preservation of runic lore since the decline of the original heathen practices, and examines the structure and methods of one of the most popular and misunderstood uses of runes: runic galdur (ON: Galdr)

The Viking Age is conventionally seen as a tumultuous time when hordes of fierce warriors from Scandinavia wreaked havoc across the European continent and Norse merchants travelled to distant corners of the world in pursuit of riches. Until recently, archaeologists and textual scholars tended to weave a male-dominated image of this pivotal period in world history, dismissing or substantially downplaying women's roles in Norse society. Today, however, there is ample evidence to suggest that many of the most spectacular achievements of Viking Age Scandinavians would not have been possiblewithout women.

This pioneering and beautifully illustrated monograph provides an in-depth exploration of women's associations with the martial sphere of life in the Viking Age. The motivations and circumstances thatled women to engage in armed conflict or other activities are illuminated and interpreted through an interdisciplinary approach to medieval literature and archaeological evidence from the Viking world. Additional cross-cultural excursions into the lives and legends of female warriors in other past and present cultural milieus - from the Asiatic steppes to the savannas of Africa and European battlefields –lead to a nuanced understanding of the idea of the armed woman and its embodiments in Norse literature, myth and archaeological reality.

Mythological stories are used to explain and maintain the balance between what is perceived as order and what is perceived as chaos within the natural universe. The oral traditions of a particular culture provide a framework for these stories that help explain the unexplainable within a culture's mythology. Myth provides insight from the normal, everyday world into another place, reaching unconscious areas within our mind (Greenwood, 2009, 76-77). It is this oral tradition or the performative aspect of myth that gives myth its power (Greenwood, 2009, 79-80). Myths involve the audience emotionally, emerging from an independent mind backed by a culture's social actions and beliefs (Greenwood, 2009, 76-80).

The topic of this paper is a whole complex of intertwined notions of soul, spirits, forerunners / premonitions and other types of long-distance influence from a person’s mind. I will try to lead you into this ‘jungle’ by looking at some terms from the Shetlandic dialect of English. The noun gander, inherited from Old Norse gandr, has some interesting meanings that have never before been discussed by scholars:
- ‘a high, roaring wind; strong gust of wind.’
- ‘a sudden feeling of powerlessness, nausea, sickness at heart’

Most scholars agree that shamanic elements tend to pop up in our sources to Old Norse Religion, but no consensus has been reached about the origins of these elements. As there can be no shamanism without a shaman it becomes essential to examine whether it is possible to single out one, or more, Old Norse religious specialists to whom the shamanic elements can be consigned, and their position in the society, because this will tell us something about the degree of importance we may assign these shamanistic elements. 
An investigation of the status of the religious practitioners in our sources to Old Norse Religion will involve more general theories of the social and economic development of societies, and of the simultaneous development, and change, of the functions of the religious practitioners. This will show that, because of an overall agreement between the development of society and religion in the Old Norse area and in other places in the world, a comparison that includes an eventual ‘evolution’ of religious practitioners in general will give us a method to view the presence of shamanistic elements and potential shamans, in the Old Norse Religion in a diachronic perspective.

In this dissertation, I intend to draw out and describe the queer themes within the literature of Old Norse mythology using a queer theoretical framework to examine textual sources. I will examine the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, Gesta Danorum, Heimskringla and some of the Icelandic Sagas as well as Grágás law code texts for comparison of themes. Using queer theory I will provide a re-interpretation of themes, characters and relationships within specific examples from these texts and demonstrate the “queerness” therein. Queer theory provides a means of refuting the cis-heteropatriarchal framework through which much of Old Norse literature is analysed and therefore works to prevent the erasure of queer individuals from historical sources. With this approach I am able to demonstrate distinct themes of queerness which relate to transformation of bodies through magic and shapeshifting, queer relationships and suppression of queerness by medieval Christian practices and the use of cross-dressing to embody non-normative roles and different gender expression. The queerness of individuals in the literature is characterised in Óðinn and Loki’s movement through gender, the relative acceptance of their defiance of norms and the actions they take. This is also seen for mortal characters in Old Norse mythology albeit with lesser acceptance by their peers and more risk in view of the Grágás law codes. These themes speak to the evident queerness in Old Norse myth and also point towards the possibility of a greater understanding and acceptance of the fluid nature of gender and sexuality in the Viking Age.

This article finds parallels in Welsh and Irish sources to Norse stories of Odin's search for wisdom; the interrelationship of the stories is such that a common origin appears to be more likely than later borrowing, but continuing cultural contact may also have been a factor.

Gísla saga has often been described as “enigmatic,” and the riddles posed by Iceland’s best-known murder-mystery indeed appear irresolvable. At least equally puzzling, I suggest, is Gisli’s “confession” of his subsequent act of vengeance through an obscure bit of skaldic verse, which has not received similar attention. Setting aside the psychological and forensic approaches traditionally brought to bear on the saga’s persistent enigmas, I offer that Gisli's “confession” forms the crux of an unnoted narrative structure, made plain by the saga’s treatment of  medieval Icelandic concepts of masculinity and femininity. In so doing, I identify an undetected analogue in Norse myth to the events that precipitate the saga’s “whodunit,” as well as reexamine widely-held assumptions about the view of gender enunciated in the saga, particularly as articulated in Carol Clover‘s seminal 1993 article, “Regardless of Sex.”

Scandinavian amuletS in viking age Poland collectio archaeologica reSSovienSiS tomuS XXXiii collegium editorum Sylwester czopek, michał Parczewski, andrzej Pelisiak, Zbigniew Pianowski, andrzej rozwałka, aleksander Sytnyk, marcin Wołoszyn iSBn 978-83-7667-197-0 Wydawca / Publisher oficyna Wydawnicza "Zimowit" sp. z o.o 35-604 rzeszów, ul. Zimowit 6/5

This paper presents a new understanding of the cosmology of pre-Christian Scandinavian myth. The sources appear to give contradictory information; for example, the Æsir are located in different places: at the centre of the world, in the west, in the east, under the sea, and in the sky; Hel is placed both in the underground and beyond the sea. In recent studies, this has led to the conclusion that there is no system. The author argues that there is, and that we misunderstand the passages to other worlds. The otherworld can be defined as ‘the world beyond what we can access by natural means’. The starting-point is the realm that is physically accessible to humans, forming a compressed, wide ‘bubble’ around him/her and the local community, since our natural range is very wide in the horizontal plane in all directions, but very short downwards and upwards. Still, people have always imagined that it is possible supernaturally to transcend this ‘bubble’ through certain passages. These passages point in many directions from the middle of the ‘bubble’, but the locations of the passages are not identical to the location(s) of the other world(s), the passages being interchangeable with each other and often lead to the same (kind of) land/place. The other worlds have interfaces with this world and with each other, but have no geographical location in relation to this world or to the others – they are simply ‘beyond the passages’, ‘on the other side’. Accordingly, the fundamental model may be construed as an opposition between ‘us’ and ‘the others’, with an ever-changing border. This system becomes clear when we examine not only the limited Old Norse sources, but consider them in the light of the abundant folktales and legends recorded in post-medieval times throughout Northern Europe.

Focusing on Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, the present article closely examines Hervör’s assumption of male identity in the context of this character's confrontation with the dead on Sámsey, going beyond the conventional binary-gender model which still continues to be employed in saga criticism. Situating this study within the discursive matrix of Old Norse-Icelandic worldview, I engage recent research on seiðr and ergi which challenges standard readings of these concepts, expanding ergi from mere “unmanliness” to the broader notion of “queerness” as ambiguous magical otherness, and seiðr to supernatural empowerment. A closer examination of the ergi complex provides a platform from which an interplay of multiple gender possibilities may be observed – not as fixed dichotomous polarities as they appear in modern perspective, but as a polyphonic inter-gender continuum. One’s positioning within this continuum, then, depends upon the extent of one’s immersion into the supernatural. The case of Hervör is used as an illustration of how the inter-gender dynamics of incremental alterity play out in that situation. I argue that Hervör’s cross-dressing activity is not ad hoc, but is crucial for this character's supernatural transformation into a wielder of power that can awaken the dead at Sámsey.

This thesis is a study of how the conversion of Iceland to Christianity during the years
surrounding the turn of the first millennium affected the religious participation of women and
their perception of the feminine elements of the divine. Using a wide range of sources from
a number of academic disciplines, it seeks to identify the roles and attributes specifically
associated with the goddesses and the feminine supernatural forces known and worshiped
as part of the Old Norse religions and to compare these to the image and role of the Christian
Virgin Mary, Mother of God. The study then goes on to discuss how the changing religious
environment may have affected the involvement of women in religious practice and finally, it
seeks to identify and consider what elements of the new Christian religion may have attracted
Scandinavian and Icelandic women, encouraging them to turn away from the Old Norse
religions.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held 3rd-14th June 1992, launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which operates through its annual roadshow the UN Conference of Parties (COP) that seeks to establish sustainable management of the global climate system.

The  'Earth Summit' by UN in 1992 brought the problems  in climate to the attention of even some of the world's most remote and isolated nations. One of these nations was the Hopi Nation in Arizona, a non-sovereign nation - which the UN labels as 'indigenous peoples'. In a long chain of events beginning from the League of Nations' decision in 1926 to deny the First Nations of Americas and the small island nations' representation in that international forum, its successor the United Nations, turned down four attempts by the Hopi Nation to raise the issue between 1948 and 1992. Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorised the Hopi Nation to table the matter to the floor of UN General Assembly 10th-11th December 1992.

The First Nations of Americas Ethnoclimatology Motion and the Tradition-Keepers ('Faith-Keepers') background to that motion is elaborated here in this UNFCCC submission with further points were raised in 1st-2nd October 2018 at CRIAS conference. This contextualises the First Nations of Americas UN General Assembly Investigation Request 101292 which was the Concluding Plea of the World Indigenous Peoples' Joint Summit with the United Nations Parties ('Member States') Delegations to open the first UN Year of the Indigenous People (1993) to other ethnoclimatologies appearing world wide. The Geophysical Annotations were discussed at the Cochabamba-Tiquipaya Climate Summit (CMPCC1) in aftermath of the collapsed Copenhagen Climate Summit COP15 (2009) with the request from the UNESCO Delegation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on 7th January 2010 and His Excellency President Evo Morales Ayma.

The key tenents of the Geophysical Annotations being:

(1) A signal noise from a substantial radiocarbon-dilution effect due to major sea level retreats and rises during the Ice Ages that depressurised methane clathrates - releasing copious amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into air from depressurised seabed clathrates and also from thawing terra firma permafrost; this results in regressive, or sideway, 14C  readings in tree rings ("tree rings in a wrong order"). Thus, the Ice Ages era (the last glacial maxium to holocene thermal maximum period) cores of the tree trunks can appear substantially 14C-younger than the tree trunks' latest (outermost) tree-rings which cannot be the case due to the extreme steadiness of the radiocarbon's decay rate.

(2) Methane accumulates to upper troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere: hence any methane signature in the ice cores is only from methane-in-transit. Additionally the global warming episode that ended the ice ages had heavy methane loads that warmed and melted away most of the era's recent ice surfaces, thus obliterating the-then-most recently laid down snow stratum (leaving behind the earlier less methane rich snow layers). This caused incomplete records (time gaps) in the ice cores, and hence "global warming" always appears "before" higher atmospheric CO2 or CH4 levels (hence appearing as if them being 'respondents', rather than the drivers of climate warning).

(3) Noting that the partial melting equations can also be run inverse direction, it is proposed that the Pleistocene glaciations resulted in damage to Peridotite which partially melted producing basalt deposition in a large scale onto the seafloor in vast effusive eruptions with field emission of heat rather than radial spot emission of heat like in modern-day Surtseyan eruptions that have only a minimal heat crossing to sea surface due to small spatial extent of hot subsea surface. The vaporisation of sea water in field emission is vast due to spatial extent of hot subsea surface greatly exceeding the thickness of overlying water column, leading to runaway snowfalls. This caused an inflated size hydrological cycle which effectively washed out atmosphere-generated radiocarbon while geological seabed-associated depressurised carbon-12 was being released en masse leading to negligible carbon-14 readings (the radiocarbon-dilution effect by the Pleistocene's hydrological cycle / sea bed depressurisation).

On these three premises, the First Nations of Americans Ethnoclimatology Motion at the United Nations General Assembly on 10th-11th December 1992 is proposed as a variant possibility to the climate theories advocated aggressively by the Western Group of Nations and their influential academia. Its implications to present-day climate change suggest that the Polar Ice Caps will continue on their much-faster-than-anticipated loss trajectory to violent collapses. This aspect was highlighted in Sea Research Society's Evidence Giving at the UK Houses of Parliament in Environmental Audit Committee evidence giving on 5th and 24th April 2017. The urgency of situation is underlined by the fact that despite world-wide economic shut down by covid-19, carbon dioxide has continued its rapid rise to 417 parts per million indicating that time to act is running out as the remaining North Pole marine ice cap is soon to melt away and then destabilise the surrounding glaciers post Arctic sea ice (most notably the Greenland Ice Sheet).

O artigo realiza um estudo crítico sobre algumas cenas envolvendo a religiosidade nórdica no cinema. Nossa metodologia é a do imaginário social aplicado aos estudos de História das Religiões, em convergência com os atuais trabalhos envolvendo a Escandinávia medieval. Nossa principal conclusão é a propagação de referenciais moralistas e valores sociais do século XX aplicados ao contexto medieval, criando um imaginário de barbárie, exotismo e macabro para a religião nórdica antiga.

retain copyright over their respective articles. Cover image: Adapted from Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnaeanske Samling, AM 736 I 4to, fol. 2r. Photo: Suzanne Reitz. Published by Kismet Press LLP under an exclusive license to publish. Commercial copying, hiring, lending is prohibited. The book is freely available online at <kismet.press> under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ for details.

"The aim of this article is to explore two case studies of Old Norse sexual charms and curses. The first case is a curse described in Skírnismál which is used by Skírnir to break
Gerðr’s will, and the second is a description by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum of how Óðinn used sorcery to break Rind’s will and rape her. The main argument is that the terminology and worldview found therein are possible to trace in other sources, where
sorcery is employed to break the will of young women and force them to have sexual intercourse with the one who uttered or carved the charm or curse. With evidence taken
from runic inscriptions and accounts of love magic from saga literature, as well as younger folkloristic examples, it is argued that this is not only a mythic motif, but something that was practiced at a societal level. It is also argued that many of the charms and curses contain foul language that serves the purpose to reinforce the charms and make them
more potent."

The purpose of this study is to analyze the distribution, forms, and function(s) of iron amulets deposited in the late Iron Age gravefields of Lovö, with the goal of ascertaining how (and so far as possible why) these objects were utilized in rituals carried out during and after burials.  Particular emphasis is given to re-interpreting the largest group of iron amulets, the iron amulet rings, in a more relational and practice-focused way than has heretofore been attempted.  By framing burial analyses, questions of typology, and evidence of ritualized actions in comparison with what is known of other cult sites in Mälardalen specifically– and theorized about the cognitive landscape(s) of late Iron Age Scandinavia generally– a picture of iron amulets as inscribed objects made to act as catalytic, protective, and mediating agents is brought to light.

Keywords: Iron Age, Viking Age, burial, amulets, Thor’s hammer ring, torshammarringar, practice theory, ritual studies, New Materialism, cognitive archaeology, archaeology of ritual

During the 20th century, Old Norse philology has been strongly textually
oriented. This is evident in saga scholarship, where the book-prose ideology turned the issue of the origin of individual sagas into an issue of direct influences from other written works. This focus has methodological advantages, but it has also meant that valuable folkloristic knowledge has been neglected. The present volume targets the advantages, the problems and the methods of using folklore material and theory in Old Norse scholarship. An important theme in folklore is the encounter with the Supernatural and such stories are indeed common in saga literature. Generally, however, scholars have tended to focus on feuds and the social structure of the sagas, and less on encounters with Otherworld beings. In this volume, the supernatural themes in the sagas are discussed by means of several approaches, some folkloristic, some traditionally philological.

La rivista opera sulla base di un sistema double blind peer review. Dal 1958 pubblica saggi e recensioni, in italiano e nelle principali lingue europee, su temi letterari, filologici e linguistici di area germanica, con un ampio spettro di prospettive metodologiche anche di tipo comparatistico e interdisciplinare. La periodicità è di due fascicoli per anno.

The Eddic poem Skírnismál depicts erotically associated suffering in several instances. The god Freyr is filled with pain and grief when he first lays eyes on the beautiful jǫtunn maiden Gerðr. Later in the poem, Gerðr is threatened with horrible punishments if she refuses to give herself to Freyr, and one of these punishments consists in unfulfilled desire. The present study examines the sorts of emotions that are in play in these instances and attempts to determine the origins of the ways in which these emotions are depicted. The study also focuses on whether, and if so in what way, the two cases of erotically associated suffering are related to one another.

A Viking Age Anglo Scandinavian drinking horn finial.
From status symbol to symbol for vanity and luxury - showing the temptation of Christ.

This article I like to take you on a trip alongside one of the distinct Viking Age attributes of noble descent, the drinking horn.

The thesis is about an Old-Norse practice called seiðr, which was performed as a prophetic and magical ritual, according to some authors similarly to shamanic ones. The emphasis is put on information obtained from the Old-Norse textual sources. Despite their fragmentary nature, the aim of this work is to make a well-arranged summary of the facts provided by these primary sources. The main subjects are the beings performing seiðr, their characteristics, place in society, equipment and conditions required for the ritual and its goal. This information is then used for interpretation and a detailed analysis of several aspects of seiðr.

2 RMN Newsletter is a medium of contact and communication for members of the Retrospective Methods Network (RMN). The RMN is an open network which can include anyone who wishes to share in its focus. It is united by an interest in the problems, approaches, strategies and limitations related to considering some aspect of culture in one period through evidence from another, later period. Such comparisons range from investigating historical relationships to the utility of analogical parallels, and from comparisons across centuries to developing working models for the more immediate traditions behind limited sources. RMN Newsletter sets out to provide a venue and emergent discourse space in which individual scholars can discuss and engage in vital crossdisciplinary dialogue, present reports and announcements of their own current activities, and where information about events, projects and institutions is made available.

In Old Norse the word troll is inextricably linked to the sphere of magic: in mythology it indicates supernatural creatures almost exclusively of female sex, often associated with giants with whom they embody both the spirits of the dead and the chaotic and uncontrollable natural forces, and it is from them that magic itself originates. Despite this dangerous bond and despite its destructive potential, in the pagan world view magic is still necessary and can also be used for a good purpose. With the introduction of Christianity this conception changes: the new religion, for which magic is idolatry and the work of the devil, not only counts magicians among the opponents of Christian missionaries, but attributes explicitly demonic characteristics to the trolls. At the same time, in above all legal sources the word troll began to be used as synonymous with witch or sorcerer, while a new unequivocally derogatory term, trolldómr (still existing in Scandinavian languages), was coined to indicate the magical arts.
The present article therefore intends to illustrate the fundamental stages of the process of demonization of trolls and magic against the more general background of the transition from a polytheistic to a monotheistic religious system, and from the opposition of order / chaos (or culture / nature) to the moral dualism between good and evil.