Seidhr. The Witchcraft of the Vikings - Eva Smit

Before the Viking world became legend, there were women who sat above the firelight and spoke with fate.

They carried staffs. They sang to spirits. They entered trance. They called the dead. They read the hidden pattern of the world.

They were the völur, the feared and honoured seeresses of the Norse world, and their art was seidhr, the witchcraft of the Vikings.

SEIDHR: The Witchcraft of the Vikings uncovers one of the most mysterious spiritual traditions of the Viking Age, a practice bound to prophecy, trance, fate, death, spirit calling, divine power, and the forbidden knowledge of the unseen world.

In the sagas, seidhr was powerful enough to disturb the boundaries of gender, honour, and the sacred. Odin himself was said to have practiced it, though the old stories tell us that this magic carried danger and shame when used by men. Freyja, goddess of beauty, desire, battle, and the dead, was remembered as the divine mistress of seidhr, the one who brought this art into the world of the gods.

This is the hidden world of the staff carrying prophetess, the woman who entered halls during famine, crisis, sickness, and fear. She was welcomed, watched, paid, honoured, and dreaded. She could reveal the future, call spirits, bless, curse, heal, and expose the threads of wyrd.

Inside this book, you will discover:

This is the world behind the familiar image of the Viking Age, beyond swords, ships, raids, and kings.

A world of seers.

A world of spirits.

A world where fate could be heard in song, read in signs, and summoned from the dark.

The woman with the staff knew what even kings feared to ask.