Bones, Back-Breaking, and Magical Creatures

Some passages of the Old Testament writings (the terrible curses that Jeremiah proclaimed were thrown by the Lord against the idolatrous people of Judah concerning their bones, Jeremiah, VIII, 1,2) would seem to have something to do with the belief that men continued to dwell in their bones. Moreover, saints' bones have been preserved as relics endowed with healing power in churches of nearly all countries. Thus, a magical virtue was supposed to reside in bones in both Christian and in pagan times. This article aims to investigate the motif of “back-breaking” as a means of destroying evil beings – which appears to be rooted also in Scandinavia – by investigating and comparing texts belonging to different genres and traditions (sagas, skaldic verses, charms, folktales), and trying to find and reconstruct common elements and patterns in order to discover the possible origin of the motif and how it spread in Nordic literary tradition.