Imagining of the Nightmare Hag

Abstract

The nightmare hag in narratives and rituals served as an image of an individual’s own anxiety and other people’s malevolence in pre-industrial Nordic countries. As such, the hag functioned as a folk definition of evil in the form of malicious acts and envy. These traditions were to a great extent embedded in an imaginary with its own logic, representing a rural worldview, yet they were simultaneously dependent on Christianity as it was preached and practised in rural communities. Vernacular religion acknowledged the Devil as the master of evil, but not necessarily Christianity’s definitive boundaries for what constitutes wickedness or the Christian dichotomy of vice and virtue. In vernacular religion, it was the intention behind an act that counted, whereas the Church simply taught that these folk beliefs and customs came from the Devil. Thus, knowledge of magic, in the eyes of the Church, was associated with the Devil’s deceptions and entailed distancing oneself from God and the order of creation. As we see from the catechism quotation above (one of the most widespread in Sweden over a long period of time), using superstition, which implied actions just as much as beliefs, was not primarily a denial of God but an abuse of his word. From the perspective of the Church, therefore, all knowledge of witchcraft, and all insight into it, was intrinsically evil.

What does it mean to use superstition [widskepelse]?

It means abusing God’s Word and Name, in order to drive away sickness, from people and livestock; or else seeking the assistance of such persons as pretend to know how to perform magic [trolla], discover hidden things, and more of that kind.

— Catechism of Olof Swebilius from 1689, revised by Jacob A. Lindblom in 1810