"Now many of those things are shown

to me which I was denied before":

Seidr, shamanism and journeying,
past and present
JENNY BLAIN

Summary: One thousand years ago, the Lawspeaker of Iceland went

"Under the Cloak" in quest of answers to problems of religious differ-
ence. This "out-sitting" has been interpreted as a kind of "seidr," poten-

tially shamanistic practice of Northern Europe. This article discusses

practitioner interpretations of evidence for seidr and its relation to
"shamanism" in the old literature, revealing seidr as gendered shaman-
istic practice, involving ecstatic communication with spirits, journey-
ing and shape-shifting, arousing mixed feelings in communities in
which practitioners worked. The article explores ways in which people
in North America and Britain are reconstructing seidr today as shaman-
istic practice with its own contradictions and contestations.

:
Résumé Il y a environ mille ans, l’Oracle/Conteur des Lois d’Islande,
en quête de réponses à des problèmes de conflit religieux, choisit de se «

dissimuler sous le manteau On a interprété cette exclusion volontaire

».

comme une sorte de seidr, une pratique probablement d’origine chama-

nique. Cet article discute des interprétations des preuves du seidr et de

sa relation au chamanisme dans les textes anciens. Ceux-ci présentaient

le seidrcomme une pratique chamanique transgenre », comprenant la

«

communication extatique avec les esprits, les voyages initiatiques et les

changements de forme et créant, par conséquent, des sentiments miti-
gés au sein des communautés dans lesquelles ces praticiens exerçaient.
Cet article explore la façon dont les populations nord-américaine et
britannique reconstituent le seidr aujourd’hui comme une pratique
chamanique ayant ses propres contradictions et remises en question.

Jenny Blain is Senior Lecturer in the Division of Applied Social Sciences, Faculty of Applied
Social Sciences, where she leads the MA programme in Social Science Research Methods,
Sheffield Hallam University, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield S10 2BP UK; e-mail:
j.blain@shu .ac.uk; telephone: 0114 225 4413 or 0114 262 1342.

© 2005 Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion / Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses

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Introduction
Seidr and the associated practice of útiseta (out-sitting) are described in the
Icelandic Sagas and referred to in Eddic poetry. Today, seidr is enjoying a new
lease of life, as part of revived or re-invented magical practices within the col-
lection of spiritualities or religions known variously as paganisms, neo-pagan-
ism and neo-shamanism. In particular seidr forms part of the repertoire of
practice among many today who base their spirituality in what is known of
North European beliefs as adherents of Asatru (in North America, Iceland
and some parts of Europe), Heathenry (in the U.K., Europe and North
America) and various forms of western shamanistic practice in Scandinavia
and the U.K. To a lesser extent it is practised by some adherents of Odinism
(in the U.K. and North America). The politics of Heathenry (which I adopt
as an overall term, in line with developing practitioner usage) is complex, and

this article is not the place for its description; some discussions of Heathenry
and its political spectrum are found in Gardell (2001), Harvey (1997) and
Blain (2006), and this topic is touched on by Wallis (2003). In short, Hea-
thenry falls within the variety of Western paganisms developing today, but
those Heathens among whom I have worked see their practices as being
closer to indigenous spiritualities elsewhere than to some other modem/post-
modern paganisms (notably Wicca).1
I have been actively engaging with seidr-as both ethnographer and
practitioner-since the mid 1990s; my descriptions and analysis here stem
from these experiences. I have elsewhere (Blain 2000, 2002a, 2004) dis-
cussed implications for experiential approaches and the need for those who
adopt an auto-ethnographic epistemology to problematize their experiences
and assumptions. For all groups concerned today, seid practices appear to
involve altered consciousness, negotiating with spirits on behalf of individ-
uals or groups, and foreseeing and possibly healing.
This paper was initially composed early in my engagement with seidr and
was then largely descriptive. It has greatly benefited from comments from two

reviewers, to whom I wish to make a public &dquo;thank you.&dquo; Since its initial writ-
ing, my work has developed producing individual and collaborative articles
and a book (Blain, 2002a). In revising this paper, therefore, I have drawn on
this later material and on further understandings of practitioner meaning
arising subsequently. The work is situated within auto-ethnographic &dquo;practi-
tioner-researcher&dquo; experiences; it reflects practitioner understandings of
older material-texts and archaeology-and it is &dquo;multi-sited&dquo; in the sense that
I have been pursuing seidr-working across areas of North America and
Europe, seeking clues to construction of meaning and the discourse of sei-
dworkers and how practice and meaning become identity. Through an ini-
tial interest in the gendering of today’s Western paganisms, my work with
seidr led me into an increasing involvement with the literature on &dquo;shaman-
ism&dquo; as a Western theoretical construct, versus the living practices and nego-
tiations of individual shamans from a variety of cultures or contexts-not only

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 83

those of Siberia and the Sami of North Scandinavia, but South America,
Korea and elsewhere. Western or academic understandings of shamanism
range from the attempted definitions of Czaplicka (1914) or the more com-
monly met with definitions of Eliade (1964) to Taussig’s (1987) nuanced
positioning of shamanic practice and identities within colonial and neo-
colonial contexts of extreme pressures and restrictions, with the shaman
being one who could improvise, blend, move between interpretations and
manipulate circumstances, taking power where it was available.
Elsewhere (Blain, 2002a), I have attempted to examine some of the
construction of &dquo;past&dquo; seidr, not as a historian or linguist, but as an ethnog-
rapher experiencing other worlds, within a framework provided by critical
anthropology. In this article, I attempt to explore a practitioner’s-eye view,
relating this briefly to some of the literature on shamanism. In my drawing
on the sources that practitioners use, I am attempting to convey something

of the recent development of what in 2002 was becoming a major focus

within Heathenry as reconstructed spiritual practice, namely practitioners’
situated knowledges or theorized understandings.2 I begin with an examina-
tion of the sources from which today’s practitioners gain ideas and con-
struct practice, paying attention to both the sources and practitioner

responses to these sources. Then I examine discussions of shamanism and

understandings of seidworkers in literary sources through the eyes of the pres-
ent-day-what is in effect the past in the imagination of the present. Finally
I return to culture of today and consider some of the explanations and con-
troversies arising.

Under the cloak

One thousand years ago, the people of Iceland were in a quandary. Some
were adherents of the Old Religion of ~Esir, Vanir and Landwights-He10ni
or Heathenry-while others had taken up the new religion of Christianity.

Further, there were external pressures to convert, including economic sanc-

tions and threats to people who were held hostage overseas. At the parliament
(bing) debate became heated. One account of events reads thus:
the Christian people and the Heathen declared that they would
... not live under
each other’s laws, and they went away from the law-rock.

Then the Christians asked Hall of Sida to pronounce the laws for the Christians to
follow. But he declined, making a bargain with Thorgeirr the Lawspeaker that he
should declare the law, being himself still Heathen. And when the people came to
the booths,3 Thorgeirr lay down, and spread his cloak over himself and he lay all day
and the night after, saying no word. And the next morning he sat up and called peo-
ple to the law-rock.
There he addressed them, when the people came, saying that this seemed to him
a desperate condition if the
people and the land were not under one law, and he
related to the people many things that they should not allow to happen and said that

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84

such disturbances must happen, that it was to be expected that such fights would
arise between people that the land would be laid waste .... (Gordon 1957: 37)

Thorgeir’s method of resolving the situation, by going &dquo;under the cloak,&dquo; has
been extensively discussed by Jon A0alsteinsson (1978). Thorgeir’s solu-
tion-accepted by both sides-was for the people and the land to become offi-
cially Christian, while keeping some Heathen points of law. This Christian-
ization at that time applied only to public worship: people’s practices in
their own houses should be their own business. Today’s Norse Heathen
&dquo;reconstructionists&dquo;-the people I am studying-credit Thorgeir’s words
with preventing the suppression of Heathen lore and practices, permitting
the transmission of poems and stories until such time as they could be writ-
ten down and thus providing material for the revival of Heathenry in the pres-
ent day. One practice which they are reclaiming, or reconstructing, is that of

journeying &dquo;under the cloak&dquo; in search of knowledge.

So, what is meant by &dquo;under the cloak&dquo;?

The account translated above, from Ari Thorgilsson’s history of Iceland in
the 12th century,5 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. In the account, Thorgeirr speaks with author-
ity and assurance, and his method of going &dquo;under the cloak&dquo; is accepted as
a valid means of pursuing knowledge: when he emerges, he speaks as though
he has seen possible futures. He is engaging in a form of titiseta, &dquo;sitting out
for wisdom.&dquo; Is his silence one of ecstasy? Though scholars are not in agree-
ment on this, it is a view that is gaining popularity within communities in
North America, Iceland, Europe and elsewhere, who have returned to the
religion or group of religions known variously as Ásatrú, Heathenry or even
Odinism,6 and to others such as the Scandinavian and British neo-shaman-
ists described by Lindquist (1997) and Jakobsen (1999).
Throughout the Icelandic sagas, there are indications of forms of mag-
ical practice, divinatory work, journeying to seek knowledge, disguising the
shape of oneself or others to avoid recognition-or journeying in other
shapes to do harm. Two of the words associated with these practices are
se16r (a term of unclear derivation, often transliterated seidr, today found in
Scandinavia as seid or sejd, and loosely translated as magic, spirit-calling or
&dquo;witchcraft&dquo;), and spa (&dquo;spae,&dquo; foretelling or prophesying). These words have
differing implications within the old literature-the spakona or spamac~r is spo-
ken of with respect, whereas the practitioner of seidr, seic~kona or seiámaár, is
often regarded rather negatively (Blain, 1999). Seidr does not only imply
trance-divination. A possibility is &dquo;messing with people’s minds&dquo; says Jordsvin,
one of today’s best-known North American seid-men, which includes using

shapeshifting to gain knowledge to the detriment of others or influencing or

affecting other people’s behaviour by means of the journey. (This is not,
Jordsvin emphasizes, what he does.)
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 85

Examples from the old literature come from Egils saga Skallagrimssonar.
Egill is in the power of his enemies, in York, England, attempting to write a
poem which will save his life. He cannot concentrate for the twittering of a
swallow-all night long-by his window. His friend goes up onto the roof and
sees the bird flying off. The implication is that the bird is his arch-enemy

Gunnhild, Queen at York and briefly of Norway, who is attempting to prevent

his composition and thereby cause his death. Indeed, he is at York because
Gunnhild has &dquo;messed with his mind&dquo; so that he, restless of spirit, took to the
sea only to be shipwrecked on shores rules from York. Gunnhild is por-

trayed in this saga and in others as ford~ec~a, an &dquo;evil&dquo; sorceress and hamhleypa,
a
shape-shifter; taught seidr by &dquo;Finns&dquo; (probably meaning Simi) and using
her skills to further her own ends. Other examples of &dquo;messing with minds&dquo;
include Snorri’s Heimskringla description of Odin’s seidr, given later in this
article.
The most famous and most complete account of seidr, however, is of
ecstatic-divination. Here the seeress is spoken of respectfully as a spakona or
spaezuoman, yet what she performs is seidr: ecstatic-journeying, assisted by var-
ious powers or spirits who are encouraged to aid her by the singing of a par-
ticular song.
In that time there was a very bad season in Greenland: those who went hunting got
little game and summer did not come afterwards. There was a woman named Th6r-
bj6rg dwelling there; she was a spae-wife and was called Little-V61va. She had had
nine sisters, and all were spae-wives, but she alone still lived. It was Th6rbj6rg’s habit
to go to feasts that winter, and most men who were curious to know their fates or har-

vest-expectations invited her home; and among those Th6rkell was the greatest
farmer, who wished to know what should come to him, how soon the bad harvest
which oppressed him should end. Th6rkell invited the spae-wife home, and she was
well received there, as was the custom when someone should take this woman up on
her habit. A high-seat was prepared for her and a cushion laid under her; that had
to be (stuffed with) hen-feathers. But when she came in the evening with the man
who had been sent to meet her, then she was so readied, that she had a blue man-
tle fastened with strings, and stones were set all in the flap above; on her neck she
had glass beads, a black lambskin hood on her head with white catskin inside; and
she had a staff in her hand with a knob on it; it was made with brass and stones were
set above in the knob; she had a belt of touch-wood, and on it was a large skin purse,
and there she kept safe her talismans which she needed to get knowledge. She
had on her feet shaggy calfskin shoes with long thongs and large tin knobs on the
ends of those. She had on her hands catskin gloves, and they were white inside and
shaggy... the next day, at sunset, she made the preparations which she needed to
have to carry out seidr. She also asked for those women who knew the wisdom
(chant) which was necessary for seidr and was called Varálokur. But those women
could not be found. Then the folk dwelling there were asked if anyone knew it. Then
Gudrid said, &dquo;I am neither magically skilled nor a wise-woman, but Halldis, my fos-
ter-mother, taught me that chant in Iceland which she called Var6lokur.... The
women made a ring around the seat, and Th6rbj6rg sat up on it. Then Gudrid

recited the chant so fairly and well, that it seemed to no one that they had heard the

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86

chant spoken with a fairer voice than was here. The spae-wife thanked her for the
recital and said (that) many of the powers were now satisfied and thought it fair to
hear when the chant was recited so well....&dquo;And now many of those things are
shown to me which I was denied before, and many others.&dquo; (Einks saga rau~a; Gun-
darsson 1994, used with permission)

Though there can be no surety that this particular episode happened as

indicated (or
even at all) the details in this account indicate much about seer-
esses including their costume and their way of life, and how they might be

regarded in time of crisis as well as how they were expected to behave, what
they would need to talk with the spirits. The song is mentioned is, however,
is not provided in the account.
This translation and what it conveys is the model that has been adopted
by many of those who practice seidr in North America today, who attempt to
&dquo;fill in the details&dquo; by drawing on practices common to other forms of neo-
paganism, such as protecting the space in which they work or through &dquo;path-
working&dquo; that attunes those present to the cosmology of the North. I have par-
ticipated in several spae-rituals which follow a pattern: after initial protection
rituals (whether using a smoke smudge, drawing a circle or singing a rune-
row) and invocations, a song is sung that begins the trance journey, through
a tunnel of trees, below the root of the world tree Yggdrasill, and down-

wards through the caverns of earth. This part of the journey is taken by all
participants, not only the seeress or seer, though the seeress will achieve a
deeper level of trance than those who bring their questions to be answered.
This form of spae-working has been devised by Diana Paxson and others in
her California seidr-working group Hrafnar (the Ravens), and spread through
workshops, the internet,7 Heathen magazines and seidr sessions at gatherings
across North America and back to Europe. Through the singing and by

drumming, the seeress gathers energy from the audience of participants

and calls upon her power-animal, or ally, to assist in the journey for knowl-
edge. She then enters a deep trance and continues to journey, where the
other participants do not follow. Another chant takes her &dquo;through the
gates&dquo; and into a realm where she can seek answers to the questions that par-
ticipants will ask.
Western Shamanic Practitioners in Europe have derived from the same
literature another form without the guided meditation and in which the
seeress is accompanied by a circle of singers. Holding firmly to her staff (as

implied in the Eirik’s Saga narrative), the seeress enters a deep trance,
focussing on a specific question, and will return part-way from the ecstatic
state before answering the queries of those others in the circle. These ritu-
als are described by Lindquist (1997) and in various accounts of practition-
ers, for instance in the Core Shamanism newsletter Spirit Talk. Whereas the
Hrafnar version focusses on the cosmology of the nine worlds, the well of the
Noms and the tree Yggdrasill, and includes invocations to 6dinn and Freyja,
the Core Shamanism version has less specificity, with most practitioners

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 87

assuming a more general neoshamanic approach to the upper, middle and

lower worlds though drawing on familiarity with Nordic mythology and cos-
mology. Within Britain, Heathen seid-workers tend to a simpler form than
the elaborate Hrafnar ritual and emphasize links with land-spirits and other
forms of spirit-helpers.
The account in Eirik’s Saga does not indicate the source of Thorbjorg’s
knowledge. However, within Norse cosmology, wisdom comes in part from
the dead, and this is where many of today’s practitioners seek knowledge.
6dinn, the wisdom-god who practices seidr, according to some of the extant
sources, is a death-god. The previously-mentioned present-day spamac~r,
known as Jordsvin, describes his experience thus:
... there’s a guided journey down to Helheim. The people that are doing the pub-
lic oracular seidr go with me, they stop at the gate. We stress &dquo;stay with the group,
don’t go runnin’ off and stirring up the jotnar, you can mess yourself up.&dquo; This is real
stuff, you’re dealing with real beings, it can have real results.... I go down, I go
through Hela’s gate ... I always nod respectfully to Hela, I’m in her living room. I see,
other people see different things, I see a lake, an island and a torch burning on it.
It lights up, the torch and the lake light up the area enough to actually see the dead
people. And I walk down there and they tend gather round, and I’ll say, would
those who need to speak with me or speak with the people I’m here representing
please come forward ... they look like people, the ones that have been there are pass-
ing on I guess to another life or whatever they’re going to do, sometimes they’re just
like shadows, some look like living men and women, some are somewhere in
between. Of course there’s many, many many of them. They ask me questions,
sometimes they’ll speak. Sometimes I’ll be in trance to where I’m answering the
questioner, and the voice that’s coming out of my mouth is, the intonation’s differ-
ent, the accent’s a little different... the voice that’s coming out of me is me and it’s
not me. And sometimes it’s the strangest feeling..... Sometimes I hear voices, some-
times I see pictures, impressions, feelings, uh I have my eyes closed physically, and
I’m in a trance, and I got a shawl over my head, sometimes it’s almost like pictures
on the back of my eyelids... (Interview, 1996)

Not all of today’s seidr-workers use the same techniques, not all visit Hela’s

realm, and not all seidr-workings are oracular. Jordsvin uses similar methods
of trance-journeying to dispel ghosts and finds himself called upon by peo-
ple outside his religion to &dquo;unhaunt houses.&dquo; Bil Linzie’s work is chiefly in
healing and soul-retrieval, and in dealing with death. He terms himself a
&dquo;wholemaker&dquo;:8 his task is to make others whole. Regarded as a shaman, he
works for his local community; most of the people he &dquo;shamanizes&dquo; for are
not of his religion.

Seeress, shaman, shamanist?

Elsewhere I have discussed the extent to which seidr may be considered
shamanic or shamanistic practice, and what shamanism-as an academic
&dquo;ism&dquo;-may cover (Blain 1999, 2002a; Blain and Wallis 2000). While this arti-

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88

cle touches on that discussion, my main focus is here on practitioners’ mean-

ings and their derivations. It is a question that is argued within today’s com-
munities of practice and more generally by Heathens and other Pagans.
Possibly both seidr and titiseta, glimpsed as the rather scattered remnants of
potentially &dquo;shamanic&dquo; techniques in Norse culture, were related to the
shamanic practices of other cultures particularly the neighbouring Sdmi
(Dubois 1999) .
Seidworkers appear in the sagas as marginalized figures, made to appear
as &dquo;other&dquo; through description as &dquo;Finn&dquo; (Sami) or Hebridean. One argument
is that seid-workers are practitioners of sorcery-working magic for specific
clients-but that the communities of today and those of &dquo;Viking-age&dquo; North
Europe were not shamanic. This argument has been given force within some
sections of the community, by Grundy’s (1995) assertion (in a Ph.D. thesis on
the god 60inn) that the &dquo;only figures in Germanic culture which we can point
to as bearing significant resemblance to the ’professional shaman’... are the
seeresses who occupy a position of respect based on their visionary capabil-
ities&dquo; (1995: 220) though they do not demonstrate other shamanic tech-
niques or activities. Seidworkers such as Raudhildr, a member of Hrafnar and
the first to sit in the &dquo;High Seat&dquo; or seidhjallr from that working group, dis-
pute this from their experience: what she does is not, she says, simply &dquo;see-
ing,&dquo; and she understands it as akin to what shamans do.
This question of &dquo;seidworker&dquo; or &dquo;shaman&dquo; relates to questions of what
&dquo;shamanism&dquo; is and how it can be used as a concept to explain or assist
understanding of cultural manifestations such as seidr or out-sitting, and how
far the term &dquo;shamanism&dquo; can be used of people’s ecstatic practices in today’s
Western world. Definitions of shamanism range from Eliade’s (1964), of
soul flight to an upper world, to Jakobsen’s (1999, based in that of Shiroko-
gorov, 1935), of mastery of spirits. Yet these definitions may miss essential com-
ponents and social dimensions of practice in what shamans do (Oosten
1984). A more practice-based definition suggests that shamans work within
communities and what they do changes over time and with changing circum-
stances. Conventional views within academia or popular culture are of
shamanism as somehow &dquo;timeless&dquo; or &dquo;primordial&dquo; (Greene 1998), with the
shaman as a repository of unchanging magical practice, close to nature and
the animals. Magazines such as Shaman’s Drum, available in New Age book-
shops, tend to validate this popular ideal of the primordial shaman holding
unchanging cultural knowledge. Also the reluctance of contemporary West-
ern scholarship to take magic or spirits seriously (Tambiah 1990) may be
reflected in what Dowson (1996) and Wallis (1999) call &dquo;shamanophobia&dquo;
within academia. A better understanding may be gained by viewing shamans
and their shamanisms in context, as political beings engaged in forming
and maintaining relationships with other members of their specific commu-
nities, both human and non-human; with their activities supported by the
community (Blain and Wallis 2000); and, as Green (1998) illustrates, incor-

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 89

porating &dquo;what works&dquo; into their practices and understandings so that

&dquo;shamanizing&dquo; enables a permeability of &dquo;traditional&dquo; and &dquo;post-modern&dquo;
knowledges and practices.
Permeability of a (perhaps) different nature informs insider-debates
on seidr-as-shamanism today. Not only are Heathen practitioners in North
America and Europe drawing directly on the mediaeval literature, they bor-
row &dquo;what works&dquo; from other forms of neo-paganism (as in the Hrafnar rit-

ual, described previously) . Some are trained in Core Shamanic or other

consciousness-altering practice, yet others may have trained with Sdmi or
Native North American shamans; they read both Western shamanic practi-
tioner and academic accounts of shamanisms, where these are available,
e.g., Price’s Archaeology of Shamanism, with, of course, particular attention to
the chapters by Price himself (2001a) and, on neo-shamanism and seidr, Wal-
lis (2001). Indeed, a handful are themselves academic linguists, archaeolo-
gists or (to re-locate myself within the debate) anthropologists or sociologists.
Experience and study inform practice and practitioners comb the sagas
assiduously for examples to fuel the debate. How far, therefore, do or did
these seeresses and seers work in ways that are shamanic, according to this
more dynamic approach to shamanism: involving specific ecstatic practices,

supported by the community and on its behalf?

Within the Icelandic poems and sagas, seeresses, seid-women and those
who are &dquo;much-knowing&dquo; ( fj’olkunnig) appear again and again as part of the
action, influencing events, and even sometimes as central figures. There is
not space in a short article to do more than list them: more detailed descrip-
tions are available in Morris (1991) and Blain (2002a).
Within family sagas they include Thordis, the seeress of Kormaks saga and
Yatnsd~ela saga; another Thordis from Gunnars saga keldugnicpsfi, fls; Oddbj6rg
of Víga-Glúms saga; Nannok of Heic~arviga saga, Heimlaug of Gull-~oris saga,
Thurrid from Gréttis saga; various women in Eyrbyggja saga including the
rivals Katla and Geirrid. They are part of the fabric of the sagas, the stories
of everyday life, written by Icelanders 200 or 300 years after Christianization
to tell of the lives of their ancestors who settled the .country. Though the
accounts are fictive, they suggest cultural frameworks in which ecstasy, magic
and prophesy could occur, in which women could ask spirits to assist them
to further community needs or personal ends. Other sagas and short stories
focussed less on the settlement of Iceland and the ancestors of the writers,
more on the entertainment derived from legends, and these reintroduce the

seeing-women, but now their magic is both more outlandish, less rooted in
daily reality and more often akin to sorcery.
In the tale (pattr) of Norna-Gest, it is told that three wise women came
to the house of Norna-Gest’s parents, at his birth, and foretold his future. A
lack of attention to the youngest nom caused her to attempt to countermand
the great prophesies of her elders, stating that the boy’s life would be no
longer than that of the candle burning beside him. The eldest norn extin-

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90

guished the candle and gave it to the boy’s mother to preserve. Three hun-
dred years later, so goes to story, Norna-Gest related his story to the king of
Norway, accepted Christian baptism, and had the candle lit dying as the
flame expired. Arrow-Odd, the hero of 6rvar-odds saga, likewise had an
extended life, of 300 years, and both this life and the strange death that
ended it were predicted by a seidkona known as Heidr. The implication is that
the prediction of the death is in some way adverse to Arrow-Odd, and indeed
it occurs through his (much earlier) attempts to circumvent it.
Seeing might be only one component of what the fjdlkyngi 9 or sei6kona-
or se10ma0r-could do. As mentioned previously, Gunnhild the ford~e~a (pop-

ularly known as the Witch-Queen) had the power of shapeshifting. A num-

ber of accounts refer to people who likewise change shape: to avoid enemies,
to seek knowledge or to cause trouble. People might discover that their

problems were associated with the appearance of a particular animal, a con-

cept repeated in today’s folk-tales. If this animal was wounded or killed, a
woman would be found with a similar wound, as happened to the seid-
woman Thorveig, in Kormtiks saga, when she took the shape of a walrus.

The shapeshifter is hamhleypa, one who is hamrammr, shape-strong. As

seidman Bil Linzie points out, in the old material there is no overall word for
shaman or community magic-worker, but many words for the components of
shamanic practice. This could indicate-and is held to do so within sections
of the heathen communities today-that by the time of the composition of
the sagas, 200 years post-Christianization, the practices were in decline.
Alternatively it may suggest that the specific components of shamanic/ecstatic
practice were widespread, general knowledge within the community: what
people were called depended on their relations with others in the commu-
nity. If these relations were bad, a woman was fordaeáa. Where relations were
good, we have the spae-woman, a term still used today in Scotland.
So, seidr-related practices are described in the Icelandic literature as relat-
ing individual skills, but their practitioners are named according to their
to
relations with others in the community. Seidr was not simple, and not nec-
essarily either &dquo;good&dquo; or &dquo;evil,&dquo; but in some sense woven into the daily life of
practitioners and those they worked for. In the stories the episodes deal
mostly with individual seidworkers and individual clients. There are, however,
exceptions.
A notable account cited in that of Thuridr
by today’s practitioners
sundafyllir, &dquo;sound-filler,&dquo;
a woman awarded a
within the communities
name

she visited. According to the Book of Settlements she gained her name by call-
ing fish into the sound, by means of seidr, thereby providing prosperity for
the people. Zoe Borovsky (1999) points out that both this instance and that
of the Greenland seeress relate to seidr in association with fertility or pros-
perity, and she speculates that the practitioners used seidr techniques, call-
ing the spirits, to actively accomplish this fertility by bringing the components
of innangar6 and útangará (approximately settlement and wildness, deities and
giants, knowable and unknowable) back into balance within the communi-
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 91

ties. If so, it is an example of seidr as active magic, involving spirits and

ecstatic practice for community benefit and with community support, that is,
it is shamanic in the dynamic, community-based sense mentioned previ-
ously. This instance and its sense of restoring balance are important, today,
for Raudhildr, who relates the incident to her own practices, and tells her own
fishing story (see Blain, 2002a: 98).
So far I have focussed almost exclusively on seeresses and ford~ec~ur,
female practitioners. Most accounts are of women and within today’s commu-
nities seidr is still often &dquo;women’s magic.&dquo; With some exceptions (Kotkell in
Laxdcela saga, Thorgrim of Gisla saga súrssonar, who are identified as practic-
ing seidr) when men are spoken of in the sagas as having knowledge, their
methods are not usually given, other than as out-sitting (litiseta), which is spo-
ken of in the sagas of the kings, in addition to the example of the Lawspeaker
with which this article commenced. Men appear as practitioners of galdr, sung
or spoken spells, which do not involve the shapeshifting, journeying or other
ecstatic components. However that men could perform seidr is evident.
Snorri’s history of the Kings of Norway recounts how Haraldr Finehair, who
became king of all Norway in the 9th century C.E., and his son Eirikr Blood-
axe were responsible for the death of Eirik’s brother Rbgnvaldr Rettilbeini,
a seidmadr, and the troop of 80 sei6menn with whom he was associated, seem-

ingly because Ein1cr and his father did not like &dquo;magic&dquo; or seidr. (Haralds saga
ins harfagra, chap. 36.) If political motivations were involved, Snorri does not
recount those.
One of the best-known accounts of any type of seidr work is by a male,
in this case, 6~inn, the master magician, euhemerized by Snorri Sturluson
as an invading king who used shapeshifting to gain knowledge for himself or
others. I quote from a version most easily available to practitioners, filtering
Snorri’s 13th-century account through a 19th-century translation that in
itself indicates some of the suspicion with which men doing seidr could be
held. 66inn was expert at:
the art in which the greatest power is lodged... what is called magic [sei6r]. By
means of this he could know beforehand the predestined fate of men, or their not
yet completed lot; and also bring on the death, ill-luck, or bad health of people, and
take the strength or wit from one person and give it to another. But after such
witchcraft followed such weakness and anxiety [ergi], that it was not thought
respectable for men to practice it; and therefore the priestesses were brought up in
this art.... His enemies dreaded him; his friends put their trust in him, and relied
on his power and on himself. He taught the most of his arts to his priests of the sac-

rifices, and they came nearest to himself in all wisdom and witch-knowledge. Many
others, however, occupied themselves much with it; and from that time witchcraft
spread far and wide, and continued long. (Ynglingasaga, translation by Samuel
Laing 184410)
This extract implies that seidr-practice was valued differently in men and in
women. The word ergi, translated into this 19th century rendering as &dquo;weak-
ness and anxiety,&dquo; might be more accurately glossed as &dquo;demasculinization&dquo;:

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92

itsmeaning can range from an exact parallel with today’s use of &dquo;faggot&dquo; as
an insult, to &dquo;cowardice&dquo; and to &dquo;engaging in activities normally performed
by women&dquo; (see Meulengracht Sorenson [1983] for a detailed account of the
use of ergi within the mediaeval literature, in particular as insult). In one of
the poems of the Poetic Edda, Loki raises the accusation of ergi against
Óáinn.
But you once practiced se16 on Samsey
and you beat on the drum as seeresses do
in the likeness of a vitki you journeyed among people
and I thought that showed an ergi nature.
(Locasenna, 24; my translation based on Larrington [1996: 89], but I have retained
words bearing on seidr and ergi)

Applied to a woman, ergi seems to have implied sexual promiscuity. Today’s

seidworkers, male and female, dispute meanings of ergi. The word and its con-
testations indicate ambiguities relating to seidr and seidworkers, and embed-
dedness of seidr within political and gendered dimensions. For today’s sei-
dworkers the term raises possibilities of finding ways of relating to the worlds
that are not those of hegemonic masculinity, an abnegation of ego that, so
say some seidworkers, is a requirement for a male of today’s world, in engag-
ing with shamanistic practices (Blain and Wallis, 2000).
Culture and shamanism among today’s Norse Heathens
The material on seidr in the old accounts is plentiful but patchy. In partic-
ular, it does not address questions of how seidworkers learned their craft or
achieved their ecstatic states. Nor does it deal with healing through seidr
trance, although such healing would be expected to be a part of shamanic
practice. The Eddas and Sagas do not provide a manual for would-be prac-
titioners today. So, today’s seidworkers are drawing on the shamanic practices
of various indigenous spiritual traditions and the work of those anthropol-
ogists and others who have studied these cultures and religions. One spae-
woman, Winifred, draws also on her training within Christian spirituality.
However practitioners point to a need to keep the cosmological focus to
maintain the journeying within a multi-dimensional map of the Nine Worlds
of the Eddas. Specific practices are involved in this journeying. As Heathen
shaman Bil Linzie, in an interview for the magazine Idunna, says,
First off, I am faithful to the Northern Gods-in other words, Asatru-and have been
for almost twenty years. Everything that I do, think, say, perceive, or whatever is
passed through that belief system. And because it is filtered through that system,
everything I practice is authentic. (Idunna 26, 1995: 17)
Bil’s description of his work as authentic does not indicate that he is attempt-
ing to re-enact the past. Rather the opposite: he considers that he is ground-
ing his practices (and indeed his life) within a framework of belief and cos-

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 93

mology. Rather than claiming &dquo;authenticity&dquo; because he does &dquo;the same&dquo; as

past seid-men, he claims &dquo;authenticity&dquo; for his adaptations, through the
apparent approval of his spirits and the northern gods, and the local human
(and spirit) communities for whom he produces results. The final test of
shamanic practice and thus for &dquo;authenticity&dquo; is its efficacy.
One point that many seidr practitioners make is that learning to do
seidr is taught through doing it, and that the &dquo;teachers&dquo; are not so much
other practitioners as those met within the journey: whether these be spirits,
the Noms, ancestors or 6dinn himself. The experience of finding a teacher,
or of becoming a traveler between the worlds, can be intense, experienced

by some as frightening or strange, and can cause major changes in how an

individual thinks of her/his self. Some practitioners describe initiation expe-
riences comparable with those found in the anthropology of shamanism, and
I have three accounts of seeming &dquo;death&dquo; experiences within deep trance
states. Even without this degree of intensity, the experience of &dquo;out-sitting&dquo;
can be alarming. One Asatru woman from the southwestern United States,

hearing that I was writing about seidr, emailed me the following:

I would ask that you warn persons about taking this too lightly. I decided to do a sit-
ting out, without any clear idea of what I was there for and had a most disturbing
evening, what I remember of it that is. I woke up in my high seat having drawn runes
and symbols all over my back fence. Had I known better I would have had a note-
book or a tape recorder, I would have prepared something to help me wake up
before it got all fuzzy, and I would have told someone who knew about the runes
what I was about to do. What I got from the runes before the rain washed it away (it
was in chalk) was that I had been very stupid and was lucky that I had not oathed

anything serious to the gods when I couldn’t remember it. Anyway, prepare people
more fully for real magic.... (e-mailed in 1997)

The experience scared her, she says. Her only assurance that she indeed had
not &dquo;oathed anything serious&dquo; in this out-sitting was her own message writ-
ten in runes on the fence. Seid-workers and western shamanic practitioners
alike stress a need for preparation, training and formulating a clear idea in
intention of what is to be negotiated with spirits or gods.
Today’s seidr practitioners are drawing on accounts of spirit or soul in
the old literature in an effort to understand their journeying. The concepts
of mind, spirit and self that are emerging are very different from the rational
individual self of academia. Further, while many North American Heathens,
like other pagans and indeed neo-shamans, can be seen as exemplifying
dominant cultural tendencies including-to quote an anonymous reviewer
of this article-a &dquo;focus on the individual, nostalgia for religious awe, and
skepticism regarding established religions,&dquo; this is not how those seidwork-
ers mentioned in the article necessarily view their &dquo;selves&dquo; or their lives. A par-
ticular difference lies in ideas of &dquo;self&dquo; as divisible, including non-human ele-
ments or entities, and in particular the &dquo;self&dquo; being formed in interaction with
other beings: ancestors, land spirits, plant or animal spirits, a community of

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94

spirit-helpers experienced as external and &dquo;real&dquo; (see. e.g. Blain 2002b).

This possible difference gives reason to study seidr and other forms of
shamanic practice, should reason be needed. People who conceptualize
personhood in the ways indicated in the sagas, with considerable input from
indigenous perspectives, view themselves, their activities and their potential
differently from the &dquo;mainstream&dquo; of society. They act on their understand-
ings, make decisions and plan events and futures within a discursive construc-
tion of person and self that incorporates a sense of being in the material
world, with being &dquo;between worlds.&dquo;
But seidr within today’s Heathenism is in a paradoxical position. The old
material can be interpreted as indicating that seidr was &dquo;evil magic,&dquo; and many
of today’s Heathens, including some who function as leaders, have taken this
approach. They divide into two groups, some holding that seidr and other
forms of magical/ecstatic practice, especially women’s magic, were given a
bad press by Christianity, so that the descriptions of the &dquo;evil&dquo; nature of
seidr were due to Christian influence. In other words, that seidr was not
originally viewed negatively. This group draws on academic sources such as
Jenny Jochens’ (1996) assertion that &dquo;magic&dquo; was originally in the province
of women, increasingly taken over by men and demonized by the church.
Jochens suggests that &dquo;[r] ooted deep in paganism, the oldest magical figure
in the north was not the skilled male magician but the female diviner&dquo; (1996:
130).
Others consider that negativity is inherent in pre-christian as well as
Christian material. Popular Heathen writer Kveld6lfr Gundarsson adopts a
more sophisticated form of
argument, that the word &dquo;seidr,&dquo; as used in a 9th-
or 10th-century context, was generally negative, but that it does not in fact
describe shapeshifting or trance journeying, having rather a precise mean-
ing relating to the calling of spirits to a specific task, and that &dquo;seidr is never
used for healing, soul-retrieval or guiding of the dead to their homes&dquo; (1995:
11). In short, &dquo;seidr&dquo; was evil magic, but that what today’s practitioners do is
not seidr, but spae-working (foretelling) with use of shamanic
techniques
including shapeshifting within the knowledge-journey. Only relatively late,
by this account, did &dquo;seidr&dquo; come to be applied more generally to magical
practice, taking its negative attributions with it. There have been, therefore,
contestations within the community, even over terminology. However it
seems likely that today’s workers will continue to use the term seidr, extend-

ing it to cover the whole complex of shamanic practices.

A complication here is that many people within Norse Heathenism have
come by means of other Earth-centred
religions, notably Wicca. Wicca is
magic-based and Wiccans in general speak of performing magic and &dquo;draw-
ing down deities&dquo; as everyday occurrences, which can be performed by most
or all group members. Yet, within shamanic cultures, few
may actually become
community shamans. Even where, as among the Sdmi, the male household
head is expected to perform some shamanic activity, there is a difference

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 95

between him and one who shamanizes for the community (see e.g., Hult-
krantz 1994: among the Sdmi it is or was mostly men who function as
shamans). Those such as Heathen &dquo;shaman&dquo; Bil Linzie point out that there
is a profound difference between the deep-trance journeys and soul-workings
that he does, and the concepts of &dquo;drawing down&dquo; deities and guided med-
itation ‘ journeys&dquo; which form part of many forms of neo-paganism. He
maintains his work is about transformation, death, life, and is focussed exter-
nally to himself, on those others for whom he does his work. A requirement
for practice is to lose one’s ego, he says. He emphasizes that his work is for
the community, not for personal development. As &dquo;wholemaker&dquo; his task is
to make others whole, as he says in an interview for the Heathen magazine
Idunna:

This way of life requires the ultimate sacrifice to the flow of waters pouring out from
Hvergelmir. Once the sacrifice is made, there is no showing off, no recognition. The
sacrifice is ego.... (1995:11)

For Thorgeirr, one thousand years ago, there was another sacrifice. He
emerged from &dquo;under the cloak,&dquo; so the story goes, to pronounce the end of
an era, of Heathenry as dominant religion. He then went to the cliff edge and
from it threw to the sea his statues, his staff, the tools of his religious practice,
in the manner of making a votive offering. From where came the inspiration
to do this? And could we say-or would today’s Heathens say-that it his
sacrifice, then, that leads Bil, Winifred, Diana, Jordsvin, and all those others
to discover, one thousand years later, what it is to go &dquo;under the cloak&dquo;?

Notes
1 However, one route to Heathenry is via Wicca or eclectic paganism, today, these being the

paganisms most likely to be visible to a "seeker."

2 Thus, in what follows I do not cite Strômbâck (1935), who remains to date the major inves-
tigator of seidr in literary sources, as he is not a direct source for the English-speaking prac-
titioners whose understandings I interrogate. Interested readers can turn to his classic
work, as well as the recent volume by Neil Price (2001b), that both summarizes work on
seidr to date and contributes new insights. The most definitive work on ergi remains that
of Meulengracht Søtrenson, available in English translation as The Unmanly Man (Meulen-
gracht Sørenson, 1983), though the concept of ergi and its multiplicity of meanings is
being again explored theoretically within a range of disciplines (see e.g. Blain and Wal-
lis 2000; Solli 1999).
3 The booths (búir) were the temporary dwellings at the bing, or Assembly, the parliament.
4 Not all like the label "reconstructionist," pointing out that they are not merely reproduc-
ing early practices but developing ways of being in today’s world. It remains a useful
label, however, and some use it deliberately to draw attention to their focus on using
medieval source material. "Reconstruction" is discussed in more detail in Blain 2002
and particularly in Blain 2004.
5 This version is translated from selections from Libellus Islandorum, given in E.V. Gordon
(1957:37).
6 The range of views and engagements with literature, deities, landspirits, etc. is rather large,
and is discussed in part by Gardell (2001). Seidr practitioners—those I have studied—tend

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96

to define themselves as part of "non-racial Heathenry" and indeed consider themselves

to be completely separate from the rather virulent groups at the "right wing" end of
Gardell’s spectrum. Their views on "who can be Heathen" tend to be inclusive. Some how-
ever consider themselves "tribal" or "folkish," while still
distancing themselves from the
more extreme implications of these terms. Their contacts are with
organizations such as
The Troth <http://www.thetroth.org>, or the British-based Association of Polytheist Tra-
ditions <http://www.manygods.org.uk>, and some have connections with kindreds of the
North American Asatru Alliance <http://alliance.eagleut.com>. Much of the groundwork
for the development of oracular seidr has been done by the group Hrafnar <http://www
.hrafnar .org>. The terms "Odinism" and "Northern Tradition" have been used in the U.K.
and to some extent also in North America, but are being replaced among seidworkers I
have worked with, by "Heathenry" or "Heathenism."
7 See The Return of the V&ouml;lva, at <http://www.hrafnar.org>.
8 Making people "whole" does not always imply conventional definitions of health or abil-
ity. Indeed, part of Bil’s work is with spirits of those who are dying. The implied play on
words and sound&mdash;whole/hole&mdash;is in line with the ambiguities inherent in shamanic
healing practice. See web pages at http://www.angelfrine.com/nm/seidhman/index.html,
The Seidman Rants, and discussions of practice in Blain 2002b.
9 Another word for "one who has much knowledge" who gains wisdom by (presumably)
using magical means to seek.
10 Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #15b; Snorri Sturluson (ca. 1225); English
translation by Samuel Laing (London, 1844). Available online at<http://sunsite.berke
ley.edu/OMACL/Heimskringla/ynglinga.html0>.

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