Women and magic in medieval Iceland: The story of Þorbjǫrg by Andrea Maraschi

In the Icelandic sagas, magical arts seem to have been almost equally spread amongst men and women. One specific form of magic, however – seiðr - was mainly practiced by women. The word seiðr signified could refer to several practices, and it is actually quite difficult to assess if any of these ever took place at all, if they had pagan features, and to what extent. The notion of seiðr was often associated with negatively-connotated rituals and was largely relegated to obviously underhanded acts, such as killing, inducing sickness, inflicting misfortune, and the like. However, a specific form of seiðr was deemed extremely helpful for the community: the divination of future. A beautiful example of divinatory seiðr emerges in Eiríks saga rauða, written in the mid-thirteenth century, and set around AD 1000. Not a banal detail, by the way, for AD 1000 is conventionally recognized as the year when Christianity formally, and legally,  became the official religion of Iceland

The context surrounding the story is based on a series of expeditions from Iceland to Greenland, one of which was led by Eiríkr rauðr, who had just been outlawed from Iceland. The following summer, a Christian Icelandic woman named Guðríðr Þorbjarnardóttir decided to to move to Greenland too, due to financial problems, and joined Eiríkr. After the summer, there came a particularly harsh winter, and the expeditioners were hosted by a farmer named Þorkell. 

A great famine ensued. Even if it is not hard to imagine how complicated procuring food supplies could be in such a remote area, the saga author specifies that, “Those who had gone out fishing had caught little”, if they had returned at all. The community was in danger; survival was at stake. But then a seiðkona (“prophetess”) named Þorbjǫrg was summoned. She was asked to perform seiðr, through which she would predict the future and, thus, unveil when the famine would come to an end. However, larger parts of the nordic area were being christianized at the time; in the bleak Greenlandic midwinter, the characters seem to strongly believe in seiðr, in the existence of special individuals who have been taught such an art, and believe that this art will prove fundamental to confronting the major threats to their survival.

Manuscript of Eirík the Red's Saga.

According to the saga author, the divinatory ritual performed by Þorbjǫrg was a yearly practice that took place every winter for the welfare of the local community, and that prophecy was ancient and long-forgotten knowledge that was possessed by the entire female-branch of Þorbjǫrg’s family – namely, by her nine sisters, all seeresses, none of whom was still alive. In other words, seiðr is described as a form of knowledge which was passed down from woman to woman, for the benefit of everybody.

Þorbjǫrg was warmly welcomed by Þorkell and the others, for seeresses were held in high esteem in the community. Her social prestige, indeed, was also materially symbolised by the hásæti (“high seat”) that was prepared for her, from where she would have sat higher than anybody else in the hall (a common feature of seiðr performances). Elegantly and richly dressed, Þorbjǫrg was taken by the hand by Þorkell himself, and accompanied to her seat. Then, she was served special food, reserved to her only:

“There was prepared a porridge of kid’s milk and the hearts of all the animals found there were cooked for her.”

Clearly, the meal must have had deep and obscure significance with regards to the performance of divination. After consuming the food. Þorbjǫrg told Þorkell that she would answer all his questions only after that night. The following day, in order to perform the divinatory ritual, she required the help of women who, “knew the lore needed for the performance of seiðr and that was called ‘warding songs’”. Once again, it seems clear that a fundamental resource for the community – divination – depends on the knowledge and memory of women. 

Unfortunately, nobody in the hall was acquainted with them. Except for one.

Depiction of Odin on The Funen bracteate (DR BR42 = DR IK58), found in Funen, Denmark.

The Christian Icelandic explorer Guðríðr Þorbjarnardóttir. She was asked to join the seeress but, understandably, her reaction was not exactly constructive: “I am not skilled in fjǫlkynngi (“magic”) nor have I the gift of prophecy”, she said, but then added that she actually had been taught such shamanic songs by her foster-mother. Nonetheless, she remarked she was Christian, and did not want to take part in any practice of that kind. Yet, she was asked to join the other women and lead the chant.  

“It could be that you could help the men here by doing so, and yet be no worse a woman for that”, Þorbjǫrg told her. The host Þorkell urged her, as well, even though it is not possible to say whether he was pagan or Christian: no reference in the text hints at either possibility. The point is that the difference, in this case, seems unimportant. Eventually, Guðríðr joined the warding ring of women around the platform where Þorbjǫrg was ready for seiðr, and led the chant. Her memory did not betray her, and her performance pleased the náttúrur (“spirits”) that had been responsible for the dearth, so the seiðkona could now predict that the famine would end during spring. 

Evidently, here, the “religious” compromise is the best solution for everyone, since the cause of this collective crisis required immediate and effective solutions: individual beliefs were a secondary element which should not prevail over the community’s good.

A few words should be spent on Þorbjǫrg’s special meal. The idea that it was possible to foresee future events by eating animals was no novelty. Birds, in particular, had long been attributed the ability to forewarn future events and dangers among many European peoples. At the same time, many ancient European traditions attributed sympathetic qualities to the heart: for instance, it was believed that the heart of an enemy would give extraordinary strength to those who ate it. Among the qualities that resided in the heart and could be transferred from the eaten to the eater, were wisdom and foreknowledge. This tradition was particularly strong in northern Europe, as many a saga suggest. This is probably the key to understanding the seiðr scene in Eiríks saga rauða: when Þorbjǫrg ate the hearts of all the animals living nearby, she engaged in a tight relationship with the surrounding environment through them, for they housed the knowledge about the area itself. This impression is supported by the peculiar recipe of the meal itself: the food served to Þorbjǫrg was reserved for her, and was clearly distinctive, and it is thus fair to assume that it was considered an integral part of the performance: consequently, it was thought to be connected with a supernatural dimension (that to which the náttúrur belonged).

Fauna was plausibly believed (as is indeed the case) to have sharper and more developed senses than humans, and its awareness of nature’s rhythms and behaviours was probably thought to reside in animals’ hearts. Most importantly, the scene shows that the conversion to Christianity was probably slow, and it may have entailed that traditional key figures among the community (such as seeresses) continued to be considered necessary as society was being christianized. In this sense, the figure of Guðríðr Þorbjarnardóttir shows that the transition could cause individual discomfort, although the benefit of the community was supposed to come first. Actually, the author of Eiríks saga himself – certainly a Christian - was quick to specify that many settlers went to consult the seiðkona, and – most importantly - that her prophecies proved true. The age of women’s connection with the supernatural was slow to die.  

It was not time for the Christian God to rule over the North, yet. 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN ISSUE 122, MEDIEVAL WOMEN.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea Maraschi holds a BA degree in Modern Humanities (2008), an MA degree in Medieval History (2010), and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Bologna (2013). From 2014 to 2017 he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iceland. He has taught courses on Food history in the Middle Ages and Anthropology of Food, and he has published on many aspects connected with food in medieval times such as banqueting, religious symbolism, and magic practice. He is he is currently teaching at the University of Bari.