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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter III: Heathenry & Runes

Seiðr: Norse Magic, the Völva and Modern Oracular Seidr

Seiðr explained: Old Norse magic of the völva in the sagas and Eddas, Odin, Freyja and ergi, the graves of seeresses, and modern oracular seidr.

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Seiðr (often written seidr or seid) is a form of magic described in Old Norse literature, practised above all by women seeresses called völur, and used to foresee the future, influence the weather and luck, attract or harm people, and contact spirits. The fullest description, in the thirteenth-century Saga of Erik the Red, shows a seeress on a raised seat entering a trance while songs are sung to summon spirits. In the sagas seiðr is associated with the goddess Freyja and the god Odin, and it carried a stigma of "unmanliness" when practised by men. Since the 1980s it has been reconstructed as a ritual of oracular trance in modern Heathenry.

What Seiðr Was: Words, Practitioners and Purposes§

Old Norse distinguished galdr, spoken or chanted spells often linked with runes, from seiðr, a practice involving altered states, spirits and song. The origin of the word is uncertain; some scholars connect it with words for a cord or binding, suggesting the image of drawing or spinning, which fits the frequent association of seiðr with women's textile work and with the Norns who spin fate.

The sources name several kinds of practitioners. The völva (plural völur), probably meaning "staff-bearer", was a travelling prophetess, received with honour by households that wanted to know the future. A seiðkona was a woman who performed seiðr, and a seiðmaðr a man who did so; male practitioners are fewer and usually portrayed negatively. The purposes of seiðr in the sagas range widely: prophecy about harvests, marriages and the fate of individuals; drawing fish or game to an area; raising storms against enemies; causing madness, sickness or death; and confusing an opponent's mind. It was therefore morally ambiguous, valued as prophecy and feared as sorcery. For the wider religious background, see Norse and Germanic religion.

All of this evidence comes from texts written by Christians, mostly in Iceland, between about 1150 and 1350, and scholars debate how far it preserves real Viking Age practice rather than literary convention.

The Völva in Eiríks Saga: A Seeress in Greenland§

The best-known account of seiðr comes from chapter four of the Saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks saga rauða), which describes events in the Norse settlements of Greenland around the year 1000. During a famine, a farmer invites the seeress Þorbjörg, called the "little völva", to tell when the hard times will end.

The saga describes her dress in unusual detail: a blue cloak set with stones, glass beads, a black lambskin hood lined with white catskin, catskin gloves, a pouch of charms and a staff with a brass knob. She is given a meal including a porridge of goat's milk and the hearts of various animals, and the next day a high platform or seat (seiðhjallr) is prepared for her. The rite requires women to sing a special song called varðlokkur, which summons the spirits. Only one woman, Guðríðr, knows it, having learned it from her foster-mother in Iceland; as a Christian she is reluctant, but she agrees and sings so beautifully that the völva says many spirits have come who would otherwise have turned away. The seeress then prophesies the end of the famine and Guðríðr's own distinguished future, and answers the questions of others present.

The passage underlies nearly all modern reconstructions of seiðr. It was written some two centuries after the events it describes, but several of its details correspond to archaeological finds.

Odin, Freyja and the Problem of Ergi§

In the mythology seiðr is associated with two deities. In Ynglinga saga, the first part of his history of the Norwegian kings, Heimskringla (c. 1230), Snorri Sturluson says that Freyja, of the Vanir, was a priestess who first taught seiðr to the Æsir. He also says that Odin knew and practised seiðr, the most powerful form of magic, by which he could know the fates of men and cause death, misfortune or illness, but that such great ergi followed it that men thought it shameful to practise, and it was taught to priestesses.

Ergi is a strong insult in Old Norse, meaning unmanliness and implying sexual passivity in a man. The Eddic poem Lokasenna has Loki taunt Odin with having practised seiðr on the island of Samsey "like the völur", calling it the mark of an argr man. In the sagas, male seiðr practitioners are often villains; in Heimskringla King Harald Fairhair's son Rögnvaldr, a seiðmaðr, is burned together with other sorcerers by his half-brother Eiríkr Bloodaxe on the king's orders.

Scholars have interpreted the stigma in different ways: as a reflection of the gendered division of ritual roles, as a sign that the trance involved a receptive or "opened" state considered feminine, or as an effect of later Christian and literary attitudes. The opening of the Eddic poem Völuspá is itself the speech of a völva, who recounts the creation and the coming destruction of the world, and a later stanza describes a figure named Heiðr who travels from house to house practising seiðr. On the gods themselves, see gods and goddesses of modern Paganism.

Archaeology of the Völva: Staffs and Graves§

Archaeology has added an independent line of evidence. Across Scandinavia, archaeologists have found some dozens of Viking Age graves, mostly of women, containing iron staffs with ornate tops, sometimes with a basket-like cage of rods near the upper end. The archaeologist Neil Price, in The Viking Way (2002, revised 2019), argued that many of these were the staffs of seeresses and that their owners were buried with other unusual objects: amulets, animal bones, small bags of seeds or other substances, and rich clothing.

A frequently cited example is a tenth-century woman's grave at Fyrkat in northern Jutland, Denmark, which contained silver jewellery, amulets, a small pouch with henbane seeds and other unusual objects that excavators have interpreted as belonging to a ritual specialist. Henbane is a toxic plant, and some scholars have speculated about its use in trance; the evidence is circumstantial, and its presence may have had other purposes. (On the cultural history of such plants, see entheogens and sacred plants.) The richly furnished Oseberg ship burial of 834 has also been linked by some writers to ritual roles, though this remains speculative.

These finds suggest that women with special ritual status did exist in the Viking Age, though archaeologists differ on how many of the staffs had a magical function.

Seiðr, Galdr and Sámi Shamanism§

Since Dag Strömbäck's study Sejd (1935), scholars have debated whether seiðr should be called a form of shamanism. The Norse sources often connect powerful magic with the Finnar, the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia, whose religious specialists, the noaidi, used drums and trance to travel in spirit and deal with spirits. Norse and Sámi peoples lived in close contact for centuries, and some scholars see seiðr as influenced by Sámi practice; the mysterious drum-like vétt in Lokasenna is sometimes read in this light.

Others, including Clive Tolley in Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic (2009), urge caution, arguing that the Norse texts are literary and that "shamanism" as a general category, shaped by Siberian ethnography, can obscure more than it explains. Most agree that seiðr was distinct from galdr, the art of chanted spells and runic charms discussed in runes and their history, although the two could overlap in practice. For the wider comparative debate, see shamanism.

Modern Oracular Seiðr in Heathenry§

Seiðr has been revived in modern Heathenry, the contemporary religion based on pre-Christian Norse and Germanic traditions, described in Heathenry and the runes. The most influential reconstruction was developed from the late 1980s by the American writer Diana L. Paxson and her group Hrafnar in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using the Saga of Erik the Red as a template, Hrafnar created a ritual of "high-seat" or oracular seidr: a seeress sits on a raised chair, the participants sing and are led in a guided journey, the seeress enters trance and travels in vision to the realm of the dead, and members of the community ask her questions in turn.

The practice spread through North America, Britain and Scandinavia during the 1990s and 2000s. The anthropologist Jenny Blain studied it ethnographically in Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic (2002), and practitioners such as Katie Gerrard in Britain have written guides. Some practitioners aim for close historical reconstruction; others combine it with techniques from modern "core shamanism". Some Heathens are wary of seidr, because of the ancient stigma, because trance work can be risky, or because they see modern forms as more New Age than Norse. Practitioners commonly stress careful preparation and grounding, and participants with mental-health concerns are generally advised to approach trance work with caution. Some male and queer practitioners have embraced seidr precisely because the sources tie it to transgressions of gender norms.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the difference between seidr and galdr?§

In Old Norse sources galdr refers to spoken or chanted spells, often in verse and sometimes linked to runes, while seiðr is a distinct practice involving trance, spirits, special songs and often prophecy. The two could overlap, but writers such as Snorri treat them as different arts.

Was seidr only practised by women?§

Mostly, in the sources. Men who practised seiðr were accused of ergi, or unmanliness; Odin is the great exception among the gods, and the few male seiðmenn in the sagas are usually villains.

Is seidr a form of shamanism?§

Scholars disagree. Seiðr involves trance and spirits, and Norse sources link powerful magic with the Sámi noaidi, but some scholars warn that the label imposes a modern category on literary sources.

How is seidr practised today?§

Mostly as oracular or high-seat seidr, reconstructed by Diana Paxson's Hrafnar group from the Saga of Erik the Red: a seeress on a raised seat enters trance with the help of song and answers questions.

Sources and further reading§