Seeress (Germanic)

[1] Ancient Roman and Greek literature records the name of several Germanic seeresses, including Albruna, Veleda, Ganna, and, by way of an archaeological find, Waluburg.

[7] At this time the word *rūnō still referred to chanting and not to letters (rune),[4] and in the sense "incantation" it was probably borrowed from Proto-Germanic into Finnish where runo means "poem".

[10] However, it is sometimes proposed that the first element is a term corresponding to Swedish hage ("wooded paddock") in the sense of "fence",[13] i.e. PGmc *χaʒōn ("pasture", "enclosure"), from whence also English hedge (through *χaʒjaz).

The majority of scholars support the "shamanic interpretation, and the presence of ecstatic rituals" (e.g. Ellis Davidson, Ohlmarks, Pálsson, Meulengracht Sørensen, Turville-Petre and de Vries), while a minority is skeptical (e.g. Bugge, Dillmann, Dumézil, Näsström and Schjødt), but there are divergent opinions within the two camps.

He allies himself with the position of Ohlmarks, who was familiar with a wide range shamanism and rejected it in 1939, in a debate with Dag Strömbäck who found similarities with Sámi practices.

[29] Ganna's political influence was so considerable that she was taken to Rome together with Masyos, the king of her tribe, where they had an audience with the Roman emperor Domitian and were treated with honours, after which they returned home.

[34] As for the later North Germanic version, Näsström writes that the völva did not perform any sacrifices, but her roles as a prophetess and as a sorceress were still important aspects of the spiritual life of her society.

Ganna belonged to a tribe called the Semnones who were settled east of the river Elbe, and she appears to have been active in the second half of the 1st century, after Veleda's time.

[30] Ganna's political influence was considerable enough that she was taken to Rome together with Masyos, the king of her tribe, where they had an audience with the Roman emperor and were treated with honours, after which they returned home.

[30] During their stay in Rome, Ganna and Masyos appear also to have met with the Roman historian Tacitus who reports that he discussed the Semnoni religious practices with informants from that tribe, who considered themselves the noblest of the Suebi.

[45] Rudolf Simek notes that Tacitus also learnt that the Semnoni performed their rites at a holy grove that was the cradle of the tribe's inception, and that could only be entered when they were fettered.

[61] Pohl comments that Gambara lived in a world and era where prophecy was important, and not being a virgin like Veleda, she combined the roles of priestess, wise woman, mother and queen.

[2] They were in the words of Wolfram "women who engaged in magic with the world of the dead", and they were banished from their tribe by Filimer who was the last pre-Amal dynasty king of the migrating Goths.

[75] They found refuge in the wilderness where they were impregnated by unclean spirits from the Steppe, and engendered the Huns, which Pohl compares with the origin of the Sarmatians as presented by Herodotus.

[77] The account may be based on a historic event when Filimer banished his seeresses as scapegoats for a defeat when their prophesy had proved wrong,[78] They may also have represented the conservative faction and resisted change.

It contained an object called a jartegn, a token given to officials by Scandinavian kings and Rus' rulers, indicating that the buried man had political influence.

For example, the woman wore silver toe rings (otherwise unknown in the Scandinavian record) and her burial contained two bronze bowls originating from Central Asia.

[100] The grave also contained a small purse with seeds from henbane, a poisonous plant, inside it, and a partially disintegrated metal wand, used by seeresses in the Old Norse record.

The grave also contained a small silver figurine of a woman with a large necklace, which has been interpreted by archaeologists as representing the goddess Freyja, a deity strongly associated with seiðr, death, and sex.

In the Laxdœla saga, the sweetness of a chant (seiðlæti) lures a boy to his death, as intended, and a pleasing sound would also have been understood as attracting spirits to the summoner.

Especially the last poem contains many Germanic pagan elements that are also found in Old Norse sources, such as sorceresses (hægtessan), elves (ylfa), Æsir gods (esa), the magic of smiths, and the presence of women that are like Valkyries.

[130] There appears to be a continuity between elements such as the first century Bructerian seeress Veleda's tower and the seiðhjallr that played an important role in Scandinavian sources.

Henbane contains the psychoactive drug scopolamine, and when consumed as a tea, or when its juice is made into a topical salve and rubbed into the skin, especially around the armpits and chest, hallucinations can be experienced.

This attitude can even be seen in some Eddic lays, and in the Ynglinga saga, Snorri Sturluson writes that their practice was so evil that "manly men considered it too shameful to practise it, and so it was taught to priestesses".

This was related to the same fears that later led to witchcraft hysteria, manifested as what Ellis Davidson referred to as "the sinister light which played round [Freyja's] cult for the story-tellers of a Christian age".

[148] Modern archaeological finds, however, do not confirm that the North Germanic seeresses had a marginal position at the bottom of society as depicted by older scholarship and Christian sources, but instead they suggest the contrary.

[145] The seeresses have been cast in a new light by a recent detailed analysis of Landnámabók, the Íslendingasögur and the Íslendingaþættir, which point out that the practitioners of magic were respected and well integrated in society.

[150] Attitudes also changed and sorcery was increasingly considered to be witchcraft during the Middle Ages, and by the 15th century society appears no longer to have distinguished between sorcesses and healers such as midwives and wise women.

Morris argues that without this book there would probably never have been witch-hunts, and that the printing press helped spread the notion of diabolical witchcraft from the ecclesiastical elite to a larger part of the population.

Morris argues that the evolution from Germanic pagan seeresses to witches during the witch-hunts is a case study in how attitudes towards magic were affected by the change of religion.