This book addresses magical ideas and practices in early modern Norway. It examines a large corpus of Norwegian manuscripts from 1650-1850 commonly called Black Books which contained a mixture of recipes on medicine, magic, and art. Ane Ohrvik assesses the Black Books from the vantage point of those who wrote the manuscripts and thus offers an original study of how early modern magical practitioners presented their ideas and saw their practices. The book show how the writers viewed magic and medicine both as practical and sacred art and as knowledge worth protecting through encoding the text. The study of the Black Books illuminates how ordinary people in Norway conceptualized magic as valuable and useful knowledge worth of collecting and saving despite the ongoing witchcraft prosecutions targeting the very same ideas and practices as the books promoted. Medicine, Magic and Art in Early Modern Norway is essential for those looking to advance their studies in magical beliefs and practices in early modern Europe as well as those interested in witchcraft studies, book history, and the history of knowledge.

This collection of papers explores the sacred and magical aspects of ethno-medicine. The subject area is marked out by the points of connection between religious anthropology, ethno-medicine and medical anthropology, focusing on topics such as magical and religious concepts of health and disease, causes of disease, religious and magical averting and healing rites, healing gods, saints and, last but not least, the role that these play in the society, religion, mentality and everyday life of a community, as well as their various representations in folklore, literature or art. This volume includes, without restrictions of a methodological, temporal or geographical nature, works from the fields of folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, comparative historical and textual philology, as well as research findings using the latest methods of analysis in textual folklore or based on archival research or fieldwork in or outside of Europe. This book will appeal to researchers and students of religion, folklore, and medical anthropology, as well as general readers interested in the humanities and cultural history.

Tying on case studies from late antiquity to the 21st century, this is the first volume that systematically explores the inter-relationship between fictional narratives about magic and the real-world ritual art of practicing magicians.

Witches of the North. Scotland and Finnmark is a comparative study of witchcraft persecution in Scotland and Finnmark, Norway. A wide range of quantitative and qualitative analyses based mainly on legal documents shed light on the witch-hunts in the two regions during the seventeenth century. Statistical analyses give information about tendencies in the source material in total. The qualitative chapters contain close-readings of trial documents, wherein the various voices heard during a trial are analysed: the voice of the scribe, the voice of the law, the voice of the accused person and the voices of the witnesses. The analyses combined provide a broad view of the historical phenomenon in question as well as in-depth studies of individual witchcraft cases.

This book sheds new light on the key role played by the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen in the collection of folklore an d the creation of national culture in Northern Europe.

There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.

This books explores varying conceptions of the Nightmare hag, mara, in Scandinavian folk belief. What began as observations of some startling narratives preserved in folklore archives where sex, violence and curses are recurring themes gradually led to questions as to how rural people envisaged good and evil, illness and health, and cause and effect. At closer reading, narratives about the mara character involve existential themes, as well as comments on gender and social hierarchy. This monograph analyses how this female creature was conceived of in oral literature and everyday ritual practice in pre-industrial Scandinavia, and what role she played in a larger pattern of belief in witchcraft and magic.

Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice, and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical, and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer.

The fifteenth to eighteenth centuries was a period of witchcraft prosecutions throughout Europe and modern scholars have now devoted a huge amount of research to these episodes. This volume will attempt to bring this work together by summarising the history of the trials in a new way - according to the types of legal systems involved. Other topics covered will be the continued practical use made of magic, the elaboration of demonological theories about witchcraft and magic, and the further development of scientific interests in natural magic through the 'Neoplatonic' and 'Hermetic' period.Amongst the topics included here are Superstition and Belief in high and popular culture, the place of Medicine, Witchcraft survivals in art and literature, and the survival of Persecution.>

The fifteenth to eighteenth centuries was a period of witchcraft prosecutions throughout Europe and modern scholars have now devoted a huge amount of research to these episodes. This volume will attempt to bring this work together by summarising the history of the trials in a new way - according to the types of legal systems involved. Other topics covered will be the continued practical use made of magic, the elaboration of demonological theories about witchcraft and magic, and the further development of scientific interests in natural magic through the 'Neoplatonic' and 'Hermetic' period.Amongst the topics included here are Superstition and Belief in high and popular culture, the place of Medicine, Witchcraft survivals in art and literature, and the survival of Persecution.>