What is Seið?
(Originally posted to the Shaman-L mailing list and the
Asatru-L mailing list
by the author).
At the risk of stating the self-evident, I will begin by stating that Seid is a word
and a word is (always?) part of some language. The first question therefore is: What
language(s) does the word Seid belong to? Everyone will no doubt agree that it
belongs to the group of nordic languages. Yes. So far so good. But the next question
is trickier: Does it belong to any of the modern nordic languages? At this point
some people will most likely start to feel a little uncertain. But a quick check
shows that it is indeed listed in e.g. a modern norwegian dictionary. However, you
do not often run into this word either in newspapers, on television or in modern
litterature. Not even in fairytales and other folklore. The point here is that it
is a word that has reentered the language from Old Norse, and is today mostly used
in modern renderings of old sagas and verse. To substantiate this, let me look up
the word in the authoritative Riksmalsordbok of 1947. It says:
Seid, -en, (recently taken from ON seidhr) 1) about old norse conditions, lower
species of trolldom (magic) that was performed under certain (offensive) ceremonies
and powerfull conjurations, usually by women, to gain knowledge about the future
or to cause death and disaster (cf. galder): o/ve seid [to excercise seid]/ is it
true Thorolf, that your father sat three nights in a womans frock with the gyver
[female troll] ... and boiled seid, before he dared take on the duel with Jo/kul?
(Ibsen, The Warriors.., 64)/ seid and galder reigned at the pact of gods and giants
(Welhaven, II, 167) 2) literature, poetry, trolldom: without glitter and courage,
the forrest steps up along the mountain side, as if someone had thrown seid at its
root (Bjo/rnstjerne Bjo/rnson, S.D. II, 245)
Also, let me check a more recent dictionary, Nynorsk- ordboka(1991): seid m1 (taken
up again from ON seidhr) in old norse times: a kind of trolldom (with song).
Now that the word has been determined as properly belonging to the old norse
language, the next question will be how to determine its meaning as precisely as
possible. Unfortunately, there do not exist any old norse dictionaries that were
compiled when the language was still in use. The old norse dictionaries existing
today are of a newer date. So all we can do is to trust the opinions of the more
recent compilers. I will quote Heggstad, Norro/n Ordbok (4th edition 1990): seidhr
m. I. (-s and -ar) A kind of trolldom (with song), seid; efla (seidha) seidh, to
perform such trolldom, to seid.
Evidently that did not get us much further. Obviously then, the only way to find
a more precise definition of the word is to collect all those places in the still
extant old norse litterature, where the word has been used, and try to proceed
from there by deductive methods, where context and comparison would constitute the
main methods. Fortunately this task has already been done by several researchers
during the last hundred years or so, and their conclusions and opinions may be
found in many monographs and articles that deal with the subject. But the question
is whether they all agree with one another. For it lies in the nature of the
subject that disagreement would exist to some extent. It all depends on how
precise a meaning those who used the word a thousand years ago or so, attributed
to the word, and how much of this is reflected in the surviving litterature. To
make a long story short, I will now quote two modern Swedish researchers and their
opinions about the meaning of the word Seid. First Ake Hultkrantz:
Seid. The shamanistic trolldom that in Norden primarily was performed by women
(volver). Also some of the gods such as Odin and Fro/ya, practised it. Because of
his seiding, Odin was accused of being unmanly. Seid had the same character as the
Siberian and Samic shamanism. The seidwoman would fall into a trance, while a choir
of other women would evoke her guardian spirit to come to her aid. I her inspired
state the spirits would inform her concerning the things she had been asked to ask;
about what the weather was going to be, about events that would occur, about
happiness and misfortune for man, acre and cattle. It also happened that her soul
travelled to other worlds to fetch knowledge while the body lay lifeless. As a
goddess of the Vanir, Fro/ya introduced the art of seid with the Aesir, and it is
said that it was she who had taught this strange art to Odin. When seiding Odin
could see into the future and affect people with disease, lunacy, misfortune and
death. It seems as if he changed his sex when seiding.
Finally, I will quote Ohlmark:
Seid. The especially nordic form of heathen shamanism. The art of seid has not
been borrowed from the high arctic Lapp 'real' shamanism, with drum-dance and
cataleptic trance, but it has been developed from a - most likely Scythian-Sarmatic
- southeastern subarctic 'small-time-shamanism'. In the viking age the northern
seid (Icelandic seidhr, origin unknown) was performed almost exclusively by women,
sometimes by women and men together. The classic description of a seid seance is
found in the saga of Eric the Red; the seance took place on Greenland in the tenth
century. During a period of protracted distress the chief Torkel at Herjolfsnes
summoned a spakvinne (divineress) called Torbjorg Lillvolva, the last surviving
of several sisters who had all been volver (shamankas). She wore a blue mantle,
ornamented with stones, even on her skirt, necklace of glass beads and hood of
black lambskin, lined with white catskin. Around her waist she had a belt with
tinder and a pouch containing magic charms, on her feet calfskin shoes with
shoestrings ending in brass buttons, on her hands gloves lined with white
catskin. Under respectfull greetings Torbjorg was accompanied to a high seat
with chicken feather pillow. For food she got goats milk, as well as the hearts
of all animals on the farm, and she ate with her own brass spoon and a broken
knife with a bone handle. After having slept one night at the farm, the next
day she asked two women who could sing the 'vardlokksong' to call her helping
spirits.The girl Gudrid was the only one who knew the song, and after Torbjorg
had climbed and sat down on the mans tall 'seidhjell' (ON hjallr, large wooden
frame, especially for drying fish) Gudrid sang the spiritcalling song beautifully
and well. The seeress thanked her and said that many beings had now found their
way there who had not wished to come before. Now Torbjorg also saw many things
that had been hidden before, and predicted that the bad year would soon end,
and that Gudrid would gain great fame on Iceland. After that everyone on the
farm went forward to Torbjorg, one by one, and were foretold concerning what
they wanted to know. Even in other sagas (Vatndo/lasaga, Hrolfssaga,
Gange-Rolfs saga, Ynglingasaga) the sayeress sits still on a high seidframe
and falls into a light, half-conscious trance, gapes and rattles. Skuld, who
seids for the death of Rolf Krake, sends out her helping spirits in the shape
of a big grey hog as well as resurrected dead. In Orvar-Odds saga the Vardlokk
song is sung by a whole chorus of 30 persons, 15 boys and 15 girls. According
to Snorre, it was Fro/ya who introduced seid among the Aesir, after she had been
handed over to them as a hostage at the end of the war with the Vanir. Also Odin
knew the art of seid, but stopped because it was considered as unmanly and
perverted; Loke once reproached him for having performed seid in earlier days
on the island Samso/ and 'having beaten a drum/shamanic drum/ that volves use'.
A woman knowledgable in seid was called 'volve' (woman with magic wand),
'seidkona' or 'seidvulva', while her helping spirits were called 'varder'
(valnader), 'natures', 'mares' or 'an army'; they often appeared in animal
shapes. It was only much later that the word 'seidr' became confused with
'seydi' (cooking fire) and 'seidr' was imagined as a witches brew consisting
of various disgusting ingredients.
Peregrinus
Tue, 19 Mar 1996
