Orning, The Magical Reality of the Late Middle

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The Magical Reality of the Late Middle
Ages: exploring the world of the
fornaldarsögur

Hans Jacob Orning
Published online: 18 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Hans Jacob Orning (2010) The Magical Reality of the Late Middle Ages:
exploring the world of the fornaldarsögur, Scandinavian Journal of History, 35:1, 3-20, DOI:

10.1080/03468750903381639

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Hans Jacob Orning

THE MAGICAL REALITY OF THE LATE MIDDLE

AGES

Exploring the world of the fornaldarsögur

This article looks at some sources seldom used by historians studying the late Middle Ages:
fornaldarsögur (legendary sagas). It argues that these sources can offer new perspectives on Old
Norse culture in this period. This is illustrated by an analysis of how magic is described in four
fornaldarsögur labelled the Hrafnista sagas from the late 15th-century manuscript AM 343a
4to. These sagas attest to what has been called

‘a magical world-view’ of the Middle Ages.

Moreover, they shed light on the importance of cooperating with the periphery for both magical
and material reasons. Although it is difficult to use the Hrafnista sagas as historical sources to
more specific issues, this can be done in two ways. First, a changing relationship to the northern
peripheries in the late Middle Ages can be discerned by comparing different versions of these
sagas from this period. Second, by situating the manuscript containing these sagas (AM 343a
4to) in its literary environment of late 15th-century northern Iceland, we get a glimpse of a
cultural struggle about how to interpret the past

– and ultimately the present.

Keywords legendary sagas, magic, middle ages, manuscripts, centre and
periphery, Finns

Introduction

The late Middle Ages has traditionally been viewed as a period of decay in Iceland and
Norway, since a period of political independence came to an end in 1262/64 in Iceland,
and in 1319 in Norway. The decay has also been explained in literary terms. From the
14th century onwards, the production of kings

’ sagas and Icelandic sagas dwindled, to be

replaced by the copying and editing of earlier texts. The scattered charters of the period
offer some glimpses into society, but the lives of ordinary men and women remain mostly
hidden in darkness. However, a category of sources which have seldom been used by
historians are the fornaldarsögur, or legendary sagas, written down in Iceland from the
13th century on.

These sagas have fared badly with modern scholars, but lately they

have become the subject of more attention and esteem.

Yet this revival has mostly been

limited to the literary sphere. Few scholars have tried to situate the fornaldarsögur
historically, and even fewer have had the historical dimension of these sagas as their prime
target.

This is partly understandable, as these sagas tell about a distant past stretching

Scandinavian Journal of History Vol. 35, No. 1. March 2010, pp. 3

–20

ISSN 0346-8755 print/ISSN 1502-7716 online

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DOI: 10.1080/03468750903381639

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back to the 8th and 9th centuries, making them utterly problematic to use as historical
accounts of that period. However, considering the recent interest among historians in
using historical sources as remnants, the lacking historicity of the fornaldarsögur should
pose no problem, since any source can in principle be used as a remnant of the conditions
under which it was produced.

Another challenge in using fornaldarsögur as historical remnants is that the structure

of this genre is very schematic. Axel Olrik underlined the stereotyped plots of these
sagas, suggesting that they could be formulated as epic laws.

Normally they deal with

heroes venturing into strange lands in the periphery, eventually bringing the realms into
closer contact through alliances, often sealed by intermarriage.

Not all sagas comply

with this pattern, but the plot and structure are very distant from the contemporary
cultural context.

If fornaldarsögur only constitute variations over a common, ready-

made plot, one may doubt whether this can tell us much about contemporary historical
conditions. Can these formulaic fairytales be interpreted as anything more than escapist
entertainment? According to Else Mundal, the fantastic element of the legendary sagas
need not be such an obstacle at all. Rather than viewing this as an escapist trait, the distant
topic of these sagas could serve as a cover-up for discussing contemporary tensions and
themes.

Furthermore, the great popularity of these sagas, attested in the numerous

preserved manuscripts, indicates that they must have carried some actuality in the eyes of
their contemporaries.

This contemporary relevance was persistent, as the rewriting of

fornaldarsögur continued up to the 19th century.

Thus, the lasting popularity of these

sagas does not indicate a decaying tradition or culture, but rather a vivid literary
tradition, in which questions of authority and social relations continued to be discussed.
Used with diligence, they can reveal a great deal about the society in which they were
produced, told and retold, written and rewritten. The main purpose of this article is to
discuss and give examples of how fornaldarsögur can be used as remnants about their
contemporary historical context. This necessitates some demarcations to be made in
order to suit the framework of an article.

First, I shall limit the analysis to a group of fornaldarsögur called the

‘Hrafnista

sagas

’: Ketils saga hængs, Gríms saga loðinkinna, Örvar-Odds saga and Áns saga

bogsveigis.

The grouping of these sagas is a modern phenomenon made on the grounds

that they all deal with men living at Hrafnista, a big farm on the coast of Northern
Trøndelag, allegedly in the 8th and 9th centuries.

Furthermore, all the Hrafnista sagas

can be found in one manuscript, AM 343a 4to, written in the latter part of the 15th
century (the first three are also in the contemporaneous AM 471 4to).

AM 343a 4to is a

voluminous manuscript consisting of nine fornaldarsögur, five fornsögur suðrlanda, and
one moral fable.

Recently, Christopher Sanders has argued that it was produced at

Möðruvellir fram, a church-farm in Eyjafjörðr nearby the Benedictine monastery of
Munkaþverá.

The date of the Hrafnista sagas can be pushed back to the 13th or 14th

centuries,

but in this article I shall focus on the versions in the manuscript AM 343a 4to.

This approach is in line with New Philology, where emphasis is switched from the
archetype towards concrete text witnesses as building blocks in an ever-changing manu-
script culture.

My second limitation is to focus on magic as it is depicted in the Hrafnista sagas. This

theme is interesting for several reasons. First, there is a striking contradiction between
the affluence of magic in the fornaldarsögur, on the one hand, and the lack of references
to magic in historical works on this period.

Thus, sources describing magic should be

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greeted by historians otherwise relegated to studying dry charters or much later sources.
Second, the Hrafnista sagas show a peculiarity compared to other fornaldarsögur in
relating magic to material concerns connected with famine and the need for obtaining
fish. This may be related to the unusual setting of these sagas in the context of a
chieftaincy in Northern Trøndelag, and not with some Scandinavian kingdom, as is
normally the case in legendary sagas.

This cannot be read directly as reflections of

contemporary conditions, as the sagas are certainly legendary, but they can reveal
something about attitudes to magic, and possibly to the Finns or Sami living up north
in Finnmark. The first section presents two different ways of close reading of the
Hrafnista sagas. In the two subsequent sections I shall use this as a basis for discussing
the broader historical and literary context of these sagas.

The Hrafnista sagas read as tale

viz structure

The Hrafnista sagas can be read chronologically as a story of how a society develops, not
as this actually happened in Norway in the Viking age,

but of how one believed that a

process of unification and integration could take place, as viewed from the 15th century.
In this respect, the story consists in how a centre gradually expanded at the expense of a
magical periphery, which becomes progressively more marginal and negatively loaded.

The first saga in the Hrafnista cycle, Ketils saga hængs, is packed with magic. Magic

could be very close to the centre at Hrafnista. When Ketill reached maturity, his father
gave him an axe and the following advice:

‘When the sun has set, I don’t want you to be

outside, and in particular you should not walk from the farm northwards on the island.

’

Ketill ignored the advice shortly afterwards and proceeded north, where he slayed a
dragon (KsH 10

–12). The prevalence of magic was more dominant the further one went

away from Hrafnista. During famines in the two subsequent summers, Ketill sailed to
places inhabited by giants, whom he conquered. His third voyage led him to Finnmark,
which can be considered the ultimate periphery of the saga, characterized by an affluence
of magic. This is underlined in how he went there, as he went alone against his father

’s

advice, during winter

– which was not the sailing season – and was carried there by a

storm (KsH 116). Here Ketill encountered Finns, who were described as magicians, as
well as many evil trolls. Finnmark was considered an extremely dangerous and unpre-
dictable area, where anything could happen. The Finns were not to be trusted (KsH 118).
Still their magic was not only bad. The Finn Bruni used magic in order to protect Ketill,
and his daughter, Hrafnhildr, is presented in positive terms as a woman Ketill slept with
voluntarily.

In Gríms saga loðinkinna, the magic of the northern areas continued to play a vital

part. Once again, the action was sparked off by a famine, which forced Grímr to go to
Finnmark, where he met with two troll women alongside other giants and hostile men
(GsL 145

–9). However, compared to the situation in Ketils saga hængs, the magical

periphery seems to have receded somewhat, as Grímr is reported to have controlled the
surroundings of Hrafnista with no threats nearby. Moreover, magic is more negatively
evaluated in this saga, foremost evidenced through the troll woman Grímhildr, who
married Haraldr in Viken, whose daughter Lopthæna from his first marriage was to
marry Grím. Grímhildr kidnapped Lopthæna before the wedding and sent her to her
brother in Finnmark, where she was conjured into an ugly troll woman named Geirríðr.
Grímhild

’s heinous acts were eventually revealed, as Grímr managed to break the curse

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laid upon Lopthæna/Geirríðr, and Grímhildr was stoned to death. The contrast between
the evil and cunning Grímhildr and the innocent and beautiful Lopthæna invokes a
dichotomous relation between centre and periphery, which is far from the situation of
Ketill hæng, who had wavered in his choice of spouse between his Finn woman and a
peasant woman. Thus, Gríms saga loðinkinna shows a more pronounced tendency to
connect the magic of the north to witchcraft, and to situate the periphery far away from
the centre. Nevertheless, in large measure it continues the trend from Ketils saga hængs,
in that its main image is of a reciprocal relationship between centre and periphery in the
magical sphere.

The north continues to play an important role in Örvar-Odds saga. Finnmark was

inhabited by Finns, who were considered to be great sorcerers and black magicians. This
made them capable of making storms, such as the one that almost killed Oddr and his
companions after their plundering expedition to Bjarmeland (ÖOs 179

–80). A land of

giants neighboured the Finns, whereas a third northern area, Bjarmeland, is described as
somewhat less magical. In sum, the northern realm was still the area par excellence of
black magic and wild, uncontrollable forces, in spite of some variation between different
regions there (ÖOs 174

–86). Yet the northerners’ reason for practising magic could be

fair enough, as when they wanted to get hold of Oddr

’s booty. The same applies to

Oddr

’s enemy Ögmundr from Bjarmeland. The whole panoply of magic was invoked

when relating his background. He was conceived by the Bjarmeland king and a troll
woman, learned magic from the Finns, and used sorcery which made him invulnerable by
weapons (ÖOs 241

–2). This, of course, placed him far over to the side of the evil Finns,

but although Ögmundr appears as the incarnation of evil and supernatural powers, his
aim was a social one

– to take revenge for Oddr’s plundering. One could go so far as to

say that he was Oddr

’s creation – a result of his own actions.

However, even though

Ögmundr

’s urge for revenge constituted a reciprocal dimension, the reciprocity in the

relation between the Hrafnista men and the northerners is markedly toned down in
Örvar-Odds saga, as compared to the former two sagas. Whereas in the former sagas
famine always constituted the occasion for sailing north, this aspect is absent in the latter
saga. Likewise, the reciprocity marked in the former sagas by intermarriage is absent in
Örvar-Odds saga, where the attractions of the northern world were solely of a material
character. Thus, whereas Ketils and Gríms saga can be considered as sagas mediating
between centre and periphery, Örvar-Odds saga saw the world from the southern point
of view. For Oddr, the northern areas were targets for plunder, not interaction.

Áns saga bogsveigis represents a watershed in attitudes to magic among the Hrafnista

sagas, as it is the first saga in this cycle which unfolds without any reference to the
northern areas. Furthermore, the saga is eager to specify that Án had no connection
whatsoever to magic. He obtained his impressive bow (which earned him his nick-name)
by threatening a dwarf into making it, as he had heard that they were more skilful than
others at making weapons, but the saga states explicitly that:

‘The dwarf did what they

had agreed on, without sorcery.

’

Án even paid him for the bow, whereupon the dwarf

gave him a chair as a gift. Thus, the relationship was turned into a social one. This story of
Án

’s acquisition of his weapon contrasts with his ancestors’, of whom their magical

connections were in no way concealed.

The rest of the saga deals with Án

’s position

within the kingdom of Namdalen.

Read in a chronological sequence, the Hrafnista sagas can be viewed as a tale of how a

small chieftaincy gradually expanded its power at the expense of a hostile and magically

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loaded environment, finally to become part of a more

‘civilized’ – though not unequi-

vocally praised

– kingdom. This implied that magic was gradually removed from the

centre, and became more clearly identified with the northern periphery. Furthermore,
this magic of the north became increasingly alien and wicked. Finally, in Áns saga
bogsveigis, magic simply had no place within the realm of a kingdom. Magic no longer
had a diffuse presence everywhere, but had been relegated to the periphery, thus forming
an

‘axis of evil’ surrounding the pacified centre. In the final chapter, this process was

linked to the national unification of Norway by Haraldr fairhair, thereby making it into a
regional forerunner to the famous stories in Heimkringla and other kings

’ sagas.

The previous reading of the Hrafnista sagas as a civilizing tale of how a centre

gradually grew stronger at the expense of its magical and threatening surroundings is
indeed a legitimate interpretation, but reading the sagas as a chronological narrative runs
the risk of merely reproducing their ideological message as a prefiguration of the national
unification of Norway. If on the other hand we take the full consequences of using sagas as
remnants, focus should be transferred from chronology to structure. In that case, magic
was not simply something which was overturned through the erection of safe borders
against the magical periphery, but rather a recurrent feature of life. This means that the
borders surrounding the kingdom of Namdalen in Áns saga bogsveigis have to be re-
opened. Magic operated in a universe not based on fixed borders enclosing self-sufficient
entities, but in a world with a continuum between centre and periphery. The northern
areas were certainly the centre of magic, in which magic was most efficient and most
dangerous. However, this must not tempt us into concluding that the centre was free of
magic, or that magic was only dangerous and evil.

First, the magic of the north was not uniformly evil. Ketill hæng, especially,

established good relations with the Finns, as we saw in his intercourse with Hrafnhildr,
but also in Gríms saga loðinkinna and Örvar-Odds saga the descriptions of Finnmark are
at times amicable. After Grímr had killed the two female trolls in Finnmark, their father
Hrímni reproached him for having done this, as it was

‘not honourably’ (GsL 147), and

the depiction of this troll family is almost tender. When Oddr arrived in Finnmark, he
blamed his companions for taking pleasure in plundering the Finn women (ÖOs 174),
and the neighbouring giants are described as quite good-natured (ÖOs 181

–2).

Moreover, not all arenas up north were equally permeated by magic. In Gríms saga
loðinkinna, the main protagonists met with normal men in Finnmark (GsL 148

–9). In

Örvar-Odds saga, Bjarmeland was depicted as less magical than other areas up north. The
people living there had a different language and religion, but their social structure and
religious rituals were recognizable. Furthermore, the Permians had a captive waiter who
spoke Old Norse, whom Oddr tried to persuade into joining them, but his attempt to
utilize the man as a broker was fruitless, as he used the first opportunity to run back to the
Permians. Oddr expressed fear of the Permians

’ magic, but their combat was fought with

human and not magical powers (ÖOs 178). The suspicion of sorcery evidently also went
both ways, because the Permians perceived of Oddr as a

‘troll’ when he appeared at their

sacrifice (ÖOs 174

–9). Finally, the northerners could have their legitimate reasons for

applying magic, as in Örvar-Odds saga, where their motive was to take revenge on Oddr.

Second, magic was also part of the centre. This can be taken quite literally, as Ketill

’s

father Hallbjörn was called

‘hálftröll’ (half-troll), attesting to the family’s link with

supernatural beings (KsH 109). Ketill

’s son Grímr continued this line by having a shaggy

chin as a consequence of the fact that some Finns gazed at her when she had covered her

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pregnant belly but on one place (KsH 118, 123).

The Hrafnista men also had the

capacity to make the wind fill their sails as soon as they were hoisted (ÖOs 170). Magic
was a means to gain increased influence over forces which were otherwise largely beyond
human control. Therefore no one in the sagas refused to make use of magic if they had the
opportunity to do so. Still the advantages offered by magic were not absolute but relative.
Compared to the magic strength of the Finns, the magical efficiency of the Hrafnista men
was very weak, and when in Finnmark it is never mentioned, probably because it could
do nothing in competition with the magic of the Finns. Nevertheless, even if the magic
applied by the Hrafnista men was normally weaker than the magic utilized by Finns, in
the southern world it was highly effective. Likewise, most of the opponents of the
Hrafnista men used magic themselves, and believed in the superiority of their own
supernatural remedies until they were proven to be wrong. The opposition thus did not
go between magic and non-magic, but between degrees of magical efficiency. Here the
northern periphery definitely had the ascendancy, but it was possible to partake in these
powers. Ketill was happy to profit from the magic of his Finn friends in terms of Gusi

’s

magical arrows. Oddr was always aided by these same arrows until he met Álfr bjálki, on
whom they were ineffective, but then he luckily possessed another set of arrows which
helped him kill him.

A structural reading of the Hrafnista sagas enables us to go beyond its chronological

frame as a story of magical withdrawal and an incipient state formation. It draws attention
to the more fundamental and recurrent importance of magic, and to a more complex
relationship between centre and periphery than as a dichotomous one. In the following,
these two questions will be addressed in more detail in a larger literary and historical
context.

A magical universe

The importance of magic in the Hrafnista sagas is not unique to these sagas, but applies for
the fornaldarsögur, and Old Norse culture, more generally.

In an analysis of this

culture, Dror Segev argues that:

The medieval world was one where the air breathed with spirits, and both literati
and simple folk breathed that very same air . . . The supernatural world of medieval
reality was thus a subject for intellectual speculations, and a part of daily life all at the
same time, and practicing magic was first and foremost a reaction to this reality.

This is consistent with what in European research has been labelled a

‘magical world-

view

’.

This view takes as its point of departure the fact that the medieval world was an

unpredictable one in which the potential for controlling one

’s surroundings was limited.

This was primarily a consequence of a low technological level. People lived on the
margins of subsistence and were very vulnerable to natural disasters or calamities of any
kind.

This uncertainty did not stop at the material level, but extended into the spiritual

realm, with fear of hell as the counterpart of this harsh environment.

The belief in

magic can be viewed as a reaction to this difficult situation, as it offered a way in which
people could come into contact with forces more powerful than themselves in order to
influence this environment. In this anthropomorphic universe, Man was a participant in
cosmos, which operated along magical guidelines. In Aron Gurevich

’s words, popular

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magic

‘was a means of actually mastering reality’.

A magical world-view implied

constantly seeking for the inherent

‘meaning’ of different signs, whose meanings were

hidden but not incomprehensible.

On an analytical level, it is easy to distinguish between magic and religion. The

standard definition of prayer is that, contrary to magic, it involves a petition of higher
powers, but no attempt to coerce them.

Nevertheless, when it comes to practice, it

becomes difficult to differentiate between these two ways of addressing the divinities,
because both magic and prayer operated from a presupposition that it was possible to
influence the physical universe by ritual means.

In Keith Thomas

’ words, the medieval

church was

‘a vast reservoir of magical power’.

So, if the medieval church built on this

magical world-view, how can it be separated from it at all? The difference probably lies
not so much in a differing logic as in the question of legitimacy. The difference between a
magical and a miraculous incident lay not in the nature of the event but in who had
activated it.

If a priest was in charge, or had approved of the course of action, the church

was normally ready to accept it. If not, it risked being ousted from the church doctrine as
superstition.

Hence, there was an ongoing struggle on how to define matters, where

popular and learned opinions could differ widely. In the course of the Middle Ages,
the clerical elite became gradually more reticent towards magic and miracles, as a
scientific world-view grew progressively stronger among the elite.

However, the

scope of this change should not be overrated. For one thing, the magical and scientific
systems co-existed for a long time, even though they proclaimed widely divergent
answers to cosmological questions.

For another, the magical outlook was not really

outdated in any strata. According to Keith Thomas, there were no large-scale changes in
attitudes to magic in pre-modern Britain beyond the Reformation.

As Gurevich notes,

‘miracles were too important to dispense with’.

A second distinction should be made between magic and paganism. Kirsten Hastrup

contrasts the swift disappearance of the old, heathen gods with the lasting presence of
supernatural beings in popular folklore in medieval Iceland. She explains this by reference
to the lack of a Christian

‘horizontal’ cosmological model to replace the pagan one of

human society as the world of Midgard, surrounded by supernatural beings in Utgard.

Hastrup

’s model has been the target of much criticism, but it should be appreciated for its

capacity to explain the contrast between the swift disappearance of heathen gods and the
prolonged echoes of supernatural beings after the conversion to Christianity. However,
Aron Gurevich, whose models greatly inspired Hastrup, asserts that the persistence of
magic after Christianity has less to do with the survival of heathen beliefs than with the
basic rhythm of agrarian life:

It was possible to destroy or discredit the old gods, but not to eliminate traditional
habits of thinking, embedded as they were in the eternally repetitive cycle of agrarian
life and linked with the many techniques of

‘managing’ the matters of the world by

way of magic.

As the ordinary life of peasants remained more or less unaltered throughout the Middle

Ages, it is not surprising that important elements of their spiritual orientation persisted.
They could surely do without the old gods if the new ones proved to be stronger and
more helpful, but they could not dispense with the idea that supernatural helpers did
exist.

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This fits well with the magical universe as it emerges in the Hrafnista sagas, and the

legendary sagas more generally. Örvar-Oddr was quite willing to reject the heathen
gods, and he is an example of a

‘noble heathen’, before he eventually became Christian

upon learning about the new faith.

However, the ease with which he left the old gods

contrasts with his unwillingness to abstain from magical means. In his combats with
heathen opponents, there were no differences in how the parties used magic. Both Oddr
and Ketill perceived religion as a competition about whose supernatural connections
were the most effective. Whether these helpers were

‘Christian’ or ‘heathen’ was more

subordinate, as it did not really impinge on the basic belief in the existence of super-
natural helpers to whom people could turn. The fornaldarsögur unravelled this magical
universe as part of entertaining tales of supernatural heroes and monsters. Still their
fascination with magic should not be discarded as mere fantasies, but rather viewed as
reminiscent of popular belief in a world where magic was too important to dispense with.

Centre and periphery

The Hrafnista sagas differ from other fornaldarsögur in their focus on chieftains from the
coast of Trøndelag, as such sagas normally had kings as their main protagonists.
However, the northern journey of the protagonist is typical of this genre. The
fornaldarsögur are brimful with magic, and this magic was very often located in the
northern periphery. The Russian scholar Alexey Eremenko distinctly formulates the
binary opposition between the Scandinavian world on the one hand and the world outside
Scandinavia on the other:

The universe in which the scene of the Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda (FAS) is laid is not
homogeneous: rather, the stories present us two realities, complementary, but
clearly separate and very different from each other. One of these can easily be
defined as

‘the real world’, and reflects the world in which the authors and the

audience of the sagas lived. The other is the

‘magic reality’ of the FAS. All the magic

and supernatural elements in the FAS belong to this reality and are based on its
principles.

This dichotomy was also an ethical one:

‘The virtues of the Scandinavian world, such as

wisdom, beauty and restraint, are not favoured in the magic world. Its inhabitants are
often very stupid . . ..

’

However, we have seen that this relationship was more complicated when it comes

to magic. More fundamentally, such an opposition raises the question of why there was
any need for the centre to communicate with the periphery at all, if the latter was
populated by stupid and evil creatures. Margaret Clunies Ross has objected to the binary
mode of viewing the relationship between gods and giants in Old Norse mythology.
Instead, she argues that gods and giants are fairly similar, and engage in an interaction
which to a large degree is reciprocal. At the basis of this relationship lies the mutual need
for objects belonging to the other party. Therefore, exchange of objects lies at the heart
of the mythological stories, and often constitutes the concrete pretext for action to be
initiated. However, the relationship is not a symmetric one, because the gods repeatedly
try to block the reciprocity in it by refusing to enter into it on equal terms. This is what
creates the tension in this mythological world.

Moreover, this tension is not described

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in a

‘neutral’ manner, as the myths describe the conflicts between gods and giants from

the perspective of the gods.

Therefore, a twofold inequality operates in this system: the

upper hand of the gods in the conflicts, and the centre bias of the sources. Yet this
ascendancy of the gods is fragile, and conceals the fundamental reciprocity on which the
relationship rests. Contrary to Kirsten Hastrup, who envisions the mythological space in
binary terms, Clunies Ross advocates an interactive model, which underlines

the importance of social hierarchy as a dynamic principle in Norse mythology and
one whose changing application over time . . . created a mythological world in which
pressures, imbalances and inequalities of the system were as important as mediated
oppositions.

This perspective of a veiled reciprocity between centre and periphery is highly relevant

for the fornaldarsögur.

So far I have focused on the magical aspects of this relationship,

underlining the importance of gaining a foothold in the northern areas in order to be able
to partake in the magic which flourishes most affluently there. To this it is possible to add
more tenets which attest to a reciprocal relationship between centre and periphery in the
Hrafnista sagas.

The northern periphery was very important to Hrafnista on material grounds, due to

the need for supplies. Famine constituted a common background for the journeys in
Ketils saga hængs and Gríms saga loðinkinna, and indirectly in Örvar-Odds saga. These
direct statements of a material dependency on the periphery in the Hrafnista sagas are
highly unusual, as no other fornaldarsagas offer economic explanations for entering into
contact with the periphery, focusing only on the heroic aspect. I would not read these
fishing stories as reflections of contemporary practice, as they are highly stylized.
Nevertheless, I think that they have some affinity to contemporaneous conditions in
underlining the reciprocal dimension between centre and periphery. The importance of
reciprocal exchange in these relations is put under stress in Örvar-Odds saga, where
Oddr, in contrast to his predecessors, chooses to raid instead of entering into alliance.
The consequences of this course of action were severe, as the Permians in response
created a monster

– Ögmundr – who was to haunt Oddr for the rest of his life, exposing

his shortcomings as a warrior and human.

A more common idiom for expressing the reciprocity between centre and periphery

in the fornaldarsögur is by way of exchange of women. This is often depicted as aggressive
bridal quests, highlighting the antagonism between the parties involved. In Ketils saga
hængs and Gríms saga loðinkinna, the protagonists married women from the periphery,
but here the quest motif is turned down, yet without offering any particular reason for
why the relationship was established. This is the more remarkable since the women in
question were not beautiful, and most of them were ill-willed.

The wish to forge

alliances with women from these areas only becomes explicable in the light of the
material and magical resources which were concentrated in the north. Hrafnista was
dependent on cooperation with the periphery, and one of the best means of securing
friendly relations was by making alliances through the exchange of females.

The material

–magical dependency on the north can also explain the proclivity to

establish political alliances in the periphery, which especially characterizes Ketils saga
hængs. Ketill twice allied himself with oppositional elements within peripheral realms.
The result of these alliances was the establishment of friendly regimes in these areas,

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secured by marriage ties.

This tendency can be detected in other fornaldarsögur, where

bridal quests often led to the establishment of alliances between centre and periphery.

Örvar-Oddr

’s main failure in this respect was that he did not think in terms of alliance,

but plundered the Permians ruthlessly. Certainly this brought him his reputation, but it
also provoked a conflict which would bother him for the rest of his life.

The periphery was certainly different from the centre in the Hrafnista sagas, as in

fornaldarsögur more generally. However, these differences were not in terms of well-
defined geographical areas or normative oppositions, as the borderline between centre
and periphery could be blurred and subject to change. The periphery possessed qualities
that were much sought after in the centre, and therefore was far more important than the
sagas would admit openly.

The wider context

How can the stories from the Hrafnista sagas, and fornaldarsögur more generally, be used
historically in shedding light on the contemporary situation in which they were written?
One difficulty consists in interpreting the fantastic form and content of these sagas.
However, this does not imply that they are

‘unreal’. Margaret Clunies Ross notes the

comparability between the often-repeated stand-offs between gods and giants and
the behaviour of feuding factions of chieftains and their supporters in thirteenth
century Iceland.

Hence, the stories of gods and giants are no more

‘unreal’ than stories about chieftains

and kings. Her conclusion is:

‘The “reality” of the world of the gods thus partakes of the

same basic metaphysical reality as that of the humans represented in non-mythic
genres.

’

Accordingly, there is no principal difference between using adventures,

mythology or historical accounts as historical sources, since they are all equally

‘tainted’

by their author

’s views and preconceptions. Here the fornaldarsaga is in an advantageous

position, as it in Torfi Tulinius

’ words was ‘tailored precisely for the handling of

vexed and hidden problems, by virtue of its long-ago, far-away, and pagan setting

’.

As such, they were

‘exemplary stories’,

because in such stories

‘the gods behave in

ways that are more extreme and more flamboyant than are usual for humans

’.

The

fornaldarsögur could thereby serve as outlets for tensions and themes which were topical
in people

’s minds, such as the relationship to the periphery.

So far, the fornaldarsögur have been used as sources of quite general contemporary

issues, such as conceptions of magic and the relation to the periphery. But is it possible to
be more specific about contemporary issues? Can the stories in the Hrafnista sagas be read
as literary descriptions of the relationship to the Finns? There is no reason to be overly
optimistic on this point. The farm of Hrafnista and its chieftains evidently differs much
from contemporary conditions in a lot of respects. Yet the main obstacle to such an
interpretation is that the sagas were written down in northern Iceland, far away from
Hrafnista and the Finns. Thus, we should be cautious of using them as evidence of specific
relationships.

Nevertheless, we can get somewhat further in this approach if we broaden the

perspective to consider other texts and manuscripts. Örvar-Odds saga went through
profound changes in late medieval manuscripts. In the early 14th-century Holm Perg 7

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4to, the saga is much shorter than in AM 343a 4to from the subsequent century, which I
have used thus far. Moreover, its context is very different. Whereas in AM 343a 4to it is
embedded in the Hrafnista cycle, in the former manuscript it is the only saga dealing with
the Hrafnista chieftains, and is followed by Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar.

These

differing texts and context allow us to draw some conclusions about the changing
relations to the periphery in course of the later Middle Ages.

First, the relationship to the periphery is very different in the early and late versions

of Örvar-Odds saga. In Holm Perg 7 4to, Oddr is the great raider of the north, a feat
which brings him everlasting fame. Here, the periphery is an area that can safely be
exploited without running any risk of retribution, as it is situated far away and considered
inferior in strength.

This situation has changed in AM 343a 4to, where we saw that

Oddr

’s plundering invoked a rage among the victims, who rallied together in order to

avenge the insult. Moreover, Oddr

’s plundering breaks with the strategy of his pre-

decessors, who had entered into alliances with the Finns in the north.

It is tempting to interpret this change as a sign that the northern region had a different

character in the late 15th century than some 150 years earlier. Finnmark had for long
been important for its natural resources, but until the 13th century the relationship was
quite distant and unilateral in that contact mainly consisted in tributary expeditions, even
if recent research has drawn attention to the more reciprocal character of the relation.

With the establishment of the Hanseatic trade networks along the Norwegian coast,
fishing activity in Finnmark increased, manifested in a substantial Norwegian immigration
to the northern coastal areas.

Moreover, the struggle for hegemony in the region

intensified. In 1323, the farm of the leading Norwegian magnate Erling Vidkunnsson at
Bjarkøy in northern Norway was burnt down by Karelians, probably a newcomer in the
area supported by the kingdom of Novgorod. The same year, a peace treaty was signed
between Novgorod and Sweden, and three years later between Novgorod and Norway.

It is tempting to date Holm Perg 7 4to with its freewheeling raider Oddr prior to these
events, which signalled closer and more reciprocal relations in this area. The late
15th-century manuscript AM 343a 4to reflects this new situation, in which it was vital
to get hold of resources from the north, which had to be extracted with great diligence.
Now Oddr was surrounded by chieftains who entered into alliances with the Finns and
respected their powers, whereas he himself served as a warning of the dire consequences
that would befall those who refused to pay heed to these conditions.

Second, the manuscript AM 343a 4to should be considered in its synchronic context.

As mentioned in the introduction, this manuscript was probably produced at Möðruvellir
fram, a church farm in northern Iceland near by the monastery of Munkaþverá.
Christopher Sanders has argued that one main hand in Holm Perg 7 fol. can be found
in parts of AM 343a 4to. This hand also appears in a diploma from 1461. To this milieu at
Möðruvellir fram can also be attributed AM 81a fol., containing the contemporary
Norwegian king

’s sagas, and AM 243a fol., with Konungs skuggsiá.

This allows us to

gain a glimpse of an active milieu for literary production, in which it is interesting to note
the wide dispersal of topics and genres. Whereas AM 343a 4to has a majority of
fornaldarsögur dealing with the Nordic region, Holm Perg 7 fol. contains only sagas
with non-Nordic motifs. AM 81a fol. and AM 243a fol., on the other hand, concentrate
on Norwegian kings. This indicates that there was no homogenous culture in this area,
and even if one should be cautious to treat these manuscripts as ideological constructs,
they at least testify to a wide variety of topics and perspectives on the past. Maybe the

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writing of these manuscripts was part of some cultural struggle for hegemony on
northern Iceland, in which a Norwegian camp (AM 81a and 243a fol.) interacted and
rivalled with a Nordic one (AM 343a 4to) and a European one (Holm Perg 7 fol.)?

The only perspective missing in this context at Möðruvellir fram is the Icelandic one.

Interestingly, AM 471 4to is dated to the same period, but not to this environment. Here
the first three Hrafnista sagas were compiled together with three late Icelandic sagas
(Þórðs saga hredu, Króka-Refs saga and Kjalnesinga saga) and one fornsaga suðrlanda
(Viktors saga ok Blávus). Common to the Icelandic sagas was the fact that the protago-
nists struggled against Norwegian kings, maybe reflecting the view of Icelandic

‘new-

comers

’ not bound to the king.

With the Hrafnista sagas, which resemble Icelandic

sagas in their focus on chieftains and not kings,

this ethos was brought to Norway,

reaching its climax with the great warrior Örvar-Oddr, who pleaded the aristocracy

’s

need for room to manoeuvre towards the king. Significantly, Áns saga bogsveigis does not
figure in this manuscript, maybe because its message of an imminent kingdom was
incompatible with this perspective.

These are preliminary conclusions, which must await closer scrutiny of the manu-

scripts as well as of the late medieval historical context. It is my conviction that such an
enterprise must include philological, literary and historical perspectives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous referees of the journal, as well as the project
members of the research project

‘Translation, Transmission and Transformation’, for

valuable comments to earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

The term

‘fornaldarsögur norðrlanda’ was introduced by C.C. Rafn in Fornaldarsögur

Norðrlanda

, I

–II, on grounds that these sagas dealt with a distant past previous to the

settlement of Iceland, and that the actions mostly occurred in Scandinavia. The term
has been widely discussed ever since as a generic term (see, for example, Hallberg,

‘Some Aspects’; Righter-Gould, ‘The Fornaldarsögur Norðrlanda’). In this tradition,
fornaldarsögur have normally been sub-divided into heroic, viking- and adventurous
sagas. Among the critics of the term are Hermann Pálsson,

‘Towards a Definition’,

and Stephen A. Mitchell, Heroic Sagas and Ballads, who argue that sagas should be
analysed along a continuum from

‘factual’ to ‘fabulous’. There has been controversy

about the dating of fornaldarsögur. Traditionally they have been dated to the late 13th
century, but recently Torfi Tulinius has argued in The Matter of the North that the
writing of fornaldarsögur had already started before 1200.

Henry Goddard Leach in Angevin Britain and Scandinavia labelled them

‘boorish

accounts

’, and Finnur Jónsson had very little sympathy for them in Den oldnorske og

oldislandske litteraturs historie

. Fornaldarsögur were the theme at the Fourth International

Saga Conference

in München 1979, but it is only in the last decade that interest has been

sparked, with one saga conference in 2006, and three Nordic conferences lead by
Ármann Jakobsson, Annette Lassen and Agneta Ney.

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Important works with a historical dimension include Mitchell, Heroic Sagas and Ballads;
Torfi Tulinius, The Matter of the North; Sverrir Jakobsson, Við og veröldin; Rowe, The
Development of Flateyjarbok

Spiegel, The Past as Text on the narrative turn. Kjeldstadli, Fortida on uses as remnants.

Olrik, Principles, especially 41

–61.

Marianne E. Kalinke has brought attention to the bridal-quest motif in the romances in
Bridal-Quest Romance

. Structural patterns in fornaldarsögur have also been investigated by

McKinnell, Meeting the Other; and Driscoll,

‘The Oral’, in Tristram, (Re)Oralisierung.

The literary character of the plots has been underlined by Ármann Jakobsson et al.,
Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi

, 10 ff.; Righter-Gould,

‘The Fornaldarsögur

Norðrlanda

’; Pálsson and Edwards, Legendary Fiction.

Mundal,

‘Fornaldersogene’ in Jakobsson et al., Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi;

Hall,

‘Changing style’.

See Driscoll on the number of preserved manuscripts in

‘Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda’, in

Jakobsson et al., Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi, 258.

This long-term tradition has been analysed by Driscoll in The Unwashed Children of Eve.

The investigation will be based on C.C. Rafn

’s edition of Fornaldarsögur Norðrlanda

from 1830, which is based on AM 343 4to. Örvar-Odds saga has also been edited
twice by R.C. Boer (in 1888 and 1892).

Örvar-Odds saga is an exception, in that in addition it covers a lot of other themes and
places than Hrafnista.

Rafn

’s edition is based on AM 343 4to. AM 471 4to is the other important medieval

manuscript of the sagas, containing the first three, in versions not very dissimilar from
the ones in AM 343a 4to. Örvar-Odds saga is also found in Holm Perg 7 4to from the
early 14th century. This version differs markedly from the one in AM 343 and 471, see
Ferrari,

‘Gods, Warlocks and Monsters’; Ferrari, ‘Ögmundr’; Bandle, ‘Um þróun’.

AM 343a 4to consists of the following sagas: Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns (þb),
Samsons saga fagra (SF), Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana (EA),
Flóress saga konungs ok sona hans (FK), Vilhjalms saga sjóðs (VS), Yngvars saga
víðförla (YV), Ketils saga hængs (KsH), Grims saga loðinkinna (GsL), Örvar-Odds
saga (ÖOs), Áns saga bogsveigis (ÁsB), Sáluss saga ok Nikanórs (SN), Hálfdanar saga
Eysteinssonar (HE), Herrauds saga ok Bósa (BH), Vilmundar saga víðutan (VV), and
lastly Meistara Perus saga (MP). The latter saga is an

‘ævintyri’. SF, FK, VS, SN and

VV are classified as fornsögur suðrlanda, but SF and VV deal with the Nordic and
northern areas. The remaining sagas are fornaldarsögur.

Sanders, Tales of Knights.

There is agreement that Örvar-Odds saga is the oldest. It has normally been dated to
the late 13th century, but Torfi Tulinius has suggested that it was already written in
the late 12th century (Torfi Tulinius, The Matter of the North, 159

–64). Hughes has

argued that Áns saga bogsveigis is a later addition to the Hrafnista saga cycle, but holds
that it has older historical roots (Hughes,

‘The Literary Antecedents’).

An influential work on New Philology generally is Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant.
A prominent representative in saga research is Jurg Glauser (

‘The Speaking Bodies’, in

ed. J. Quinn et al., Learning and Understanding). This approach is dominant in the
ongoing research project

‘Translation, Transmission and Transformation. Old Norse

Romantic Fiction and Scandinavian Vernacular Literacy 1200

–1500’, led by Karl-

Gunnar Johansson, in which I am participating.

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For instance, magic is hardly referred to in the Norwegian history from 1995. It is only
mentioned briefly in connection with sorcery, and not with regards to religion.

Righter-Gould,

‘The Fornaldarsögur Norðrlanda’, 426. Pálsson, ‘Towards a

Definition

’, 12, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, ‘Generic Hybrids’, consider the

Hrafnista sagas similar to Icelandic sagas.

Hughes,

‘The Literary Antecedents’.

‘þegar degi er sett, vil ek at þú sért lítt úti, ok þó allra helzt, at þú gángir eigi norðr á
eyna frá bænum

’ (KsH 110). Translations into English are mine, based on Rafn’s

edition.

Karen Swenson has suggested Ögmundr is Oddr

’s double (Performing Definitions, 94).

The character of Ögmundr is largely a novelty in AM 343a. In Holm Perg 7, he is only
a minor figure; see Ferrari,

‘Gods, Warlocks and Monsters’; Ferrari, ‘Ögmundr’.

‘Svá gjörði dvergrinn, sem fyrir var skilit, ok með augnum álögum’ (ÁsB 327).

This

‘secular’ attitude is confirmed when Án, after having been outlawed, met with

the robber Garan far into the forest. Here the depiction of Garan is relieved of any
reference to magic. He lived in the woods solely because he was outlawed, and used
his cottage as a shelter and base for robbing other people (ÁsB 344

–6).

This is a different interpretation of Áns saga bogsveigis than that of Rowe,

‘Generic

Hybrids

’.

Grímr was as noted a result of Ketill

’s intercourse with the Finn woman Hrafnhildr.

On the

‘Otherness’ of the Hrafnista men due to their intermarriages, see Straubhaar,

‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large’. She has developed these thoughts in a conference paper in
print from Reykjavik, August 2009.

Regis Boyer in Le Monde du Double maintained that magic permeated the Old Norse
world.

Segev,

‘Medieval Magic and Magicians’, 192 ff. He moreover confirms the view that

magic and religion are hard to separate, and that the church to a large degree built on
magic (25 ff).

Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 91; Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 344.

Flint, The Rise of Magic, 8; Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 45.

Bloch, Feudal Society; Le Goff, Medieval Civilization.

Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 95.

Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 330 f. This is much in line with anthropological theories
about magic, as formulated by scholars as Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss. As
such, it constituted a separate universe or mode of thinking with its specific rules and
connections.

Steinsland, Norrøn religion; Haaland,

‘Kirkens fordømmelse’.

Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 15; Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 46;
Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 55 ff; Bartlett, The Natural, 23 f.

Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 51. See also Flint, The Rise of Magic, 9; Gurevich,
Medieval Popular Culture

, 103.

On these distinctions, see Bartlett, The Natural; Le Goff,

‘The Marvelous’.

Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 61 ff; Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 56.

Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 344.

Ibid. Yet there were a range of incidents in which magic was not employed, for
instance against the plague (Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 209 ff, 247).

Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 259 ff.

Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 54; Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 55.

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Hastrup, Culture and History.

Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, 90, 80 f, 215.

Lönnroth,

‘The Noble Heathen’.

Eremenko,

‘The Dual World’. A similar image of the Scandinavian world-view has

been formulated by Sverrir Jakobsson in his doctoral thesis Við og veröldin.

Eremenko,

‘The Dual World’.

Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes I, 60 ff, 68, 77.

Ibid., 61 f. This implies that what is defined as centre resp. periphery is contextual,
and not determined once and for all, from objective criteria (Ibid., 54, 51 on concrete
example of Jotunheimen).

Ibid., 82. Yet, she holds that settlement is rare among gods and giants (77).

This is not in itself very surprising, as these sagas are considered to build on much of
the mythological material from the Eddas. Yet they are written in another genre, and
probably far later than the mythological stories preserved in the Eddas. See the
differences between Edda and fornaldarsögur concerning giants analysed in
Jakobsson,

‘Identifying the Ogre’, in A. Ney et al., Fornaldarsagaerne.

For instance, Harald

’s marriage to Grímhildr makes little sense considering her evil

and the negative outcome of actions. The only exception here was Hrafnhildr, but she
on the other hand brought Ketill into intra-familiar problems which he proved unable
to solve. See the contrast to the famous story of Haraldr hárfagri and Snæfríðr in
Heimskringla, in which the latter

’s beauty serves as an explanation for the alliance.

Henric Bagerius in his doctoral thesis argues that the image of monstrous women in
fornaldarsögur functioned to

‘demarcate the homosocial bonds of knights’ (‘Mandom

och mødom

’, 204).

See Ketill

’s alliances with Bruni against Gusi, and with Böðmóðr against Framarr.

This is one prelimiary conclusion in my ongoing project in fornaldarsögur.

Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes II, 24.

Ibid.

Tulinius, The Matter of the North, 186. See also Mundal,

‘Fornaldersogene’, in

Jakobsson et al., Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi.

Steinsland, Norrøn religion, 87, cf. 60 f; Jakobsson,

‘Identifying the Ogre’, in A. Ney

et al., Fornaldarsagaerne.

Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes I, 24. See also 82, 101.

Only the first four chapters remain of this saga, but it probably was rendered in full.

See the similarity with Egil

’s raiding in Kurland in Egils saga.

Hansen and Olsen, Samenes historie, 63 f; Mundal,

‘Kontakt’, in Kusmenko, The Sámi.

Hansen and Olsen, Samenes historie, 160 ff.

Ibid.

Sanders, Tales of Knights.

Helgi Þorláksson,

‘Historical Background’, in McTurk, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature.

Rowe,

‘Generic hybrids’.

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“Mythic-Heroic” Sagas’. Scandinavian Studies 66 (1993), 529–43.

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Segev, Dror.

‘Medieval Magic and Magicians – in Norway and Elsewhere: Based upon

12th

–15th Centuries Manuscript and Runic Evidence’. MA thesis, Oslo, 2001.

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Hans Jacob Orning is Associate Professor in History at University College, Volda,
Norway. Among his publications are Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship

in the High Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), and

‘Det rettsantropologiske perspektivet og

staten: konfliktløsning og byråkratisering i høymiddelalderen

’, in Kim Esmark, Lars

Hermanson and Hans Jacob Orning (eds): Gaver, ritualer og konflikter: Et antropologisk

perspektiv på nordisk middelalder (Oslo: Unipub, 2010). He is currently working on a mono-

graph on the world-view of legendary sagas as part of the project

‘Translation,

Transmission and Transformation: Old Norse Romantic Fiction and Scandinavian

Vernacular Literacy 1200

–1500’ at University of Oslo. Address: Høgskulen i Volda,

Postboks 500, 6101 Volda, Norway. [e-mail: hjo@hivolda.no]

SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY

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