The tales of Norse mythology are full of interesting characters and vivid landscapes. Readers are often fascinated by figures such as Odin, Thor, and Loki. However, Norse mythology still holds many secrets that researchers have worked hard to uncover. There is much to be learned about this ancient mythology.
The stories of Norse mythology are full of powerful gods and goddesses, as well as brave heroes and heroines. Tales tell of great battles between good and evil, of tragic love affairs, and of heroic deeds. These stories have inspired many later works of literature and art.
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Understand What Seiðr Actually Is (Without Misinformation And Hollywood Stereotypes)
Seiðr, a type of Norse sorcery and magic, is an ancient practice that has been shrouded in mystery for centuries.
Scholars have sought to understand the nature of seiðr by studying it from various perspectives, including examining its links to traditional shamanistic cultures across northern Eurasia and beyond.
One such scholar, Åke Ohlmark, published a research paper in 1939 entitled “Arctic shamanism and Old Norse seiðr”, which explores the relationship between these two concepts. Through this lens, we can gain a deeper understanding of seiðr and its role in Norse culture.
Another expert in this field is the British scholar Prof. Neil Price, who is especially renowned for his highly influential books such as ‘The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (2002)’ and ‘The Archaeology of Shamanism’ (2001).
Indeed, as Neil Price writes in a research paper published in 2007, this type of Norse sorcery and magic may have had a similar function within Norse society as traditional shamanism does for Eurasian cultures such as the Evenki, Ket, or Nanai people.
These practices could be used to heal the sick and bring fortune to warriors going into battle, but were also thought to hold a deeper significance, possibly linking people to the spiritual world and communicating with supernatural forces.
Like many other ancient cultures, Norse society was deeply invested in mysticism and magic, particularly what was known as seiðr. This esoteric practice involved communicating with spirits and harnessing natural forces for healing or fortune-telling purposes.
Many people studying Norse mythology and worldview believe that there are shamanistic elements in it, and that Odin himself may have been a shaman.
This is largely due to the fact that Seiðr shares many similarities to traditional healing and ritual practices from circumpolar cultures.
Scholars have combined studies of both archaeology and ethnography to further explore these connections and understand how Nordic people viewed their world and their place within it. (e.g. O. Sundqvist, 2020).
Norse Seidr And The Question Of European Shamanism
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Consequently, Hexenkunde draws its research from multiple disciplines such as comparative m…
One aspect of Seiðr
that has led many scholars to believe that it was shamanistic in nature is its association with trance states. According to historical records, practitioners of Seiðr would often induce ecstatic trances through singing and dancing, which allowed them to communicate with spirits or deities as well as access hidden knowledge about the future.
Indeed, gaining access to future outcomes of battles, harvest and crops and so forth, may have been very characteristic of this practice. To influence and to attract, to gain access or to foresee may be where the origin of the word Seiðr lies (Eldar Heide, 2006).
Because trance states are typically associated with shamanism, many scholars believe that Seiðr must have shared some connection to this practice as well.
Overall, the study of Seiðr has provided us with valuable insight into the worldview and understanding of the world that Nordic people shared across Scandinavia, Greenland and Iceland.
Free Mini Workshop
Understand What Seiðr Actually Is (Without Misinformation And Hollywood Stereotypes)
By examining Seiðr
We can see how they viewed nature and the spirit world, as well as how they sought to control or understand these forces through magic and ritual. As such, it remains an important part of our understanding of Norse culture today.
Despite these differences, it is clear that there were many similarities between Nordic shamanism and other traditions from the circumpolar world. By studying both of these traditions, we can continue to deepen our understanding of Norse society, culture, and worldview as well as the ways in which Nordic people interacted with the world around them.
Ultimately, the study of Seiðr and other shamanistic traditions is important for understanding not only Norse history and culture, but also to gain a broader perspective on how different cultures view the world and their place within it.
The question of Seiðr being shamanistic is a rather difficult one to begin with.
Shamanism, in a traditional sense, is most notably recorded in northern Eurasia and its roots may be found in the mentality, subsistence and ecology of northern hunter-gatherers (e.g. Henry Michael, 1963).
Shamanism in its most basic form is a method of entering an altered state of consciousness (ASC) in order to interact with the spirit world on behalf of the community.
The shaman would act as a mediator between the human and non-human worlds and their knowledge would be used to solve various problems within the group, such as locational information about game, the diagnosis and treatment of illness, etc. It is also worth noting that shamanism is not tied to any particular religious beliefs and can be found in a variety of cultures across the world.
The rituals, myths and cosmologies that we can describe as ‘shamanistic’ today were heavily influenced by factors such as subsistence (food-production), and the natural environment, especially the Arctic and sub-arctic boreal zone, such as the indigenous Siberian Evenki people (Grøn, 2008).
In this area, shamanism developed as a response to the unique challenges that people faced in their everyday lives. The shaman would enter into an ASC in order to contact the spirit world and gain knowledge or power that could be used to help the community.
One of the most important aspects of shamanism is that it is not tied to any one culture or region. It is a tradition that can be found in a variety of cultures across the world, each with their own unique take on the practice. (M. Eliade, 1972).
So, when we ask if Seiðr is shamanistic, we must first understand what shamanism is and how it developed. Only then can we begin to answer the question.
Despite this, there are some core features that are common to shamanic cultures. These include a three-layered division of the world, often represented by a world tree or world pillar.
Other features include animistic perceptions of nature as alive, and animals such as bears, elk, and others possessing their own agency, culture, and even shamanistic powers. Even today, there is no real consensus about what shamanism is and how it developed.
However, it appears that its worldview arose out of hunting-cultures, which emphasize the importance of rebirth of game and the cyclical forces of nature, and ultimately life and death. (see e.g., Deborah J. Shepherd, 1995, Singh Manvir 2018, M. Winkelman, 2002)
Several Influential scholars of shamanism, Åke Hultkrantz and Juha Pentikäinen, for instance, emphasized the role of drumming, whereas others such as Mihaly Hoppal have proposed that shamanism arose out of seasonal renewal ceremonies, that revolved around the movements of the sun, where the rebirth/resurrection of game, the sun and of nature overall played an essential role. (M. Hoppal, 2006, A. L. Siikala & Hoppal, 1992).
The question that must be answered here is:
Another possibility could be that Seiðr dates back to an even older ritualistic practice that was once widely spread across Europe and beyond the Ural mountains. Perhaps, an animistic perception of the natural environment was also shared by European pre-Christian cultures, based on a mentality that emphasizes relational interactions between humans and nature. Therefore, a European type of ‘shamanism’ could have also evolved over time due to similar environmental and cultural factors. (see Enrico Comba, 2014, Nurit Bird-David, 1999).
To cite an important paper and example of this idea, according to Archaeologist Marek Zvelebil, it was evident that the ideological world of pre-agricultural Europe was very similar to that of northern hunter-gatherers in Siberia. In his words, this was partly so because they operated in similar economic and ecological conditions. They shared a similar habitat and subsistence. This would be, therefore, be reflected in the overarching cosmological structure, in rituals and beliefs alike (Zvelebil, 1997, p. 46).
But how far back in time must we go to answer the question of why a Northern European type of sorcery contains a) shamanistic elements and is b) similarly structured to others cosmological concepts found among circumpolar cultures?
Perhaps, the question is not so much about how shamanism evolved in Siberia.
It could be that we must investigate the deeper and older layers of cosmologies shared west of the Urals in Europe.
What do we know about the cosmological concepts of Scandinavian hunters (e.g. from the Maglemosian culture), how did these concepts change during the Neolithic and throughout the so-called Metal Ages?
What if these older layers were indeed similarly organized to other hunting cultures in Eurasia, and consequently, similar healing-systems evolved parallel both in Asia and in Europe?
There are attempts to seriously reconstruct these older layers. This, however, will be discussed in upcoming articles.
Free Mini Workshop
Understand What Seiðr Actually Is (Without Misinformation And Hollywood Stereotypes)
References:
Price, Neil. (2004). The Archaeology of Seiðr: circumpolar traditions in Viking pre-Christian religion. Brathair. 4. 109-126.
MICHAEL, H. N. (Ed.). (1963). Studies in Siberian Shamanism No. 4. University of Toronto Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1vxmc4c
Pentikäinen, Juha, & Regional Conference on Circumpolar and Northern Religion. (1996). Shamanism and Northern ecology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Shepherd, D. (2018). BEAR, ELK, AND FISH SYMBOLISM IN FINNISH CONTEXTS. In K. Ryan & P. Crabtree (Ed.), The Symbolic Role of Animals in Archaeology (pp. 27-38). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781949057003-004
Grøn, O. (2008). Spiritual and material aspects of everyday ritual negotiation Ethnoarchaeological data from the Evenk, Siberia. Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture.
Siikala, A. (2002). Myth and Mentality: Studies in Folklore and Popular Thought.
Bird‐David, N. (1999). “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40(S1), S67–S91. https://doi.org/10.1086/200061
Hoppál, Mihály. (2006). Shamanic and\or cognitive evolution. Documenta Praehistorica. 33. 10.4312/dp.33.20.
Singh, Manvir (2018). The cultural evolution of shamanism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41.
Winkelman, M. (2002). Shamanism and Cognitive Evolution (with comments). Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 12(1), 71-101. doi:10.1017/S0959774302000045
Eliade, Mircea. (1972). Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Siikala, A., and M. Hoppal. 1992. Studies in shamanism. Helsinki and Budapest: Finnish Anthropological Society and Akademiai Klado.
Sundqvist, O. (2020). Female cultic leaders and religious (ritual) specialists in Germanic and ancient Scandinavian sources. In C. HILLERDAL & K. ILVES (Eds.), Re-imagining Periphery: Archaeology and Text in Northern Europe from Iron Age to Viking and Early Medieval Periods (pp. 145–156). Oxbow Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv138wt08.17
Comba, Enrico. 2014. “Amerindian Cosmologies and European Prehistoric Cave Art: Reasons for and Usefulness of a Comparison” Arts 3, no. 1: 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts3010001
Eldar Heide (2006). Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions, edited by Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert et al.
Marek Zvelebil (1997). Hunter-gatherer ritual landscapes: spatial organisation, social structure and ideology among hunter-gatherers of Northern Europe and Western Siberia. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 29.