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Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land
To cure a fever that begins with chills, write the following on a piece of bread and give it to the patient for eight days, one piece each day, and on the ninth day, burn the last Colameris x, Colameri x, Colamer x, Colame x, Colam x, Cola x, Col x, Co x, and C x.
To prevent the huldrefolk from stealing your healthy child and leaving a child with rickets in its place, make three dolls from the child's clothing to put into the cradle. The huldrefolk will take one of them instead of your child.
These and many more fascinating folk-healing rituals were secretly administered by healers, "witches," and religious caregivers who tended the medical and spiritual needs of rural Norwegians for hundreds of years. In Remedies and Rituals, Kathleen Stokker culls from hundreds of original documents and first-hand accounts to detail the ingredients, customs, and histories behind natural remedies, potions, whispered spells, and the infamous "black books" used for centuries by Norway's folk healers.
Stokker also illuminates the surprising personalities of those who risked imprisonment and persecution to help fellow Norwegians throughout the nineteenth century, as well as the often reluctant healers in the U.S. who continued to treat immigrants living in rural communities beyond the reach of doctors. Dodging harsh criminal laws championed by formally trained doctors, these rebel practitioners drew on ancient written and oral sources to treat everything from burns, broken bones, and whooping cough to difficult labors and emotional stress.
To prevent the huldrefolk from stealing your healthy child and leaving a child with rickets in its place, make three dolls from the child's clothing to put into the cradle. The huldrefolk will take one of them instead of your child.
These and many more fascinating folk-healing rituals were secretly administered by healers, "witches," and religious caregivers who tended the medical and spiritual needs of rural Norwegians for hundreds of years. In Remedies and Rituals, Kathleen Stokker culls from hundreds of original documents and first-hand accounts to detail the ingredients, customs, and histories behind natural remedies, potions, whispered spells, and the infamous "black books" used for centuries by Norway's folk healers.
Stokker also illuminates the surprising personalities of those who risked imprisonment and persecution to help fellow Norwegians throughout the nineteenth century, as well as the often reluctant healers in the U.S. who continued to treat immigrants living in rural communities beyond the reach of doctors. Dodging harsh criminal laws championed by formally trained doctors, these rebel practitioners drew on ancient written and oral sources to treat everything from burns, broken bones, and whooping cough to difficult labors and emotional stress.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 8, 2023
I love this book! I've been wanting to learn about Norwegian folk traditions for years, but only from the 1700-1900's. For a long time I thought this resource didn't exist, and then the Vesterheim Norwegian-American museum in Decorah, IA introduced me to this book! As I learn to forage angelica, elderberries, chamomile, etc here in the upper Midwest I can finally learn how my Norwegian ancestors used these same plants. Wonderful!
The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is I wish there was more detailed information about how Norwegian immigrants interacted with Native Americans. This is mentioned a few times in the book with no reference to specific First Nations peoples.
The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is I wish there was more detailed information about how Norwegian immigrants interacted with Native Americans. This is mentioned a few times in the book with no reference to specific First Nations peoples.
March 1, 2022
Weaving together historical documents and anecdotes and diaries from Norwegians during and before the Nordic diaspora, Stokker's book taught me so much about the lives of my distant and not-so-distant relatives. It was powerful to link memories of my grandma's home healing recipes and see how they had meaning and healing to those who emigrated from Norway. So grateful for this book, it will stay with me and my family for a long time.
January 23, 2022
As a Minnesotan, this was an enjoyable read! The Norwegian history and folk medicine stories blew my mind. Thank you Kathleen, for preserving the stories you collected for this book.
March 15, 2024
Really enjoyed this. Can’t wait to read her other book about Christmas.
August 19, 2025
This was an interesting and well researched treatise on the folklore surrounding health care among sixteenth to nineteenth century Norwegians, both in Norway and in North America. Not unlike many rural, isolated cultures, the “almuen” (or peasants) and their relatives who immigrated maintained a variety of traditions to care for their own health problems.
Kathleen Stokker writes in an engaging, sympathetic voice, providing detailed primary sources for the remedies - herbal, magical, and social - used by common people. From doctor books (legeboker), to commonly used herbs, to bloodletting, Stokker shares a smorgasbord of fascinating information. Her focus on a few famous folk healers, some of the effective cures they developed, and the religious and social contexts that made home medicine a necessity for most of the population was empathetic and thought provoking.
The book can get pretty harrowing as Stokker records various stories of injuries and sickness in the isolated Norwegian countryside or the midwestern prairie, when so many children were hitting themselves with axes or stepping onto a hot anvil. That the tellers were able to recover with the help of their parents and a few sliced potatoes or hits of turpentine shows how innovative they could be. Particularly sobering were the chapters on child birth and rickets, and the host of legends surrounding this formerly mysterious childhood disease, in particular that of the huldrefolk replacing a healthy child with a changeling, illustrating how bleak medical conditions could be in an era before knowledge of germ theory and nutrients. Of course, medical science, at the time, often offered no better treatments or, in some cases, worsened conditions.
Most interesting was the information on the “black book,” those mysterious and frightening books of magic of which legends sprung up all over Scandinavia, and which many actually existed. Featuring handwritten formulas and prayers a person scrawled down to stop bleeding, heal bones, or other needs, their diabolic reputations stem mainly from their relation to pre-Reformation prayers and theology- anathema to the rigid Lutheran authorities of the time, who nonetheless provided much of the medical knowledge of the time themselves.
All in all, a fascinating book with a lot of interesting ideas.
Kathleen Stokker writes in an engaging, sympathetic voice, providing detailed primary sources for the remedies - herbal, magical, and social - used by common people. From doctor books (legeboker), to commonly used herbs, to bloodletting, Stokker shares a smorgasbord of fascinating information. Her focus on a few famous folk healers, some of the effective cures they developed, and the religious and social contexts that made home medicine a necessity for most of the population was empathetic and thought provoking.
The book can get pretty harrowing as Stokker records various stories of injuries and sickness in the isolated Norwegian countryside or the midwestern prairie, when so many children were hitting themselves with axes or stepping onto a hot anvil. That the tellers were able to recover with the help of their parents and a few sliced potatoes or hits of turpentine shows how innovative they could be. Particularly sobering were the chapters on child birth and rickets, and the host of legends surrounding this formerly mysterious childhood disease, in particular that of the huldrefolk replacing a healthy child with a changeling, illustrating how bleak medical conditions could be in an era before knowledge of germ theory and nutrients. Of course, medical science, at the time, often offered no better treatments or, in some cases, worsened conditions.
Most interesting was the information on the “black book,” those mysterious and frightening books of magic of which legends sprung up all over Scandinavia, and which many actually existed. Featuring handwritten formulas and prayers a person scrawled down to stop bleeding, heal bones, or other needs, their diabolic reputations stem mainly from their relation to pre-Reformation prayers and theology- anathema to the rigid Lutheran authorities of the time, who nonetheless provided much of the medical knowledge of the time themselves.
All in all, a fascinating book with a lot of interesting ideas.
February 5, 2016
Kathleen Stokker is known for her thorough studies of Norwegian culture, and her method of comparing the experience of Norwegians to those of their emigrant relatives in America. This examination of folk medicine, mostly in the 19th century, but also in the early 20th and in ages before, demonstrates the same attention to detail, pattern and texture of folk life that Stokker has demonstrated in her other works. Remedies and Rituals explores the varying medicinal methods used by the almuen, Norways peasant class: herbal remedies, leeching and bloodletting, alcohol concoctions, rituals and magical formulas, and medicine made from other substances. Though the medical knowledge and understanding of these common folk (attributing disease to anything from blood aggravation to the huldre-folk, or fairies) was often poor, Stokker shows that their methods were often effective. Though she acknowledges the dismal state of medicine as practices in these traditional societies, Stokker admirably recognizes the skill, wisdom and experience held by these self-trained people, and rightfully criticizes the doctors who snobbishly denounced and often prosecuted them. As she often points out, at this time these doctors' medical knowledge was only slightly more informed than that of the peasants, and the treatment they had to offer was only slightly more consistent and effective. Ultimately, Remedies vindicates the haphazard though experienced efforts of peasant healers, shedding light on a long-darkened and qualitatively rich aspect of human experience and history. Stokker's writing is clear and straightforward, and a pleasure to read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews