Help with Medieval Norwegian Setting?

Mine is also set in medieval Norway! 12th to 14th century in the Sognefjord area, so Bergen is the nearest town. Bergen is a very interesting setting in that period as it has a totally unique source of written material made by ordinary people, rune-sticks. These have been described as the text messages of their day [SMS] as they were simple, fast, cheap and disposable. Basically, Scandinavia had its own alphabet, runes, which are easier to write on wood because they are angular and simple in shape. So someone wanting to send a message could pick up a twig or a piece of kindling, scrape a side or two flat with the knife that everyone carried at all times, and scratch a message on. Then it was just a case of getting some kid or someone to carry it to the person, or passing it to them perhaps in a noisy pub. There is a hugely wide range of the surviving texts, from things like 'Gytha says you should come home now' [with a garbled attempt at a reply on the back possibly from her drunk husband who did not want to leave the ale house!] and 'I feally fancy you in that fana-belt' or 'now there is a lot of brawling' through bits of poetry, Latin prayers up to official merchants letters about parchment and other goods, and a secret message about ordering weapons for the civil war written by a prince! There is some information about these online, look for rune-sticks, Bryggen Bergen, that sort of thing. I can try to find some sites if you like. These give a very colourful flavour of bits of life as they are written by the kind of people who don't usually write things in that period as well as those who do leave us the usual historical sources.

I don't know anything about the king's shepherd. The king would have had several royal estates scattered along the coast as he had to travel a lot between Trondheim, Bergen [the capital in that period and therefore his main palace] and Oslo as well as Stavanger and other places. So I assume the shepherd in question would be working on the estates belonging to the royal palace in Bergen. A couple of general books I would recommend are 'Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800-1500' by Birgit Sawyer and P.H. Sawyer available from Amazon for a reasonable price and The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Volume 1 by Knut Helle which is very expensive so would be a library one!

As for magic, the church had been quite strict about paganism in Norway, more so than other Scandinavian countries I think, so if any survived they would probably be quite underground. Possibly an opportunity to bring in a foreign character, maybe from Sweden, where paganism survived much later. People did combine magic and Christianity, making amulets with magic words on which were often garbled versions of Christian prayers or holy words and names. The might write such words on leads crosses or on runesticks and either wear them round their necks or put them under the floors of churches, so they are partially prayers and partially amulets. Some healing charms survive, written down in manuscripts, with herbal rememdies and prayers or magic words to say. If you want something more pagan and magical than that, then looking at some of the Icelandic sagas which describe witches, both male and female, would be a good place to start. They had a form of magic called seidh [the dh is the letter eth] and could curse people, put the evil eye on them, that sort of thing. They had to be killed with a bag over their head or they would put the evil eye on their killers. Then they had to bury them away from farms with their head between their knees. Under no circumstances should they be buried sitting up under the doorway to their farm, or they will become a particularly vicious kind of ghost! See Grettis saga for that one! There will be lots of stuff on the web about this, but some will be highly speculative so it depends how historically accurate you want to be.

Feel free to message me and or buddy me if you like, it's always good to find people who share my interest!

Yes the pic is a stavechurch, in case anyone wondered!

Ah, thank you so much! Those books sound perfect and the rune-sticks sound totally interesting, so I will definitely have to check both out.

The church vs. magic thing has been worked into my story, actually, as the MC is Christian and the daughter of a very strict Christian, but also the granddaughter and sort-of-apprentice of a woman who still secretly practises magic and the old pagan religion, and part of her development is having to reconcile her religious beliefs with the magic she'll at one point need to survive. As this is historical fantasy, I hope people won't be too annoyed if end up mixing in a bit of Swedish and Icelandic beliefs and traditions, as you mentioned, and the strange, strange fairy tale magic of the source story, as there seems to be more information on them.

I think I will definitely buddy you, if you don't mind as a) talking with someone whose story has roughly the same setting and seems much more knowledgable about it would be really helpful and b) my family is from Sognefjord, so anyone who uses that as a setting automatically wins in my book!

Hey,
your project sounds very interesting.

I don´t know much about the 12th century in Norway. But, you can try the following link:

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/

It covers earlier times, but I think social life didn´t change much in one or two centuries except for religion.

For scandinavian witches you can search the net for seidr (or Seidwoman or seidkona).

Good luck!

Klesst

Not uniquely Norwegian, but found across northern Scandinavia in the Sapmi area (was known as Lapland) there is a figure that might fit. A Sami shaman was called a Noaide, and practiced a kind of 'nature-magic'. The would act as healers/medicine-men for their clan, put protection charms on reindeer, and counsel the clan when advice was needed.

They were believed to communicate with spirits by entering a trance, through drumming, and occasionally using hallucinogens like fly-agaric. They would sing a song called a joik. Some were even considered to have shap-shifting abilities, and be able to enter the body of animals and birds.