Seidr

This paper will shed light on the vestiges of the magic practice of Seiðr that have survived the centuries through oral tradition among the Black Sea-, Volga-, and Pennsylvania-German cultural diasporas of the Americas in the form of the folk healing arts. These separate and distinct culture groups, having brought ancestral practices with them, preserved a system of healing magic called “Brauche” as charms and incantations that contain pre-Christian elements.

Author: Noel Braucher

There are plenty of people so foolish that they believe nothing but what they have seen with their own eyes or heard with their own ears - never anything unfamiliar to them, such as the councils of the wise, or the strength and amazing skills of the great heroes, or the way in which seiðr [pronounced *sayther*] or skills of the mind ON huklaraskap and powerful sorcery ON fjolkyngi may seiðr death or a lifetime of misery for some, or bestow worldly honours, riches and rank on others. These men would sometimes stir up the elements, and sometimes calm them down, just like Othinn and all those who learnt from him these skills, of galðr and healing. Göngu-Hrólfs Saga Prologue

The purpose of this study is to analyze the distribution, forms, and function(s) of iron amulets deposited in the late Iron Age gravefields of Lovö, with the goal of ascertaining how (and so far as possible why) these objects were utilized in rituals carried out during and after burials.  Particular emphasis is given to re-interpreting the largest group of iron amulets, the iron amulet rings, in a more relational and practice-focused way than has heretofore been attempted.  By framing burial analyses, questions of typology, and evidence of ritualized actions in comparison with what is known of other cult sites in Mälardalen specifically– and theorized about the cognitive landscape(s) of late Iron Age Scandinavia generally– a picture of iron amulets as inscribed objects made to act as catalytic, protective, and mediating agents is brought to light.

Keywords: Iron Age, Viking Age, burial, amulets, Thor’s hammer ring, torshammarringar, practice theory, ritual studies, New Materialism, cognitive archaeology, archaeology of ritual

Frey and Freya are the twin Vanir gods in Norse Mythology-the brother, Ingvi Frey2, is associated with kingship, virility, the sun, summer and good harvests3, while his twin sister, named Freya, is associated with love, beauty, sex, battle, and the magic behind omens 4. Their father is the Vanir god Njörðr and their mother is the queen of the Aesir gods, Frigg56. Freya is most concerned with her love for Svipdagr7, the young warrior with whom she is in love, and she is also highly sought after by the giants8 who wish to make her their own. Freyja rules Fólkvangr, a field where she receives half of the slain warriors from battle. Griminismal says: "The ninth is Folkvang, where Freyja decrees Who shall have seats in the hall;

This paper examines the corpus of rare Viking-Age miniature objects in the form of coiled snakes. Artefacts of this kind are made of silver, copper-alloy, gold, jet, and wood, and are discovered in graves, hoards, settlements, and as stray finds. In funerary contexts, they are typically found in connection with women, often buried with various ritual paraphernalia strongly suggesting that their owners had an important role to play in pre-Christian religious practice. By conducting a thorough analysis of the materiality of snake figurines, and by investigating their different variants and the wider contexts in which they are found, this paper attempts to unravel the symbolic and social significance of these curious miniature objects.