Understanding Embodiment through Lived Religion: A Look at Vernacular Physiologies in an Old Norse Milieu [with a Response by Margaret Clunies Ross]

This chapter outlines an approach to how ritual technologies prominent for a person can impact on the development of that person’s body image – i.e. a symbolic and iconic model of what our body is (and is not). Three types of ritual specialists from the Old Norse milieu are explored: berserkir, vǫlur and what are here described as deep-trance specialists. It is argued that all three were likely conceived as having distinct body images linked to the respective ritual technologies that they used. Bringing into focus the relationship between the technology of practice and body image interfaced with it offers insights into how their technologies were imagined to “work”, and also the degree to which they aligned with or diverged from the normative body image identified with non-specialists in society.