The Old Norse Materia Medica Between Liturgy and Magic

In a time when healing the body did not align with the biomedical paradigm, healers could exploit a broad range of sources, ideas, and concepts, facilitating their experiment and elaboration of new remedies. In the medieval period, healing was a multidimensional experience, encompassing diverse methodologies, approaches, and theoretical constructs. This kaleidoscopic picture of healing is extant in the corpus of medical literature originating from the Middle Ages, which forms the foundational source for the subsequent discussion. This chapter will draw upon instances of medical remedies preserved in Old Norse medical miscellanies to illustrate the manner in which Old Norse healers and scribes actively engaged in practices of magic for healing purposes, and the nuanced juncture between such practices and Christian liturgy. The focus of this chapter lies on the premise that the magical framework underpinning the interpretation of select medical remedies, as evidenced by their survival to the present day, not merely as an external perspective (etic) but rather an internal one (emic). Consequently, the significance of this framework should not be dismissed, but rather, should be subjected to a re-evaluation, given its potential to enrich the realm of pre-modern medical studies and the intersection between magic, medicine, and religion in the Middle Ages.