Norse Shamanism: Seidr, the Volva, and the Ancient Magic of the North

She arrives in the village wrapped in a cloak of black lambskin, wearing gloves of catskin, carrying a staff topped with a brass knob set with stones. The villagers have prepared a special high seat for her — the seidhjallr — and a meal of the hearts of every kind of animal they could find. After the meal, she asks for the women who know the chants — the vardlokkur — to gather around her. The chanting begins. And the volva, the seeress, enters the trance that will allow her to travel through the nine worlds, to speak with the spirits, and to answer the questions that the community has brought to her.

This scene — described in the thirteenth-century Icelandic saga Eirik's Saga — is one of the most detailed accounts of shamanic practice in the Norse world. It describes the volva — the Norse seeress, the female practitioner of seidr — at work: the ritual preparation, the special seat, the chanting that induces the trance, the spirit journey, and the oracular pronouncements that follow. It is a scene that would be recognizable to shamanic practitioners from Siberia to the Amazon — because the core elements of shamanic practice are universal, even as their specific expressions vary enormously across cultures.

What Seidr Is

Seidr is the shamanic magical tradition of the Norse world — the practice of entering altered states of consciousness to travel in spirit through the nine worlds, to communicate with the dead and with other spirits, to see the future and the hidden present, and to manipulate the threads of fate. It is the oldest and most powerful magical tradition in the Norse world, predating the runic tradition and associated with the Vanir gods rather than the Aesir.

The word seidr is related to words meaning "to bind" or "to ensnare" — reflecting the understanding that seidr magic works by binding and manipulating the threads of fate that connect all beings and all events. The seidr practitioner does not simply observe the future. They see the threads of fate and, in some cases, can alter them — redirecting the flow of events, binding harmful forces, and loosening the bonds that constrain beneficial ones.

Seidr is distinguished from galdr — the runic magic of spoken charms and incantations — by its method and its character. Galdr is active, directed, and masculine in its Norse cultural associations: it works by imposing the practitioner's will on the world through the power of the spoken word and the carved rune. Seidr is receptive, fluid, and feminine in its Norse cultural associations: it works by opening the practitioner to the flow of fate, by entering the current of events and reading — and sometimes redirecting — its direction.

The Volva: The Norse Seeress

The primary practitioner of seidr in the Norse world is the volva — the seeress, the staff-carrier, the woman who travels between the worlds. The word volva derives from the Old Norse word for staff (volr) — the staff being the volva's primary ritual implement, the physical axis that represents the World Tree and that serves as the vehicle for her spirit journeys.

The volva is one of the most important figures in Norse society — a specialist in hidden knowledge who is consulted by kings and farmers alike, who can see the future and communicate with the dead, and whose pronouncements carry the authority of the spirit world. She is simultaneously respected and feared: respected for her knowledge and her power, feared for the same reasons and for the transgressive nature of her practice.

The volva's practice is transgressive in the Norse cultural context because seidr is associated with the feminine and with the Vanir — and a man who practices seidr is understood to be crossing a fundamental gender boundary. This is why Odin's practice of seidr is described in the Norse sources as ergi — a term that implies unmanliness, the transgression of masculine gender norms. Odin's willingness to practice seidr despite this cultural stigma is one of the most striking expressions of his character: a god who will cross any boundary, transgress any norm, and pay any price in pursuit of knowledge and power.

The Vardlokkur: The Chants That Call the Spirits

The most important element of the seidr ceremony — after the volva herself — is the vardlokkur: the chants that are sung by the women gathered around the seidhjallr to call the spirits and to support the volva's trance journey. The word vardlokkur means "spirit-locks" or "ward-songs" — chants that lock the spirits in place, that call them to the ceremony and hold them there while the volva communicates with them.

The vardlokkur are not simply background music. They are the energetic foundation of the ceremony — the collective intention of the community, expressed in sound, that creates the conditions for the volva's spirit journey. Without the vardlokkur, the spirits will not come. Without the spirits, the volva cannot see. The ceremony is a collective act — the community's participation is as essential as the volva's skill.

This collective dimension of the seidr ceremony is one of its most distinctive features. Unlike many forms of magical practice, which are performed by a single practitioner in isolation, seidr is fundamentally communal: it requires the participation of the community, it serves the community's needs, and its results are shared with the community. The volva is not a solitary practitioner. She is a community resource — a specialist who serves the collective by accessing the hidden knowledge that the community needs.

The Seidhjallr: The High Seat

The seidhjallr — the high seat from which the volva performs her work — is the physical center of the seidr ceremony. It is elevated above the ground — sometimes described as a platform or a raised chair — because height is associated with the ability to see further, both physically and spiritually. The volva on her high seat is simultaneously above the ordinary world and at the center of the community's attention — a position that reflects her role as the mediator between the human world and the spirit world.

The high seat is also a liminal space — a threshold between the worlds, a place where the boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary are thin. The volva who sits on the seidhjallr is not fully in the ordinary world. She is in the space between the worlds — the space from which she can see into the hidden dimensions of reality and communicate with the beings who inhabit them.

Utiseta: Sitting Out

A related practice to seidr is utiseta — "sitting out" — the practice of sitting alone in a wild place, typically at night and at a liminal location (a crossroads, a grave mound, a boundary between cultivated and wild land), to receive visions and communications from the spirits. Utiseta is a more solitary practice than the communal seidr ceremony — a practice of individual spirit contact that does not require the support of the community's chanting.

The practitioner of utiseta sits in the wild place through the night, opening themselves to whatever comes — to the spirits of the land, to the spirits of the dead, to the hidden forces of the natural world. The practice requires courage — the willingness to sit alone in the dark, in a place associated with the dead and with the supernatural, and to remain open to whatever appears. It is a practice of radical receptivity — of making oneself available to the spirit world and trusting that what comes will be useful.

The Living Tradition: Norse Shamanism Today

The Norse shamanic tradition — seidr, utiseta, the practice of the volva — has experienced a significant revival in the modern world, as part of the broader revival of Norse and Germanic spiritual traditions. Modern practitioners of seidr — working within the framework of contemporary Norse paganism (Asatru) and related traditions — have reconstructed the practice from the historical sources and developed living forms of the tradition that are adapted to the modern context.

The modern seidr practitioner draws on the Icelandic sagas, the Norse mythological sources, and the comparative study of shamanic traditions worldwide to reconstruct and adapt the ancient practice. The high seat ceremony, the vardlokkur chants, the spirit journeys through the nine worlds — all of these elements of the ancient tradition are being practiced today by communities of modern Norse pagans who understand themselves as the inheritors of the volva tradition.

The revival of Norse shamanism is part of a broader global movement of shamanic revival — the recognition that the shamanic traditions of the world's indigenous cultures contain profound wisdom about the nature of consciousness, of the spirit world, and of the human being's relationship to the cosmos. The volva who sat on her high seat in a Norse village a thousand years ago and the modern seidr practitioner who sits in a circle of chanters today are both doing the same essential thing: opening themselves to the hidden dimensions of reality and bringing back what they find for the benefit of their community.