The Different Conceptions of Magic in Old Norse Literature.

Háskóli Íslands

Nicolas Jaramillo

“Der Mensch ist ein Seil,

geknüpft zwischen
Thier und Übermensch, - ein
Seil über einem Abgrunde. [...]
Ich liebe Den, dessen Seele sich
verschwendet, der nicht Dank haben
will und nicht zurückgiebt: denn er
schenkt immer und will sich nicht
bewahren.”
Nietzsche1

I Introduction.

The Old Icelandic Corpus presents many different words that are usually translated as

Magic in the translations, without considering the possible differences and connections in

the conceptions described in those concepts. Far from being a criticism of the translations,

it only highlights how far we are from understanding the phenomena described in the

literary texts.

One of the reasons we are far from the phenomena, is due to the fact that most of the

material we have access to, was written two, three or four centuries later by educated

Christian writers interested in preserving, perhaps, the ancient lore, but in the process of

preserving it, they interpret, modify and intervene the material at their disposal in various

and different ways.2

1
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen. (Chemnitz: Schmeitzner,
1883). 12.
2
Rosalie H. Wax, Magic, Fate and History: The Changing Ethos of the Vikings, (Lawrence: Coronado Press,
1969) 15-17.

1
 For that reason, I will not try to understand, or investigate the phenomena as they were,

or should, or could had been before the Christian writers imprint them into parchment and

modify them to the new intellectual environment, re-signifying them under the Christian

light. This difference, between trying to rescue the original, heathen-Scandinavian

meaning, and addressing them just as it appears in the parchment, is of no small importance

to this work, because the Christian axioms that underlay the production of the written

sources, although were flexible enough to absorb dimensions of meaning, reshape them

under the framework of Christian belief. The Christian belief is in this respect, dismisses

witchcraft as either devil’s influence on the material world, or as mere superstition.

It means that this paper will try to understand how the scribes that preserved the magical

contents understood them. It is of importance in this regard, that the ancient gods of the

Norsemen perform witchcraft, summon the spirits of the dead, and reveal their fortunes; but

nevertheless, the Icelandic writers of the sagas portrait, specially at the beginning, those

Ancient gods were portrait as sympathetic figures from the past.3

The mythological element of the old Norse religion, was probably maintained as

important lore, and, as Snorri explained in his Prologue to the Edda, as proof that the

knowledge of the gods is just a reminder of the primal understanding of the world and of

the history of people’s lineage, that is also worldly knowledge.4 Although, as Karen L. Jolly

explains for the Anglo-Saxon experience, in Northern Europe the assimilation of Magic and

Religion, in the Christian World that forbids Magic practice, can be explained with the

3
Robert Bartlett. “From Paganism to Christianity in Medieval Europe.” in Christianization and the Rise of
Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe an Rus’ c. 900−1200. Ed. Nora Berend. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007) 64.
4
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, trans. Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (Nueva York: The American-
Scandinavian foundation, 1916) 4-5.

2
concept of Popular Religion.5 Of course, this is problematic from a historiographical point

of view, since the process of conversion, the uproot of old beliefs and values and the

interiorization of new values implies a process and a time-lapse of syncretism.6

In the case of Iceland, thanks to the strong bonds between families and friends, and a

small community formed around strong traditions, the role of the ancient beliefs and

practices remains closer to the upper strata of the society. And, since the clergy arises from

the aristocracy, and the aristocracy was the safe-keeper of the ancient lore, the original

syncretism and the evidence for the gradual shifting of axioms, from pagan to Christian, is

more evident than in other places: “popular religion encompasses all practicing Christians

and all everyday practices and beliefs. Expanding our view to this larger Christian

community allows us to see the gradual nature of conversion.”7

It is of note then, that Snorri starts his prologue by highlighting that peoples of the earth,

after losing the memory of their Creator, still recognize “that the earth was quick, and had

life with some manner of nature of its own;” 8 is in modern academia recognized as part of

the Magical World-view. the idea is that nature, and all the beings in it, have some kind of

life of its own, and a knowledge and conscience, that although different from the human

conscience, is taken as a reality. 9 For that reason, the mythological cosmology represents a

cosmos in perpetual motion.10

5
Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context, (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996) 8-9.
6
Anders Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Viking Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of
Northern Europe, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012) 115-116.
7
Karen Jolly, Popular Religion, 10.
8
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, 4.
9
Rosalie H. Wax and Murray Wax. 1962. “The Magical World View.” Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion 1 (1962)179-88.
10
RosalieWax, Magic, Fate and History, 39-41.

3
 The interest of the Icelanders while writing the sagas that reflected the interest they had

on their ancestors,11 brought to existence also an interest for the past that reflects the idea

that the past was a mysterious space of time where the world was different, men and

creatures were different, and amazing things that in their own times were seldom

occurrences, were common or everyday happenings “Þiðreks saga mentions different kinds

of story: […] defending the historical likelihood that ancient heroes really were as big and

strong as is claimed in the saga.”12 This ideas reflect considerations about the magic world,

its existence, and in many cases offered interpretations about the origin of this difference.

This rationalization of the ancient world versus the present world, gave those writing

sagas the opportunity to explain the pagan beliefs on the ancient gods in an euhemeristic

way. But in the process of assimilating the belief in an educated way, they presented the

ancient belief in the way of malefic intervention through the forgetfulness of the Creator of

the world, an stream that will remain in use and will spread throughout society in the

popular religion of the common Christian peoples of Iceland and Scandinavia, 13 thus the

sources don’t reflect an original decomposition of the old Norse religion.14

I Urðr and the Magical World.

“Ask veit ek standa, […] stendr æ yfir grœnn/ Urðarbrunni.” 15 Despite the greatness, the

immense power and wisdom of the primeval beings and gods of the Norse mythology, the

11
Vǫlsunga saga. The saga of the Volsungs. The Icelandic Text According to MS Nks 1824 b, 4° With an
English Translation, Introduction and Notes by Kaaren Grimstad. 2nd ed., trans. Kaaren Grimstad
(Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag, 2005), 28. http://book2look.de/vBook.aspx?
id=5nYjPDbWBd&euid=1224797&ruid=0&referURL=http://book2look.de (consulted on: 28.05.2017).
12
Ralph O’Connor, “Historicity and Fiction,” in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval
Icelandic Sagas, ed. Ármann Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2017) 101.
13
Gabriel Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), 264.
14
Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1882) 7.
15
“Vǫluspá” in Eddukvæði: Goðakvæði Vol I, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014) 295.

4
fate is beyond their control. As beings just came to existence, the forces that shape the

world remain beyond sight in the Norse mythology. The magic, at least following Vǫluspá,

is seen as dangerous and evil in nature and, more importantly, different from the original

powers of the Æsir: “Heiði hana hétu/ hvars til húsa kom,/ vǫlu vélspá,/ vitti hon ganda;/

seið hon kunni,/ seið hon leikinn,/ æ var hon angan/ illrar þjóðar.” 16 It seems to indicate

what is stated in Heimskringla that “Njǫrðr’s daughter was Freyja. She was a sacrificial

priestess. She was the first to teach the Æsir black magic, which was customary among the

Vanir”17

The sources seem to implicate that the original powers of the gods were related to

strength, creation, and other supernatural notions. The different kinds of supernatural

beings seem to possess different sorts of powers, including the beings created by the gods

themselves, as the dwarves that “þeir mannlíkun/ mǫrg um gørðu/ dvergar ór jǫrðu,/ sem

Durinn sagði.” Or the Norns that “Þær lǫg lǫgðu,/ þær líf kuru/ alda bǫrnum,/ ørlǫg

seggja.”18

That the destiny is a force that seems impossible to defeat or stop is evident and is

represented in the Ash tree and the well of Urðr: “There is little doubt about the central

importance of the world tree […] always directly involved with the world of the Æsir, the

gods of whom Odin is chief and who are most influential in the affairs of men.” 19 The tree

as a symbol, was not alien at all to the Christian world-view, since the Cross where Jesus

Christ was crucified was sometimes represented as prefigured by the tree of life of the

Book of Genesis 2:9, and in the Acts of the Apostles 5:30 is referred explicitly as tree or
16
“Vǫluspá” in Eddukvæði, 296.
17
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla. Vol I: The Beginnings to Óláfr Tryggvason, trans. Alison Finlay and
Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), 8.
18
“Vǫluspá” in Eddukvæði, 294, 296.
19
Paul C. Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts press, 1982), 5.

5
trunk. The concept of fate, inexistent as such in the old Norse vocabulary, was ørlǫg,

ancient-law that was laid down in the well of Urðr, next to the roots of the world-tree

Yggdrasill.

The meaning of was this ørlǫg is not clear for the modern reader of the Old Icelandic

corpus. Nevertheless, the relation with fate seems evident in the Vǫluspá fragment related

to the Norns, but never implies a constricted fate, since the term is directly related to life as

in the scene in stanza 17 were the three Æsir give life to Ask and Embla: “fundu á landi/ lítt

megandi/ Ask ok Emblu/ ørlǫglausa.”20 But this relation between the life of the beings and

the concept of fate or destiny is only implied and supported also by the facticity that this

concept appears always in relation with the fate of beings, either mortal or divine.

The other concepts related to fate are the names of the three Norns, and more

prominently to Urðr. Urðr so far appears in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic as

“weird, fate.”21 And in the same page we find the definition of urðar-maðr as “outlaw”.

Since urðar is the genitive case of urðr it is easy to associate the concept of Urðr as fate in

the sense of the predestination of men to die, and an outlawed man appears to be sent to die,

to fulfil that destiny. But the sense of the concepts urðr and ørlǫg don’t imply by

themselves fate as preordained, although they may be related to the concept of

determination it does not mean that there is no freedom since the possibility to face the

determined outcome still exists ““But good renown/ will never die/ for anyone who earns

it” […] The stanza does not advocate the idea that that a bird in the hand is worth two in the

bush; rather, that men should risk all that is nearest at hand for the remote and difficult. […]

20
“Vǫluspá” in Eddukvæði, 295.
21
Geir Tómasson Zoëga, A Concise dictionary of Old Icelandic, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) 453.

6
it was regarded as the outward symbol of the wholeness of a man’s worth” 22 or as the case

of Sigurðr explains “Mátti han ok eigi við skǫpum vinna né sínu aldrlagi.”23

The meaning of the Norns names appears to come from the verb verða, to become,

being Urðr the past participle, Verðandi the present participle, 24 and Skuld from the verb

skulu, “shall (denoting fate, law, bidding, necessity, duty, obligation, purpose)” 25 The

nature of the relations between them in the mind of the pre-Christian Norsemen or the

Germanic peoples influenced the understanding of the Christian writers that preserved the

ancient lore of their pagan ancestors “the newly-literate Icelanders and other Scandinavian

peoples did a unique job of […] recording data. They set down the Elder Edda, an entire

volume of miscellaneous heathen or heathen oriented poems, without, apparently, trying to

26
alter or censor them.” “they pursued the lore of their pre-Christian culture when other

Christianized peoples were doing everything they could to forget or disguise theirs.” 27 The

Christian writers then understood that there was a relation between Magic and the Ancient

concepts of fate as is explained in Gylfaginning: “A hall stands there, fair, under the ash by

the well, and out of the hall come three maids, who are called thus: Urdr, Verdandi, Skuld;

these maids determine the period of men’s lives […] Good norns and of honorable race

appoint good life; but those men that suffer evil fortunes are governed by evil norns.”28

II How to change or know the fate.

22
Sigurður Nordal , Icelandic Culture, (Ithaca: Cornell University Library, 1990) 151.
23
Vǫlsunga saga, The Saga of The Volsungs, trans. R. G. Finch (London: Nelson, 1965), 58.
24
Paul Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree, 14-15.
25
Zoëga, A Concise dictionary of Old Icelandic, 383.
26
RosalieWax, Magic, Fate and History, 16-17
27
Torfi H. Tulinius, The Matter of The North: The Rise of Literary Fiction in Thirteenth-century Iceland,
(Odense: Odense University Press, 2002) 66.
28
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, 28-29.

7
 The magical dimension revolves around two important properties of Old Norse

paganism that are important for the Christian writers: divination and blood sacrifice. As the

aforementioned passage of Heimskringla that states that “She [Freyja] was a sacrificial

priestess. She was the first to teach the Æsir black magic, which was customary among the

Vanir.”29 Where the same passage is preceded by, although seems to imply that this later

passage is an explanation of, the account of what Óðinn does with the severed head of

Mímir “Óðinn took the head and smeared it with herbs that prevented it from decaying, and

recited spells over it and imbued it with magic powers so that it spoke to him and told him

many secret things.”30 For the Christian faith and world view, divination and necromancy,

both related in this passage, are interferences in the Natural order created by God, since He

is the Lord of life and death, and His will and grace rule the past, the present and the future.

The relation with sacrifice, necromancy and divination was strong in the mind of the

Christian writers, and the Old Norse religion, although not necessarily expressed this

relations by itself, supported that world view with its own practices.

Next, men came with shields and staves. They handed the girl a cup of

nabīdh. She sang a song over it and drank. […] Then the old woman

seized her head, made her enter the pavilion and went in with her. The

men began to bang on their shields with staves, to drown her cries, […]

Next, six men entered the pavilion […] Two seized her feet and two

others her hands. The old woman called the Angel of Death came and

put a cord round her neck in such a way that the two ends went in

opposite directions. She gave the ends to two of the men so they pull on

29
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, 8.
30
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, 8.

8
 them. Then she herself approached the girl holding in her hand a dagger

with a broad blade and [plunged it again and again between the girl’s

ribs]31

The ritualism of the sacrifice along with the violence was enough to engulf the

imagination of the Muslim writers and the Christian writers, although succinct about the

theological implications of this practices of their ancestors, leveled and linked always

human sacrifice and magic, thus Snorri writes “Óðinn and Gylfi often competed in tricks

and illusions, and the Æsir were always superior. Óðinn established his dwelling by

Lǫgrinn at the place now called Old Sigtúnir, and built a large temple there and performed

sacrifices according to the custom of the Æsir.” 32 And the enumeration of Óðinn skills of

magic highlights strongly the relation between seiðr and divination:

Óðinn kept Mímir’s head by him, and it told him much news from other

worlds, and sometimes he awakened the dead from the earth or sat

himself under hanged men. Because of this he was called

draugadróttinn (‘lord of ghosts’) or hangadróttinn (‘lord of the

hanged’) […] Because of this the Æsir are called galdrasmiðir (‘magic

makers’). Óðinn knew, and practiced himself, the art which is

accompanied by greatest power, called seiðr (‘black magic’), and from

it he could predict the fates of men and things that had not yet

happened, and also cause men death or disaster or disease, and also take

wit or strength from some and give it to others. But this magic, when it

is practised, is accompanied by such great perversion that it was not

31
Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan and the land of Darkness: Arab travellers in the Far North, trans. Caroline E. M.
Stone and Paul Lunde, (Londres: Penguin Books, 2012), 52-53.
32
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, 8.

9
 considered without shame for a man to perform it, and the skill was

taught to the goddesses.33

The Christian writers, as we have seen in the introduction of Snorri to the understanding

of the knowledge of the gods, understood that kind of knowledge as just a reminder of the

primal understanding of the world, and the relation with its Creator that is also worldly

knowledge that reveals to a certain degree the reality of the revelation, 34 and so, understood

that the rituals and magic practices draw power from two kinds: first, from the natural life

of the world, or secondly, from the devils. The first one was a feature of the Old Norse

religion “In this world of the gods and ancient heroes, the only important attribute is what

has been called supernatural power. A better term is Vital Power, for people who live in the

enchanted world do not usually distinguish between power and life or between the natural

and the supernatural.”35 The function of magic is to manipulate this force, that shapes the

realities of the universe. The Christian, at least the “good” ones, are supposed to give in to

the will of God and strive for salvation and sanctity through the grace of God. The Old

Pagan Gods endeavor to gain power, mainly to divine the future, and possibly to change

their fates:

Óðinn appears insatiable in his desire for Power. It was for magical

power to see into the future that he gave his wondrous eye, which saw

everything that happened in the universe. It was for the magical mead

that he took the form of a snake and tunneled into the giant's cave, there

seduced the giant's daughter and swallowed the mead, and, then, in the

form of an eagle flew back to Ásgarð. It was for the magical power of
33
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla I, 10-11.
34
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, 3-6.
35
RosalieWax, Magic, Fate and History, 48.

10
 the runes that he hanged himself on the world tree Yggdrasill and

wounded himself with his own spear […] As in all magically conceived

universes, the possession of this Power was not a matter of mere conceit

or aggrandizement over other beings, but of life and death. For example,

when the giant Thjatsi kidnapped Iðunn and her youth-giving apples, he

made off, not only with a beautiful goddess and her magical trinkets,

but with a part of the life force maintaining the community of the

gods.36

This can be contrasted with the understanding of the Christian grace, even in the context

of Heimskringla as can be seen in the Saga of Óláfr helgi, that link his reign with the well-

being of the land and, although shapes some of the aspects of the ancient lore, like those

highlighted above, is reproducing a Christian narrative of the prosperity of the land with the

virtuous following of the law of God. The Old testament shows this idea in Leviticus

18:27-28 “(for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these

abominations, and the land has become defiled); 28 so that the land will not spew you out,

should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you.”

Consequently, the well-being of the land and the roll of the kings in the process is

absolute: many philosophers and patres ecclesiae used the figures of king David and king

Salomon from the bible to portrait the king not only as the individual appointed as primus

inter pares to rule in God’s name the realm, but also as the pater familias that should guard

the kingdom and the subjects, especially in the spiritual aspect. 37 Relating the imagery of

36
Rosalie Wax, Magic, Fate and History, 48-51.
37
Paul J. E.Kershaw, Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power and the Early Medieval Political Imagination, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011) 47-52.

11
Christ in the Viking Age with the action of the king was then a different approach to the

understanding of the world.38 future, and possibly to change their fates:

The next summer there came to be much talk of King Óláfr’s sainthood,

and public opinion about the king all changed. There were now many

that affirmed that the king must be saintly who previously had opposed

him in absolute enmity and not let him in any respect get a fair report

from them. People now began to turn to criticising the men that had

most urged rebellion against the king. As a result Bishop Sigurðr was

much blamed. People there became such great enemies of his that he

saw his best course as to go away and west to England to see King

Knútr. After this the Þroendir sent men and messages to Upplǫnd for

Bishop Grímkell to come north to Þrándheimr. King Óláfr had sent

Bishop Grímkell back to Norway when the king went east to Garðaríki.

Bishop Grímkell had since then been in Upplǫnd. So when this message

came to the bishop, then he immediately got ready for this journey. A

large part of the reason why he went was that the bishop believed that it

must be true what was said about the performing of miracles and the

sainthood of King Óláfr.39

Is of great importance that the body of the king was preserved and, that after a year, the

remains are incorrupt, so that the narrative could provide a proof of the sanctity of Óláfr

hinn helgi beyond any doubt. And that separates the conceptualization of magic from the

Christian idea of grace.

38
Robert Ferguson, The Vikings: A History, (Nueva York: Penguin Books, 2009). 201.
39
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla. Vol II: Óláfr Haraldsson (the Saint), trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony
Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2014), 269.

12
 The other aspect of the Magic and fate, is that of the powers that help to control destiny

and glimpse into the time to come were relievable in the sense that those who practiced

magic believed they could always depend on them, since even if they were to have a will of

their own, could be coerced or manipulated to respond to the wishes of the magic

practitioner, but a Christian can only rely on the will of God and his grace. If a Christian

asks anything, have to trust that that which he or she is asking for, will be given only to

them if that is a great benefit for them, the Epistle of James 4:2-3 says “You crave what you

do not have. You kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do

not have, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you

ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.” This great difference

between the two world views have its toll on the way that the Icelandic writers of the

Icelandic literary corpus related to the subject they were writing about.

The magic appears only to reveal the fate that was lay dawn or play with it. The

individual is compelled to follow the destiny lay upon him, but can choose how to face it.

The knowledge of that which is to come, can help individuals in that sense, but nevertheless

the common fate of men is death. That is reflected in the famous speech of King Sverrir

before the battle of Ilevolden, when he says “In every battle where you are present, one of

two things will happen: you will either fall or come away alive. Be bold, therefore, for

everything is preordained. Nothing can bring a man to his death if his time has not come,

and nothing can save one doomed to die.” 40 This view, based on a Christian understanding

of the Old Pagan drama of facing the destiny, lead the Scandinavian peoples to a certain

40
Sigurður Nordal , Icelandic Culture, 132-133.

13
kind of disenchanted ethic of action. The stress in placed in the actions and the ethical

standards of the Age.41

The representation of the magic at the beginning of the writing period, on the first sagas,

shows characters faced to the oppression of destiny, which is mediated through magical

means to bring devastation:

Fate in this magical or relatively "unheroic" literature is rarely

envisaged as truly inexorable or final, for it lies in the hands of Beings

who, like human relations or friends, may give welcome or unwelcome

gifts, may be bribed or propitiated, or may be thwarted by the power of

another Being. In like manner, fate in the magical literature is rarely

seen as an a-moral, impersonal force, generating moral dilemmas for

unsuspecting human beings. Instead, it is referred to as if it were a kind

of immanent justice. For example, when Kormák kills a witch's son she

curses him so that he is "fated" never to possess his beloved. 42

The Icelanders were conceptualizing in the sagas a more personal conception of destiny,

and thus, the power of magic seemed more active and imperative. It was not so pressingly

driven towards divination and the control of the fates of the universe, but to the individual.

“In some of the early lays the idea of fate may be used in a somewhat different and less

magical sense as the ultimate explanation of an event which cannot be blamed on sorcery or

attributed to the gods […] The kind of fate pictured in the classic sagas and some of the heroic

41
Guðrún Nordal, Ethics and Action in Thirteenth-Century Iceland, (Odense: Odense University Press, 1998)
176-195.
42
Rosalie Wax, Magic, Fate and History, 137.

14
lays is an entirely different phenomenon […] one might say that in some of the lays and sagas

man is seen as having internalized his fate.” 43

This understanding of the fate and magic also changes the panorama in the sense that the

divination changes from a magical dimension to a supernatural dimension that dispenses

special characteristics to individual. That also increases the weight of the ethical decisions and

of the responsibility for them, for that reason Snorri Sturluson portrays King Óláfr hinn helgi

doing so because they were rejecting the alliance with their true lord but he is willing to

forgive them and spare them pain:

Now this treason against their lord is much less important, even though

they do not keep faith with me, and yet this will not be thought seemly

for those who want to be decent men. Now I have here somewhat more

right to treat them with some leniency when they are acting badly

against me, than when they were displaying hatred of God. Now what I

want is that men should go easy and do no plundering. I will first go to

see the farmers. If we are reconciled, well and good, but if they engage

in battle against us, then there will be two possibilities facing us, and if

we fall in battle, then it will be a good idea not to go to it with proceeds

of plunder44

It is possible to question that the values that are represented are not genuinely Christian,

and that the close relation of the beliefs that Óláfr helgi had as a pagan child, impulses his

actions, or a mere practical formality is at display. But that presupposes that Snorri is

making a perfect, objective and true account of the actions, words and deeds of Óláfr,

43
Rosalie Wax, Magic, Fate and History, 137-138.
44
Snorri, Heimskringla II, 238-239.

15
things impossible to claim: for Snorri as a Christian author, narrating the life of the saint

implies highlight the Christian values of the saint, and the presence of God throughout his

life. That the values, and the way those values are expressed doesn’t necessarily coincide

with our modern understanding of the Christian values, it is natural that the values are

differently expressed, lived and influenced by different cultures. That there were values that

the Christian Snorri and other Christians of the Middle Ages cherished highly, that were of

pagan origins, doesn’t mean that they were not Christian, because those values were

reshaped, or placed within a Christian World view.

So, although the first part of the rule of Óláfr helgi in Norway may be linked to the

ancient ideas of the link between prosperity and kingship,45 since the arrangement made by

Snorri of the division of time, space and historical information, responds to a creative and

analytical use of the sources by Snorri, 46 the idea must be related to hagiographical ideas

about saintly kings.

It is the same with the gesture of the king, that gives the order that money should be

given to churches for the souls of the men that fall fighting against him, so that they will be

all saved together, his men and his enemies and a new man that coverts just before the

battle. It seems implied that the men that the king turned Christians are also saved, since

they all die in the beginning of the battle. In his final moments Óláfr is depicted unarmed

praying to God just before the worse men that battle against him inflict him each a death

wound.47

Is also this set of ideas, the one that helps portrait Sigurðr Fáfnisbani “The achievement

of great feats is the hero’s raison d’être and the memory of his mighty deeds is all that lives
45
Gabriel Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), 191-193.
46
Sverre Bagge, “Warrior, King, and Saint: The Medieval Histories about st. Óláfr Haraldsson”, Journal of
English and Germanic Philology 109, n° 3 (2010), 286-288.
47
Snorri, Heimskringla II, 247, 254, 257.

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on in the minds of subsequent generations.” 48 This reduction of the magical world from the

sense of wonder to the disenchantment is not negative, because it enables the individual

identity, the character or ethos of the individual to arise from the magical dimensions.

Conclusions

The Icelandic writers, such as Snorri Sturluson, were depositories of a Pre-Christian

tradition that believed that the magic was the force that formed the world over and over

again. They expressed to a certain degree that idea, and respected the Ancient lore that they

were depositories of. This can be said because they tried to explain the ancient beliefs of

their ancestors, by speculating, understanding and rationalizing the dispersion of sources

that were available to them.

They were also understanding, adapting, translating and comprehending a new tradition

that mixed values, ideas and concepts of at least three different cultures, Roman, Greek and

Jewish. In this process they use their ancient set of ideas and concepts to grasp the truth and

translate it in such a way that they were able to understand them properly. That explains in

part, why they respected the ancient lore. But they also change their World view and when

they tried to understand the ancient accounts represented magic and the connection it had

with destiny, basically as divination and manipulation of the beings that had power over it.

Later, the mixing of concepts led to a disenchantment, a loss to the magical sense of the

world, but replace it with an ethos based on the idea that the facts of the world are fixed,

but the internal struggles of the heroic life or the openness to the grace of God, were the

most important dispositions of the life.

48
Aaron Gurevich, The Origins of European Individualism, trans. Katharine Judelson (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers Limited, 1995) 20.

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