Customer Reviews

Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context

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Karen Jolly has produced a wonderful source of information on Anglo-Saxon charms. She makes a powerful case for the charms as elements of Anglo-Saxon popular religion, and explodes many of the myths of a pagan/Christian dichotomy that flooded the field during the age of patristic readings, and that have returned under the guise of neo-paganism in our own popular culture. One cannot claim to be a scholar of the Anglo-Saxon charms without having read this book.

In this work, Karen Jolly uses the Elf Charms from the Lacnunga and Bald's Leechbook as a window into popular religion in late Anglo-Saxon England, The book provides a great deal of information on the elf-charms themselves, but its significance goes well beyond that.

The full value of Jolly's work is found through the way she explores Anglo-Saxon popular religion, the process of conversion to Christianity, and tensions between formal and popular religion, and the tensions between magical and religious elements. This is a far more important work than the title suggests, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Anglo-Saxon times.

Not as mind blowing as 'Elves in Anglo-Saxon England', but an interesting book none the less. I like the more accurate translations of some of the same texts in Alaric Hall's book better. Also the emphasis on christianity is not as interesting to me, although I like how she shows the difference between 'popular' religion, the world of the folk, and that it was quite different from what the Bishops and Reformers believed was going on. Also how she points out the 'privileged' view of things was not necessarily what was really going on. The Middle Ages was not really the Age Of Faith that we all think it was, At least in the British Isles, most people were barely christian till well into the early modern era.

the book is great, you see, cause it's informative and incredibly detailed. It's obvious much work went into the book, and that much research was done. The book, however, isn't for those just starting out in the field of charms and magic... you should have a little background before reading the book. It's more for the historical reader then just any plain person... details on spells are also found in the book. Just plain great