[[soul-germanic]] # Norwegian Soul [[perabo2016]] ## Norweigian Concepts of the Soul in Norwegian Tradition by Bente G. Alver in Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies • The word "soul" ○ "The word sjel (soul) first entered our language with the arrival of Christianity. The Old Norse sól or sála occurs only in the later texts, and then always as a reference to the Christian definition of the soul (Fritzner, 1883-96). • The Hug ○ "[The]...Norwegian...popular [concept] of the soul...would be what is called the hug, which corresponds to Åke Hultkranz's definition of the ego-soul (1953)." ○ "The concept we today designate as the psyche--but not nearly as complex--is defined by the term hug (Old Norse hugr). ○ "Hug represents qualities which are now called thought, wish, desire, or temperament." ○ "...every person had a hug..." ○ "...The hug could free itself for long or short periods of time and live its own life outside the body. If a person were deprived of the hug, he or she was said to have been hugstjålet (hug-stolen), a popular designation for abnormal behavior...[and/or]...psychic disorder. [~"out of your mind?"] According to tradition, a supernatural being was to blame..." ○ "It was also believed that people's hug could be turned towards or away from each other, causing them to become friends or enemies. Such a hugvending (hug-turning) could be performed by most people with the help of magic. These beliefs are very old, and many rites used to "turn" the hug have been collected: § "To make everyone love you: Take the right foot of a hen, carry it with you; then all your enemies will be your friends again. (Bang, 1901-2, 517)" § "To make a woman love you: Take the heart of a snake and make her eat it without her knowledge. Then she will desire you. (Bang, 475)" § "When one is bewitched and loves someone against one's will: If, against you will, you must love and run after someone, put one a pair of new shoes and walk rapidly in them for a while, causing your feet to sweat. Take off your right shoe, pour in beer or wind and drink it. Within the hour you will hate the one you loved. (Bang, 378)" § "if you wished to turn someone's hug toward you, you were supposed to stick the hooked end of a frog bone in the person's clothing and give it a gentle tug." § "If you were tired of this hugsøkning (hug-seeking), you could push it away with the forked end of the bone Reichborn-Kjennerud, 1928, 183)." ○ "...the hug can be apprehended concretely, coerced the way one coerces a headstrong child." ○ "There are strong ties between the hug and the person. Injuries to the hug while it is outside the body are suffered by the person. If the hug is killed while it is in concrete form, the person if killed, too. ○ "...widespread belief that a person's hug can affect nearby animate or inanimate objects. It makes no different weather the hug is weak or strong, friendly or malicious, aimless or on an errand." ○ "Descriptions of the hug can be divided into the follow categories, in which the first word refers to the hug's shape, the second to the person's relationship to the hug: (1) invisible/unconscious; (2) visible/unconscious; (3) invisible/conscious; (4) visible conscious. ○ "conscious and has a goal...magic has an intense willpower at its core: one craves, wishes for, desires something, and the ritual is built on this....the power of thought and desire..." ○ "Scandinavia[n]...witchcraft...the transformation of people and animals." ○ "The power to do evil could manifest itself in different parts of the body, so we have the terms evil eye, evil hand, spiteful tongue, evil foot...that evil, or the evil thought, was transmitted through the eye, the hand, the tongue, or the foot. (Lid, 1935a)" • The Ham ○ "There is a widespread belief that a hug can be so strong that it can assume a ham (shape). Although this is not considered an every occurrence, the hug has often been encountered in a ham....a hug in a ham is known as a hugham. As a rule the hugham is visible, and usually assumes one of the following shapes: 1...the person 2...an animal that has some relationship to the person's character...3. A more abstract shape such as fog, light, vapor, fire. ○ "...a person whose hug is in a ham is sometimes said to be hamgalen (ham-mad). This corresponds to the Old Norse hamramr. A similar word, probably invented by scholars since it does not appear in traditional material, is hamløber (shape-runner). This term refers to several different concepts, but the general reference is to a person who, more or less, intentionally, allows the hug to go about in a ham in order to accomplish something. Thus the witch can be described as a hamløber when she send her hug out on assignment. The term also applies to women whose hug rides astride people and animals in a mareridt (nightmare), and to the mannbjørn (man-bear) and the varulv (werewolf), despite the fact that these last two are metamorphoses and neither bears any relationship to the hug. The difference between a person who has sent out the hug and the one who has changed shape, or been changed (metamorphosis), is that the former can be observed in two places: in his or her own shape and in the hugham." 1. The Invisible/Unconscious Hug "hugsing" ○ Envy § "The verb at hugse refers to the Old Norse hugsa, which means to take notice of; to think; to think about. "To hugse a person" means to harm them through unconscious desire. Traditionally, hugsing is often connected with a meal...envy affected the eater, causing him or her to choke on the food or become nauseated and lose appetite. These beliefs gave rise to the custom of inviting strangers to have a bit to eat if they came by at mealtime, in order to avoid any form of hugsing. Even today people say, "Well, I don't grudge you your food!" if someone chokes on something....ward[s] off suspicion of having caused the unpleasantness. It was believed that if a person hugset someone inadvertently, they could make amends by admitting it." § One can...hugse oneself...You can have such an uncontrollable desire for something...that at the moment the wish is fulfilled, you feel psychically exhausted, overwhelmed by nausea....a person's own desire turned inward. § "[A] tingling sensation in [one's] nose or ear or fingers was interpreted as the effect of a stranger's hug, as a sign that someone was thinking or talking about you, or that a stranger would soon by coming to the farm. You could figure out whose hug it might be according to where the sensation was. The right side of the body mean a man's hug, the left side a woman's...Hiccupping, sneezing, or yawning were also regarded as the result of a stranger's hug." § "When people were afraid that they were being hugsøkt by the thoughts of an evil person, they would mumble Jesus' name or make the sign of the cross." § It's a "concrete" idea: "The expression hugbit (hug bit), a term referring to belching and...cardialgia, indicates that it was regarded as a biting spirit. A similar notion...in the term reham, or rehug, which is the name of an illness. The prefix re- comes from the verb ride: the hug is visualized as riding...The same sickness is called flog or ålaup, which refer to the hug's having flown into a person." § "The most common magic against...[hug illnesses]...is stroking or touching the sick person, indicating that one knows one is to blame for the illness, and is trying to control the effects of one's hug. If someone is unaware that they have caused harm, but are suspected by the milieu, then a third person can touch them and then touch the afflicted person, thereby neutralizing the damage: □ "There was a boy...who had a terrible stomach ailment. "They're floging him to death!" said the father, and swore and was furious. Then a stranger cam to the farm, and the man went out to greet him. When the stranger touched the boy, it was as if he stroked the illness out of him. (Skar, 1961, 492)" § "People [controlled their] hug-being by not allowing it to wander, by thinking good thoughts in order to keep from harming someone inadvertently.....certain people had a hug that was stronger and more unstable than others, and people were nervous about them. Some people's hug were so strong that they could cause beer barrels and milk pails to leak if they desired the contents: □ "They talked so much about a flogham, but I didn't believe it till I saw it. We had a tub of milk in the loft. Suddenly it started to leak....Then someone came in who hadn't had any milk, and was thirsty at the moment. He was given something to drink. The tub immediately became watertight, and has never leaked since. (Skar, 1961, 492)." § "The word ovund, or avund, [or agonn] refers to envy. The term...occurs in reference to magic, where it indicates an envious thought intended to cause harm....[or]...inadvertently. People were afraid of the ovund; it could cause sickness or death, and was endowed with an almost corrosive power...so strong, it could crumble a stone to dust....[or]...affect...cattle." ○ Longing § "In tradition...the longing of young people for each other manifests itself as sickness in the beloved....a man longs for a woman in such a way that his hug is about to destroy her...he realize[s] that he is harming her...touches her and strokes the sickness out of her..." § "A longing imposed from the outside was called an elsk...[and] could be imposed by a supernatural being who desired a mortal as a partner, or by a dead person...usually a mother in the Kingdom of the Dead who longed so much for her living child that the child would become sick and fail to thrive. § "...ballads about the grieving lover who drags his beloved back across the threshold of death. It is only for a moment, but long enough to discover that the longing of the bereaved makes life in the grave unbearable: □ "Each time you cry for me and are sad; My coffin is filled with dried blood; But when you sing and are glad; Then my grave is festooned with roses. (DFG 90, 17-19)" □ "Here the dead person speaks for society; people are not allowed to abandon themselves to sorrow and longing. As a part of the great machinery of life, they must continue to function, and longing causes pain to those one loves best." § "...reflected in the tradition about the mare, in which one's hug could ride someone in a nightmare. The mare is often perceived as the desire of an unmarried woman for a man. These mares...thought to be invisible, but palpable, hug. The person is ridden in an act of vengeance...[in the tradition] the mare developed into a separate supernormal being with a variety of shapes, all of which leave the impression of being tremendously heavy and suffocating. 2. The Visible/Invisible Unconscious Hug ○ Communication § "...when a family member was absent from home...a person's hug might appear unexpectedly and very briefly, usually in a familiar attitude: sitting for a moment in a favorite chair, walking across the yard, standing by a bedpost. They would be in their own shape, and you might believe for a moment that they had actually come home. But the shape would vanish, and then you would know that it had been a hugham. Such visits...were assumed to be a warning, and usually preceded a message that the loved one had died or been in danger [if they really did die the hugham/message is called a hugbod; "hug message"]. Sometimes the hug is barely perceptible: an unpleasant premonition, a sigh though the house, a knock or cry which sounds like the absent person's voice. § "Vardøger (vardywle, vardøwle, vardiwle, vardyr) [drøygen]. The prefix is vor(d), derived from the Old Norse vordr, which means "keeper, custodian." In Norwegian dialects, it recurs in words like gardvor(d) and tunvor(d), names for supranormal beings that watch over the farm...(Solheim, 1951, 143ff). Vor(d) also refers to a concept of the soul. The suffix -øger (iwle, ywle, øwle) is not etymologically traceable (Torp, 1919), but in context it refers to the hug...The vardøger goes ahead of the person and warns of his or her approach. In Norwegian dialects, this concept is also called a gangferd, fyriferd, or føregangar...[The vardøger]...is most often experiences by the closest to the person, who best knows his or her patterns of behavior, and often when they are waiting for this person....an aural experience...gradually merged with the tradition of sighting the image of a person before he or she arrives. □ "[Between the vardøger and the hugham]...there is a discernable difference...: you encountered a vardøger when you were expecting a specific person...a hugham...was unexpected." 3. The Invisible/Conscious Hug ○ "...the ability to attract things through the power of thought." ○ "...the belief prevailed throughout Europe that witches always had enough butter. One of their methods was to drag it out of people's churns...it is the witch's hug that does the work...one could take a red-hot scythe and slash it to and fro in the heavy cream; then the witch had to release her hold [...accounts that a woman had been badly slashed at the same time]. Glowing steel is an ancient precaution against evil in general....If the butter was witch's butter, drops of blood would run along the incision [hugdragning: hug-dragging] 4. The Visible/Conscious Hug ○ Witches could affect butter via a ham: "in an animal were found, it had to be picked up with fire tongs and burned in the fireplace. It was believed that the animal was the witch's hugham, and when it was burned...the witch would...[be affected by] thirst...[or]...burned. ○ "The witch's hugham was usually in the shape of a cat, a hare, a toad, or a big black bird...The designation of certain animals s "evil" is due to the fact that these animals were associated with witches..." ○ "the witch had a special helper, usually called a "troll cat." In Norwegian dialects it is also called truss, skratt, smorkat, trollnoste, trollnoa. The last two names indicate the most common shape of this creature: a ball of yarn. As a rule, the troll cat is described as a little gray or brown ball of yarn that rolls from cow to cow and sucks milk, only to roll home to the witch and spit it out in her milk pails." ○ "...if a troll cat in a cat shape is injured, the witch suffers the injury too; if a troll cat in the shape of a ball is destroyed, nothing happens to the witch except that she loses the ball." ○ "...she had to sell her soul to the Devil so that he could breathe life into this being, because the witch was unable to bestow life herself." ○ "It was believed that [the witch] had to take it with her to her grave; otherwise she would have to return from her grave to get it." ○ "...the troll cat was a very greedy creature. Sometimes it had sucked up more milk...than it could hold. the waste, which was attributed to the troll cat, was often called troll-cat vomit or tusse-dung, which actually might have been quick-growing mushrooms, various types of algae, or secretions from insects. When this was burned, the witch felt as if she were burning too. • Other Concepts of the Soul: Vor(d) and Fylgje ○ "Although the hugham and the fylgie often have the same appearance, the hug and hugham lead very unstable lives between the individual and the surrounding and can be consciously controlled, while the fylgie and vor(d) are passive, and people have very little control over them. With vigilance it is possible to retain them (which is desirable), but it is not possible to direct them. ○ The Vord § "The vor(d) represents the alter-ego. It is sometimes described as an "accompanying or protecting spirit," although it is not clear what its protective function is. The vord can be synonymous with hug, but it seems to be a more complex concept of the soul than hug, which is merely a part of it. § "It was customary to accompany guests to the door and hold the door open, saying "I'd better let your vor(d) out behind you." People must have believed that more of a guest was present than could be seen, and it had to have time to get out. If you prevented the vor(d) from joining its owner you were guilty of causing the person to be vor(d)sjålet (vor(d)-stolen), which was a parallel to hugsjålet." § "The...vor(d) is...the most widespread notion of the soul in our tradition..." § "...the vor(d) appears in various shapes: as the person, as different animals ["every person is accompanied by a tiny animal" p.124 (NFS Asbjørnsen VII, 70)"], as a light, mist, and such like. It is often invisible, but perceptible....can designate that which leaves a person at the moment of death. □ "The Vor is the spirit of the dead person, which often reveals itself at the moment it leaves the body as a thick, narrow, long, whitish cloud, at times extinguishing candles, at times entering animals which become enraged thereafter, and wish to accompany the body, uncontrollable until they hear the lid being nailed to the coffin. (Wille, 1786, 253)" § "There are a number of illnesses whose names contain the prefix vor(d), such as "vord pinch" and "vord scratch." These described unexplainable marks on the body, which were believed to have been made by the dead. ○ The Fylgje § "valdøvvel" □ "If you carry in an armful of wood, you mustn't drop it with a crash so as to frighten away the "valdøvvel," since it is dangerous to lose it. (NFS Moe 106, V7)" § "...an accompanying spirit." § "...protective...when the person was in a critical situation." § "...appearing in the shape of the person or of an animal that had some relationship to the person's character as it was perceived by the milieu: a coward's fylgie would take the shape of a hare; a sly person's a fox; a ladies' man's a cock..." § "People had to be clairvoyant in order to see the fylgje. It was generally supposed that cattle could see more than people, and if cattle were restless when a stranger entered the barn...then the stranger's fylgje was a beast of prey. ------~The Following is influenced by the Sami/Lapps------ • "During journeys of the free-soul and the dream-soul the body remains passive, and the person does not revive until the soul is back in place." • The Dream Soul ○ "It was believed that part of the alter-ego...left the sleeper and experienced life outside....dreams as experiences of the soul. Since there was no threshold between worlds, the soul could pass through the realms of the living and the dead." ○ "People have believed in dreams as omens; therefore, you were not suppose to recount an unpleasant dream, lest it come true. On the other hand, there were rites by which one could make dreams come true, and usually they contain an element of newness..." ○ Lapp/Sami Tradition § "Now it happened that two reindeer hunters were out hunting . As it was getting late in the evening, they lay down to sleep and wait for the reindeer--because in earlier times, when there were plenty of reindeer, no one bothered to go a long way to look for them, but waited until they came. After they had been sleeping for a while, one of the men awoke, and he wanted to wake the other. But he couldn't get him awake, even though he fired a shot over his body. Finally he caught sight of a tony mouse that was scurrying back and forth by a brook as if it couldn't get across. Well, it finally came up to them and ran over to the sleeper's head. There it vanished, and, at the same moment, the man woke up. He said he had dreamed that he was struggling to get across a river. (NFS Asbørnsen VIII, 70)" § PROBLEM: "In Norway, the notion that the soul assumes the shape of a tiny animals and leaves the body during a dream does not occur in the memorate tradition and, in all likelihood, was not part of collective tradition". [ie Sami in origin?] ○ "On the other hand, the belief that the soul went on its own journey while the person slept still exists, and appears in the way people treat a sleeping person. There are taboos against touching sleepers, especially babies. A change of position might confuse the soul so that it could not enter the person again...thus causing the loss of the alter-ego." • The Free Soul ○ "...on which shamanism is based." ○ "...a...concept that a soul was not only directed by the individual, but could assume any ham appropriate to the situation...associated with specialists..." ○ "The activities of shaman among the Sami (Lapps) must have added weight to beliefs that certain people could obtain useful information by the transmigration of the soul. But in tradition, the soul's domain was limited to the perceivable world, while the shaman's soul travels everywhere." • Other Topics and Conclusions ○ "Concepts of a skyggesjel (shadow-soul) have existed in many cultures. Even though there are items in Norwegian tradition that suggest a very close relationship between people and their shadows, I have been unable to draw any conclusions about belief in a shadow-soul. Most likely the shadow has been regarded as an organic part of the person." ○ "...a silver spoon which the tussefolk (fairies) had left behind..." Done