These narratives introduce many outlaws, out of which some 75 are named. They are based on events and personae that belong to the 10th century Iceland. The Icelandic Family Sagas comprise a group of prose narratives that were written down in the 13th and 14th century Iceland. Outlaws appear in saga texts in significant roles. Indeed, understanding outlawry is essential for understanding many of the Family Sagas. The concept of outlawry was fundamental for the medieval Icelanders conceptions of their past. It provides a thorough description about outlawry on the basis of extant law and saga texts as well as an analysis of referential connotations attached to it. The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas. It also sheds light on the social base of folklore and examines vernacular views toward legendry and the supernatural. It scrutinizes the history of folkloristics, its geopolitical dimensions and its connection with nation building, as well as looking at constructions of the concepts Baltic, Nordic and Celtic. The third section of the book “Traditions and Histories Reconsidered” addresses major developments within the European social histories and mentalities. The meaning of places and spatial distance as the marker of otherness and sacrality in Old Norse sagas is also discussed here. Articles in the second section “Regional Variation, Environment and Spatial Dimensions” address ecotypes, milieu-morphological adaptation in Nordic and Baltic-Finnic folklores, and the active role of tradition bearers in shaping beliefs about nature as well as attitudes towards the environment. Articles show, how places accumulate meanings as they are layered by stories and how this shared knowledge about environments can actualise in personal experiences. The supernaturalisation of places appears as a socially embedded set of practices that involves storytelling and ritual behaviour. The first section “Explorations in Place-Lore” discusses cursed and sacred places, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic and Baltic countries, both retrospectively and from synchronous perspectives. This book addresses the narrative construction of places, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, the supernatural dimensions of cultural landscapes and wilderness as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. By highlighting texts as a source we thereby give attention to how we use texts in our investigating process and thus explore and explain our methodological apparatus and the potential ideological and material properties in texts. This diversity of textual sources represents official, “private”, academic, and artistic texts written by individuals and groups from different social and cultural backgrounds. In this volume, Fredrik Skott studies magic by making use of juridical laws and trials documents, Stephen Mitchell and Ane Ohrvik investigate individual manuscript writings, Catharina Raudvere uses ethnographic fieldwork notes and Laura Stark reads personal memoirs, while Clive Tolley and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir study Old Norse literature. Another intention of this volume is to explore and problematize texts as a source: How do we read texts? Whose voices do we interpret? What is the relationship between the magical beliefs and practices we are studying - and the texts? In the study of magical beliefs and practices in Nordic cultural history, a great variety of textual sources are available. What was the everyday context of magic and witchcraft in the medieval, early modern and modern period in the Nordic countries? How did people pass on their magical knowledge? What was the dialectics between magical knowledge as beneficial on one hand and dangerous on the other within the different communities? In what way and by whom were traditional methods of folk healing practices considered to be a crime? And how does this relate to general ideas on magicin the communities? By asking these questions the intention of this volume is to provide studies communicating and discussing with as well as challenging the long line of research on magic.
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