Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 165

PAGANISM AND LITERATURE
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or continental sources, vitae in latin, tales of miracles, ‘scentific’ writ-
ings and so on . . . Even in the case of what may seem to be genuine,
one feels justified in speaking of superimpositions, as photographers
would term it. On an old Northern pattern, the Church has grafted or
imposed new images and stories, and probably only the outer Christian
form was visible to the samtíðarsögur authors’ contemporaries.
IV. WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC
If we now study witchcraft and magic, I am aware of the fact that we
are on the border of religion proper, and that such a study is far more
difficult than the previous ones. For this is a field in which religion
and faith do not necessarily play a prominent part. On the other hand,
E. Ó. Sveinsson remarks judiciously that the Church brought with
itself ‘a whole world of witchcraft and sorcery’.1 And it is true, it
is very difficult in many cases to make a distinction between practices
which may be genuinely Northern and the sorcery of the Western
world.
We shall begin with a very important consideration: all the prac-
tices that we have the right to consider as genuinely pagan, such as
seiðr, galdr, gandreið, sending, níðstöng are totally missing from the
samtíðarsögur. This is surely surprising to anyone who has read the
íslendingasögur or Landnámabók.
The only passage in the samtíðarsögur which may shed some light
on the matter is Jóns Saga Helga I, ch. 24 (or the parallel text in II,
ch. 12) where it is said that bishop Jón Ögmundarson (1106-1121)
fought against all evil customs, witchcraft (fjölkynngi ok fordæðu-
skapr), magic (galdrar ok gerningar), optical illusions produced by
spells (sjónhverfiligr kuklaraskapr) and esoteric practices (forneskja)
and Jóns Saga Helga II adds here, idolatry, blótskapr—. This enu-
meration, in its alliterated form, does not have a genuinering: monk
Gunnlaugr must here have translated a Latin formula. Jóns Saga
Helga I gives examples: Bishop Jón forbade the promulgation of
superstitions (hindrvitni) such as these concerning the moon and the
names of the days of the week, he denounced dansar and mansöngs-
1 Um íslenzkar þjóðsögur, op. cit., p. 67.
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