23272731-Yves-Kodratoff-Nordic-Shamanism.pdf

Seiðr, seið, Sol-Iss-Þurs and Nordic shamanism

Yves Kodratoff

This article is composed of two very different parts.

The first part is personal, and it exposes my practice of seiðr, by comparing it several

times to the one coming from Diana Paxson’s group and in Jordsvin’s papers. I thus

recommend to read at first these papers before mine. The second part explains and

supports my own practice of seiðr, but the facts it contains are independent of any belief.

It is subdivided in two sections. The first is a rather scholarly description of the linguistic

problems involved with the word seiðr in Old Norse, the ancient Norwegian, (and

Icelandic, Danish, Swedish) language, used in the sagas and the Eddic and Skaldic

poems. The second is an annotated presentation of the runic inscriptions referring or

alluding to seiðr.

On seiðs practice

I was not fortunate enough to meet someone like Diana Paxson, nor a group of persons

devoted to reconstruct such a seiðs practice that might reconcile the scarce written

tradition available to us, and the present day ethical choices. Even though I know nothing

of group seiðs practice, I do feel strongly my belonging to the ‘seiðfolk’, as Jordsvin calls

them. I thus worked the seiðr in isolation but, inversely, I had, over the years, the luck to

practice several different approaches to ‘non Nordic’ shamanism in various settings. I

therefore use the so-called classical shamanic techniques to deal with some of the

problems instead of using systematically seiðr. For instance, both American Indian and

Siberian shamanisms include the re-gathering of lost soul parts, the cutting of abusive

soul links, different kinds of spiritual counseling, and the hard psychopomp work, that is,

convincing the souls of the dead ones to accept the lo ss of life and helping them to join

the realm of the Dead. I followed the teachings of many master shamans and the most

influential one has been Sandra Ingerman. I strongly suggest the reading of

[Sandra Ingerman, Soul Retrieval : Mending the Fragmented Self, Harper San Francisco,

1991].

It follows that, in the surface, I look like some Heathens who use the word seiðr for a

kind of active magic, mostly of an aggressive and destructive type, but this is due to no

theory of mine. It simply follows from some random choices that happened during my

life. Anyhow, as I shall explain now, I do not believe that it is possible to oppose a nice

shamanism to a harmful seiðr. More generally, I strongly oppose the concepts of ‘black

magic’ and a ‘white magic’: obviously people have varied social and ethical positions,

but magic is of one unique brand. My shiatsu master liked to say that there is a feature,

strongly common to the shiatsu healer and the samurai, which is that both have to single

out, at first sight, the weakest point of the person standing in front of them. This point

shows where Death starts worming its way in this person. Both move fast their hand

towards this weakest point. The samurai does it to increase Death’s speed in his

opponent, the shiatsu healer does it to reduce this speed in the patron. Any society

produces its own shiatsu healers, and its own samurais. We are only able to try, as much

as our social ranking allows us to do so, to choose which class we wish to belong to.

Since I have always been interested in understanding the why and the how of illness, I

practice seiðr mainly as a healing technique. It seems to me however obvious that the

knowledge used for healing could be very easily used also for the sickening, almost in the

same way. We shall now analyze the example of shiatsu, which is further from magic

than seiðr, thus easier to tell in words. In principle, the work of a shiatsu healer is finding

out which parts of the sick body possess some excess of energy (excess of ki, we call

jitsu) and which ones lack energy (lack of ki, called kyo). An optimistic view of reality

could lead some persons to believe that kyo and jitsu should have a natural tendency to

balance themselves. This is partly true in the healthy body, but the sickness is nothing but

an evidence that the imbalance is fixed and now stable in the sick body. The hard part of

the healer’s work is to fight this acquired tendency of the sick person. We observe

sometimes the contrary among the beginners who confuse jitsu and hard- under-the-hand,

and kyo and soft- under-the-hand. Fortunately, they are usually also very bad at balancing

the energies and their treatment is harmless, if useless. I know that what I will now say,

may cause stomach heaving to shiatsu healers who read this, since we are so intensely

trained towards fighting illness. Nevertheless, that it is a beginner’s mistake, hints

strongly at the possibility it is easier to perform than the normal healing treatment. I

cannot witness directly the truth of my hypothesis since I never tried to practice this

harmful shiatsu, but I am quite convinced that a well- trained shiatsu healer, moved by

hate or greed, could very well reinforce the imbalance of ki causing the sickness, thus

sickening rather than healing the patient.

Similarly but in a still more irrational way, seiðr tries to reenact a balance that has been

destroyed for any number of reasons. A destructive magician (called an adept of ‘black

magic’) must observe the potential victim, spot the victim’s weakest point and push

forward in the same direction as the forces creating this weakness. The sagas offer us

description of harmful magical behaviors that follow exactly the pattern I just described.

There are also obvious cases of constructive magicians (‘white magic’ adepts) who

oppose the irrational forces that created weakness in their patron, they are seldom

described since they are not very interesting in a story.

There will always exist people that find it more interesting to destroy than to build, but all

of them use de same magic which, as the natural forces and human knowledge, is neither

good nor bad, but exactly neutral.

When starting to learn how to deal with illness, I was able to choose my side, which is

not the samurai’s one. I am therefore politically correct, but I find it ridiculous to be too

proud of it. There have been ‘alrunae’ who used to practice harmful magic, probably

using the runes in view of their name, within the Gothic armies, until the 3 rd -4 th centuries

AD. They played the role of samurai magicians in order to destroy the enemy, such was

the society they lived into, and they might have not been so free to choose their way. I

absolutely refuse to call them ‘wicked’ and ‘witches’, seeing them rather as my sisters,

even if those that enjoyed their position do not look very attractive to me. This kind of

fighters using magic must have been used quite late in our era since the Inquisition

castigated them so much.

[Jordanes, Getica, around 550 AD] and [Kramer et Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum,

1486]

As a side remark, I find it anyhow ridiculous to look for social power through magical

means: If you are obsessed by power, try banker or industrialist, these roles are much

more efficient for this purpose!

It happens nevertheless that the magicians’ role becomes hard to agree with when they

bear heavy social responsibility, as was the rule in ancient societies. For instance, we find

witnessing of Siberian shamans who ‘fly away’ to ‘steal the soul’ of person they judge of

secondary importance, in order to ‘grant’ it to their patron who recovers health in this

way. This behavior is also attested quite late by Inquisition reports, as for instance Pierre

de Lancre who says:

“As if we heal by the means of these stupidities, this is temporary: & if (it happens) by

chance (then) the sickness removed by a witch & (will be) given to someone else of

higher stature & and whose death is hundred times more important than the first one

whom the illness was removed from.” [1]

[Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, par Pierre de Lancre à Paris chez

Nicolas Buon, 1613]

The shamans of the past would hold social roles much different from today shamans. The

role of deciding, in some specific cases, who is going to live or die is now in the hands of

the medical doctors who can decide to stop intensive care of a no-hope patient in case it

would save another one. It is obvious that Inquisition, among other things, managed to

convince its ‘witches’ that they no more held such a responsibility.

Working with such an active seiðr has yet other consequences on the health of the

practitioner, but I strongly dislike to speak of this problem except among fellow seiðfolk.

Just recall that those working with the ki energy are well-known for catching cancer

easily, even before this sickness became so popular due to pollution. For instance, the

‘old witches’ have always been shown with a wart covered face: Do not believe this was

nothing but a lie to debase them.

Nordic texts relative to seiðr

In Old Norse, a seeress using seiðr to perform her foreseeing is called a völva. Many texts

speak of the völva, for example Vatnsdæla saga reports that during a feast

“[the hosts] prepared a seiðr in the old heathen fashion, so that men could examine what

the fates had in store for them. A Lapp völva was amongst those present. ... The Lapp

woman, splendidly attired, sat at the high seat. Men left their benches and went forward

to ask about their destinies. For each of them she predicted that which eventually came to

pass …”

[Old Norse web version available at http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/isl.htm.

English translation : either mine or from The complete sagas of Icelanders, Viðar

Hreinsson (Ed.), Leifur Eiríksson Publishing, 1997]

In some cases, the shamaness is lying on a special scaffolding and goes in a trance

induced by a special song . We find an example of that in Eiríks saga rauða (‘saga of Erik

the Red’). The völva asked for a warlock song sung by ladies of the company before she

could start her art :

“Bað hún fá sér konur þær sem kynnu fræði (fræði = traditional knowledge often tainted

with magic), það er þyrfti til seiðinn að fremja og Varðlokur heita. En þær konur fundust

eigi.”

“She asked for women who knew the traditional knowledge required for carrying out

seiðr, which is called guardian-spirit (‘ward’) songs. But such women were not to be

found.”

The complete sagas of Icelanders adds the footnote : “Ward songs (varðlokkur) were

chants likely intended to attract the spirits to the sorceress, who was enclosed in a ring of

wards as described below.” Anyhow, varðlokur is translated as it is here in

[Cleasby-Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1962 edition].

The saga of Erik the Red stresses later that very good results were obtained (i.e., the spirit

wards agreed to come) because the only woman who knew these ward-songs sung them

particularly well.

These ward-songs are obviously forgotten now, and I consider that one of the duties of

the seiðfolk is to attempt finding them again. I presently try to check some music

collected at the end of the 18th century by J. Acerbi.

[Joseph Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland to the North Cape in the

years 1798 and 1799, J. Mawman, London, 1802]

This explains why I never use a drum to practice seiðr, and that I prefer song to drum,

even in the more traditional shamanism.

Note however that the saga stresses that women only are aware of this traditional

knowledge, and that confirms that Diana Paxson was right to recreate seiðr with a group

of women. This is why I am simply documenting the ward-songs, and I will have to ask

confirmation from women to help me, as I do always in my seiðs practice.

Another example shows that Germanic shamans used ‘soft’ techniques to perform their

journeys. It is provided by Orkneyinga saga (‘The history of the earls of Orkney’). One of

the saga characters consults a seer who declares :

“These believers [the Christians] behave in a very strange way, depriving themselves of

food and sleep so as to be informed about that which they desire to know; despite all their

efforts, the higher the stakes are, the less they find. People like me do not bother with

self-punishment, and are able to easily find what their friends want to know.”

Finally, and as a second example of a male performing seiðr, Gísla saga Súrssonar (‘Gisli

Sursson’s saga’) reports a very powerful sorcerer, Thorgrim the Nose. In this saga,

‘sorcerer’ is actually seiðskratti, where skratti refers to the strange noise made by the

performer of the seiðr. It reads classically :

Thorgrim the Nose performs the seiðr, prepares himself as usual, builds a scaffold and

devotes himself to his sorcery, with all its spells and evil-doings.

The original Old Norse says that Thorgrim the Nose prepared his seiðr “með allri ergi ok

skelmiskap.” While skelmiskap means indeed ‘devilry’ or ‘evil-doing’, ergi features a

man who has been buggered, so that it seems that Thorgrim the Nose received sodomy

while preparing his seiðr.

We find another example of a seiðr performed by Lapp shamans who foresee correctly

but they are unable to bring back an object, as they had been asked to do. They do try to

modify physical reality but fail in this task. Many more information will be found in the

excellent paper of H. R. Ellis Davidson : “Hostile Magic in the Icelandic Sagas,” that

gives many examples of this kind of behavior.

[published in : The Witch in History Venetia Newall (Ed.) Barnes & Noble, NY 1996].

Passiveness, homosexuality, and seiðs practice

Why seiðs practice would become an insult or a curse for the medieval people of

Northern countries is a challenging question we shall examine now. As striking examples

of this hate for seiðr, the warden of a grave is this formula, a seemingly dreadful one :

“Let him practice seiðr who will desecrate this grave !” We will also report of a runic

inscription in which the ‘wolf’, fought by the inscription, is cursed by a “Enjoy seiðs

practice !”

Even the highest of the Nordic Gods, Óðinn (Odin), is said to have been buggered

because he participated in a shamanic séance. Loki, in the Lokasenna says to Óðinn:

« You practiced magic in Samsey

… [2]

And, there, you received sodomy. »

The word used by Loki is argr (written in runes as arageu on the runic inscriptions of the

Stentoften and Björketorp standing stones we shall study later), an adjective form of ergi.

It qualifies either a man who has been buggered or who is sexually impotent. Óðinn is

better known for his lechery with women that anything else, thus Loki can accuse him

nor to be sexually impotent nor homosexual. That Loki accuses him to be argr is then

better understood if sodomy is part of the seiðr séance, and Óðinn receives this treatment

as a kind of accident, necessary to practice seiðr.

This and the story of Thorgrim the Nose leads us to suppose that the preparation of the

seiðr séance included a buggering of the sorcerer. It is obviously possible that the words

used in these texts had been said in a figurative mode as the translators do, who tend to

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