society), and for healing the sick. One of the most common circumstances in which
we encounter seiðr is as a tool for divining the future, when vo ̨lur and other sorcerers
are specially commissioned to come to a district and predict what the coming
years will bring for its inhabitants. Again, it is no accident that this also frequently
occurs in the context of famine, crop failure or other preoccupations of economic
subsistence.
Another theme also runs through the descriptions of sorcery, namely its connections
with sexuality, a link that is consistent both for gods and for humans. We not only find a
variety of love charms intended to attract the opposite sex, cure impotence and so on,
but also to do the opposite. Óðinn especially uses seiðr as a means of seduction. It is
noticeable too how many of the rituals involve sexual elements in their performance, and
indeed it has been suggested by several scholars that the very practice of magic itself was
either a real or a simulated sexual act. Suggestive double meanings seem to have
attached to the tools of sorcery such as the staff (in a manner that is probably obvious), as
well as to what one did with them. Even the language used for describing the practice of
magic mirrors that used to suggest the rhythms of lovemaking. If the completion of a
seiðr ritual really did involve an actual sexual performance, with an emphasis on the
woman’s physically receptive role in intercourse, then this – together with the distaff
imagery of female handicrafts – may explain why it held such negative connotations for
men.
Finally there is also a form of seiðr that was very clearly aggressive in nature, building
up from small-scale private disputes to a practical involvement on the battlefield. On
the one hand we frequently find sorcerers accused of causing mild injury to people,
animals or property (they often appear in the sources as medieval ‘neighbours from
Hell’). On the other hand, the same individuals are also found playing a role in warfare,
using their sorcery in a proactive sense for both offence and defence. This kind of magic
is described in many, many sources, including very specific catalogues of war-charms
listed among the supernatural skills of Óðinn. In particular these charms affected the
state of a warrior’s mind, making him fearful or clumsy, confused and weak – or the
opposite of these. Armour and weapons could be rendered unbreakable through sorcery,
or alternatively as brittle as ice. At the final extreme, seiðr could be used to kill and maim
outright, being employed against either individuals or even whole armies: one especially
dramatic description relates how the shield-wall of a king’s bodyguard breaks under the
sheer weight of a barrage of spells, raining down on it like artillery fire.
SEIÐR, SHAMANISM AND CIRCUMPOLAR RELIGIONIn thinking about Nordic sorcery, we should remember that all of this was far from
static. It was in fact highly dynamic, with a pattern of regional variation and change
over time. Above the level of these local differences, however, there is also an overarch-
ing pattern that can be perceived.
The Vikings are usually understood as part of the Germanic cultures of north-western
Europe. However, there is also a sense in which Scandinavia at this time formed a border
between the Germanic world and that of the circumpolar, arctic cultures – represented
in Sweden and Norway by the Sámi people, but ultimately extending around the north-
ern hemisphere through Siberia, northern North America and Greenland. It is in this
vast region that scholars usually locate the origins of what is known as shamanism, a set
–– chapter 17 ( 1 ): Sorcery in Old Norse belief––