Ing Archives - Seo Helrune

November 1, 2024November 1, 2024

The Origin Story of the Witch

Wiccan, Wicca, Wicce, Witch

Over the past few months, I’ve been digging into the 9th to 11th centuries in early English history. This was a tumultuous period to say the least. A time of warfare in which two very different possible futures hung in the balance.

It was also during this time that the word wiccan (“witches”) made its first appearance in the textual sources.

Nowadays, most understand Wiccan to refer to a single practitioner of the neopagan religion Wicca. For the early English though, wiccan was always plural, and a wicca was a male witch. The feminine form of the noun, wicce, eventually became our modern word “witch.”

(Yes, Gerard Gardner chose the singular masculine form of the noun to name his religion. How…utterly unsurprising of him.)

Over the centuries, “witches” have been blamed for all manner of social ills—everything from the ritual murder of infants (a version of the antisemitic blood libel accusation) to blighting crops and causing disease (both of which were also accusations used to wipe out entire communities of European Jews). The meanings of the word “witch” have shifted over time. It’s become something of a malleable term, all too often weaponized. A tool for policing behavior, enforcing dogma, and exerting control.

But that is not the subject of today’s post. That ground is well-trodden enough. No, today I want to talk about the original meaning of the word “witch” and, more importantly, its relationship to early English Heathenism.

The Witch Appears

One of the earliest mentions of the Old English plural form of “witch”, wiccan appears in a passage from the prologue of King Alfred’s Dombōc (law book) (Elsakkers 2010). Now, there is an earlier attestation of the related word wiccungdōm in Cædmon’s Paraphrase that likely dates back to the 7th century (Thorpe. p. 223). However, for this post, I’m going to limit myself to sources including the words wicce, wicca, wiccan and wiccecræft, as well as the verb wiccian.

Anyway, back to Alfred’s Dombōc. The prologue of the Dombōc included sections of chapters 20-22 from the Book of Exodus, ostensibly translated into Old English.

Unsurprisingly, we first find the word wiccan in Alfred’s “translation” of Exodus 22:18 (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”):

Þa fæmnan þe gewuniað onfon [anfon] gealdorcræftigan [galdorcræft] 7 scinlæcan 7 wiccan, ne læt þu ða libban.

(The women who are wont to receive [and assist] gealdorcræftigan and scinlæcan and wiccan, let them not live.)
(Elsakker 2010)

As you can see from the above quote, Alfred’s treatment of this verse is more reinterpretation than translation. Where the author of the Hebrew Bible punished the mekhashepa, Alfred instead punished the women who welcomed them into their homes and helped them.

But why?

Alfred’s Source

Alfred’s main source was the Vulgate, a 4th century translation of the Hebrew Bible. However, that does not seem to have been his only source. Consider the Vulgate translation of Exodus 22:18 below.

“XXII. 18 maleficos non patieris vivere.”

As you can see, the Vulgate translates the Hebrew word mekhashepa as maleficos, a word that originally meant “evil doers” and carried no connotations with magic in earlier Latin texts. A terrible translation by any measure. But in the defense of the Vulgate’s translator, no other translation was possible. Thanks to the Theodosian Code anything even vaguely related to magic was considered maleficium (“evil doing”) and had been for decades before his birth. For 4th century Romans like Jerome of Stridon (the translator in question), there simply was no difference between charm-muttering healers and sorcerers (Hutton 2017). So, the fact that Alfred used three words where the Vulgate only used one suggests he must have had a secondary source.

“It’s me. Hi! I’m the problem. It’s me.”
– Alfred, never.

The most likely candidate for that secondary source is the Vetus Latina. This is a collection of Latin translations of the Septuagint, a 3rd century Greek translation of Hebraic traditions produced by Jewish scholars who were fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. Unlike the Vulgate that followed it, the Vetus Latina retained the nuance of the Septuagint. And this—more specifically, the Vetus Latina version of Exodus VII.11—is likely the source of Alfred’s own nuance (Elsakkers 2010). Because instead of the evergreen “maleficos” of the Vulgate, the Vetus gives us a trio of practitioners.

However, neither of Alfred’s sources explain the most significant change of the Dombōc version: the target. For that, we’ll have to widen our net.

An Old Norse Parallel?

When I first read Alfred’s law, I was struck by how similar it was to what we find in later Old Norse texts. The peripatetic seeress/magical practitioner that goes from house to house plying her trade is one that crops up in a number of sources, the most famous of which being Þorbjörg Lítilvölva from Eric the Red’s Saga. However fame aside, I think a better parallel to Alfred’s law (at least in sentiment) is verse 22 of the Poetic Edda poem, Völuspá.

”Bright Heiðr they called her
At all the houses she came to,
A good seer of fair fortunes
—she conjured up spirits who told her.
Sorcery (seið) she had skill in,
Sorcery (seið) she practised, possessed.
She was ever the darling
Of an evil wife.”
(Dronke trans.)

In my opinion, Alfred’s choice to condemn the women who received and assisted the practitioners in their homes instead of the practitioners themselves owed more to attitudes prevalent in his own culture than his sources. A culture that shared a common root with and engaged in centuries of interaction and exchange with the Norse.

However, unlike with the Romans, Alfred’s law wasn’t as simple as banning all magic. The presence of magical elements such as verbal charms and ritual acts in early English healing practices would have made such a ban impossible. They may as well have been trying to ban healing itself! An untenable position for any ruler, but especially for one whose rulership was under threat.
And this, friends, is where we come to a key part of this puzzle.

Christians, Danes, and Witches, Oh My!

At the time of the Dombōc’s writing, Christianity was in a perilous position in the English kingdoms. The conversion of the would-be English had begun in 597 CE with the arrival of the monk Augustine in Kent. Over the next two-and-half centuries, Christian missionaries spread their faith throughout the English kingdoms, with the city of Canterbury as their base. However, not all in the kingdoms were eager to receive the new teachings, leading the missionaries (on the pope’s orders) to “sweeten the pot” by co-opting Heathen practices and places of worship instead of simply banning them and tearing them down.

Generally speaking, Christianity spread first among the rulers. However, even after that initial conversion among the kings in the 6th century, some—such as Redwald of East Anglia—were persuaded back to the ways of their ancestors. And even when a king remained devoutly Christian in life, there was no guarantee his heirs would share his devotion. At least two of the kingdoms officially reverted to Heathenism with the ascent of Heathen heirs to their thrones in the 7th century (Knapp. The Fight Against The Threat).

And Christianity seems to have been even more precarious at the popular level. As Karen Jolly notes on page 45 of her book Popular religion in Late-Saxon England:

“The pagan hierarchical structure disintegrated rapidly in the seventh century in the face of Christianity’s systematic organization. But folk practices were all-pervasive in everyday life. The animistic character of Germanic belief prior to Christianization, with its emphasis on nature, holistic cures, and worship at wells, trees, and stones, meant that it was hard to counteract on an institutional level of organized religion. Small religious sites were everywhere; people carried amulets to ward off misfortune and relied on the belief in spiritual agents as explanations for many life experiences.”

That’s not to say that everyone at the popular level was practicing exactly as they had prior to conversion though. Over time, these practices were syncretized with Christian elements (Jolly. 45). Education in Christianity also seems to have been a concern for the church, as few at the popular level were literate—a situation that would remain well into the 11th century.
Then in the late 8th century, the Danes came. This was the world Alfred was born to and the wider context of his law book and education program. A world in which centuries of struggle to fully Christianize a land met a new challenge in the form of Heathen invaders.

Witches, Heathens, and Law

Alfred’s law book wasn’t just the first to mention witches, it was also likely a large part of why “witches” became synonymous with maleficos (and in turn, fordæða in Old Norse). Once included though, witches and witchcraft remained a part of the early English law codes, and persisted in English law long after other terms for practitioners fell away.

(A short note before I proceed: the following laws are pulled from M.J Elsakkers “Reading between the lines: Old Germanic And Early Christian Views On Abortion, which you can find linked at the bottom of the page.)

The first law code to actually sentence the witches themselves was the 10th century law code of Æthelstan, Æt Greatanleage II, which states (ModEng trans. only this time):

“Concerning witchcrafts (wiccecræftum). And we have pronounced concerning witchcrafts (wiccecræftum) and sorceries and secret attempts on life, that, if anyone is killed by such and he (the accused) cannot deny it, he is to forfeit his life”

This is repeated (along with a sentence of outlawry) in the 11th century law Eadward, Alfred and Guþrum:

“If witches (wiccan) or sorcerers (wigleras), perjurers, or murderers or foul, polluted, manifest whores are caught anywhere in the land, they are then to be driven from this country and the nation is to be purified, or they are to be completely destroyed in this country, unless they desist and atone very deeply.”

When we get to article 5.1 of Cnut’s law code from 1020-1021 though, we finally get a possible hint as to the motivation underlying Alfred’s choice to punish the female hosts of magical practitioners instead of the practitioners themselves.

”It is heathen practice if one worships idols, namely if one worships heathen gods and the sun or the moon, fire or flood, wells or stones or any kind of forest trees, or if one practises witchcraft (wiccecræft) or encompasses death by any means, either by sacrifice or divination, or takes any part in such delusions.”

As we can see here, wiccecræft was clearly considered a part of Heathenism in Cnut’s time. If this was also the case in Alfred’s time (more than likely), then it would have made sense for him to find ways to limit contact between the faithful and the Heathen. From this perspective, we might see his amendment to Exodus 22:18 as a way to cut off those contacts by targeting a key vector of transmission: the female hosts.

Ælfric and the Witches

Unfortunately, that is where the legal evidence of wiccan dries up without getting into the Latin translations of those earlier English laws. However, witches also appear in the work of the 11th century homilist, Ælfric of Eynsham. And as infuriating as Ælfric can be to read, he also provides us with some important clues as to how the early English thought about and interacted with witches.

In On Auguries, Ælfric warns his fellow Christians against consulting witches (wiccan) for divination/prophecy, claiming devils as the reason why their predictions prove true. (According to Ælfric, everything a witch could do was down to devils.) In the same text, he also speaks against going to witches for advice about health, a far more holistic concept at the time which not only pertained to physical health but matters of luck, prosperity, and safety. And more curiously, he rails against Christians making offerings at trees and earth-fast stones for healing “as the witches teach.”

You may have already noticed this, but the roles of the early English wiccan as alluded to by Ælfric, are not so different from what we attributed to the seiðkona, Heiðr, in the Völuspá passage quoted toward the beginning of this essay.

Moreover, I would go so far as to say that those roles sound somewhat cultic. Things a priest/ess might do.

And yes, I know everyone decided this particular line of thought was bullshit decades ago. But if you ask me, we threw out the baby with the Margaret Murray bathwater.

The Witches In The Glosses

Moreover, these possible associations between cultus and wiccan are further strengthened by the Aldhelm glosses. These were Old English translations of Latin words added to a manuscript after its production to aid comprehension. This really isn’t so different from modern readers designed for language learners where you have the target language text and a small glossary of the more difficult words at the bottom of the page.

The relevant glosses are found in the Digby MS 146 manuscript and date back to the 11th century. There we find wiccan glossed with words like p(h)itonissam (or “pythoness,” a term that derived from the oracular priestess of Apollo at Delphi), and ariolum (diviner, seer). We also find wiccan cited as a cognate for helrunan, and wiccecræft used as a gloss for necromantia or “necromancy.” A gloss we find repeated in the 12th century manuscript, MS Royal 6.B.VII.

The Meaning In The Witch

Finally, we come to the etymology of “witch.” As I said at the top of this post, our modern word derives from the feminine form of the OE noun, wicce. Beyond that though, a number of possible etymologies have been proposed. The one I cite below is that found in Gus Kroonen’s Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic:

“*wikkōn- w.v. ‘to practice sorcery’ – OE wiccian w.v. ‘id.’, WFri. wikje w.v. ‘to tell the future, warn’, MDu. wicken w.v. ‘to practice sorcery’, MHG wicken w.v. ‘id.’*uik-néh₂- (WEUR).

Derived from the same root as found in *wiha- 1 and *wiha- 2 (q.v.). The verb served as the derivational base for OE wicca m. ‘witch’, wicce f. ‘id.’ < *wikka/ōn- and MHG wicker m. ‘soothsayer’. Also cf. OE wigol adj. ‘prophet ic’ <*wigala- and OE wĭglian, (M) Du. wichelen ‘to practice divination’.

*wiha- 1 adj. ‘holy’ – Go. weihs adj. ‘id.’, OHG wih adj. ‘id.’*uéik-o- (WEUR) – Lat. victima f. ‘sacrificial animal’ < *uik-tm-ehz-. Also cf. Go. weihan w.v. ‘to bless, consecrate’ < *wihen- and ON vígja, OFri. wi(g)a, OS wihian, Du. wijden, OHG wihen, G weihen w.v. ‘id.’ < *wih/gjan-. Related to *wiha-2 and *wikkōn- (q.v.).
*wiha- 2 m./n. ‘sanctuary’ – ON vé n. ‘mansion; sanctuary’, OE weoh, wig m. ‘idol’, OS wih m. ‘temple’ (WEUR). Closely related to *wiha- 1 ‘holy’ (q.v.).”

How interesting that once again we find ourselves back in the realm of cultus!

Final Words

This post has been long and something of a winding road. However, the picture that emerges is surprisingly coherent, spanning a variety of textual sources, and has strong parallels with themes found in later Old Norse material.

I’ve actually been wanting to write this for a while for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’ve found myself getting increasingly frustrated by the perennial discourse surrounding the matter of what a witch is and who gets to call themself a witch. So, I hope this provides some helpful context for these discussions going forward – or at least encourages more precision with regards to the era of witchcraft being discussed. Secondly, I wanted to highlight the connection between those original wiccan and Heathen cultus, and to begin drawing attention to the parallels in ON accounts of seiðr. For a multitude of reasons (many shitty), the label “witch” has been somewhat stigmatized in modern Heathen communities, something to be avoided, and primarily associated with modern Wicca. I would like for that particular discourse to also shift.

As for whose cultus I think the wiccan might have belonged to? My personal guess would be that of Ing, the early English Freyr, but I’ll have to save my reasoning for that for another post.

For now though, let’s just concentrate on getting that proverbial baby back into the bathtub. Murray’s work may be riddled with issues, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and I think there is enough here to conclude she was right that the witch’s roots lie in pre-Christian belief, likely in the realm of cultus.

With that said, be well all!

Oh, and before I forget, I’m giving another class on Sunday. This time I’ll be looking at the matter of luck, what it is, its implications for magic, and how to work with it. Interested? You can find tickets (along with more info) here. All ticket holders receive recordings after the class. This time, the attendee pack is also coming with a little book as well.

Sources

Bouterwek, K. “Die Angelsächsischen Glossen in dem Brüsseler Codex von Aldhelms Schrift De Virginitate.” Digizeitschriften. n.d. https://www.digizeitschriften.de/id/345204107_0009%7Clog30?tify=%7B%22view%22%3A%22info%22%7D

“Caedmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures in Anglo-Saxon : Caedmon, Benjamin Thorpe : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://archive.org/details/caedmonsmetrica01thorgoog/page/n265/mode/2up?q=magic

Dronke, Ursula. The Poetic Edda: Volume III Mythological Poems II. 1969.

Elsakkers, M. J. “Reading between the lines: Old Germanic and early Christian views on abortion.” Research Explorer. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1578616/76079_article_08_embargo_twee_jaar.pdf

Hutton, Ronald. The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Jolly, Karen L. Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2015.

Knapp, R. I. “The Fight Against the Threat of Witchcraft and Paganism in Anglo-Saxon England.” Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars 1 (May 2023). https://pillars.taylor.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=luxetfidesjournal

Kroonen, Guus. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Brill Academic Publishers, 2013.

“Old English Glosses : Chiefly Unpublished : Napier, Arthur S. (Arthur Sampson), 1853-1916 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://archive.org/details/oldenglishglosse00napiuoft/page/n1/mode/2up

Pollington, Stephen. Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plant Lore, and Healing. 2000.

“Pythoness – No, Not a Big Female Snake.” Notre Dame Sites. Last modified October 20, 2017. https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2017/10/20/pythoness-no-not-a-big-female-snake

Simpson, D. P. Cassell’s New Compact Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary. 1971.

Thorpe, Benjamin. The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Scôp Or Gleeman’s Tale, and the Fight at Finnesburg. With a Literal Translation, Notes, Glossary Etc. by Benjamin Thorpe. 1855.
https://archive.org/details/anglosaxonpoemso00thor/page/12/mode/2up

“Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch to Live, A Murderous Mistranslation.” Haaretz | Israel News, the Middle East and the Jewish World – Haaretz.com. Last modified August 17, 2017. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2017-08-17/ty-article/thou-shalt-not-suffer-a-witch-to-live-a-murderous-mistranslation/0000017f-e2c8-d804-ad7f-f3fa49340000)

Vulgate Latin Bible With English Translation. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://vulgate.org/

“Ælfric’s Lives of Saints/17aug – Wikisource, the Free Online Library.” Wikisource, the Free Library. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%86lfric%27s_Lives_of_Saints/17aug

August 6, 2018August 6, 2018

Sex and the Dead: A Right Load of Fuckery

The Paradox of Sex and the Dead

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the onion was considered a vegetable of the dead. Perhaps it’s because it grew in the ground as the deceased are planted? Or perhaps the reasoning was something else. Either way, along with parsley and celery, the onion commonly graced the tables of funeral feasts

sex and the dead - onions — Viagra, a long time ago.

(“Eating with the Dead”).

But here is where we come to a paradox, because the onion was also well known as an aphrodisiac. And what of grim and unyielding Hades himself? Not only was he connected with the cycle of the year, but was also arguably connected to fertility too.

As it turns out though, this collocation of sex and death is not unusual, and it’s not limited to the classical world either.

Among the Germanic tribes, for example, the god of the mound is also the god who fertilizes the earth. It is he who is depicted with a large phallus – a sign of his virility. Ruler of Alfheim, so too do his subjects share the same associations. Mound-dwelling and sexually deviant, elves would eventually come to be known as incubi.

Moving slightly further afield, the Canaanite Ba’al the god of life and fertility is shown to be constantly locked in battle with Mot, the god of death and sterility.

To move even further afield (at least from the perspective of my resting paradigm), we see the same dichotomy in the Haitian deity Papa Ghédé who presides over both death and eroticism.

Again and again, fertility (or even straight up eroticism) and death walk hand in hand. Life is spun and then unspun in a cycle of generation and dissolution, the fibers falling away only to be respun again. These are in truth, two sides of the same cycle, and without the one there cannot be the other.

Man Imitates Gods (or Elves)

This also seems to be the case for many humans who work with the dead too, and the grave may be just as inseparable from sex and generation within some human practitioners, as it is with the aforementioned gods.

“Thus the Gods did, thus men do”

Taittirīya Brāhmana
(Eliade 98)

sex and the dead - beso negro — Those witches will get with any old unclean spirit!

There also seems to be something in the “wiring” here too. For anyone who has studied historical witchcraft accounts, accusations of “sexual deviancy” go hand in hand with accusations of trucking (sexually or magically) with demons or elves. Again and again we see this pattern of chthonic beings with fertility aspects and their human partners engaged in both necromancy and apparent sexual deviancy. (See Lee Morgan’s ‘A Deed without a Name’ for further discussion on these relationships both among historical and modern practitioners)

It would seem that one cannot separate the sex/eroticism from the chthonic, and by extension, death itself. And this can be unsettling to our modern WEIRD minds. (I note here that apparently Papa Ghédé enjoys fucking with white people because of exactly this kind of hang up. Go Papa Ghédé!)

But patterns rarely emerge without reason, and this one is no exception.

A Matter of “Wiring”?

First though, I’d like to talk about the matter of the “wiring” of human practitioners for a moment. Because here too are patterns to be observed. Why is it that the witch was so associated with sexual deviancy in historical accounts? Why did Jordanes write of the Halirunnae (Gothic for Helrune), if you’re interested) going out and having issue with “unclean spirits”? Why was that so believable to him that people associated with Hel practices would be all about fucking the “unclean spirits”? (Getica XXIV, 121-123)

This matter of “wiring” is something that Martin Coleman (aka Draja Mickaharic) comments on in Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy. To quote him regarding women with the propensity for necromancy:

“If you are a woman you may have had occasional vivid dreams of a sexual nature which you remember upon awakening. In some cases, the dream may

sex and the dead - necromancy — According to Pixabay, this is what necromancy looks like

have been so vivid that you awakened as a result of the orgasm that the dream produced. This is not an uncommon phenomena found in those women who are able to work with the spirits of the dead. Women who are able to work well with the spirits of the dead often have very little sense of physical modesty. In a few cases they are excessively modest. Often women who can work with spirits of the dead are quite uninhibited in comparison with most of the women of their generation. Occasionally they are asexual, but these women are usually found at the extreme ranges of dress and sexual behavior.”

So what is going on here? Why can working with the dead turn into such fuckery? (Ha, see what I did there?) Why does this collocation exist?

Sex as a Safety Mechanism

One thing you quickly learn when interacting with the dead is that to interact with the dead is to interact with death, and pull away from life. But to engage in the primal act of intercourse is to pull away from death and to reassert one’s place within the living world. It is to leave the world of shadows and rejoin the world of the heart pounding, heavy breathing, and corporeality of skin and bodily fluids. To fall once more under the spell of the sensual and reconnect with one of the joys of this world. It is in this sense, a way of exorcising the touch of death from yourself in the same way that you may take salt or wash your feet, or whatever else you do to purify when leaving the places of the dead.

This is not some sick and perverted thing as some might think. There is no sexual attraction to the dead present (and I actually hate that I feel like I have to say that). Instead, I find it to be more like the triggering a safety mechanism that occurs in response to a certain degree of proximity to death. It’s a form of medicine. When you think about it, this is really no different from people fucking at or after funerals. It is, I believe, the same underlying mechanism at work.

In short, this is a piece of protective wiring for those of us who experience it, and deities like Papa Ghédé rightfully mock us when repression keeps us from this act of self-healing.

(Ace folx, I’d be curious to hear what you experience post-interacting-with-the-dead!)

Bibliography

Eating With the Dead: Funeral Meal Practices, by Tylluan Perry in MEMENTO MORI A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives On Death, Dying, Mortality and Beyond

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, by Mircea Eliade

Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy, by Martin Coleman

December 14, 2016February 8, 2018

Elves and Sex

Please YoursELF

“Bye love, I’m off to go bang some elves in Iceland”

– How I imagine saying farewell to my husband when I go co-Host That Trip To Iceland With Land Sea Sky Travel

Back in 2008, an Icelandic lady by the name of Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir published her seminal (ha, see what I did there?) work ‘Please YousELF – Sex With The Icelandic Invisibles’. Now, Iceland isn’t a country in which elves making the news is all that uncommon, however this was particularly standout. Because for all the stories of road rerouting (like here), it’s really not that common for Icelanders to claim to be banging elves.

The internet naturally responded as you might imagine – with mockery. However, I for one am grateful for people like Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir for a couple of reasons:

1. The woman has balls of steel to put a book out about her elf-fucking experiences, under her own name, and go on camera talking about it too.

2. It was a really nice diversion from the usual ‘godspouse’ thing that you see in Heathen circles. Now I could digress into a bit of a rant about why elf-spouses would beat your average ‘godspouse’, but I don’t really think I need to do that. Seriously, just look at Hallgerður’s stick-figure drawings of elven sexy times. Case. Closed.

But on a more serious note, I was mostly happy to see Hallgerður’s stuff for another reason, and that’s because it got

people talking about elves and sex, and well…that’s not that weird of an association to make.

To examine this further though, we need to start with the ‘D’. You know, ‘demons’ (and the devil too to some degree).

Checking Out The D

There’s actually some pretty good evidence that at one point, elves were equated with the devil and demons. For example, the eighth century Royal Prayer Book contains the phrase ‘Satanae diabolus aelfae’, meaning ‘devil of the elf Satan’, and in Beowulf, elves are aligned with ‘misbegotten beings’ of the not very nice variety (Hall 69-71). Another example of this can be found in a Lacnunga charm against elves that borrows from the same liturgy as a Christian exorcism (North 54-56). When it comes to the word ‘Ælfs?den’, a word probably referring to a type of magic (‘s?den’ being cognate with the Old Icelandic word ‘seiðr’), Richard North tells us that ‘All temptations, but especially demonic possession, are indicated in Ælfs?den’(North 55).

Speaking of possession, it’s in the specifics of these particular associations with demons where things become really interesting, especially with regards to elf-sex.

In the Bosworth & Toller dictionary, a possible translation of the word ‘ælf’, is incubus (Bosworth & Toller 14), or in other words, a type of male demon known for its penchant for boning people in their sleep. This translation is likely taken from Chaucer, who equated elves with incubi in the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ (Hall 162); and even though we’re out of the Heathen period by quite a long time by Chaucer’s time, there are some interesting points about elves in earlier sources that make this connection pretty reasonable.

(Elven)Sausage Party

The first thing is that the earliest elves were male. Yup, it was an elven sausage fest back in the day. No elven ladies to

elves sex - kinky elf — Sadly, this is the nearest creative commons pic I could find to a ‘kinky elf’. Fail.

be found anywhere – that came later (Hall 157-166 ). Secondly, the connection with sex, and more specifically sexual deviancy with elves (by the standards of culture back then), is not an uncommon theme. You just have to know what constituted sexual deviancy back then, because if you were hoping for something that looked like ball gags and whips, you’d be sorely disappointed.

Taking a quick trip over the Atlantic to medieval Iceland, we come across the terms hvatr and blauðr. Now, some of you are possibly going to absolutely hate these terms, but to cut a long story short, hvatr was ‘bold, independent, powerful, vigorous, and sharp’, and blauðr ‘weak, soft, powerless, yielding’. Scholars such as Carol J Clover have argued that initially these terms were separate from biological sex, having more to do with power and independence. However in spite of this initial lack of alignment with biological sex, hvatr was more the domain of aristocratic males, and blauðr, that of women (Clover).

Regardless of whether those dick Christians turned us all from whatever egalitarian pagan utopia though, some sources do suggest that elves didn’t really fit into the manly man hvatr category (hvategory?).

Deviant Elves

The first way in which elves totally blew that one out of the water is that they were reputedly beautiful, and in a way that doesn’t really suggest handsome either. The elf Volundr, for example, is described as having a white neck, which although doesn’t seem particularly significant to us, is significant in that that was the kind of description only applied to women back in the day (Hall 43-45). Hell, if you trace the etymology of ‘elf’ back, you get ‘white’. The only other male figure to be described as being hvitr or ‘white’ is Heimdall, and given the collocation of Álfar with Vanir, plus Heimdall’s ability to divine the future, it’s arguable that he might also be considered an elf (as well as a god) anyway. Significantly, the description of Heimdall’s whiteness (and ergo his girly beauty), appears in the same stanza as Heimdall suggesting that Thor participate in a spot of cross-dressing in order to win back Freyja’s necklace, Brisingamen.

This association with elves and beauty can also be found in the OE word ælfscyne – which is used within the context of a kind of bewitching, otherworldly, yet dangerous beauty (Hall 88-95).

So they were hawt, probably in a Prince or Bowie kind of way.

Secondly, they defied the usual expectations about manly roles. For example, in The Lay of Volund, we’re told that a maiden called ‘Svanhvit’ guarded Volund’s white neck. Remember that whole thing with hvatr and blauðr? Which category do you think Volundr would have fallen into? Unfortunately for Volundr, nine winters into shacking up with this swan lady, she leaves; and unlike his brothers (who are also in the story, and also have ladies of their own), he stays home and doesn’t go in search of Svanhvit. From this point forth, things go seriously downhill for Volundr, because a certain king by the name of Douchebag (just kidding, his name was Níðuðr) heard that Volundr was no longer protected and he wanted Volundr to make him a load of swag. Poor Volundr is then hamstrung, imprisoned on an island, and forced to make bling for king Douchebag (Hall 39-46).

Eventually Volundr has his revenge (part of which happens to be raping the king’s daughter) and flies off using his feet as propellers or wings (I shit you not).

Another possible example is that of the god, Freyr. Again, we have a potential ‘god and elf’ situation here. In Grimnismal 5, we’re told that Freyr was given Álfheim (elf-home) as a gift for cutting his first tooth, which aligns Freyr with the elves. Once again, we see the theme of a man undone by love – this time by giving up his sword as part of wooing the giantess Gerðr (in the Lay of Volund, his sword is taken from him by king Douchebag). Moreover, Freyr’s manservant, Skirnir, who is sent to ‘woo’ Gerðr has to resort to magical threats in order to coerce her into to ‘saying yes to the dress’ (North 52-54). As an aside, this kind of magical coercion is a disturbing feature of old school ‘love’ spells.

For Richard North, who spends over three hundred pages densely building his arguments in ‘Heathen Gods in Old English Literature’, Freyr is the god associated with hieros gamos rituals, and whose cultic passage through the land signaled a period of sexual license (270-271). He is the god who the church came to see as the devil, and like the devil, was known as ‘god of the world’ (76).

Then there is the matter of Freyr’s priests per the description in the Gesta Danorum (chapter 6):

“After Bemoni’s death Starkather, because of his valour, was summoned by the Biarmian champions and there performed many feats worthy of the tellings. Then he entered Swedish territory where he spent seven years in a leisurely stay with the sons of Frø (Freyr), after which he departed to join Haki, the lord of Denmark, for, living at Uppsala in the period of sacrifices, he had become disgusted with the womanish body movements, the clatter of actors on the stage and the soft tinkling of bells. It is obvious how far his heart was removed from frivolity if he could not even bear to watch these occasions. A manly individual is resistant to wantonness.”

See what I’m getting at here? Doesn’t exactly fit in the ‘hvategory’.

Elves and those associated with the worship of elves, though male, deviated from ideas about how males should act – at least within a sacred context (on the part of human worshippers).

Out of all the legions of demons, whicht type in particular do you think would fit the bill for elves? And that isn’t even taking into account all of the later stories about elven seduction and half-elf children, OR the associations with elves and nightmares that came throughout the intervening years. Hello, nocturnal-slumbering-person-boner demon! Hallgerður’s path is a very well-trodden one.

Sources
Carol J Clover – Regardless of Sex
Alaric Hall – Elves in Anglo-Saxon England
Richard North – Heathen Gods in Old English Literature