Neophilologus

, Volume 93, Issue 4, pp 691–702 | Cite as

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

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Abstract

The Nine Herbs Charm is one of the most extensively researched Old English metrical charms, not only in view of its allegedly corrupt text or its religious focus, but also with regard to its arithmetic. Since The Nine Herbs Charm abounds in references to numbers, particularly the number nine, three major arithmetical concerns have been whether the nine herbs, poisons and infections explicitly indicated in the text can actually be matched to referents within the charm. A fourth arithmetical crux, as yet undiscovered, is located in the charm’s Woden passage. Here, Woden is said to have smitten a snake into nine parts with nine wuldortanas (“glory-twigs”). Interpretations of this passage have focused on the significance of Woden’s presence and the nature of Woden’s wuldortanas. These twigs have traditionally been interpreted as runic weapons of magical power, but this seems unwarranted on the basis of the textual evidence. Yet if the wuldortanas are conventional weapons, they cannot possibly strike the snake into nine pieces, unless the nature of the snake is properly understood.

Keywords

Nine Herbs Charm Woden Lacnunga Charms Old English 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous readers and the late Stephen O. Glosecki for their critical remarks upon earlier drafts of this article, Femke Prinsen for the illustrations, and Tonya Dewey for her helpful comments on my paper on the present topic at the Forty-Third International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in May 2008.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of English Language and CultureRadboud UniversityNijmegenThe Netherlands

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