Seiðr, Gender and Transformation:

From the Sagas to the New Millennium

Jenny Blain
School of Social Science and Law
Sheffield Hallam University

Robert J. Wallis
Dept. of Archaeology
Southampton University

This paper has been submitted to the conference procedings of the Viking Millennium Symposium, where an earlier version was read, for the authors, by Diana Paxson. Our thanks go to Diana for this! Please do not cite or quote from this paper without contacting the authors. Copyright regulations apply. Thank you!

Abstract:

Eiríks saga rauða includes the well-known incident of the Greenland seeress who prophesies an end to the famine, and a good future, particularly for Gúðríðr. Here a respected seeress, a spaewoman, makes use of techniques known as seiðr, including asking spirit-assistance in foreseeing. Elsewhere seiðr may have more negative connotations.

In this paper we explore some dimensions of seiðr, from today's readings of the saga material and from attempts within reconstructionist spirituality and experiential anthropology to investigate boundaries and meanings of these practices. Seiðr is being re-discovered, or re-invented, by a number of groups who draw on the literature. Several areas of contestation arise from these readings, dealing with:

disputed linking of seiðr with shamanic practice elsewhere, notably Saami and Siberian shamanisms, and its relation to 'útiseta';
whether seiðr was seen as 'evil magic', or should be seen so today;
seiðr as 'women's magic'; and
references to male seiðworkers as 'ergi', and implications of these for today's practice.

These points are intrinsically linked. This paper interrogates understandings of seiðr and útiseta as shamanistic practice, embedded in community constructions of meaning and social relations, dynamics between human and spirit worlds, and cosmological concepts of the World Tree and the Norns. It investigates ways in which seiðr was or is linked to community construction and draws on newly emerging anthropological and archaeological approaches to shamanism to further this analysis. In creating a 21st century society, some people are finding that concepts and discourses of seiðr, gender and spaeworking become part of the fabric of their lives, part of their understanding of self, community, and spirituality. This paper asks how these discursive concepts -- re-contextualised -- form today's practice, what their implications for personal and communal transformation are, and what fate lies in store for anthropologists who discuss them.

Introduction

Among contemporary Heathens (see Paxson, this volume) the re-development of seiðr involves altered states of consciousness within which seeking for knowledge, engaging with spirits, promoting healing, and protection rituals, emerge. As such seiðr is being re-discovered, re-invented, or re-created by a number of groups who draw on the literature. Most obviously, Heathens embrace the story of the Greenland seeress from Eiríks saga rauða, who prophesies an end to the famine and a good future, particularly for Gúðríðr (thus forming a link with the site of the conference at which this paper was presented). We have both addressed today's seiðr practices ethnographically elsewhere, Robert in part of his thesis (Wallis 1999b) and a forthcoming book, Jenny within various articles (e.g. Blain 1998, 1999) and in a forthcoming book. A major component of this work explores how practitioners draw on and derive meaning from the sources, including their readings of scholarly interpretations, such as those of Strömbäck (1935), Jochens (1996), Dubois (1999). As seiðr becomes increasingly embedded within today's spiritual communities however, these connections become more secondary to practice. Debatable or contested aspects of seiðr are known about, and sometimes practitioners' views may diverge from accepted 'academic' wisdom.

With this background knowledge, we can explore some dimensions of ancient seiðr and understandings of seiðr practices today, that relate to attempts within reconstructionist spirituality and experiential anthropology to investigate the boundaries and meanings of these practices. In particular we have been looking at several areas of contestation, including:

the disputed linking of seiðr with shamanic practice elsewhere, notably Sámi and Siberian shamanisms, and its relation to 'útiseta';
whether seiðr was seen as 'evil magic', or 'should' be seen so today;
seiðr as 'women's magic'; and
references to male seiðworkers as 'ergi', and implications of these for today's practice.

It is notable that these dissonant issues are arising within today's communities of practice, as within academia. A further contention, with which we are each engaging in our own ways, is the status of using experiential anthropology to explore seiðr - such as the idea that practices involving 'altered consciousness' states require exploration from within, as indicated by Turner (e.g. 1994). We argue this use of experiential engagement in the present facilitates understanding of the past, not as 'truth' but as constructed meaning and contested territory.

Is it 'shamanism'

There are competing definitions, both of seiðr and of shamanism, and practitioners have differing views on each. We draw on recent theorising of shamanisms as active constitution of relationships (involving human and non-human entities), culturally and temporally specific. We draw on what has been called a 'non-definition' of shamanism which does not homogenise what are diverse practices (discussed more fully elsewhere, e.g. Wallis, 1999b; Blain, 1999). We explicitly do not claim seiðr practice as 'shamanism': we do view seiðr as shamanistic, and conclude the twenty-first century Heathen community has potentially 'shamanic' aspects.

It is a much discussed point that if Old Norse cultures of the 'viking' age were not visibly 'shamanic', they were in contact with those that were, including both the Sámi and Finnish peoples. There have been various attempts to demonstrate derivation of seiðr from Sámi practice, but Hultkrantz regards these as inconclusive (1992). Most recently, Dubois (1999) uses seiðr as an example of practices which, in his view, had entered the cultural complex from elsewhere and become modified and adapted as part of the conceptual/magical apparatus available within Heathenry/Heiðni. Dubois contrasts the adaptation (as he considers it) of seiðr with the coming of Christianity in which the initiators, converts or priests did not seek to merge Christian and non-Christian practices, but went to some lengths to avoid pre-Christian understandings and activities. He says:

"Seiðr thus demonstrates a dynamic process of religious exchange operating in the Viking Age in which individual ritual elements - and sometimes even practitioners - crossed cultural and economic lines, becoming reinscribed within the worldview of the recipient community. Seiðr replicated strongly shamanic rituals among Sámi and Balto-Finns, but it also became assimilated into the pre-existing repertoire of religious practices and mythology operating among Scandinavian pagans. This assimilation effected its own substantive changes on the tradition, rendering it a new entity, the product of religious syncresis."
(p.137).

Earlier, Dubois states that:

'Seiðr practitioners are frequently depicted as foreigners, people with Sámi or Finnish connections or (more rarely) links to the British Isles'
(p.128).

Certainly the specifics of seiðr and hamfara - journeying in other shape - are associated with 'foreign' practitioners, particularly Sámi and 'Finns'. It may be that both specific practices and practitioners are imports. The framework within which they are described however, is one in which most people acknowledged the practices, and in which an animist world-view seems to have been quite prevalent. Indeed, Dubois says as much: a range of spirits could be found in rocks, trees, waterfalls, houses and other natural features or artefacts, such as in Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, and Sámi beliefs and practices. Within Nordic practices, offerings to Dísir and other clan spirits point to a focus on ancestors, and the concept of the fylgia (the following spirit attached to one-self at birth - though not necessarily a 'guardian spirit' as Dubois (p.52) implies) provides another of the components associated with an animist world-view. Therefore, while it seems quite likely that components of Sámi shamanism and its practitioners migrated into 'Nordic' practice, we think the development of seiðr must be viewed not only as a 'borrowing' from the Sámi. Shamanic practice elsewhere (see e.g. Greene, 1998) is creative and adaptive; the seiðr practitioners were also developing and changing their practices, and doing so under specific socio-historic circumstances in association with Sámi practice and with regional constructions of gender performance. Sámi practitioners, described in, for example, the twelfth century Historica Norwegiae and in recent ethnographic accounts (Pentikaïnen 1984), seem to have been mostly male, though often with female assistants. The seið-workers of the sagas were, in contrast, generally female and we have speculated that there may be a connection with Norse women training as 'assistants' to Sámi, but practising in their own right and their own way (Blain and Wallis, 2000).

Evidence for Norse, as opposed to Sámi, practitioners comes from 'Viking age' burials where staffs, similar to those described for seeresses and assumed therefore to be those of seeresses, have been found. Neil Price (this volume and thesis in prep.) details and discusses an impressive list of sites in Scandinavia in which either staffs have been identified, or objects previously otherwise classified may be re-interpreted as 'shamanic' staffs. Most are from burials identified as those of women, but one in Norway is of a man, and in several others no attribution has been made (or they are from non-burial contexts). Interestingly, the burial at Fyrkat included fragments of a (possible) staff alongside what was possibly a seeress' talisman pouch (with bones of birds and small mammals, and several hundred seeds of the entheogenic plant henbane (Price, pers. comm)). These may all strongly refer to shamanistic practices, from contact with 'spirit-helpers' to entheogen use. Importantly, most of these burials appear to indicate high status, suggesting that however 'seiðr' may have been viewed, these were not simply marginalised practitioners of a 'foreign' art.

It seems to us that a possible reading of the claimed 'foreign-ness' of many practitioners in the sagas may relate to the author's awareness of seiðr as practice conflicting with the dominant discourses of the thirteenth century audience. Hence, practitioners may be 'othered' by describing them as Sámi or Hebridean, just as they are 'othered' by often having the 'hero' of the saga take the stance of either disbelieving their accounts, or as Quinn (1998) indicates, showing their distaste by ignoring the advice or warning (which is, however, later borne out by events). Furthermore, considerably earlier shamanic or shamanistic practice is also suggested by the burial described by Hjørungdal (1989) from Hordaland in West Norway, which included a wooden staff suggested to be that of a seeress, dated to around 550 C.E. (pers com, Ingegerd Holland).

This, beside other assorted pieces of evidence, strongly indicates indigenous shamanic practices across Northern Europe with, one presumes, specific local patterns associated with gender ambiguity. Over time, these practices gradually developed in the 'Norse' contexts with considerable Sámi input, into the various strands of seeing, hamfara (travelling in altered shape), and protective or attacking magics. These all required some sort of alteration of consciousness and communication with spirits, and they were eventually associated with seiðr. It remains entirely possible that the format of the Eiríks saga rituals, or elements such as the use of the seið-platform, may have been relatively recent 'borrowings', and we fully agree with Dubois' contention that these would have been part of a

dynamic process of religious exchange... in which individual ritual elements -- and sometimes even practitioners -- crossed cultural and economic lines, becoming reinscribed within the worldview of the recipient community
(1999: 137)

We likewise see this as part of a 'decentralised, circulating flow and exchange of religious ideas' (Dubois: 137), in which the flow was multi-directional. However it also seems likely that the cultural boundaries were less sure and more permeable than earlier accounts (such as Strömbäck, 1935) have indicated. Further, even at the time of saga writing, the differences in accounts of seiðworkers (and even between e.g. Thórdis spákona in Vatndæla saga and the same Thórdis in Kormáks saga) indicate that the practices could still bear differences in interpretation. This apparent diversity of practice is important since our approach to shamanism refuses to homogenise seiðr into a metanarrative. We might draw interesting parallels here with today's Heathen practices. Contemporary seiðr is being re-formulated by drawing on strands from other shamanic cultures and from 'neo-shamanism', within an emerging Heathen world-view based on the cosmology of the World Tree, in a landscape that is alive with meaning and peopled by the beings met with in folklore and dreams.

Seiðr and out-sitting

Útiseta or 'sitting out', is a further technique used in the quest for wisdom or guidance in past and present. The most well known description (at least for today's Heathen practitioners) is that of Thorgeir the lawspeaker at the time of the 'conversion' of Iceland, one thousand years ago. The story does not reveal the sources of Thorgeir's knowledge, though it indicates that the people of both old and new religions were inclined to take his word for it. Thorgeirr speaks with authority and assurance and his method of going 'under the cloak' is accepted as a valid means of pursuing knowledge. When he emerges, he speaks as though he has seen possible futures. As such, he is engaging in a form of útiseta, specifically 'sitting out for wisdom'. Is his silence one of ecstatic trance? Though academics do not agree on this, it is a view that is gaining popularity within the Heathen community in Europe, North America and Iceland, and among the Scandinavian neo-shamanists described by Lindquist (1997) and Jakobsen (1999). We find convincing Jón Aðalsteinsson's (1978) arguments that the account of Thórgeir is comparable with descriptions of others who clearly go 'under the cloak', and stay there for extended times for magical or divinatory purposes. Sometimes they are described as 'muttering', 'mumbling' or 'murmuring' into the cloak. Aðalsteinsson points out that:

To mutter or murmur or mumble into one's cloak thus means, as far as one can tell, to rehearse some kind of soothsaying. Those who practised this seemed by their conduct to be able to see what was hidden to others and to gain information in a supernatural way. They appear to have pulled their cloaks over their heads merely to concentrate better on their task.
(1978: 113)

Aðalsteinsson sees Thorgeir's behaviour as more intense and longer-lasting than this, paralleling descriptions from Ireland and Scotland of the seer who would lie wrapped in a bull's hide, for knowledge, and other accounts from Iceland of those who lie still while (presumably) their spirit travels and causes events to occur. There is also, of course, the Heimskringla description of Óðinn who lay as if 'asleep or dead' while his spirit journeyed.

In the sources, the knowledge gained through sitting out would be used by the out-sitter immediately/'internally', or revealed at a later stage, rather than narrated in trance. Sitting out typically involved sitting on a burial mound or at a crossroads. Going under the cloak did not require a mound -- it could be done wherever one was, but it certainly implied a distancing of oneself from the other human members of the community. The one who was sitting out was not to be disturbed, and in particular their name should not be mentioned (Aðalsteinsson, 1978). Like seið, Útiseta also became problematic, proscribed in Iceland in the laws of the 13th century (which remained in place until the 19th century), in terms that name '...fordæðuskap ok spáfarar allar ok útiseta at vekja tröll upp ok fremja heiðni,' ('sorcery and spae-working (foretelling) and sitting out to wake up trolls and practising heathenry'). This associates útiseta with gaining knowledge from other beings or spirits (we might best treat the term 'trolls' as a derogatory re-working during Christian times). Referring to this law, Hastrup comments that 'By the act of sitting out, which was a metaphor for leaving the ordinary social space, it was possible to invoke supernatural beings.' (Hastrup, 1990: 391) While the penalty was death, no-one was convicted until Iceland's small witch-craze in the 17th century. As with ancient seiðr, members of today's Heathen community are attempting to rediscover útiseta, seeing it as a solitary practice of seiðr, whereas oracular seiðr is a community ritual. Out-sitting is also part of the practices of many other neo-shamanic groups today, though not necessarily framed in a Heathen worldview.

Men (and some women) appear also as practitioners of galdr -- sung or spoken spells -- which do not, as far as we know from the sources, involve shape-shifting or other shamanic/ecstatic components (and which together with knowledge of runes in the early modern period formed the basis of the few witchcraft accusations and convictions in Iceland (Hastrup, 1990)). However, that men could perform seiðr is evident. Snorri's history of the Kings of Norway recounts how Haraldr Finehair (who became king of all Norway in the 9th century CE), and his son Eiríkr called Bloodaxe, were responsible for the death of Eirík's brother Rögnvaldr rettilbeini, a seiðmaðr, and the troop of eighty seiðmenn with whom he was associated, seemingly because Eiríkr and his father did not like 'magic' or seiðr (Haralds saga ins hárfagra, ch 36. See e.g. Monsen, 1932). Rather than representing a purely individual relation between people and the spirit world, the practice of seiðr and útiseta appears, according to this evidence, to be associated with gender and with political power (Blain, forthcoming).

Other associated political dimensions may be evident in today's community, as will become apparent. However, many people are enthusiastic about the techniques and about their potential for use in healing and alternative medicine, as well as divination. They also see journeying and útiseta as a way to gain personal knowledge of the cosmology of the World Tree Yggdrasill, and of deities and other wights, and so to explore the possibilities of religion with conceptions of self and spirit.

'Evil magic', 'women's magic'?

In the long run, whether seiðr is a 'borrowing' from Sámi practice that was developed and integrated within Nordic and other regional religious contexts, as Dubois indicates, or whether seiðr represents 'indigenous' fluid practices that were developing and changing over time in exchange with Sámi and other practitioners, these factors may not be the most telling of its features for today's practitioners (though they may deter those for whom 'purity' and 'race' are issues). More important are the nuances that surround seiðr practice, whether past or present. In this we can see seiðr as part of a complex of activities including seeing, runic or spoken magic, and útiseta. But the association of seiðr through spirit contact, with the ability to manipulate thought or wyrd, seems to have been always problematic, and increasingly so for men. Dubois says:

The [perhaps] underhanded, covert workings of seiðr must have represented a further reason for male aversion to it, at least in public. In a society that valued a forthright male manner and a ready embrace of outward conflict, a ritual allowing the secret manipulation of another's will would violate ideals of proper masculinity... Such trickery is typical of Ódinn... but it appears more problematic for his male disciples
(1999: 137).

Others too have suggested that these 'underhanded' ways of operating go against hegemonic masculinity, though they may be valued when undertaken by women who do not have the legal (as well as agonistic) remedies afforded by the Icelandic system to men. (It could be pointed out that not only 'magic' could be seen as devious or 'underhanded'. The sagas are full of accounts of people - men - twisting the law and using it to their advantage!) Some seiðworkers today would dispute that their magical techniques would always have been seen as 'underhanded', but in working with seiðr today they know the saga passages, and the reputation that seiðr acquired.

In the sagas, seiðr is primarily women's magic: Ynglinga saga holds that the first practitioner of seiðr was the goddess Freyja, who taught this magic to the god Óðinn (the master magician and a major deity in contemporary Heathenism). In the Eddic poems (e.g. Larrington, 1996), we are introduced to the völva or prophetess who speaks the great poem Völuspá, and to Heiðr (who may be Freyja herself, or may be another name for the völva who is speaking). In the poem Lokasenna, Freyja is described as 'fordæða', a word for a (usually evil) magic-working woman. In addition to Thorbjörg the seeress of Eiríkr the Red's saga, there are numerous women mentioned in the sagas who are described as seiðkonur (seiðwomen), or as illusion-workers or shape-shifters. Some of these sagas deal with the everyday lives of Icelanders, and while they were composed some two centuries after the episodes they purport to record, people are portrayed in them as engaging in activities of a fairly usual kind, so that the concept of the seiðwoman or völva seems one that was generally acknowledged. In Landnámabók, the Book of Settlements (Pálsson and Edwards, trans, 1972), we read of Thurídr sundafyllir, who gained her name 'sound-filler' by calling fish into the sound by means of seiðr, thereby actively engaging with spirits and environment to provide prosperity for the people. This marks a rare description of a seiðkona acting primarily for the community. Jochens has suggested that seeing was originally something women did, and that in the written material of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they came to be portrayed increasingly as evil. Further, men engaging in seiðr were apparently known as 'ergi', a term which has caused consternation amongst scholars and today's Heathens alike.

'Seiðr is for women and gay men' was one comment on an Asatru email list that caused a major controversy due to the implied homophobic stance of the individual making the assertion. Heathenism, as reconstructed today, appeals to middle England and America. Homophobia is institutionalised hegemonic discourse within these populations: not the aggressive homophobia of hatred, but the assumption that 'normal people' are heterosexual coupled with a fear of diversity. Several seið-men have reported that they are deemed to be 'ergi' by others, and that the word is given only one meaning by those who throw it at them. Here are some of the comments that were given us for a paper on these 'Ergi Seiðmen' (forthcoming in Journal of Contemporary Religion).

I occasionally get bigoted rants via email, usually from young males high on testosterone and bravado, usually with blatant homophobic content. Large sections of the Heathen community really need some education on this matter.
(Jordsvin: a gay male seiðworker)

Having been practising seiðr for a good while now, the 'ergi' accusation gets thrown at me on a regular basis, usually with some very uneducated and childish interpretations along with it.
(Malcolm: a straight male seiðworker)

A number of men who do seiðr are gay. But an increasing number of 'straight' men are being drawn to it, says Diana Paxson of the Hrafnar Community in San Francisco. Jordsvin is involved with training others, female and male, gay and straight. He says:

The concept of sexual orientation per se is a modern one. There do seem to be references in the lore connecting men who do seiðr with men who have sex with men, more specifically, men who are in the receptive role during such activities. Obviously, this should not be an excuse for bigotry against gay people today. Gay men and women seem often to show a knack for seiðr, but heterosexual men can and do learn it and do it quite well.

Some of those who do seiðr today, male or female, are engaging with meanings of the term 'ergi'. For instance, Malcolm considers that 'ergi' may have a broader meaning than specifically sexual behaviour. He interprets 'ergi' in terms of rejection of conventional masculine ideology, including today, rejection of violence as a first line approach to dealing with interpersonal problems. He is practising in Scotland and he points to a related Scots word, 'argi', used to mean 'coward, one not using the resources men are expected to use'. For other practitioners, the word 'ergi' may be a reminder that the relations that practitioners enter into with spirits, in addition to those with members of the human community, do not necessarily conform to conventional western gendered 'roles', Indeed, the concept of 'third and fourth genders' (discussed by numerous anthropologists with respect to shamanic cultures elsewhere and applied to 'berdache', 'two-spirit' or 'changing ones' (see, for example, Jacobs et. al. 1997, Roscoe 1998) may be one that can be usefully used in considering seiðr, as long as it is not seen as a straightforward, monolithic application of 'male, female, and other' which merely reinforces the Western conflation of sex with gender. We have examined this concept elsewhere (Blain and Wallis, 2000, Blain forthcoming), suffice to say here, that in this area as others, seiðworkers exist within political dimensions that include contestation and challenge. They challenge existing stereotypes; others challenge what they do and the ways in which they construct identity from their non-normative locations.

Seiðr and rationality

Finally, a word about contemporary seiðr and rationality (see also Blain, in press). The activities of 'contact with spirits' and the descriptions given by practitioners about shamanic initiations, and about what they can 'do' in trance as a result, are counter to an number of social assumptions about what people can and should do. In a world that values rationality, acquisition of belongings or artefacts, and advancement through institutionalised gendered social hierarchies, any shamanistic practice may potentially be threatening because it allows for possibilities of creating meaning outside the narrowly-circumscribed 'choice' of 'legitimate' socio-economic activity. Many other neo-shamanisms appear in the West as individual practice, forms of psychological 'self-help' that marginalise the practitioner while exoticising the 'other', the 'primordial traditional shaman' with whom the practitioner identifies (Wallis 1999a). Seiðr inverts this procedure not only by being community practice, but by existing within a framework that draws directly on the roots of the Northwest European societies within which it is practised today. It is a reminder that the ancestors of Western society were not 'rational' in today's terms, and that they dealt or were forced to deal directly with death, transformation, and knowledge in ways that are non-normative for Western society today. So today's practitioners, male or female, create relationships with ancestors and 'spirits', and in living these become changed by the experience. Within this fluidity of meaning and shaping of self and community, conventional labels of 'gay' or 'straight' need not apply.

Men and women who engage with seiðr today are shaping their own understandings of 'ergi' as they deal actively with discourses of gender and sexuality, positioning themselves as active agents of change as they seek to understand their own worlds. Some men (and women) are actively attempting to reclaim the term to describe themselves, their practice and worldview. 'Ergi' becomes a process of identity and a means of dissonantly 'queering' the perceived socio-spiritual norms of the present and the past (for discussion of queer theory in the context of autoarchaeology, see Wallis 2000). Seiðr becomes political practice, existing within gendered political dimensions today, as are other forms of shamanistic practice elsewhere. And 'doing seiðr' becomes both a central process and a central location in practitioners' shaping of their identities and their social relations of practice. Jordsvin understands himself as a seiðworker within contested contexts. Similarly, seiðr in the past, existing as part of community relations and with a context of increasing centralisation of power (and resistance to that centralisation), and of ideas associated with the coming of the new religion, was political practice.

Today's practitioners are not attempting to re-enact the past. They are attempting to work within today's world and meet its challenges, through processes and relations constructed in dialogue with a spirit world. Those of us who study the process, and engage with its practices experientially as researcher-practitioners, deal likewise with challenges from academia to any experiential forms of altered-consciousness research. It is our contention that in moving between the worlds, we can shed new light that furthers understanding of this contested terrain in both past and present, through examination of our own contexts and their construction today.

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