The Goddess by David Leeming

Author:David Leeming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2017-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

This copper-alloy openwork brooch from 11th-century Norway displays an animal figure typical of the Urnes style, which combines zoomorphic forms with interlace.

It is intriguing that Snorri informs us that Freyja was the last of the surviving Norse goddesses, and there is reason to believe that aspects of her cult we would associate with seid rituals survived well into the Christian period in the northern world. Certainly the proliferation of place names associated with the goddess throughout Scandinavia bear out her widespread popularity. From various sources, it appears that seid rituals most often involved a seeress, called a völva, a term meaning ‘prophetess’ or ‘witch’, which may refer to the staff or wand sometimes used in such a rite; the most famous mythic example of such a figure is the eponymous völva of the Eddic poem Völuspá, the title of which means, literally, the spá, or ‘prophecy’, of the seeress. Odin himself called forth this seeress and compelled her to utter her prophecy, again underscoring that god’s penchant for gaining hidden knowledge through forbidden activities. In general practice, völva rituals seemed to have involved a raised platform upon which the seeress served as officiate, often surrounded by a chanting ward-circle of women. Seid practices are associated in some sources with curses and maladies, of course, as well as with shape-shifting (most especially into the figure of a horse), in which guise, presumably, one might crush one’s enemies. Generally, however, these rituals seem associated with divination, especially concerning crops, famine, pestilence and personal destinies, as well as in evoking blessings of health and fertility upon crops and people alike.

Perhaps one of the most instructive of the examples of such rites is preserved for us in Eiríks saga rauda, the Saga of Erik the Red, which famously discusses the Greenland settlements and reports of the travels of Leif the Lucky, son of Erik the Red, to Vinland in North America. In Greenland during this time there lived a völva by the name of Thorbjörg, the last of a group of ten seeresses. Thorbjörg made it her practice to travel from farm to farm during the winter months, predicting for those who invited her what would become of their lives and farms over the course of the coming year. Times had been tough of late, the hunting was scarce, and quite a few hunters had been lost to the wilds. The responsibility of determining when times would improve fell upon the leading farmer in each district, and so Thorkel invited Thorbjörg to visit his house and made arrangements to entertain her with appropriate honours: these preparations included devising a high seat for the völva, complete with a cushion stuffed with chicken feathers. Thorbjörg arrived clad in a black mantle with a bejewelled hem, a black lambskin hood lined with white catskin, white catskin gloves and calfskin boots, and holding a staff with a brass finial set with stones. The seeress wore a string of glass beads and carried at her waist a bag of charms necessary to perform her rites; she was belted with a linked girdle.

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