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www.shamansociety.org 11 shamanic practice The Legacy of Seir History Experiences and the Path Ahead by Annette Hst During the past 25 years the old Norse shamanic tradition called seir has experienced a renaissance internationally. Different shamanic and heathen groups as well as individuals have been exploring this heritage experientially. In this article shamanic teacher Annette Hst examines traditional seidr as well as the new seidr asking What have we learned about the old seidr and the new What does it take to do a strong clear seidr respecting the tradition And looking ahead what possibilities and challenges does it offer our shamanic practice of today and tomorrow Old Norse Seir Seidr is originally a Norse shamanic tradition and could be seen as an old Scandinavian form of magic with strong shaman- ic traits. Seidr in Norse seir pronounced some- what like sayth where is pronounced like the th in there was a living tradi- tion used for divination and transformation up until middle or late Viking age. The ritual structure of seidrconsistsofmagicsong staff and a ritual seat. It is the combination of all three elements used in a shamanic way that gives the unique quality of seidr. Our only written sources are bits and pieces in the mythical Edda-poems and the sagas from late Viking age and early middle ages. In this literature a practitioner of seir is called a seidr woman seikona seidr man seimar or volva meaning staff carrier or spkona meaning seer. Sometimes the person experienced in the art of seid is just called fjolkunnigr meaning a person skilled in magic. The eddic poems and the sagas mostly mention women as practitioners of seidr but this might have been different at an earlier age. Seidr is much older than both the written sources and the Vikings. Most likely its roots are in iron age fertility cults and early shamanism and the tradition most likely has a lifespan of more than a thousand years. The old texts only offer us glimpses of the practice in its later days and clearly it must have undergone many changes through its long life. To picture how a seidr session might unfold in the Viking era we can turn to the most famous seidr account that of Thorb- jrg Little-Volva in the Saga of Eric the Red. Thorbjrgan ex- perienced professional wise woman and seikonais sitting on the seidr seat seihiall with her staff. The people who have summoned her to help solve the problems of illness and bad hunting luck in their settlement surround her singing the seidr song. Thorbjrgs spirit allies gather around her called by the haunt- ing chanting and the song transports her into an al- tered state of conscious- ness into the spirit world. There we must imagine how she meets with spir- its divine beings or na- ture forces asking for help on behalf of the suffering community but the saga is silent on this intimate part of the ritual. Her task completed she signals the song to end. The saga then tells that she chants kua the outcome of her magic Both health and fertility shall speedily return to the settlement. In the silent space following the song Thorbjrg is still between the worlds and from there she gives divinatory answers sp to the questions put to her by individuals from the farms about health the crops and the future. Thorbjrgs story tells us about seidr done as a big commu- nity ritual but seidr can also be done with just a few people. In Laxdoela saga Kotkel Grima and their two sons do an out- door seidr together singing strong songs raising a storm to wreck a ship. In other sagas Thuridr performs seidr to bring ________________________________________________________ Odin and his wife the goddess Frigg by Lorenz Frlich ca. 1895.