Divided into seven chapters, Price opened the book with a discussion of his theoretical approach, before providing an overview of what is known of pre-Christian Norse religion and magic from both literary and archaeological studies.

[1] Personal circumstances meant that Price was unable to finish his doctoral thesis at York, and in 1992 he emigrated to Sweden, where he spent the following five years working as a field archaeologist.

Despite his full-time employment, he continued to be engaged in archaeological research in a private capacity, publishing a series of academic papers and presenting others at conferences.

[2] In undertaking research for his doctoral thesis, Price took great interest in circumpolar shamanism, attending academic conferences on this subject and reading much published material that had been produced by anthropologists.

[3] "Where in our synthetic models of the period do we find serious consideration of the torch-carrying man who walked backwards round a funeral pyre, completely naked and with his fingers covering his anus; the herd of six-legged reindeer depicted on a wall-covering; the armed women who worked a loom made from human body-parts; the elderly Sámi man who was buried in a Nordic woman's clothes; the men who could understand the howling of wolves; the women with raised swords who paced beneath trees of hanging bodies; the men who had sex with a slave-girl, and then strangled her, as a formal sign of respect for her dead master; the woman buried with silver toe-rings and a bag full of narcotics?"

He then discusses the evidence for temples and sacred spaces in Iron Age Scandinavia, and the various priestly figures who would have carried out cultic functions.

He moves on to deal with accounts of the Seiðr-workers' assistants in the literature, before turning his attention to the burial evidence for Norse magical practitioners.

As evidence, Price highlights a number of Viking Age graves that have been excavated in Scandinavia and found to contain potentially magical items; this includes three inhumation burials at Birka in the town of Björkö in Uppland, and two cremation burials at Klinta in Köpings parish, Öland, all of which were in Sweden, as well as a Danish grave from the cemetery at Fyrkat in Jylland and another from the Swedish cemetery at Aska in Hagebyhöga parish, Östergötland.

He then rounds off this section of the chapter with a discussion of charms, songs and chants, as well as debating whether we can understand the role of trance and ecstasy in seiðr.

[12] Price proceeds to deal with the gender concepts surrounding seiðr, and the fact that male practitioners of sorcery were viewed as social and sexual deviants who had committed ergi.

Looking at the role of Óðinn as sorcerer under the lens of queer theory, Price then discusses the evidence that Seiðr practices offered involved sexual acts such as masturbation.

Finally, the chapter is brought to an end with a discussion of the domestic uses of seiðr, including divination, healing, hunting and weather magic.

[17] Reviewing Tolley's work in the Time and Mind journal, historian Ronald Hutton commented that Price's study had gained "much admiration" for its multidisciplinary approach.