The Greatest Spell

The Poetic Edda contains the narrative of a young man, Svipdag, who raises his mother from her burial mound to help him on an impossible quest to find the beloved of his soul, his "fated bride". Groa was and is a völva, or seeress. Before she died, with her knowledge of things to come, she told him to call her back when he needed help.

Groa weaves nine spells of protection over him, to preserve him from flood and fire and to change the hearts of enemies so they cannot reach for their swords. The great spell is probably the ninth. If Svipdag finds himself in a "war of words", his own will not fail him.

Wit nor words be wanting you

At behest of the heart

- Grógaldr (The Spell of Groa) in Lee Hollander (trans) The Poetic Edda

The story of Svipdag and Groa has many counterparts in Norse tradition. In the Völuspá, the greatest of the poems in the Poetic Edda, a seeress summoned from the Underworld by the high god Odin tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming destruction and rebirth.

In tale in the Flateyjarbók, a poet is made by dreaming on the burial mound of a dead poet.

Dream Poetry from the Mound

An Icelandic shepherd lay down to sleep on the burial mound of a poet, hoping for inspiration to compose a poem in the style of the bard he admired, though he had no skill with words. While the sheep browsed and dozed, the dead poet appeared to the shepherd in a dream. “I will give you a rare verse. If you learn the verse by heart and can recite it without flaw when you wake, you will become a great poet.”

- Flateyjarbók I: 174 quoted in H. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe.

The Norse stories have counterparts in other traditions. A story from Ireland weaves together the theme of calling on wise ancestors and the power of poetic speech.

Raising a Bard to Lift the Fog of Forgetfulness

There is a legend that the great Irish epic, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or Cattle Raid of Cooley, was brought back from the fogs of forgetfulness when the foremost poets of Ireland gathered at night on the burial mound of Fergus, the ancient druid of dreams and battles. They called on Fergus to awaken. They praised him with drink and gallant words, and above all with fresh poetry.

When one of them delivered a fine enough poem, a deeper mist rose from the tomb, and from the mist came Fergus with his shining hair, to sing again the lost epic of gods and heroes and warrior queens. And the poets caught the words and carried them to the written page.

Illustration: "Old Birch at the Sogneford" by Thomas Fearnley (1839)

How a Völva Got the News

 

Her name is in the Saga of Erik the Red. Her name is Þorbjörg Lítilvölva, Thorbjörg Little Völva. She was one of a sisterhood of nine seeresses but now she is traveling alone. Gone are the days when a völva of her renown might travel with a chorus of thiry to sing for her shamanic flights. Thorkell, the big man in the settlement in Greenland, has begged for her presence.

When she arrives in her deep blue robe, studded with semiprecious stones, and her black lambskin hood and gloves lined with white cat's fur, holding her staff of power, with her bag of tricks hanging from her touchwood belt and her knife with the boar tusk handle, the lord of the manner treats her like royalty. He guides her to a seat set up on a high platform like a throne. She is fed foods of seiðr, porridge made with goat's milk and a bowl of animal hearts. Is she ready to give the frétta (the word means both news and prophecy)? Not before she has slept and dreamed.

The morning after, she asks for someone who knows Vardlokur, an ancient song for journeying. Guðríður, an Icelandic  woman of high degree, knows the song but is reluctant to sing it because she is now a Christian. Her resistance is overcome. A circle of women gather close around the völva. The song is achingly beautiful. It pleases the spirits of earth and sea and they join the seiðr. No longer alone, the völva takes wing and follows the skeins of her dream into the future.

When she returns she announces, ,"Now many things stand revealed to me that were hidden before". The news she brings back will carry the woman who sang for her all the way to Newfoundland; Guðríður will become the first white woman in history or legend to give birth in North America.

Dressed for the part

I was fascinated by the detailed description of Thorbjörg's costume in chapter 4 of the Saga of Erik the Red. She wears "a blue woven mantle adorned with stones down to the hem". She has a necklace of "glass beads"(that may be amber). She has "a black lambskin hood lined on the inside with with white cat's fur". (Hoods were generally separate from robes in this period of Scandinavian history.) There is more white cat fur inside her black lambskin gloves. She carries a staff with a brass knob decorated with stones. She wears "a belt made of touchwood", with a bag of her magical power tools attached. She has a knife with a tusk handle; it would be boar tusk in most of Freyja's domain, but up in Greenland it might be walrus. The end of the knife is broken off, a sign that it is for ritual use.

There are mysteries here, of course. The cat's fur is easily explained by the close affinity of Freyja, goddess and high priestess of the völvur, for cats, who pull her carriage through the sky. But: black sheep, white cat? And what of the touchwood belt? It has been suggested that "touchwood" is the English translation of an Old Norse word for a fungus that grows on birch, oak and beech trees. Cut off the outer rind, slice the inner part thin, soak and hammer and you can make a pliable felt-like material. Wearing this as a belt would confirm your connection with trees (from which Nordic peoples trace their descent in the myths). It also adds to your potential as a firestarter since a little piece, torn off, makes excellent kindling.

The saga doesn't tell us what Thorbjörg wears under her deep blue robe. I have given her a light blue woolen dress, a sign of the high status the saga accords her. She might, however, have been wearing a tunic of animal (probably reindeer) skin.

Dreaming and singing what is to come

I picture the völva deep in her vision of what is, what was and what will be. I turn back to Valgerður H. Bjarnadóttir's excellent study, The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja, and read:

"The völva (the one who turns, bends and evolves) is the one who sits at the hub(or völur) of the wheel, thus having a view into every direction. She could not only see into the wheel of time, she could turn it and bend, influence the future with her prophecies. She stored memory and from that memory she could predict a future, but in addition to that she was in touch with the collective memory of all times and places, Urðr, Verðandi  and Skuld. From that connection came her ability to predict the becoming future. "

Drawing by Robert Moss

The Wand Woman and the Odin Squirt

 I do much of my best reading and research in the middle of the night, between naps. Last night I decided to take a break from my recent four hour sessions with Jung's Black Books (which make the Red Book look like beach reading) and return to my studies of Viking era history, mystery and magical practices.

My particular focus last night was the staff or wand of the völva, or seeress. The word völva means "staff-carrier" or wand woman and the staff was her principal power tool, used for summoning spirits, for projecting harm or healing, for astral riding, for opening portals between worlds, for blasting enemies and probably for sex magic. It could be as large as a medieval pole-weapon or as slim and elegant as a wand acquired in Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter stories.

I read the description of a decorated völr (staff) in the Saga of Erik the Red. I examined scores of photos of staffs unearthed in the gravesites of Scandinavian women of power in Neil Price's monumental book The Viking Way. Most of the ones that have survived are metal but surely many more - long since decomposed - were of wood. One of the surviving wooden staffs, found in a bog at Hemdrup in Jyllund, Denmark, has a remarkable set of carvings suggesting an association with soul travel. A female figure in a feathered robe appears to be flying through the air, with her dogs nearby amd a triquetra as a magical seal.

I went online seeking more images and discovered that Etsy has dozens of pages offering reconstructions. Then I found this wonderful painting (above) of a völva striding forth with her staff by Arkel Eli Petersen, one of a series reproduced as postage stamps in the Faroe Islands, a self-governing province of Denmark.

I reread the Völuspá in the Poetic Edda, in which Odin journeys to a (deceased) völva to clarify the meaning of a dream and see into the future. Even the All-Father, no slouch at magic himself, turns to a völva when he wants reliable divination.

After five hours with my Norse books, I took a break by cooking one of the few dishes of which I am proud: a super-spicy hot chili loaded with fresh jalapenos and many cloves of garlic. Crushing garlic, I managed to squirt myself and was temporarily blinded in one eye. This has happened before, with lemon juice, as memorable punctiation to an interactive adventure in realms of soul healing and the care and relocation of draugr (Old Norse for the restless dead) I may tell elsewhere. Dabbing garlic juice from my eye,I again recalled how Odin paid with an eye at the well of Mimir for the power to see into the Otherworld.

Note to self: be careful what you squeeze after squeezing in a full helping of Norse mythology and magic.

The Völva as Cat Woman

I have long recgonized that my nocturnal habits are catlike and as I pursue my Norse studies - in dreams and visions as well as in books and conversation with friends who have walked these paths - I am struck by how important cats seem to be in Scandinavian myth and magic. The latest confirmation:

She comes in this silver body from a trove of jewelry unearthed at the former estate of a Viking magnate on Lake Tissø in western Zealand. Since the settlement was named for the god Tyr some scholars speculate that she was part of a blót, a sacrifice to the god. She has the face of a cat, or a shapeshifter in the midst of transformation.

Some think she is Freyja, the great goddess of the Vanir and mistress of magic who rides through the sky in a wagon pulled by cats. I suspect she is a völva, a seeress who may have painted her face like this in seidr and other rituals. Face paint was found inside a little cat-shaped box that was also a belt buckle. In other Viking tombs we find the remains of völva outfits including catskin gloves and hoods lined with catskins.

This cat woman resides for now in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, at least when the lights are on.