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Scandinavian Journal of History
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Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic
Middle Ages, Stephen A. Mitchell
Gunnar W. Knutsen a
a
Telemark University College , Porsgrunn
Published online: 05 Jun 2013.
To cite this article: Gunnar W. Knutsen (2013) Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic
Middle Ages, Stephen A. Mitchell, Scandinavian Journal of History, 38:3, 389-390, DOI:
10.1080/03468755.2013.800329
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BOOK REVIEWS 389
Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages
STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania University Press, 2011
384 pp., $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-4290-4
The literature on witchcraft and magic in the Nordic countries has been understandably
dominated by the early modern period. The greater availability of sources and the drama
of witchcraft trials have drawn the attention of researchers and publishers alike. Despite
this emphasis, there is no survey of witchcraft and magic in the Nordic countries in
the early modern period. However, we now have an exciting survey for the middle ages,
written by the Harvard Professor Stephen A. Mitchell. Perhaps it does take a foreigner to
sum up the experiences of the Nordic countries, where most researchers seem wedded
to the histories of their own countries.
Such a wide-ranging book necessitates a number of compromises in everything from
chronology to orthography. These are all well argued by the author in the preface,
but it bears mentioning that the book s chronology (1100 1525) is somewhat differ-
ent than the title (Middle Ages) would lead us to expect. Furthermore, while the book
is titled  Nordic , the subject is  Scandinavian-speaking peoples (p. x). This probably
does not make much of a difference to an English-speaking audience, but it may ruf-
fle some feathers in the high north. Taken together, these two factors make the title
slightly less than accurate. This is not to be taken as a criticism: The problem in finding
an adequate title is a real one, because this is an ambitious book, dealing with the world
of Scandinavian-speaking peoples when it was at its largest, and under strong influence
from an expanding Catholic Church on the one hand and an increasing number of subju-
gated peoples and new neighbours on the other. In short, the subject is both wider and
smaller than the title suggests.
The central question in Mitchell s investigation is  What happened in Catholic
Scandinavia as Christian ideology, with its own developing views of witchcraft and
demonic magic, encountered and merged with native Nordic traditions of sorcery?
(p. 201). In order to answer this, Mitchell takes us on an erudite voyage (the list of
works cited is 55 pages long, even though it lacks a number of important works from
the last few years before publication) through six chapters. Eschewing a chronological
structure, the six chapters reflect themes and sources instead, beginning with a sur-
vey of the sources and the status of magic in pagan Scandinavia. This is followed in
Chapter 2 by a review of the most common uses for magic (romance, health, fortune,
weather and malediction). Chapter 3 studies the representation and use of magic and
witchcraft by Nordic authors, while the next deals with late medieval mythologies of
witches. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the study of normative sources, while the sixth and
final chapter looks at the ever-important connection between gender and witchcraft.
The epilogue then tries to bring the arguments from the previous chapters forward to
explain the large increase in prosecution for witchcraft in the early modern period.
This is probably the greatest value of the book: that it gives the early modern witch
trials a historical foundation that spans several centuries. While showing how continental
ideas about witchcraft, magic and the devil entered Scandinavia, Mitchell also demon-
strates the existence of local ideas of witchcraft predating those imports in both writing
and painting. Here he demonstrates an interaction between popular and elite concep-
tions of magic and a magico-religious world that was both receptive to and compatible
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390 SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY
with the later continental imports that followed on the heels of the penetration of the
Catholic Church in the Nordic countries. The central argument is that witchcraft and
magic were first described as being connected to paganism, and then later demonized.
This gives the early modern Nordic witchcraft trials a solid local grounding. One of
the few weaknesses of the book is that it does not engage more with the phenomena of
trolls and other supernatural creatures that were similarly demonized in the late Middle
Ages. Another is the short shrift given to Sámi beliefs and practices. The book is not an
easy read, and this is compounded by the almost 100 pages of endnotes (where there is
plenty of meat). Footnotes would certainly have improved readability. However, these
objections do not detract from the value of the work.
This book is a milestone: Never again can we describe the early modern witchcraft
trials in Scandinavia without going back to the Nordic Medieval foundations so richly
laid out by Mitchell. This is among the most important works written on witchcraft in
Scandinavia, and it is unlikely to be superseded for decades.
GUNNAR W. KNUTSEN
Telemark University College
Porsgrunn
[e-mail]
© 2013, Gunnar W. Knutsen
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2013.800329
Ödets teater: Ödesföreställningar i Sverige vid 1700-talets början
[Fate s Theatre: conceptions of fate in Sweden at the beginning of
the 18th century]
ANDREAS HELLERSTEDT
Lund, Nordic Academic Press, 2009
256 pp., 177 SEK, ISBN 978-91-85509-24-9
In his doctoral thesis, Ödets teater, Andreas Hellerstedt explores the different meanings of
destiny in the early 18th century in Sweden. This is an ambitious subject in the history
of ideas, because such concepts as  fate ,  fortune ,  providence and  destiny were
central to the era s philosophy and metaphysics. Yet his study is of broader historical
importance because he unearths the different political and personal ways people used
these concepts to explain their own and their kingdom s troubles during a catastrophic
period in Swedish history, the more than 20 years of brutal bloodletting known as the
Great Northern War. This period saw the death of some 200,000 soldiers, or roughly
11% of the population, the death of a third of Stockholm s population in an outbreak
of plague, and the end of Sweden s time as a great power. These events, which would
test nearly any system of meaning, sorely troubled people who had long given and/or
heard sermons proclaiming Sweden as God s new chosen Israel, a people providentially
chosen to defend His Word.
Hellerstedt uses a variety of printed sources, allowing him to explore how people
from a range, if not all, of social orders drew upon these concepts in order to articulate
visions of how fortune shaped Swedish history and individuals ends. Academic disserta-
tions and treatises treat notions of fortune and providence as problems; two treatises by
ministers  Simon Isogaeus s Carla Seger-Skiöld of 1712 and Henning Johann Gerdes s
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