such women were asked to foretell the coming season. We are told of one volva in Landnamabok who is even said to have worked sei?r so that a sound should fill with fish, which means that she took an active part in the bringing of plenty to the land. The seeresses also appear to have foretold the destiny of children. In the story of Norna-Gest, included in Flateyjarbok, there is a reference to this:
At that time wise women used to go about the land. They were called ‘spae-wives’ and they foretold people’s futures. For this reason folk used to invite them to their houses and give them hos pitality, and bestow gifts on them at parting.Flateyjarbok,1, 346
The women in this story were seated when they made their prophecies, since when the people crowded round them, one of them was pushed off her seat, and was very angry. Here then we have memories of a custom which offers us a link with the Mothers and the Parcae mentioned earlier. The volva in Greenland who was described in such detail was said to be the last survivor of a company of nine women, and the sagas elsewhere represent the seeresses as going about in groups. Possibly at an earlier time than that represented in the sagas, isolated seeresses were less common, and women were not left to conduct ceremonies alone until the organization had broken down owing to the weakening of the old traditions. Such is the state of affairs implied in the story of the Greenland ceremony.
The use of animal fur in the costume of the volva links up with the statement made by Snorri that Freyja travelled in a carriage drawn by cats. The link between cats and the goddess has not been satisfactorily explained, but the gloves made of catskin, white and furry inside, mentioned in the Greenland account, suggests that cats were among the animal spirits which would aid the volva on her supernatural journey. We may note further that in a consultation of a volva described in Vatnsd?la Saga, she prophesies to a young man in the audience in the name of Freyr, and tells Ingimund that it is the god’s will that he go to Iceland. Thus at least in the mind of the saga-teller there was some kind of link between such practices and the cult of the Vanir.
When we find hints that at one time sei?r was also practised by men, we may remember the traditional ceremonies, said to be of a shameful nature, associated with Freyr. One of Harald Fairhair’s sons, called Ragnvald, was said to have worked sei?r with a company of eighty followers. His descendant Eyvind also did sei?r, but it is clear that there was great hostility against these two men, and both were killed in the end by members of their own family, and are condemned in Snorri’s Heimskringla for their wickedness. Such practices in early heathen times seem to be associated then with both the male and female deities of the Vanir. The connexion between women and divination however seems to have been established early among the Germans. Tacitus in his Histories (IV, 61) refers to a young woman called Veleda among the Bructeri, who was a seeress secluded in a tower, from which she gave answer to inquirers by means of a relative, who interpreted her replies. He has an interesting comment on this. It was the custom, he says, of the Germans to regard women as endowed with the gift of prophecy, and ‘even as goddesses’.
What we know of the practice of sei?r may throw some light on the divination associated with the deity in the wagon. The seeresses who travelled alone or in companies and went round to farms in Norway and Iceland may have been the final representatives of the fertility goddess in the north, the deity who, according to Snorri, survived last of all the gods. Here too we may see a link with the widespread cult of the Mothers in earlier times, the appeal to female deities whose blessing on new-born children ensured their happiness in life. We have evidence here for rites in which women were able to participate fully, both as celebrants and as audience, rites bound up with the fertility of the land and also with the rearing of a family and the giving of young girls in marriage. Frigg and Freya appear to be concerned in some way with such rites; both at times appear as the beneficent goddess helping women and girls at the times of marriage and child-birth as well as shaping the destiny of children.
There is little doubt that there was a darker side to sei?r and all that it represented. It could include harmful magic, dealing out death to its victims, and this aspect of it in the sagas is more than once found in conjunction with the horse-cult, which we know to be connected with the Vanir. One of the early kings of Sweden was said to have been crushed to death by a sei?kona who took on the form of a horse. According to Landnamabok, a woman skilled in witchcraft was brought to trial in Iceland for ‘riding’ a man to death in a similar way. The story is expanded in Eyrbyggja Saga, where the picture of the witch is an evil and menacing one. Memories of this evil cult lived on for many years. An English chronicle of the twelfth century states that the wife of King Edgar was accused of witchcraft, and that she was accustomed to take on the form of a horse by her magic arts, and was seen by a bishop ‘running and leaping hither and thither with horses and showing herself shamelessly to them’.1 This may be unreliable evidence for the character of a historic queen, but it is significant that an accusation of witchcraft should be expressed in this particular form. It recalls the accusation against Freyja herself, that she strayed out at night like a she-goat among the bucks. Hints such as this build up a vague but unpleasant picture of the malignant powers and repulsive practices of some women connected with the cult of the Vanir, and they may help to explain the strong prejudice against eating horse-flesh which has survived in this country.2
The goddess of the Vanir seems to have flourished under different names in various parts of Scandinavia. In the north we have the arresting but confused set of traditions concerning Thorgerda Holgabru?r, who was worshipped with passionate devotion by Jarl Hakon of Halogaland, and was known as his wife. She appears to be linked with the Vanir, and her image stood in some temples. King Olaf in Flateyjarbok is said to have dragged her out along with Freyr, and to have insulted her by pulling her along at the tail of his horse. In Saxo she is said to be one of the ‘wives of the kinsfolk’ of Freyr, and to have been put into a brothel along with her companions. Thorgerda in the later sagas is represented as consorting with trolls and evil creatures of all kinds, and there is no doubt of the hostility with which she was regarded, and of the sinister light which played round her cult for the story-tellers of a Christian age.1
Frigg, as we saw, has been left almost wholly free from such aspersions, and yet there is little doubt that Frigg and Freyja are closely connected. As the weeping mother, the goddess associated with child-birth and linked with the benevolent Mothers, Frigg appears to have her roots in the Vanir cult. The two main goddesses of Asgard indeed suggest two aspects of the same divinity, and this is paralleled by the two-fold aspect of the fertility goddess in the Near East, appearing as mother and as lover. Sometimes both roles may be combined in the person of one goddess, but it is more usual for the different aspects to be personified under different names. It is even possible to recognize a triad of goddesses, such as Asherah, Astarte, and Anat of Syria, or Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis of Greece. Here the three main aspects of womanhood appear side by side as wife and mother, lover and mistress, chaste and beautiful virgin. Frigg and Freyja in northern mythology could figure as the first two of such a trio, while the dim figure of Skadi the huntress might once have occupied the vacant place.
Even in the late sources which are all that remain, it is easy to discern two distinct sides of the cult of the goddess of the Vanir. One was connected with marriage, the family, and the birth of children. This appears to have been eminently respectable, and the visits of the seeresses to families and groups of neighbours in Scandinavia would seem to have been its latest manifestation. Side by side with these reputable practices – which the story- tellers do not shrink from recording – there were others which Saxo and other Christian writers refer to with horror and loathing, and condemn in terms which single them out from other heathen rites. These have only been preserved in hints and garbled accounts, and the hostility felt towards them does not seem to be wholly due to Christian prejudices. The ambivalent nature of the fertility goddess is something familiar to us from what we know of Cybele and Isis in the Roman world, as well as the rich pageant of the Near Eastern divinities, and it may help us to understand more of the nature of Frigg and Freyja in Asgard.
