Viking Kitties!
Because Viking Cats
Cats and the Middle Ages are given a bit of a bum rap. It is assumed that cats were associated with witches and were thus banned forever, all of the time, and viewed as evil.
This isn’t 100% wrong. There was that time that Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241) issued a bull called the Vox in Rama that denounced black cats as tools of the devil. He seems to be reacting to an inquisitor who went to Germany (an eternal source of weirdness) and heard rumors of satanic rites that used cats. The Templars were accused of using cats in their initiation ceremonies too when Phillip the UnFair Mooch avoided paying them.
But not everyone was on board with the cat-hate. At the very least, their relationship to the animals was nuanced.
In addition, as famous historian Chris Wickham put it: “1000 years is a long time, and the world is a big place.” (I might have that worded wrong, but my point is that blanket statements about ‘the Middle Ages’ is covering a huge swathe of humanity, and there is going to be exceptions to anything you say about it.)
A big example of just how nuanced things can be is the Norse, and how they treated cats throughout the Middle Ages.
Sadly- Kitty Coats
In some ways, I’m going to have to start by reinforcing the stereotype, at least a little.
Cat fur was a commodity throughout the Middle Ages, often as a poor person’s type of fur lining for cloaks and such. Trading centers such as Hedby have middens full of cat bodies that were tossed after they were killed and skinned from the snout back so people can sell their pelts. These bodies are generally of young cats who seemed to have been allowed to feed in the wild and then were caught when their winter coat was at its fullest.
Birka, however, has no such kitty mass graves, despite the prevalence in other places. Folks in Birka traded a wide variety of other furs, but they seemed to have kept cats as pets and didn’t want to wear their pelts.
Even More Sadly
During famines, cat meat was considered an acceptable food source, and cat bone piles could indicate hard times for humans from that era.
Kitty Burials
On the other hand, gravesites from early in the Viking Age include the bones of cats that look like they were prestige animals sent to keep fancy people company in death. They are included often with high-ranking noblemen, suggesting rich dudes wanted to take their pet kitties into the afterlife or that cats were sacred animals you sacrificed to honor someone important.
As time went on, the practice of burying cats with people trickled down to a broader base of society. Women started being buried with cats, and the gravesites of more middle-class folks of both sexes also tended to include cat bones. At the far end of the era, children were particularly buried with cats. Twice, they went so far as being the child’s only companion in the grave.
It is difficult to figure out the context of these types of burials because cat bones are not resilient. However, at least one grave had a whole cat in it, so it feels reasonable to assume they were important as symbols and pets.
Kitty Sacrifices
In one of my books, a cat is sacrificed to the saints to insure a safe building. This is based on the widespread practice of burying a cat in the walls of a house for protection.
Old Norse folks seemed to do this more officially by sacrificing cats at temples. There are not a lot of cat bones at these sites, so they may not have been very important as sacrificial animals. On the other hand, cats seem to be kind of rare in general at that time period. It has to be remembered that cats really show up in Northern Germany and Scandinavia around 500 AD or so, though they might have been trickling in as early as the first century AD.
Kitty Art
Some other archeological finds that put cats in a prominent, positive light are artistic.
You know how Birka didn’t have cat fur factories? What they do have is an amber figurine of a cat. It’s about 3 centimeters long and has holes drilled in it, and it was made at a time when children were frequently buried with cats. So, a going hypothesis is that it was toy for children.
Cats show up on swords as well. The ‘gripping beast’ motif that Viking Age swords sometimes use a cat as the beast that is doing the gripping. For instance, there is a sword hilt from the 9th century that was found in Scotland with just this depiction.
The Prose Edda
A solid couple of centuries after these things happened, Norse sagas were written down. In these instances, cats are associated with the old-world gods and sorcery. Freyja has cats pull her chariot in the Prose Edda (though she rides a boar in other stories), and a witch in Eric’s saga very specifically wears cat fur as part of her magical get-up. In the Vatnesolda Saga, an evil giant takes the form of a massive cat.
But these works were written in the 1200’s. Most Norse people were Catholic by that time. Are we looking at some syncretism here?
Cats continued their complicated relationship with humans as time went on. By 1862, there were stories of the ferocious Yule Cat in Iceland that stalked people who didn’t get new clothes for Christmas (which sounds like an ad campaign to me.) On the other hand, while people playfully use black cat iconography to depict the occult, cats in general are popular pets. I haven’t heard of any cat fur coats recently, either.
The relationship between bipedal apes and Felis Domesticus is way more complicated than some people will have you believe, but I only have time for the Norse version right now.
However, cats and the Irish would also be a good topic. That’s where fines against killing someone’s cat were levied, anchorites were allowed one kitty as a companion, and the poem Pangur Ban, which is about a cat and the moral lesson he can impart, come from.
Actually, before the 1100’s, cats seemed to have been well-regarded in Christianity in general. They were the only creatures allowed in monasteries, and they were generally praised and often depicted as helpful. I don’t know what changed, but there are definitely some nuances to look at here. Not creating that long diatribe right now, but maybe later.
Source:
Vikings and Cats — Medievalists.net