Abstract
Surgery is far from a prevalent issue contained in the Old Norse sagas. The sagas, however, are the most significant sources available for insights into medieval perceptions of this practice, in Scandinavia. This thesis maintains that hagiographical literature, especially, can suggest attitudes towards healing by manual means. This study firstly aims to consider the social and religious context of the depiction of surgical practice, considering these sources were written in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council. It proposes that Church regulations did not discourage writers from portraying blood-shedding activities, and evidence for the separation of surgery from medical practice is minimal. The portrayal of surgical practitioners is the next focus of this study. Such individuals are generally described positively in the secular sagas, which show the need for their presence in warfare and scenes of conflict. In Hrafns saga, and Konungasögur, in which the notion that healers are bestowed the “gift of healing” by God, it is not possible to distinguish between earthly and divine skills. Surgical practitioners shown in such sagas are characterised by writers favourably, since their abilities derive from a divine source. It is argued that in hagiographical literature, there is a varied response to the surgical practice employed by secular practitioners. Nevertheless, some accounts reveal a dependence and trust in their methods. The latter half of the study sets out to explore descriptions of surgical procedures, such as bloodletting, cauterisation, and wound treatment. Many such accounts echo Greek principles of medicine, including humoral theory. It is concluded these principles and learned surgical methods underpinned detailed descriptions of surgery in hagiographical sagas. In some of these miracles, secular medicine is often portrayed in competition with religious healing, whereas in others, earthly medicine and divine intervention appear to collaborate.