Strong Drink: Women’s ‘Magic’ and the Art of Brewing in Medieval Scandinavia

The Old Norse word fjǫlkynngi is often translated as ‘magic’, but its literal meaning is something like ‘great knowledge’. This paper argues that, rather than thinking of the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magical’ as discrete categories, people in the medieval Norse world are likely to have conceived of knowledge as existing along a continuum from the everyday to the exceptional. An examination of representations of the preparation of drinks by women in medieval Scandinavian texts demonstrates, not only that the creation of ‘magical’ drinks can be viewed as an extension of the ‘ordinary’ art of brewing, but also that ‘ordinary’ brewing is likely to have been understood as involving beings or forces that would now be considered ‘magical’. A final section extends the argument to the textile arts.