1 Economy, magic and the politics of religious change in pre-modern Scandinavia Hugh Atkinson Department of Scandinavian Studies University College London Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 28th May 2020 I, Hugh Atkinson, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that these sources have been acknowledged in the thesis. 2 Abstract This dissertation undertook to investigate the social and religious dynamic at play in processes of religious conversion within two cultures, the Sámi and the Scandinavian (Norse). More specifically, it examined some particular forces bearing upon this process, forces originating from within the cultures in question, working, it is argued, to dispute, disrupt and thereby counteract the pressures placed upon these indigenous communities by the missionary campaigns each was subjected to. The two spheres of dispute or ambivalence towards the abandonment of indigenous religion and the adoption of the religion of the colonial institution (the Church) which were examined were: economic activity perceived as unsustainable without the 'safety net' of having recourse to appeal to supernatural powers to intervene when the economic affairs of the community suffered crisis; and the inheritance of ancestral tradition. Within the indigenous religious tradition of the Sámi communities selected as comparanda for the purposes of the study, ancestral tradition was embodied, articulated and transmitted by particular supernatural entities, personal guardian spirits. Intervention in economic affairs fell within the remit of these spirits, along with others, which may be characterized as guardian spirits of localities, and guardian spirits of particular groups of game animals (such as wild reindeer, fish). These same roles and functions may have been assigned to guardian spirits within the religious conceptions of Scandinavian communities, and an attempt was made to demonstrate that this was at least partially the case. Personal guardian spirits were certainly heritable in both cultures; to accept and receive them as inheritance was an act and an event which expressed and demonstrated an individual's place within a family (either as blood relative or in-law, or sometimes friend) and the body of tradition which that family possessed and enacted. In both cultures these spirits were key constituents of the web of indigenous religious conceptions, and central cogs in the machine of relations with the supernatural sphere; as such they represented and embodied the primus motor of 'paganism' in the eyes of missionaries, and were accordingly demonized and targeted for some of the most vehement bile directed by the Church against the indigenous religion. Other themes, both broader and narrower, addressed or touched upon in the present study include: continuity and discontinuity of religious customs in the conversion and post-conversion eras; contextualization of religious and magical rituals within the immediate social, ecological and economic circumstances to which the community which had recourse to said rituals was subject; Christian attitudes to inherited cultural traditions, encompassing revisionism, rehabilitation of 'pagan' ancestors, the concept of the 'noble heathen', the de-sacralizing of 'pagan' cosmology and its preservation for posterity; indigenous religious discourse, and specifically that placed into the mouths of (or articulated by) personal guardian spirits, as an expression and externalization of the experience of conversion and the behaviour, tone and rhetoric of missionaries and missionary kings; folk religiosity as social and political dissidence contra the alliance of state and orthodox religion; and more generally the human- spirit contract and partnership and the dynamic pertaining within it. Keywords: cultural inheritance, human‒spirit relations, popular religions, Sámi, schism, tutelary spirits 3 Table of contents Abstract 2 Table of contents 3 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 7 Parameters of the study 7 Chronological parameters 9 Phenomenological parameters 11 Cultural parameters 13 Geographical parameters 14 Typology vs. contextualism 15 Scholarship on the seiðr-shamanism nexus 19 Scholarly opinion on the account of seiðr in Eiríks saga rauða chapter 4 28 Sources for the religious culture of the Sámi of Finnmark 31 17th century sources for the religious culture of the Sámi of Finnmark 32 Hans Hansen Lilienskiold 33 Niels Knag 36 18th century sources for the religious culture of the Sámi of Finnmark 43 Ludvig Christian Ludvigssøn Paus 43 Isaac Olsen 47 Thomas von Westen 51 Hans Skanke 55 Jens Kildal 57 Henric Forbus 59 Johan Randulf 60 Sigvard Kildal 60 Knud Leem 61 On the interdependency of the Norwegian missionary authors' texts 64 19th century sources for the religious culture of the Sámi of Finnmark 65 Lars Jacobsen Hætta 66 Terminology 68 Chapter One: Magic applied to economic affairs: seiðr and noaidevuohta 71 seiðr per se 72 at seiða til sín (seiðr as tractive magic) 78 'love magic' 79 Tractive seiðr used to draw a person to oneself or to a particular location 82 Tractive seiðr as a means of mustering supernatural allies 84 Exerting magical traction via manipulation of weather to wreck ships 86 ‘kleptomagic’: theft effected through the application of tractive magic 95 Tractive magic in the context of farming 96 Tractive seiðr used to acquire food 101 Milk 102 Cooked meat 105 Living animals (livestock) 106 Fish 111 Whales 125 Chapter Two: Tractive magic in a broader perspective: Sámi comparanda 130 Spiritual etiquette: The human-spirit contract reneged upon 144 4 Prescribed conduct vis-à-vis supernatural powers 150 Theft and punishment 153 Sacrifice made to 'churches' – instances of religious syncretism? 156 Summary 157 Chapter Three: The Norse frontier economy and its religious corollary 160 The text: Eiríks saga rauða – a description of a seiðr ritual and its preconditions? 163 The seiðr described in Eiríks saga rauða as pseudo-shamanic ritual 166 The context: a peripheral hunting community in a peripheral Norse settlement 172 Shamanism as Arctic religion 173 Hunting as the principal economic strategy in Greenland and northern Norway 176 Ecclesiastical repression of grassroots religious culture? 188 Two possible models for interpreting the seiðr episode in Eiríks saga rauða: 195 a) as a product of the late tenth century 195 b) as a product of the thirteenth century (and later) 198 The shamanistic template as a corroborative methodological tool 203 Chapter Four: Contextual arguments for Norse-Greenlandic 'shamanism' 212 Arctic ecology ergo Arctic economy ergo Arctic religion? 212 Recontextualising seiðr 216 The ritual at Herjólfsnes contextualised 221 hallæri 226 Interpretations of the concept of hallæri 233 Decoy reindeer, guardian spirits of game animals and at seiða til sín 236 verðir as undead reindeer herders? 243 Conclusion: seiðr in a Norse-Sámi, Norse-Inuit and circumpolar perspective 250 Appendix A: Compendium of source text citations with parallel translations 254 Ynglinga saga 254 Njáls saga 254 Egils saga 255-6 'Peysan og prestsdóttir að norðan' (variant 1) 256-7 'Peysan og prestsdóttir að norðan' (variant 2) 257 'Jóhanna' 257 Þiðreks saga 258 Kormaks saga 258 Gísla saga Súrssonar 259 Laxdoela saga 260 Egils saga 260-1 'Galdra-Antoníus' 261-2 Friðþjófs saga ins frækna 262 'Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper […]' 262-3 Kristni saga 263-4 Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss 264-6 Sǫrla saga sterka 266 'Rauðkufl, Blákufl og Grænkufl' 266-7 'Hálfdan prestur og Ólöf í Lónkoti' 267 Laxdoela saga 267-8 Þorhalls þáttr knapps 268 Hrólfs saga kraka 269 'Mjólk seidd af Íslandi' 269-70 'Enn seidd mjólk frá Íslandi' 270 'Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper' 270-1 5 'Hálfdan prestur og Ólöf í Lónkoti' 271-2 'Kerlingin á tjörnum' 272-3 'Fiskiveiðin' 273-4 Hálfdanar saga Brǫnufóstra 274 Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss 274 'Þórálfur útilegumaður' 274-5 'Mjóafjarðar-skessan' 275-6 'Seiðkerlingar í Kaupmannahöfn' 276-7 Landnámabók 277 Eyrbyggja saga 277-8 Landnámabók 278-9 Jarteinabók Þorláks byskups ǫnnur 279 Grágás 279 'Api á Apavatni' 280 Gríms saga loðinkinna 280-1 'Einar seiðir að sér hval' 281-2 Eiríks saga rauða, AM 577 4to text 282-3 'Göldrótti presturinn' 283-4 'Hvalurinn' 284-5 Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum 285 Historia Norwegie 285-6 'Noaiden Linke-Ola' 286-7 'Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper' 287-8 Fragmenter i lappska mythologien 288-9 'Villrenene på Akkoberget' 289-90 informant Johan Kitti, 1888, Loppa 290-1 informant Elen Ucce, 1926, Kautokeino 291 informant Ole Hansen, 1892, Kvænangen 291-2 informant Isak Eira, 1921, Kautokeino 292 informant Elen Ucce 1926, Kautokeino 292-3 anonymous informant from Holm, Polmak 293-4 'Manden, som var sin god utro' 294-6 informant Isak Eira, 1921, Kautokeino 296-8 informant Per Bær, 1924 298 informant Elen Ucce, 1926, Kautokeino 298 informant Isak Eira, 1921, Kautokeino 298-9 informant Samuelsen 299 informant Salomon Nilsen 299 Eiríks saga rauða, AM 557 4to text 299-300 Eiríks saga rauða, AM 544 4to text 300 Konungs skuggsjá 300-1 Landnámabók 301 Gríms saga loðinkinna 301 Óláfs saga helga 301-2 Droplaugarsona saga 302 Drauma-Jóns saga 302 Konungs skuggsjá 302 Sturlunga saga 302-3 Njáls saga 303 Óláfs saga helga 304 Konungs skuggsjá 304 6 Orosius 304 'Epitomes Historiæ Missionis Lapponicæ' 304-5 Appendix B: Eiríks saga rauða ch. 4, AM 557 4to text, with parallel translation 306 Bibliography 313 Sources for Sámi religious culture 313 Sources for Scandinavian religious culture