Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition: Customs, Rites, and Ceremonies - Nigel Pennick 2015

Magical and Sacred Places in the Landscape

Throughout Europe, legends of the landscape express an understanding that the land is ensouled. Since antiquity, it was taught that a respectful, caring spiritual awareness of the land spirits brought plentiful harvests, healthy and productive livestock, and a peaceful society. The traditional relationship of people to the land depended upon the activities of everyday life. Differing climates and landscapes gave each place its own character. From hunting, farming, fishing, trades, and crafts came the rites and ceremonies, festivals and divinities. Living close to nature brought a keen awareness of all aspects of the world. The ancient northern understanding of the sacred was “organic religion,” multiform and polytheistic. This worldview acknowledged spirits of the earth, air, fire, waters, and trees, and the spirit guardians of fields and flocks.

Different human activities had their spiritual protectors, especially those who had to travel on land and sea. The spirits of the ancestral dead were present at certain places. Ancestral holy places—homesteads, grave mounds, tombs, and battlefields—were sites where the ancestral spirits could be venerated and asked for assistance. There was also belief in unseen humanlike beings such as house sprites, elves, fairies, kobolds, boggarts, and trolls. Supernatural beasts such as spectral dogs, water monsters, and dragons lurked in dangerous places. There were personifications of disease and death, and demons who brought bad luck and ruin. All of these spirits and entities interacted with human life. Some were helpful, some required gifts of acknowledgment to perform tasks; others had to be placated lest they brought disaster. Religious and magical rites served to communicate with spirits and interact with them. Every place had an innate spiritual quality that the Romans recognized as the genius loci, the spirit of the place.

Fig. 5.1. The Long Man of Wilmington. Chalk hill figure, Wilmington, Sussex, England.

Landscape features deemed sacred are hills and mountains, volcanoes, springs, rivers and lakes, ravines and caves, notable rocks and exceptional trees. Each feature has its particular marks of veneration. Devotees ritually ascended holy hills on days dedicated to sky gods. Valuable items were thrown into lakes and springs as thanksgiving or propitiation of the lake spirits. Sacred trees were surrounded by protective fences. They were bedecked with garlands and ribbons, and food was left for their guardian sprites. Stopping places along tracks and roads had shrines to local gods, places where wayfarers could give thanks for having gotten there safely and ask for protection on the road ahead. Stories were—and are still—told about events that happened at particular places, which gave them their names. The names of gods, heroes, saints, and villains, records of magical happenings and accidents, all appear as place names.

Fig. 5.2. Mountain shapes according to medieval planetary correspondences.

Sometimes, the genii loci were not localized at a particular spot on the ground. In ancient times deities of whole forests were venerated, such as Vosegos, Celtic god of the Vosges in Alsace (modern France), and Abnoba, goddess of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest, south Germany). Every river had its goddess or sprite, and many still bear the names. The river Severn in England recalls the goddess Sabrina, while in France the rivers Seine and Saône are named for the goddesses Sequana and Souconna. River deities were honored with festivals and sacrifices. Contemporary folklore tells how the indwelling spirit of certain rivers requires the loss of at least one human life a year. One of them is the River Trent in the Midlands of England, whose dangerous tidal bore is personified as the Eager, a name recalling the Norse sea god Ægir. The river Eider in north Germany was called Ægir’s Door (Ellis-Davidson 1964, 128).

ICELAND

A Medieval Pagan landscape

Because of the unique history of the island, the nature of the pre-Christian northern European sacred landscape is recorded in Icelandic literature. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the previously uninhabited island of Iceland was colonized by settlers. They came mainly from Norway and the Western Isles of Scotland and were predominantly Pagan in outlook. Their spiritual response to the landscape is recorded in Landnámabók, the book of settling the land. The settlers were intensely aware of the spiritual nature of the landscape, and certain areas were deemed spiritually inappropriate for settlement. These places were the territories of the landvættir (land wights), the spirits of place. Ceremonies were performed in honor of these landvættir, and offerings left for them. Landnámabók records an example where Thorvald Holbarki went to Surtur’s cave and recited a poem in honor of a giant that resided there. The mountain Helgafell was designated as holy, and, before praying facing toward it, devotees washed their faces out of respect. These and other instances of spiritual recognition in Icelandic documents tell much about the religious practices that existed across northern Europe in Pagan times.

The island of Iceland was divided up into religious jurisdictions, ruled over by sacred officials called goðar (singular: goði) who officiated at religious rites and ceremonies. They were not comparable with later Christian priests, as the office of goði was held by a priest of a tribe or clan who had a certain sacred place in common. Goðar were never full-time officials, for they were hereditary landowners who had the duty to maintain the ancestral holy places. The Allsherjargoði, the high priest of Iceland, was the direct descendent of the first settler, Ingulf Arnarson. He was in charge of the temple at Kialarnes. Iceland was divided into four quarters, each containing three jurisdictions, which were further subdivided into three goðorð (the name for the priestly office itself). Each goðorð had a goði who lived at a particular holy place and was its guardian, but not necessarily its owner. The public temples were sometimes owned by women. The office of dewar, keeper of ancestral sacred things, continued in Scotland and Ireland in a Christian context until the nineteenth century and remains as a surname of Scottish origin.

PLACES OF WORSHIP HOFS AND TEMPLES

The ancestral spirits (Old Norse dísir) were worshipped collectively at special places, often holy hills recalled today in Germany by names such as Disenberg or Disibodenberg. Offerings were made to the ancestresses at these places for the good fortune of the family and the fecundity of flocks and fields. There were also holy places of Germanic and Norse religion that had no particular natural feature. They were marked by standing stones, poles, wooden images, and semi-open sacred pavilions and spirit sheds. The Anglo-Saxon wíh was a basic sacred image standing in the open. More substantial was a shrine on “a rocky outcrop” (Old Norse hörgr; Old English hearg), which may have been covered with a tent or pavilion (Old English træf ). In Scandinavia and Scandinavian colonies, communal worship took place in the hof, an ordinary hall-form farmhouse that had a special extension, the afhús, where sacred objects and images were kept. Here, regular festivals to mark the passing of the seasons were observed. There were also purpose-built temples (höfuð-hof ). Each January, Scandinavians celebrated a collective festival of the dísir called Dísarblót on sacred hills and at temples erected to venerate them.

The development of Norse temples (and perhaps also Frisian and Anglo-Saxon ones) from the nobleman’s hall (hof ) or farmhouse where sacred rites were conducted is clear. The northern hof was a sanctified part of an ordinary farmhouse belonging to the local goði. In later times, the religious parallel was the Christian chapel that was an integral part of the castle or larger manor house. The first Norwegian settlers of Iceland (ca. 870—930 CE) transported temple buildings there from Norway. The Eyrbyggja Saga tells how, after performing a divination, the goði Thorolf Mostur-skeggi dismantled his temple and shipped it, with the earth beneath it, from Norway to Iceland. The earth floor had received the libations and offerings made in the temple, so it had to be taken along with the timber building. The new temple site was decided by divination. As his ship approached the Icelandic coast, Thorolf threw the high seat pillars, on one of which was carved an image of the god Thor, into the sea. Where the tides brought them ashore, there he reerected the temple.

The temple that Thorolf Mostur-skeggi “let be raised” was described as a great house, with the entrance in one of the sidewalls by the far end, the same layout as that in later medieval churches. Inside, before the door, were the high-seat pillars that the sea had brought ashore there. They had “god-nails” driven into them. At the center of the temple, the images of the gods stood on a platform (Eyrbyggja Saga 4; Kjalnesinga Saga 2). The Eyrbyggja Saga is not contemporary with the ritual relocation of Thorolf’s temple, but it seems to preserve local tradition reliably, though it was probably written at Helgafell monastery in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (Ellis-Davidson 1993, 102—3). Many early Christian churches were built over Pagan sacred places when the old religion was destroyed, though the spirit of what went before is still discernable at some of them more than a thousand years later. Places that could not be appropriated by the church had their indwelling spirits redefined as harmful demons and evil spirits and were shunned as dangerous locations.

ROYAL AND SACRED ROADS

In northern Europe, roads are ascribed to great kings of legendary history. This mythos viewed them not as disconnected individual roads but as a systematic infrastructure. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1136) recounts how the roads of Britain were constructed on the orders of Belinus, king of the ancient Britons. According to Geoffrey, Belinus ordered four paved roads to be built across Britain that led in straight lines between cities (Geoffrey 1966, 93). These were known as the Four Royal Roads of Britain. They were protected in law against anyone who committed an act of violence upon them, a stricture added to the earlier Molmutine Laws that historically were translated from Old Welsh into Latin by the historian Gildas (sixth century) and incorporated into English law by King Alfred the Great in the ninth century (Geoffrey 1966, 93—94). Ireland, too, had royal roads. Tara of the Kings (Teamhair na Riogh) was the ancient royal capital of Ireland, and its most sacred and sovereign place. The Five Royal Roads of Ireland radiated from Tara. Slige Midluachra ran to Emain Macha near Armagh in the north; to the northwest ran Slige Asal; to the mid-west, Slige Mór connected Tara with Uisnech, the “Navel of Ireland,” where stood the omphalos, and on to Galway on the west coast. Slige Dála linked Tara to Tipperary in the southwest, and to the south, Slige Cualainn, ran to Bohernabreena, south of Dublin. Like their counterparts in Great Britain, these Royal Roads had a spiritual dimension that guaranteed royal protection of those traveling along them.

According to the thirteenth-century chronicler Roger of Wendover, the seventh-century English king Eadwin (Edwin) of Northumbria (northern England and southern Scotland) employed an astrologer, Pellitus, to advise him. Eadwin, founder of the city of Edinburgh, was said to have made the roads so safe that even a woman laden with gold could travel in safety. Alongside the roads, he laid pipes to supply travelers with drinking water (Giles 1849, I, 79—80). In Sweden the legendary King Onund the Land-Clearer was credited with creating the country’s roads. In Ynglingasaga (37) Sturluson recounts: “Onund had roads made through all Sweden, both through forests and bogs, and also over the mountains; therefore he was called Onund Road-Maker.” The time of King Onund, Sturluson tells us, was notable for fruitful seasons, occasioned by his clearing of forests for cultivation. A historic road-making northern king was Harald Blåtand Gormsson (Harald Bluetooth) of Denmark (ca. 935—ca. 986). Around the year 980 CE he ordered the surveying and construction of a highway along the Jutland Ridge, avoiding crossing most rivers. This road was called Hærvejen (military road) or Oksevejen (cattle road). Narrower roads ran from the Jutland Highway to the main towns. Harald also built six circular fortresses, laid out by his surveyors and constructed with precise accuracy (Nørlund 1948, 14). The historic King Edward I of England (reigned 1272—1307) followed the mythic image of the great northern king by a systematic roadside clearance of forests to rid the country of the threat of highway robbers.

MOVEMENT

The Laxdœla Saga, a thirteenth-century tale of the people of Laxardale in Iceland, recounts the rites and ceremonies of moving from an old farm to a new one. There is a ritual form. The smaller animals make up the head of the procession, then the more valuable cattle, and finally the beasts of burden left the farm. The drove was arranged so that the small animals arrived at the new farm at the time the beasts of burden were leaving the old farm with the household goods (Hasenfratz 2011, 67). The procession had to be on a direct path, and there were no gaps in it, maintaining continuity between the old and the new. A crooked path would serve as a binding knot that would disrupt the success of the new venture. This magical principle of directness is found five hundred years later in the rituals of a powerful Scottish rural fraternity, the Society of the Horseman’s Grip and Word: here the candidate for initiation was taken deliberately indirectly by the “crooked path,” “the hooks and crooks of the road,” which severed his contact with his former life as a nonmember (Rennie 2009, 1, 86). Once he was initiated as a horseman, he would no longer be crooked, but always plough his rigs (furrows) straight.

PAGAN TRACKWAYS AND SPIRIT PATHS

In certain landscapes local people recognized invisible otherworldly paths that ran across the country between notable features associated with the spirits of the land. These may have been tracks on which religious processions took place in Pagan times. The Capitularia Regum Francorum, dating from the days when the Frankish kings were attempting to destroy non-Christian belief and practices, refers to the “Pagan trackway” called yries marked by rags and shoes, along which processions were made. These tracks were among “the irregular places which they cherish for their ceremonies.” A “Pagan trackway” of the Viking Age exists in Sweden as the “cult road” at Rösaring, associated at its southern end with a stone labyrinth and a burial-ground contemporary with the road. It is about 10 feet (3 m) wide, has a north-south orientation, and running along the top of a ridge for 600 yards (550 m).

In Ireland some people who suffered misfortunes and ill health believed it was caused by living in a house built at a “contrary place.” The worst contrary place to be was on a path where the fairy procession traveled. Building on a fairy path is fraught with danger, for the fairies process along it at certain times of the year and will punish anyone who has blocked the way. In Ireland, Paddy Baine built his house with its corner across a fairy path. The house was disturbed, so he consulted a woman who knew about such matters, who advised him to remove the corner, which he did, after which all was well (Michell 1975, 88). Fairy paths sometimes pass beneath buildings constructed across the way, leaving the right of way unobstructed. This feature is called a closs in Scotland. On Dartmoor in the west of England, an ancient track called the Mariners’ Way runs through the central passage of an ancient traditional longhouse at West Combe. In south Wales it was considered risky to build a cottage in or near the place where an elder tree grew. Elder trees have equivocal magical attributes and are associated with the fairies (Trevelyan 1909, 316). Naturally, fairy trees are located at places on fairy paths. W. Y. Evans Wentz notes that fairies were held to be the spirits of the departed (Wentz 1911, 33). In Scots belief the paths were used by the Fairy Rade, the fairies’ expedition on May Day to attend their great annual feast (Warrack 1988 [1911], 163).

The fairies’ journeys along their well-defined tracks resemble the more frightening appearance of the Wild Hunt (Wilde Jagd). It was an appearance of a band of terrifying huntsmen thought to ride through the land on dark, wild horses. Accompanied by hellhounds, the hunt rode in pursuit across the landscape, either in the air or on the ground, especially during the winter months. The hunt is known all over northern and central Europe, and some of the names reflect the being or entity supposed to lead it, or the hounds that run with the hunters. In Old English it was Herlaþing (assembly of Herla); in Old French, Mesnée d’Hellequin (Hellequin’s household); in Welsh, Cŵn Annwn (dogs of the underworld; hellhounds); and in later English lore, the Devil’s Dandy Dogs and Gabriel Ratchets. The latter hunt is led by the Spectre Huntsman, and the noise of the yelping hounds is a portent of bad luck or death to those who hear it (Harland and Wilkinson 1867, 89).

A Norwegian name for the wild hunt is jolareidi, linking it with Jul (Yule), midwinter. A story told in a folksong collected from Telemarken, Norway, in the eighteenth century recalls the wild hunt called Åsgårdsrei. The word Åsgårdsrei appears to be related to the Old Norse word öskranligr, meaning “fearful,” and rei, a procession on horseback, hence the “fearful procession” or “terror-ride” (Gjerset 1915, II, 97). Also the connexion with Asgard, the abode of the gods, is apparent. This spectral procession consisted of the spirits of the dead who in their lives were not evil enough to be condemned to hell, but who remained unsettled spirits after death. This is one of the ideas held in Celtic countries about the fairies. Thor (seen as an evil spirit), Gudrun, and Sigurd (the slayer of Fafnir) are the leading figures of the Åsgårdsrei as it travels through the air to places where fights and murders occur, to fetch the souls of those killed. After dark, people feared to stand outdoors in case the Åsgårdsrei should appear and abduct them. The apotropaic sign of the cross on the house door warded off the Åsgårdsrei (Gjerset 1915, II, 97).

Coffin paths and roads of the dead are paths along which dead people were carried to the church, especially in mountainous terrain where homesteads and small groups of houses had no consecrated burial ground. The lore of coffin paths has features in common with spirit ways. In lowland areas coffin paths avoided houses and roads and crossed as few fields as possible. This was said to minimize the blighting effect of death on living and growing things (Tebbutt 1984, 17). In Britain road names such as Burial Lane, Corpse Lane, and Lych Way denote these deathly paths. It was a common belief that the act of using a path for a funeral somehow dedicated it as a public right of way. At the funeral of a gardener at Girton, Cambridge, in 1936, the pallbearers insisted that because they had carried a coffin with a corpse through Girton College from one gate to another, the path must now be a public right of way (Porter 1969, 30). A Welsh funeral custom had the pallbearers carrying the coffin put it down at each crossroads they came to and say a prayer (Trevelyan 1909, 275). Over the border in the Golden Valley of Herefordshire, England, Ella Mary Leather recorded the custom in 1912. The coffin was taken on a roundabout way to the church, and it was put down for a few moments at every crosssroads, the mourners standing still (Leather 1912, 122).

THE FAINTY GRUND

People living a traditional, self-reliant life without powered machines and the backup of rescue services have a subtle recognition of all conditions around them. The recognition of debilitating places was a feature of traditional life in Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland such places were seen as a kind of fairy grass. The Scots fainty grund and the Irish fear gortha (“hungry grass” or “hunger-stricken earth”) signified ground where one felt faint. In Scotland it was deemed necessary to carry a piece of bread in the pocket when going to such a place, and in Ireland is a record of a woman who always kept some porridge in a pot ready to help wayfarers who succumbed to the harmful place (Warrack 1988 [1911], 162). In her Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, Lady Wilde said of the Fair-Gortha, the harmful “hunger-stricken sod”: “if the hapless traveler accidently treads on this grass by the roadside, while passing on a journey, either by night or day, he becomes at once seized with the most extraordinary cravings of hunger and weakness, and unless timely relief is afforded he must certainly die” (Wilde 1887, II, 69).

Wilde also wrote of another herb, or fairy grass, called the Faud Shaughran (the “stray sod”):

Whoever treads the path it grows on is compelled by an irresistible impulse to travel on without stopping, all through the night, delirious and restless, over bog and mountain, through hedges and ditches, till wearied and bruised and cut, his garments torn, his hands bleeding, he finds himself in the morning twenty or thirty miles, perhaps, from his own home . . . those who fall under this strange influence have all the time the sensation of flying and are utterly unable to pause or turn back or change their career. There is, however, another herb that can neutralize the effects of the Faud Shaughran, but only the initiated can utilize its mystic properties. (Wilde 1887, II, 68—69)