Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages by Stephen A. Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) Paperback

Stephen A. Mitchell. Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Paperback. 368 pages.  Condition: As New Description from the publisher:  Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpo