Seiðr

Summary

Seiðr is a practice of magic and divination in the sagas and myths of the North. A woman called a völva sits on a raised platform while other women sing a chant around her; spirits come to her and she learns what is going to happen to people and to the year. Cleasby–Vigfusson says it was worked at night, that it could be used to bring good or harm to a person, or as a kind of oracle to foretell the future.

The clearest description is in Eiríks saga rauða. A hard famine had fallen on Greenland: those who went hunting caught little, and some did not come back. In the settlement lived a woman called Þorbjörg, a prophetess known as the "little völva", who had had nine sisters, all prophetesses, and was the only one still alive. In winter she went round the feasts, invited by those who wanted to know their fate or the season ahead. Þorkell, the chief farmer there, invited her to learn when the famine would end, and prepared a high seat for her with a cushion stuffed with hens' feathers. She came in the evening wearing a blue cloak set with stones down to its hem, a necklace of glass beads, a black lambskin hood lined with white catskin, a staff with a brass knob set with stones, a large pouch at her belt holding her charms, hairy calfskin shoes and catskin gloves. They fed her porridge of goat's milk and the hearts of every kind of animal they had, and she ate with a brass spoon and an ivory-handled knife whose point was broken. She said she would give no answer until she had slept a night.

Next day she was given what she needed "to perform the seiðr", and she asked for women who knew the chant called Varðlokur. None could be found. Then Guðríðr, a guest there with her father, said: I am neither a witch nor a wise woman, but my foster-mother in Iceland taught me this chant, and I do not want to take part, since I am a Christian woman. Þorkell pressed her until she agreed. The women made a ring round the platform, Þorbjörg sat on it, and Guðríðr sang the chant so beautifully that no one present thought he had heard a lovelier voice. The prophetess thanked her and said: many spirits have now come that used to turn away from us and would not obey us, and much that was hidden from me is now plain. To Þorkell she said: this famine will not last beyond this winter, the season will improve with the spring, and the sickness will pass sooner than you expect. To Guðríðr she said: you will marry here, but not for long; your road leads to Iceland, and a great line will come from you. Then everyone went up to ask what he most wanted to know, and the weather soon improved as she had said. Guðríðr's father left the house while this heathen work was going on.

Snorri places seiðr among the gods. In Ynglinga saga he says that Freyja, daughter of Njörðr, was a priestess of sacrifice and "first taught among the Æsir the seiðr that was customary among the Vanir". He says that Odin knew the art with the greatest power in it, called seiðr, by which he could know men's fates and things not yet come to pass, and bring death, misfortune or sickness, and take wit or strength from people and give it to others, "but such ergi, unmanliness, follows this sorcery that men thought it shameful to practise, and the art was taught to the priestesses". In Lokasenna Loki throws this at Odin: they say you worked seiðr on Samsey and beat the drum as völur do, and went among men in a wizard's likeness, and I took that for the mark of an unmanly man.

The idea seiðr turns on is that knowledge of fate comes from a woman seated high in the middle of her community while others sing for her, until the spirits come down to her. It is the community that sends for her in a year of hunger, feeds her the hearts of its animals, and asks her when the winter will end and whom a girl will marry. She gathers in one night what every household fears and gives it an answer. And because the work belongs to women and to the Vanir, a man who does it, even Odin himself, pays for it with his manhood in people's talk.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read this word. Take the nominative r off seiðr and seið- remains, with s and ð. We read it as shadā: Lane says shadā al-shiʿr is to sing poetry, to recite verses prolonging and modulating the voice, shādin is a singer, and shadā min al-ʿilm is to acquire some knowledge and be guided by it to more. Arabic sh becomes s outside Arabic, as in the Juthoor table, and d answers Norse ð. This is what seiðr does in the saga: a chant with a long-drawn voice, out of which comes knowledge that was not there before.

Linguistic Root

Kroonen's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic sets up *saida-, "magic, charm", and says it is identical to Lithuanian saitas, "magic", and Middle Welsh hud, of the same meaning, derived from the root of the Norse verb síða, to work charms, also found in Old English -siden, magic. So the word is old in the languages of Europe, and in all of them it means magic. Cleasby–Vigfusson says the wizards sat on the platform "from which they chanted their spells and songs".

So the reading covers seið- alone: s and ð, with a vowel that alternates in Germanic between ei and í, as the two verbs show. Arabic sh is s in Germanic, and d is ð. The sense of shadā in Arabic is chanting with a drawn-out voice and knowledge that guides to more knowledge, and these are what seiðr does in the account of Þorbjörg: the Varðlokur chant gathers the spirits, then comes knowledge of what is to come. The limit of the reading is that the European word means magic itself while Arabic shadā means singing: the reading reaches the means by which the magic is worked, not the name of the magic.

Key Mythic Narratives

Huld and the Yngling kings

In Ynglinga saga Snorri tells that King Vanlandi married Drífa in Finland and promised to come back in three years, but did not come in ten. Drífa paid Huld the seiðr-woman to draw him back to Finland by her art or else to kill him. When the seiðr was worked he was at Uppsala; he longed to travel, his friends held him back saying it was the sorcery of the Finns, and he fell asleep; then he cried out that a mara was trampling him, and when his men held his head she trod on his legs, and when they held his legs she smothered his head until he died. Later the sons of King Vísburr asked the same Huld to work seiðr so that they could kill their father; she said she would, and that kin-slaying would remain in the line of the Ynglings ever after. They agreed, and burned their father in his house.

Heiðr in Völuspá

Völuspá itself is the speech of a völva telling Odin the beginning and the end of the world. In it the gods pierce a woman named Gullveig with spears and burn her three times; three times she is reborn and she lives still. Wherever she came to houses they called her Heiðr, "a völva of good prophecy, who knew the spirits; she worked seiðr wherever she could", and then comes the first war between the Æsir and the Vanir.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay makes Freyja join love, war and seiðr, and reads the Vanir gods as the producing class of society. Seiðr in Eiríks saga rauða bears this out from inside the text: it is sought in a year of famine, and its questions are about hunting, weather, sickness and marriage, the livelihood of households and the survival of their line; the prophetess's fee is the best food in the house.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Egypt the power of magic itself is a god, Heka, and Ynglinga saga says that Odin could quench fire and still the sea "with words alone", and taught this with runes and the songs called galdrar. In both places magic is speech, but seiðr in the North is the work of a woman seated on a platform while others chant for her, and galdr is a spell that is spoken: Snorri keeps the two apart.

In Japan Ame-no-Uzume dances before the cave where the sun has hidden, on a hollow board that she stamps until it resounds, "as if a kami had come upon her", while all the kami are gathered round her in a darkness whose end they do not know. Þorbjörg sits on her platform among a community in a famine whose end it does not know, and the spirits come to her through the chant. The two rites differ in their aim: Uzume brings the sun out, Þorbjörg learns when it will come out.

Seiðr is the northerners' way of learning what the Norns decree, so the prophetess is asked about fate in the households, as the völva of Völuspá is asked about the fate of the whole world down to Ragnarök. For the northerners it is one of the forms of oracles and divination known to many peoples, from the priestess at Delphi to the kāhin of Arabia.

At Delphi the Pythia sat on a high tripod over a cleft in the earth and spoke Apollo's answer to whoever asked, and the oracle was paid in gold as the Norse seeress was given rings and necklaces; see Delphi.