In Denmark, another possible ‘volva grave’ was found in the 1950s, at the tenth-century fortification at Fyrkat in Jylland. The Fyrkat circular enclosure was constructed towards the end of the reign of Haraldr blátand, its building dated by dendrochronology to around the year 980. Situated in northeast Jylland, Fyrkat is one of four such engineering projects built in Denmark at this time – the others being a similar enclosure at Trelleborg on Sjælland, another which was probably of the same kind at Nonnebakken under modern Odense, and the massive example at Aggersborg on the Limfjord. All the enclosures are circular in form, with axial streets leading to gates at the compass points, and buildings built precisely in the quadrants of the circle. Originally thought to be fortresses and often termed such today, the ‘Trelleborg-type’ enclosures may have served a number of purposes, all linked by the notion of bringing these functions into central places under royal supervision. They have been interpreted variously as tax-gathering installations for the co-ordination of agricultural surplus, as military assembly points, and as economic centres of craft production. There is also a possibility that they served as administrative mustering camps for Haraldr’s campaign which regained southern Jylland from the Germans in 983. They perhaps combined elements of all these functions, reflecting different aspects of the king’s power. By 987 Haraldr was dead, and it seems that the enclosures were abandoned soon after, rejected together with other great engineering projects such as the Ravning Enge bridge as emblems of a failed political strategy (the literature on the enclosures is extensive – for overviews see Roesdahl 1987 & 2001: 147–52).
Fig. 3.26 The Fyrkat circular enclosure in its landscape, with the cemetery on the peninsula to the north-east (after Roesdahl 1977a: 8; drawing by Holger Schmidt).
Fig. 3.27 Plan of the Fyrkat cemetery, showing the postholes of the raised ‘walkway’ and the outlines of the burials. Grave 4 is situated at the mid-point of the walkway, on its north side (after Roesdahl 1977a: 77; plan by Orla Svendson).
It is clear that the Fyrkat camp’s population included women as well as men, and that a broad range of domestic activities and craftsworking went on there. We find these people in the small cemetery that lay on the flat end of the peninsula north-east of the enclosure (Fig. 3.26). The cemetery was arranged around a 38 m-long raised wooden platform, perhaps a kind of road or a processional way, built of transverse planks laid on joists supported by earth-fast posts. The functions of this platform are unclear – it is unique in the Viking world – but it was clearly linked to the guiding principles behind the construction of the main enclosure as it ran exactly parallel to the main east–west axial street. Around 30 graves were laid out parallel with the platform on both sides.
The grave of interest here – numbered 4 by the excavators – was found on the north side of the platform, nearer its narrower, eastern end (the grave is published in Roesdahl 1977a: 83–104, with additional notes throughout; three decades later another study appeared, with more extensive scientific analyses and some startling new information, Pentz et al. 2009; the account given below draws on both publications; see also Gardeła 2016: 73f; Fig. 3.27).
A rectangular cut had been excavated in the loose sand which forms the sub-soil of the cemetery, and was then carefully lined with a thin layer of clay. Into this had been laid the wooden body of a wagon, used as a ‘coffin’ for the body of a woman (Figs 3.28–3.30). With her in the wagon were grave-goods of various kinds, discussed below.
The wagon-body was clinker-built of seven overlapping oak planks, fastened with nails and rivets. It was 2.0 × 1.0 m in size, 0.45 m deep, and had been laid in the grave on its removable chassis of oak cross-beams – the whole cradle being lifted from the wagon and deposited in the grave. The eastern end of the wagon body, by the feet of the dead, was certainly present as it can be seen in profile on the excavation photos, but it is not certain whether the west end was intact or left open (see Peter Wagner’s reconstruction of its carpentry in Roesdahl 1977a: 84–90, and the alternative interpretation in Pentz et al. 2009: 229; Fig. 3.31).
Fig. 3.28 Plan of grave 4 at Fyrkat. The rivets and iron fittings of the wagon-body can be clearly seen, shown in black; the linear hatched areas indicate the remains of the wooden cradle on which the wagon-body rested. On the south side of the grave are the two possible postholes, which may represent some kind of burial marker. Very few skeletal remains survived, but the approximate position of the woman’s body could be made out as stains in the soil, here shown by the fine dotted lines; she was laid in the grave with her head to the west. The numbering refers to the catalogue of grave-goods (after Roesdahl 1977a: 86; plan by Orla Svendson).
Fig. 3.30 An alternative reconstruction of grave 4 at Fyrkat as it may have appeared when the burial was sealed (drawing by Thomas Hjejle Bredsdorff). It is not certain whether or not gable ends were present on the wagon body.
Fig. 3.29 A reconstruction of grave 4 at Fyrkat as it may have appeared when the burial was sealed (drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson). It is not certain whether or not gable ends were present on the wagon body.
The use of a wagon-body for burial in this way is known from a number of Viking-Age cemeteries, including one more example from Fyrkat itself. There are fourteen examples from Denmark and northern Germany, of which eleven are female burials and the rest are of undetermined sex; all available datings are from the tenth century (Roesdahl 1978: 11; see also Hägg 2009 for a deeper time perspective on the burial custom). The rite was less common in Sweden, where one such burial is known from Birka (grave Bj. 1131 – Gräslund 1980: 24). Sometimes wagons were included among the grave-goods, though not used as the container for the body. The classic example is of course the wagon from the Oseberg ship burial (Brøgger & Shetelig 1928: 3–33, and see below). This is the only one to have survived intact, and was richly carved, but we have no way of knowing if this was also the case for that from Fyrkat. Most of the excavated examples are of similar size to that from Fyrkat. Their mortuary connection with women of status is confirmed by their appearance in several scenes on the Oseberg tapestry, and on Gotlandic picture stones from Alskog and Levide (Lindqvist 1941: Figs 135f, 176, 178; 1942: 12–15, 96). Þórgunnur Snædal (2010) has explored these images in more detail in a ground-breaking paper, and observed that even the contours of certain Gotlandic pictorial monuments to women resemble the outline of wagons, and argues that the wagon burial rite – whether carved in stone or enacted in fact – is a female equivalent to the Valholl journey for dead male warriors.
Fig. 3.31 Photograph of grave 4 at Fyrkat under excavation in 1955, seen from the west. The end-board of the wagon-body in which the woman was buried can be seen at the top of the picture (after Roesdahl 1977a: 85; photo by Svend Søndergaard).
The woman in grave 4 was laid out on her back in an extended position, probably with a pillow of some kind to support her head. Her left arm was by her side, but the right arm was flexed inwards across her waist. The bone preservation was too poor for any age determination to be made, but she would have stood about 1.70 m tall.
As one of the best-preserved of the possible ‘volva graves’ from Scandinavia, it is instructive to examine the disposition of the burial in some detail. It should be noted that when the burial was excavated in the 1950s standards of record-keeping left something to be desired, and a number of grave-goods were not precisely located on the plans.
She was dressed in a blue costume of very good quality, with red details and ornamentation in gold thread across the chest area. This was exceptional clothing in many respects, not least as none of the jewellery fittings and brooches which held the standard Viking-Age female dress together were present. It seems to have conformed to the very latest fashions of the 980s, and probably comprised a foot-length gown with long, sweeping arms. Several objects were found in a position that might suggest that they hung from a belt, but no trace of a buckle or belt mounts was found. The writers of the report considered that, like some of the others buried at Fyrkat, she may have been interred in a shroud (Roesdahl 1977a: 190), but the new analysis of 2009 suggested that this was instead a full-body veil of linen, so thin as to be transparent – another item of then-current high-end fashion.
Fig. 3.32 Replicas of the two silver toe-rings worn by the woman in grave 4 at Fyrkat (photo by Neil Price).
Fig. 3.33 A small bronze bowl, possibly from the Middle East or Central Asia, buried in grave 4 at Fyrkat (photo by Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark).
The Fyrkat woman was also wearing items of jewellery which are completely unique from a Viking-Age context: two silver toe-rings (Fig. 3.32). The rings were identical and probably made as a pair, each one 1.5 cm in diameter and unadorned. Fastened with a clasp fitting, they were probably worn on the second toe. The closest parallels come from the Far East (Pentz et al. 2009: 222). In view of the rings, which were probably intended to be seen, it is possible that the woman was buried barefoot or in open-toed sandals.
Resting up against the woman’s left knee was a small bronze bowl, 10 cm in diameter, for which the closest parallels come from the Middle East and Central Asia, particularly from Persian Khourasan (Fig. 3.33). It seems to have travelled a long way to Fyrkat, and interestingly has a close parallel with the Klinta grave discussed above. The Fyrkat example contained a fatty substance, perhaps an ointment of some kind, covered over with a ‘lid’ of woven grass that perhaps acted as a kind of filter.
Fig. 3.34 A damaged box brooch of Gotlandic type, found in grave 4 at Fyrkat where it was used as a container for a white lead substance, provisionally interpreted as body paint (photo by Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark).
By her right elbow was a small copper bowl, only 3.8 cm high, with no known parallels – perhaps it was a drinking cup? Slightly to the right of the woman’s head lay a gilded bronze box-brooch with silver and niello decoration (Fig. 3.34). Probably imported from Gotland, the brooch was very heavily worn, and was placed in the grave upside down. On close analysis for the 2009 paper, it was revealed that it had been used as a container for a white lead paste, interpreted as some form of make-up, of a deeply unhealthy kind used since Roman times. We cannot know how this was used or where it was applied, but it is a startling image to think of the Fyrkat woman with a blank white face resembling the impression given by the cosmetics of Japanese geisha. Even more surprising is the find made in 2017 at another circular fortress, at Borgring near Køge, of a tiny fragment that appears to come from the same box brooch (Persson 2017). If correct, aside from the extraordinary coincidence of discovery, it would imply that the Fyrkat woman had also visited another fortress, which might have interesting implications for her activities there.
Fig. 3.35 Hayo Vierck’s reconstruction of the items buried with the woman from grave 4 at Fyrkat, in which the various loose grave-goods are seen as originally part of a complicated belt ensemble (after Vierck 2002: 45).
In her lap the woman had a sheathed knife, its hilt bound in five loops of silver wire. Grouped around this were a number of other objects, including an 8 cm-long whetstone of dark slate. Most of the artefacts in this group seem to have been either jewellery or ‘amulets’ of different kinds. A small, very finely plaited silver chain was found, with a thread running through it, possibly in association with a small silver ring. Clustered nearby, perhaps once attached to the chain or to a string that had decayed, were a round silver pendant and a few fragments of silver that may have once been something similar. In the same group were found a dress pin of copper alloy covered with gold foil, an ornamented pendant in gold, and two glass beads. A silver pendant with three suspended ‘bird’s feet’ decorations was also found here; this object resembles finds from the Finnish mainland, but more particuarly further to the east in Russia – it has clearly been imported, and only one other example is known from Denmark, from the famous Mammen grave that seems to have been of princely status (Iversen 1991).
Another item found in the same group, and possibly strung on the same string or chain, is important in the context of seiðr and the volur. This was a small silver pendant in the form of a chair, of a kind found in other female graves with possible links to the practice of sorcery. The object is considered in detail below. Hayo Vierck (2002: 45; Fig. 3.35) has suggested that this chair was originally suspended from a belt, together with all the objects in the woman’s lap and several other items such as the bronze bowl by her side. As we shall see in chapter 4, such an arrangement would find very good parallels among the belts of Sámi sorcerers, and seems convincing.
A scatter of clear glass fragments covered an area of approximately 15 cm2 alongside the above cluster of jewellery, and it seems to have been a small, thin-walled ampule. This is not of local manufacture, and was probably imported from Continental Europe or perhaps the Middle East. Analysis indicated that it contained a brilliant white substance made of phosphorus, lead and calcium. Fragments of a sheepskin pouch were also found, probably closed with a string of some kind drawn through a copper bead.
From an unlocalised point somewhere around the knife and jewellery came several hundred seeds of henbane (Hyoscyamus sp.). The excavator’s notes say merely that they were retrieved here fra gravens bund, ‘from the bottom of the grave’, which can be interpreted several ways (Roesdahl 1977a: 84). They were found tightly grouped and had probably lain within the sheepskin pouch, becoming dispersed when the latter decayed. Henbane is a plant with mind-altering properties, and this find is discussed further below.
By the woman’s feet up against the end-board of the wagon-body was an oak box, at least 24 cm long with highly ornamented tin-plated iron hinges and a complex lock. This chest, which had been repaired several times with patches of poplar, was locked when buried. The bottom of the box seems to have been filled with folded clothes. Their exact appearance is impossible to reconstruct but the finds included items of very good quality, with similar decorative details to the woman’s funerary dress. A fragment of leather with what seems to be relief embroidery in gold and silver thread may have come from an apron or a hood, while a number of other fragments of gold and silver threads clearly adorned other clothing items. The box also contained pieces of gold thread decorating blue and red woollen fragments, and loose silver thread. An iron hook of the hook-and-eye kind was also found in the box, and presumably served as a fastener on an item of clothing. Taken together with what the deceased was wearing, this makes up a wardrobe of very high status indeed.
On top of the textiles in the box lay a pair of shears in a finely-made poplar case, a slate whetstone 20.5 cm long, and a spindle-whorl of burnt clay. In or on top of the chest were two more items of possible ‘magical’ association: the lower jawbone of a young pig, and a clump of pellets which appear to have been quite old when placed in the grave, suggesting that they had been carried around for a long time. The latter are particuarly interesting: once thought to be pellets from an owl, on later CT-examination they were shown to be rolled conglomerates of hair and “calcareous material” which could come from bones. Were these the remains of cremations, rolled up into little balls of hair, ash and fat?
Parallel with the woman’s right side lay an iron meat-spit, 99 cm long, with a spear-form blade and a twisted shaft. The handle was placed by the woman’s elbow, just below the small copper bowl. Lying next to the meat spit and parallel with it was a wooden staff of some kind, entirely perished but visible as negative impressions left in the iron corrosion products on the spit. The staff seems to have been about the thickness of a finger in cross-section, but its length is uncertain. An object so thin is unlikely to have been a walking stick, but it may have served some domestic purpose. Its use in connection with ritual of some kind cannot be ruled out – as we shall see below, at least one of the different ‘sorcery staffs’ in the sources seems to have been a slim cane.
Two large, undecorated drinking horns, probably from cattle, were also found in the grave but their exact position was not recorded.
In the present context one of the most interesting objects in the grave, besides the henbane, came from the area around the oak box by the woman’s feet. Here the very corroded and fragmented remains of a metal staff were found. The writers of the report did not interpret it as such – and its identification is far from certain – but its location led them to suggest that it was actually in the chest. In reconsidering the excavation plans and the object’s possible original form, I would instead argue that one end of it was resting on top of the box, while its length extended along the wagon-body by the woman’s left leg (Fig. 3.36). This object is considered in detail below.
The poor condition of some of the grave-goods is interesting. The box was rather clumsily repaired, and does not seem to have been of good quality. The Gotlandic box-brooch was almost in pieces when placed in the grave. Many of the grave-goods imply eastern connections, and it is possible that the toe-rings also have such associations. As Roesdahl suggests (1977a: 192), either the woman herself or someone she knew seems to have travelled along the Baltic littoral into Gotlandic and Finnish waters, and perhaps also along the Russian river systems.
Most strikingly, the woman in grave 4 was accorded the richest burial of any in the cemetery. We must consider here the virtually certain royal connections of the ‘fortress’, and the fact that many of the men who served there must have belonged to the king’s retinues (and were presumably buried in the cemetery, though weapons were found only in one grave). In this light, it is clear that this woman must have been of very considerable social standing indeed to be honoured in death above all others present. That this was occurring in the late tenth century, within the orbit of a king who claimed to have made the Danes Christian, is more remarkable still.
A number of curious features in connection with the surroundings of grave 4 also suggest that its occupant might have been specially regarded. At the southern edge of the grave-cut, at about the height of the woman’s elbow, were found two circular cuts about 60 cm deep, 20 cm broad, at an angle of approximately 45 degrees (Fig. 3.37). Filled with charcoal, the cuts seem to represent the remains of posts that had burned. Interpretation is difficult here, but they may have once stood vertically (or even sloping as found) and marked the burial in some way. A small stone-set hearth was also found about a metre away from the posts, again directly south from the grave, but the dating of this feature is unknown and it may well have been prehistoric.
Fig. 3.36 Plan drawing of what remained of the oak chest by the feet of the woman in grave 4 at Fyrkat (marked B & C on the excavation plan), drawn while under excavation in the conservation laboratories. The possible staff of sorcery can be seen in the centre, numbered 23 (after Roesdahl 1977a: 88; plan by Knud Holm).
Fig. 3.37 Section drawing through the centre of grave 4 at Fyrkat, showing the profile of the grave cut and one of the sloping burnt ?posts on the southern side (after Roesdahl 1977a: 85; plan by Orla Svendson).
In passing we may note an interesting Anglo-Saxon parallel for the woman in Fyrkat 4, in a sixth-century female inhumation from Bidford-on-Avon in Warwickshire (Dickinson 1993). This woman was also buried with a range of unusual amulets, including a leather object apparently sewn with miniature buckets, a leather bag with various possible ‘charms’ including a puzzling cone of antler, and some remarkable jewellery. The grave is interpreted as that of a ‘cunning woman’ (Dickinson 1993: 53, who also presents a range of parallels).
The early trading emporium of Kaupang on the Viksfjord is well known as a key site for the development of Viking-Age urbanism in Norway (see Skre & Stylegar 2004 for a summary of the settlement; Skre 2007 references the full excavation programmes). The main settlement consisted of a bustling community of merchants laid out along the quaysides by the water, but surrounding this were a series of cemeteries on promontories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord. The grave in question was a multiple burial so complex that when it was originally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way (Blindheim & Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995: 22–6, 92–5, 99, 103, 115–20, 128–9). Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity, renumbered as Ka. 294–296, and even then discussed only briefly (Stylegar 2007: 95–100, 122–3). The interpretation presented here is my own, that I have developed at greater length elsewhere (Price 2010a, 2012; see also Lihammer 2012: 198f; Pedersen 2014). The Kaupang burial Ka. 294–296 is difficult to disentangle, but rewards the effort as probably the most elaborate possible sorceress burial so far known (Fig. 3.38).
The funerary sequence began in the mid–late ninth century when a man of indeterminate age was buried on his left side, his head to the north-east, probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder. He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone, and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality, drawn up like a blanket over his legs. With him were a handful of objects: two knives, a fire steel and two flints, a whetstone, some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an “egg-shaped stone”.
Fig. 3.38 Reconstruction of the multiple boat-grave inhumation Ka. 294–296 at the S. Bikjholberget cemetery, Kaupang, as it may have appeared when the burial was sealed (drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson).
Some unspecified “iron objects”, perhaps tools, were also found. This grave in itself seems unremarkable, but it played an apparently integral role in the sequence of subsequent ritual activity that began several decades later, probably in the early tenth century, when an 8.5 m-long clinker-built boat was placed exactly on top of the dead man. Its keel aligned precisely SW–NE along the axis of his grave (which tells us that its location was remembered). Inside the boat were the bodies of four people, sexed through both osteology and by artefactual association: a male, two females and an infant, together with a number of animals. Around and above the bodies, laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth, were masses of objects.
In the prow a man and a woman lay apparently on blankets covering the decking. The woman was aged about 45–50 when she died, arranged on her back with her right hand on her breast, ankles crossed and her feet pointing into the prow. Her head was resting on a stone, like a pillow. She was expensively dressed, her clothes held together with two gilded oval brooches and a trefoil brooch, beads and a silver ring strung between them, a silver bracelet on her arm. From her belt hung a knife and a key. To her immediate right was a bucket. Balanced across her knees, a weaving sword. A baby was wrapped in the woman’s dress, bundled at her hip with her left hand resting on its head. Lying head to head with the woman, arranged symmetrically with his feet pointing to the stern, was a man of unknown age. He had been placed slightly twisted, his upper body lying supine while his legs were flexed and bent to one side at the waist. Spatially, though not necessarily personally, associated with him were numerous weapons: two axes of different types, of which one was an antique when it was buried; a throwing spear; a sheathed sword, its point precisely at his head, with two knives and a whetstone next to it; a shield (two more lay nearby); a quiver of arrows implying probably also a bow, now completely decayed. A silver arm-ring lay above him. On his midriff lay an inverted frying pan. On the sword scabbard two spindle whorls had been carefully placed. A pot of German manufacture had been smashed and its pieces scattered over the man’s body along with three glass beads, near a soapstone vessel. Two more of the latter were deposited at the man’s feet. An iron dog chain was draped next to him, with a sickle somewhere nearby.
Amidships, a bridled horse had been killed and laid on the deck. Its exact manner of death is unknown but its throat was probably cut. Irregularities in the bone assemblage also suggest that the horse was decapitated and roughly dismembered, its limbs and body parts then placed back in approximately their anatomical positions. A single spur was placed on the mangled corpse.
In the stern of the boat was a second woman, apparently buried sitting up, either in a chair or hunched up against the rising end of the vessel. We lack most organics from the grave, but from the woman’s location and her seated posture it is possible – even likely – that the steering oar of the boat was resting in her hands. A whetstone and a bridle-bit leant against her feet, which touched the carcass of the horse. She seems to have been well-dressed, her clothes fastened with oval brooches and beads, fragments of textile suggesting high-quality fashion. In addition, she was apparently wearing some clothing item made of leather, very unusual apparel indeed. Behind her was a shield. To her right, resting on the deck, another enigmatic ‘egg-shaped stone” and a weaving sword of iron. Somewhere near her (the exact location is unknown) was an axe. In the woman’s lap was an imported Insular bowl of bronze that had been scratched with runes, i muntlauku, ‘in the hand basin’. The bowl contained an unidentified object of gilt copper alloy fixed with iron nails, a copper alloy ring that might have been used to suspend the bowl, a ‘tweezer-like’ object, and the severed head of a dog. Its body lay crossways over the woman’s feet. One pair of its legs, perhaps detached, lay a little below the torso; the other legs were missing. Marks on the bones suggest crude carving of the flesh before the ragged skeleton was reassembled. Around the woman were also found fragments of wood and bark, pieces of sheet iron and objects of copper alloy; we do not know what they were.
To the woman’s left, an iron staff had been pinned down under a large rock. It is now preserved to a length of 0.65 m, with an expanded ‘handle’ with three rods, each with a ring attached (Bøgh-Andersen 1999: 47f; Gardeła 2012: 72ff, 2016: 63–6, 312f). The shaft is broken in the centre, but it is hard to say if this was an ritual act or the result of taphonomic processes.
The four people in the boat, the horse and the dog were probably not alone. The excavation records are incomplete here but it looks as though there were other animals too. Several loose “animal teeth” were recorded, scattered around the body of the woman in the prow. The whole burial was then covered with earth and complex stone constructions, building up to a low mound. The excavators also found patches of cremated bone and wood mixed here and there in the deposit, hinting at further rituals about which we know nothing.
The Kaupang grave raises many questions. Were the man and woman a couple, with their child? Or were they unrelated? Who was the woman sitting in the stern, apparently some kind of sorceress? Did they all die together, either violently or through illness? Was one or more of them killed to accompany the others in death? Whose were the boat and the animals, or did they belong to none of the dead? What do all the objects mean, and would a contemporary understanding of them even approximate to our own? What connection did all of this have with the man under the keel?
The grave known as the ‘Gausel Queen’ has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, as one of the most spectacular Viking-Age inhumations from Norway (Bakka 1993; Børsheim 1997; Børsheim & Soltvedt 2002). Lying within a high-status cemetery that included several boat burials, this slab-lined cist burial under a mound contained no preserved human bones though a body seems originally to have been present, artefactually sexed as female on the basis of numerous items of very good quality jewellery and dress accessories. The grave also contained three drinking horns, a number of metal vessels, sundry household items (knives, a chain, shears, a frying pan, etc), a wooden chest, a fragmentary shafted lamp with parallels from Oseberg (both material and pictorial), pieces of an Irish reliquary and a penannular brooch. A severed and bridled horse’s head lay at the feet of the deceased, in a ritual ‘motif’ that links the burial with others in the cemetery (Price 2010a, 2012; Fig. 3.39). Alongside the presumed woman’s body lay an iron staff, now heavily corroded and fragmented, preserved to a length of 0.7 m. Gardeła (2016: 55f, 77) strongly contests my suggestion that the object preserves remains of a basket-like ‘handle’ construction, but I disagree, in that to me the (admittedly highly damaged) remains of such can clearly be seen. The burial has been much discussed in its landscape context, in terms of its international connections, and also in relation to my own interpretations (e.g. Sørheim 2011, 2014). The burial is dated to the second half of the ninth century (ÅFNF 1833: 75; Petersen 1951: 426ff; Bøgh-Andersen 1999: 47f; Gardeła 2012: 114ff, 2016: 74–8,292f).
Without doubt the most impressive of the possible sorceress graves is the ship burial from Oseberg on the Oslofjord, dated to c.834 on dendrochronological evidence. The find is well-known as the richest single burial from the Viking Age ever found, and its quality is such that a possible ‘volva’ theme can at best be considered as only one of the many different roles and associations that the women interred there must have played (an obvious point is that the burial contained two women, and we have little idea of their relationship). Only specific points will be taken up here, and the main burial will not be described in any detail (see the early report volumes for more information: Brøgger, Falk & Shetelig 1917a on the excavation and the ship, and 1917b on the art and ornamentation; Brøgger & Shetelig 1928 on the finds; Brøgger & Shetelig 1927 on the plant remains and animal bones; Christensen et al. 1992 provides a modern synthesis).
Assuming that one of the two buried females was the ‘primary’ occupant – which is far from certain – this person has been considered variously as a Viking queen (Åsa is the most commonly cited candidate), priestess or monumentally rich landowner. The grave also contained several objects that can arguably be associated with the practice of sorcery. The late Anne Stine Ingstad published two perceptive studies of this (1992b; 1995), arguing that the burial was so spectacular that it implies a status for one of the dead woman even higher than that of a queen – a kind of royal intermediary between the worlds on behalf of her people. She bases her arguments on two groups of objects:
•the two small tapestries, each measuring 1–1.5 m in length and 0.16–0.23 m wide, which seem to have hung from the rafters of the burial chamber
•the contents of the iron-studded oak chest (nr. 149) found unopened in the burial chamber
Ingstad provides a detailed interpretation of the processional scenes on the tapestries as relating to the worship of Freyja and Óðinn, with themes of sexual power and fertility, and sacrifice for future prosperity (1995: 140–3). The symbols of the two deities run as a consistent motif through the images on the weaves, with spears and ravens for Óðinn and a variety of female figures who appear to be representing aspects of Freyja’s nature. The tapestries include scenes of hanging men in a tree, in the classic mode of Óðinnic sacrifice, surrounded by images of women who seem to be pacing beneath the tree holding raised swords, and with hands lifted in a gesture resembling prayer (Fig. 3.40). Fragments of the same textiles also show armed men apparently wearing animal skins, and curious figures that seem to show women with the heads of birds and boars (see below). All these themes of sexuality, violence and transformation combine in the practice of sorcery, but in the Oseberg grave the consistently impressive status of its practitioners is raised to a new level – the buried woman appearing as perhaps the ultimate ‘volva’ figure at the highest stratum of royal power. Even the place-name attached to the burial mound supports this, as it seems that Oseberg means ‘Hill of the Æsir’, implying cultic functions for the locality (Ingstad 1995: 139).
More recent work has expanded upon this, demonstrating not only the extraordinary complexity of the grave construction and its accompanying rituals (Gansum 2004; Price 2008a, 2010a, 2012, 2014b; Gardeła 2016: 66–73), but also the enigmatic nature of the women interred within, at least one of whom seems to have had pathological conditions such as to give her an appearance far from the ordinary (Holck 2006).
That the Oseberg tapestries were based on a perception of reality rather than myth is supported by other finds from the grave, particularly the wagon and other forms of transport such as the sleds and of course the ship itself. The backboard of the wagon was in fact decorated with a carved frieze full of what appear to be cats, the sacred animal of Freyja (Fig. 3.41). As with Þorbiorg’s catskin gloves discussed above, here again we see a link to the Vanir deities in a sacred context. The iron-studded chest also contained a number of artefacts specifically depicted on the textiles, such as two iron lamps of the kind borne by women at the front of the tapestries’ procession, and most importantly a possible staff of sorcery. The grave chamber also contained seeds of cannabis, which like the staff are discussed in more detail below. Along with the magnificent array of clearly symbolic objects such as the animal-head posts, the burial effectively provided the material requisites for the enaction of the scenes in the tapestries’ ritual dramas (to this should be added Gunhild Røthe’s 1994 reinterpretation of Oseberg in a cultic context, and Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh’s detailed analysis of the grave-goods’ disposition from a ritual perspective, 1998: 227–38).
Fig. 3.39 Reconstruction of the so-called ‘Queen’ burial, from Gausel, Rogaland, Norway (drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson).
Fig. 3.40 The tree with hanging bodies depicted on the Oseberg tapestry; note the female figures in the top left (after Ingstad 1992b: 242; drawing by Sofie Krafft).
Fig. 3.41 The rear body-panel of the carved wagon from Oseberg, showing the design of cats – a symbol of Freyja? (Photo by Annie Delbéra, Creative Commons).
Another grave to be considered in this context contains one of only five finds of possible staffs of sorcery from outside Fenno-Scandia and Iceland. On the west coast of the Isle of Man, at Peel Castle on St. Patrick’s Isle is the only female burial of probable Norse origin so far known from the island. The grave was found in a small cemetery which included five other clothed burials, though whether or not these were pagan is hard to discern (Holgate 1987; Batey 1994: 157ff; Freke 2002: 66–9, 83–7; Wilson 2008: 48–50; Gardeła 2014a: 33–6, 2016: 346). The woman was buried in a slab-lined grave with a very costly selection of grave-goods, making it in fact one of the richest female burials known from the British Isles at this period (Figs 3.42, 3.43). She was laid out on her back in an extended position, wearing a spectacular necklace of 71 glass, amber and jet beads; more of the latter were also found loose in the grave, though perhaps they had been sewn onto her clothes, about which we otherwise know nothing. On her chest was a work-bag made of some organic material, containing two needles. A pair of household shears and a comb hung from a tablet-woven belt, which seems to have been decorated by two amber beads and a fossil ammonite. Also with her in the grave were several knives, one of which had a handle inlaid with silver.
Along the woman’s right side parallel with her leg had been laid an iron staff, 0.85 m long, the exact details of which are hard to discern as it was poorly preserved. The end nearest the woman’s waist, and perhaps held in her right hand, tapers considerably, implying some kind of ‘handle’. Interpreted by the excavator as a cooking spit, the staff clearly resembles those discussed here in the context of sorcery (contra Wilson 2008: 49), and this interpretation is strengthened by other objects in the grave. Next to the staff were deposited charred grains of wheat and barley, and the wing of a goose, and the fossil may also be seen in this light. All these finds bring to mind the ‘charms’ of the woman from Fyrkat, as does the richness of the burial and its context surrounded by male graves. It is clear that the woman from Peel was of considerable standing in her community, though where exactly she came from is unclear. The absence of brooches suggests that she was not buried in conventional Norse dress, and it has been suggested that she may have been an Anglo-Scandinavian from the Danelaw (Graham-Campbell & Batey 1998: 111).
We know that St. Patrick’s Isle was a major Norse power centre on the Isle of Man in the Viking Age (ibid). Whatever her actual origins, the cemetery itself leaves no doubt that the woman from Peel Castle was buried in a Viking context, with non-Christian burial rites. Here again, this may be the burial of a volva or similar sorceress. The grave cannot be closely dated, but is probably from the mid-tenth century.
One curious aspect of these graves is the confluences between them, beyond obvious common features like the staffs. In ways that are suggestive but which are hard to understand, several artefacts of unusual character occur repeatedly in these burials. For example, the iron chain in the woman’s grave at Klinta was of the same kind as that holding the bodies on the chair in the Birka double-grave Bj. 834; the bronze oriental jug from Klinta can be compared with a very similar example from Aska; both Klinta and Fyrkat 4 contained what appear to be Samanid bowls; the studded iron box from Birka Bj. 845 is paralleled in the Oseberg grave, and so on. We cannot discuss this in terms of a ‘seiðr-box’ or ‘magical’ jugs and chains, but perhaps they were in some way instrumental in the rituals that these women may have performed.
Fig. 3.42 Plan of the so-called ‘Pagan Lady’ burial from Peel Castle, Isle of Man. The iron staff is marked as a ‘cooking spit’ (after Batey 1994: 158).
Fig. 3.43 Reconstruction of the so-called ‘Pagan Lady’ burial from Peel castle, Isle of Man (drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson).
It is these to which we shall next turn our attention.
‘Seiðr’ functioned as both verb and noun in a way impossible to render elegantly into English. The general verbs seiða and síða bely the fact that there were at least six specific ways to describe the performance of the rituals. These have been collected by Strömbäck (1935: 108ff), and are summarised below. Each verb means essentially ‘to perform seiðr’, but in my translations I have tried to approximate their specific connotations:
| Verb | Suggested meaning | Sources |
| afla at seið | ‘to accomplish seiðr’ | Sogubrot af fornkonungum |
| efla seið | ‘to raise seiðr’ | Egils saga Skalla-Gríms-sonar; Friðþjófs saga hins frækna; Gongu-Hrólfs saga; Orvar-Odds saga |
| efna seið | ‘to prepare seiðr’ | Vatnsdæla saga |
| fremia seið | ‘to practise seiðr’ | Ynglinga saga; Eiríks saga rauða; Gongu-Hrólfs saga |
| magna seið | ‘to work seiðr’ (connotations of strength?) | Egils saga Skalla-Gríms-sonar; Gísla saga Súrs-sonar; Diplomatarium Islandicum II: 604 |
| seiða seið | ‘to “seið” seiðr’ | Gísla saga Súrssonar; Þiðriks saga af Bern |
The performance of seiðr was clearly nuanced, but in its practical vocabulary it is hard to find more exact information as to the form that this took.
In almost every published discussion of seiðr, the account of the performance in Eiríks saga rauða unsurprisingly occupies a central place. However, here again we must be cautious in how we evaluate the sources, and must remember that the description of the Greenland volva is contained in a prose passage from the early thirteenth century – quite simply we cannot take all the details contained in Eiríks saga as either accurate or authentic (see Strömbäck’s general discussion in Sejd, 1935: 54–60 and also North 1991: 157, who argues that the entire passage was invented using Christian ecclesiastical references; see also Tolley 1995a: 62). However, the passage equally preserves some early information, a fact confirmed by comparisons with the belief systems of the circumpolar area of the kind undertaken by Strömbäck, Ohlmarks and others discussed above. The process of source-criticism must equally be applied to the other written descriptions of seiðr. Some are clearly more reliable than others – Strömbäck (1935: 66), for example, considered that the Laxdæla saga performances were particularly trustworthy and free from stereotype.
Each element in the sources must be evaluated individually, and set against the collective resource of information about seiðr gleaned from the whole corpus of material under discussion – a process necessary for each such mention of the practice from a context later than the Viking Age itself.
We can here consider the different aspects of the rituals in turn.
The primary architectural requisite of seiðr was a special platform, usually termed the seiðhjallr, on which the performer(s) climbed to carry out the ritual.
The classic example comes of course from Eiríks saga rauða (4), when the volva Þorbiorg climbs onto a seiðhjallr to begin her chanting. The same is seen in Hrólfs saga kraka (3) when Heiðr also sits on a high platform. In chapter 33 of the same saga, the sorceress Skuld sits on a seiðhjallr, inside a black tent which appears to be set up on top of the platform. In this instance, the platform is actually built on a battlefield, from which Skuld directs a complex sorcerous attack on Hrólfr and his army (see chapter 6).
Sometimes more than one person used a platform, as in Friðþjófs saga hins frækna when two seiðkonur (also called trollkonur and flagð) sit on a seiðhjallr, which seems to be raised some distance above the ground because both women break their backs when they fall from it.
It is clear that male sorcerers also used platforms, as with the seiðhjallr built by the evil seiðskratti Þórgrímr in Gísla saga Súrssonar (18). In Laxdæla saga (35), the seiðmaðr Kotkell sets up a seiðhjall mikinn, ‘a large seiðhjallr’, onto which he and his three sons climb to work their sorcery. Another example of such a structure large enough to support a number of individuals comes from Gongu-Hrólfs saga (28), where no less than twelve male sorcerers sit upon it; the platform is constructed inside a building, and is described as being raised high up, on four posts.
The seiðhjallr has on several occasions been seen as synonymous with the hásæti or ‘high seat’ that formed a place of honour in the Germanic hall, and also with the þulr’s chair in Hávamál 11. In one source, the twelfth-century poem Sólarljóð (51), the ‘chair of the nornir’ is implied as a seat of sorcery; this is discussed below. Olrik was probably the first to make the high-seat connection in 1909 (8f), and it has been followed by most commentators on seiðr since then – Strömbäck is a notable exception (cf. Holmqvist 1962). The idea can partly be explained by the connotations of a high vantage point from which to see further, in every sense, than would otherwise be possible. This link is however hard to understand for several reasons not least that in the one account when both a high seat and a seiðhjallr are mentioned (Eiríks saga rauða) they are clearly separate things. Most of the descriptions imply some kind of fairly substantial structure, and in any case one that had to be ‘prepared’ rather than merely brought out in the case of a high seat. In Laxdæla saga, Kotkell is specifically said to have constructed (lét…gera) his great platform.
Another variant of the platform-as-chair idea has connected the seiðhjallr with Hliðskjálf, the throne of Óðinn mentioned in the prose introductions to the Grímnismál and Skírnismál. From this chair the god has a supernatural view um heima alla, ‘over all the worlds’, a vista that he shares with others such as Frigg and Freyr. At times they sit in the chair alone, and at times together with Óðinn. Vilhelm Kiil (1960) has made a convincing case for seeing this as something similar to the seiðhjallr, or even as its divine equivalent.
We have seen in the Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh above how Turges’s wife used to give her answers from the altar at Clonmacnoise, and presumably this functioned in the same way as the seiðr platforms of various kinds. The text does not say whether Ota stood or sat on the altar, but her choice of it clearly implies a requirement for something raised some way above the ground, not simply an impressive chair or similar. It may also be significant that the altar was itself a sacred object, and stood in a sacred building. Perhaps this may be related to the socio-spatial context of the seiðr platforms set up in the ‘temple-halls’ of the chieftains visited by the volur in the sagas?
In a final possible parallel, Strömbäck (1935: 116) noted the passage from the medieval English text Gesta Herwardi, when William the Conqueror is assisted by a sorceress who sits high up to cast her spells against his enemies, and who breaks her neck when her charms are unsuccessful and she falls. No further details are given, but the similarity of Old Norse descriptions of falls from the seiðhjallr, and the ‘post-Viking’ context of the Normans whom the sorceress helps, are enough for us to wonder if this is also a faint echo of a seiðr performance.
No seiðr-platform has ever been excavated in a Viking-Age building, or at least it has never been recognised as such (though Bäck et al. 2008 argue for a possible example at Lilla Ullevi). From the saga accounts it is clear that these constructions were either specially built for each occasion – and therefore dismantled afterwards – or else a permanent feature of the hall was temporarily adapted for this use. In neither instance would any special archaeological trace be found.
However, a small handful of objects have been excavated which bring such associations to mind, namely the chair-pendants mentioned in the section on possible volur graves above. The chairs have been discussed by Arrhenius (1961: 140f, 149, 156ff), Roesdahl (1977a: 140f), and Duczko in the context of the granulated ornament (1985: 69f). They are found in silver, bronze and amber, and all range between 1 and 3 cm in size.
Fig. 3.44 The silver miniature chair from Birka grave Bj. 632 (after Drescher & Hauck 1982: 251; drawing by H. Lange).
Three examples have been found in graves from Birka. One was recovered from grave Bj. 632, an assumed female inhumation in a chamber, in which the woman was buried with an elaborate necklace of carnelian and rock crystal beads, from which hung several pendants – among them a silver miniature chair (Arbman 1940: pl. 119, 92; 1943: 210–3; Figs 3.44, 3.45). Another silver chair, much more simply made, was found in Bj. 844, again a probable female inhumation; its position within the grave was uncertain (Arbman 1940: pl. 92; 1943: 317ff; Fig. 3.46). Both graves Bj. 632 and 844 also included pendants of coiled snakes. A third silver chair was excavated in Bj. 968, also found on a necklace worn by a woman in a chamber grave (Arbman 1940: pl. 92; 1943: 394ff; Fig. 3.47). A so-called ‘valkyrie’ figurine and an equal-armed cross were on the same string.
The pendant from Bj. 632 was heavily granulated, with 42 rings with granules around its sides, and a further 11 on the seat (Duczko 1985: 69). Like most of the chairs, there is no sign that it had a base. In contrast to those from Birka graves Bj. 632 and 844, which had a generally low, broad profile, the pendant from Birka grave Bj. 968 is much taller and slimmer in form. This appears to represent a ‘block chair’ (Sw. kubbstol), of a kind carved from a single block of wood and thus following the curving contours of the tree trunk, with the back and arm-rests hollowed out above the solid seat.
Fig. 3.45 An alternative reconstruction of the necklace from Birka grave Bj. 632 as worn; the miniature chair is shown as number 1 (after Vierck 2002: 45).
Fig. 3.46 The silver miniature chair from Birka grave Bj. 844 (after Drescher & Hauck 1982: 266; drawing by H. Lange).
The example from grave 4 at Fyrkat, examined above, was 1.3 cm in diameter and also formed as a kubbstol (Fig. 3.48). The pendant was finely moulded, with gold inlay in incised lines following the upper and lower edges of the chair. Some kind of gold decoration may also have been applied to the seat, but this is uncertain as the object wasdamaged at this point. A suspension loop on the back of the chair confirms its use as a pendant (Roesdahl 1977a: 101f).
Fig. 3.47 The silver miniature chair from Birka grave Bj. 968 (photo Swedish History Museum, Creative Commons).
A very small bronze example of the kubbstol-type is known from an unprovenanced amulet ring in the collections of the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm (Arrhenius 1961: 141f; Fig. 3.49), on which it is strung together with a bronze horse and a miniature sword and spear. Another, rather crudely made, square bronze chair has been recovered from a tenth-century woman’s grave at Folkeslunda on Öland (Drescher & Hauck 1982: 301). Another chair is known in amber, found in an eleventh-century woman’s grave at Ihre, in Hellvi parish on Gotland (Stenberger 1961: 134).
An exceptional miniature chair in silver, unique in form and very elaborate, was found in an inhumation grave at Hedeby (Drescher & Hauck 1982: 237–44; Fig. 3.50). The chair is pierced with several holes in the back and seat, and was clearly attached to something – perhaps an amulet ring or some other object. The chair has arms moulded to resemble hounds seen in profile in the manner depicted on runestone images, and the back appears to incorporate two birds (see Vierck 2002: 42–7 for parallels). The positioning of these creatures, posed as if to speak into the ears of the chair’s missing occupant, brings Huginn and Muninn irresistibly to mind. With this Óðinnic parallel, the ‘hound’ arm-rests may well be better interpreted as the god’s wolves, Freki and Geri. A silver coin gives the grave a terminus post quem of 899–911.
Fig. 3.48 The silver miniature chair-pendant found in grave 4 at Fyrkat (photo by Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark).
Fig. 3.49 A miniature chair strung with other ‘charms’ on an unprovenanced amulet ring in the collections of the National Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm (after Arrhenius 1961).
The Hedeby example was further illuminated in 2011 with a remarkable discovery of a similar silver chair model at Lejre – the ancient Danish royal power centre. This example is free-standing and resembles the Hedeby piece in the presence of birds and wolves, though with their positions reversed: two wolf-like creatures form the back of the Lejre chair, while two three-dimensional birds sit on the arms of the throne-like seat (Fig. 3.51). What makes the Lejre chair unique is the fact that it is occupied (the birds appear to look directly at the seated figure). Of indeterminate sex, the being is shown wearing what appears to be a long gown with a decorative border, with multiple strands of beads around the neck; this is covered by a cloak or shawl. The figure wears some kind of head covering, perhaps a scarf or cap, and seems to have two neck-rings. The legs and arms are covered but the face is free, with no mouth but a broad, flat nose and two eyes staring straight ahead – one of which has been scored out. The find has been extensively studied (Christensen 2010a–c, 2015: 194–203; Osborn 2015) and has been identified by some scholars as a depiction of Óðinn due to the damaged eye and the possible ravens, arguably seated on Hliðskjálf as he looks out across the worlds. Others have seen the figure instead as Freyja, the mistress of magic, due to what seem to be the unmistakably feminine gender signals encoded in the clothing. The practice of cross-dressing is discussed in relation to sorcery elsewhere in this chapter, and it must be said that the Lejre figure would also fit quite well in this context, and subsequent finds of ambiguously gendered images may potentially be seen in the same light (e.g. Feveile 2015). For my part, I think it unwise and unnecessary to attempt specific identifications of the figures, beyond the contextual indications of power and a possibly connection with magic (see Price 2006b for an expansion of this discussion).
Fig. 3.50 The silver miniature chair from a tenth-century grave at Hedeby; note the wolves or dogs as arm-rests, and the birds on the chair back (after Drescher & Hauck 1982: 239; drawing by H. Drescher).
Fig. 3.51 The enthroned silver figure from Lejre (photo National Museum of Denmark).
Fig. 3.52 The silver miniature chair from the Gravlev hoard, Jylland, deposited after 952 (after Drescher & Hauck 1982: 255; drawing by H. Lange).
A number of chair-pendants have also been found in hoards; their presence in such a context is unexplained. Three examples are known from Danish hoards, from Gravlev (dated after 952; Fig. 3.52), Tolstrup (after 995), and Bornholm (after c.1000; see Skovmand 1942: 54, 133). In Sweden, miniature chairs are known from two hoards. The first, from Fölhagen on Gotland and dated to shortly after 1000, contained two filigree-ornamented examples (Stenberger 1947: 21–4, pl. 170; Fig. 3.53), similar to that from Birka Bj. 632, though one is much lower in profile. A superbly preserved miniature chair was also found in a silver hoard from Eketorp in Edsberg parish, Närke, deposited around 960 (Ekelund 1956: 152, 165ff; Arrhenius 1961: 149; Fig. 3.54). Square in form with a rounded back, the chair is decorated with diamond-pattern designs and a circle-and-dot in relief on the seat. Two small holes pierce the front of the chair, and it may be that a figure was once fixed in a sitting position. Fabech (2006: 29) has speculated that the items in the hoard may once have belonged to the inventory of a pre-Christian cult site.
Fig. 3.53 Two miniature chair-pendants from the silver hoard found at Fölhagen on Gotland, dated to shortly after 1000 (after Drescher & Hauck 1982: 256; drawings by H. Lange).
Fig. 3.54 The miniature chair from the silver hoard found at Eketorp in Edsberg parish, Närke, dated to c.960 (after Arrhenius 1961: 149).
With the exception of the Ihre grave on Gotland, all the finds of chair-pendants in burials date to the late ninth and tenth centuries. The hoard finds group slightly later, in the second half of the tenth century and running into the early eleventh. The pendants have a distribution confined to the south and east of Scandinavia, and are certainly of Nordic manufacture (Stenberger 1958: 200; Roesdahl 1977a: 141).
Fig. 3.55 Two post-medieval kubbstol from Helsingland, made in a style unchanged since the Viking Age (after Sahlin 1916: 64; photo Nordic Museum, Stockholm).
Fig. 3.56 The picture-stone from Sanda, Gotland, with figures seated on kubbstolar. The scene has been interpreted as showing the bringing of sacrifices to Óðinn in Valholl (after Jungner 1930: 68; drawing by Olof Sörling).
In 1916 Sahlin compared the miniatures to full-size chairs of this type known from early modern times in Scandinavia, and could demonstrate that this form of furniture survived unchanged almost to modern times (Fig. 3.55). The kubbstol chair is hard to place in its Viking-Age social context, but it was clearly appropriate to people of rank. At least one chair of exactly this kind is depicted on a picture-stone from Sanda on Gotland (Lindqvist 1941: pl. 177; 1942: 107ff; Fig. 3.56). In the upper part of the stone a man and a woman sit facing each other, apparently inside some kind of building. The woman’s kubbstol is clearly shown, and she has what appears to be a goose or a swan stretching over her head, its feet remaining outside the structure. Between the two people stands another man holding a spear, which he appears to be exchanging with the sitting man. Below them all is a line of people moving away from what seems to be a sacrificial altar with a burnt offering. The scene with the chairs has been interpreted as depicting Valholl, with Óðinn receiving sacrifices brought up from ‘below’, perhaps from Miðgarðr (e.g. Jungner 1930; Arrhenius 1961: 152ff). The identity of the seated woman is obscure, but the written sources make clear how often the volur appear in Óðinn’s company.
In the burial finds the chairs are associated exclusively with women, and the presence of these pendants in graves such as that from Fyrkat is suggestive. They may well symbolise high seats of some kind, as distinct from the seiðr-platforms as discussed above, or some other ‘throne’ connected with sorcery and magical power (a suggestion first put forward by Arrhenius 1961: 156ff).
One interpretation would combine the burial contexts, seiðr and the gods, namely that the chairs are meant to represent Hliðskjálf, the throne of Óðinn. Thus they would symbolise the view over every world, with a link to the patron of sorcery, while not necessarily being a direct depiction of the kinds of seiðr-platforms used by mortal sorcerers. Others have suggested that the chairs represent the seat of Þórr, on the basis of a walrus-ivory figurine from Lund that might depict the god, possibly sitting on a kubbstol (Trotzig 1983: 365f); the evidence for this seems weak, as neither god nor chair can be unequivocally identified.
In 1982 Drescher and Hauck published a comprehensive survey of the miniature chairs, setting them in a multi-period context stretching throughout Europe, with the objective of demonstrating that they represent the thrones of gods (a similar line is taken by Vierck, 2002: 42–59). The analogies sometimes combine both chronological and cultural abstraction from the Viking-Age material, which is problematic, but they make a strong case for the supernatural context of the chairs. The suggested link to deities is less secure, with the exception of the Hedeby and Lejre chairs and their possibly Óðinnic theme, and these pieces are unlike any of the others.
Whatever the precise connotations of the miniature chairs, their association with traditional Nordic religion is also strengthened by their total absence from Christian contexts (Roesdahl 1977a: 141). The cross pendant in Birka Bj. 968 can be seen in the same light as the crucifix from the possible volva grave Bj. 660 – a symbol of magical power. The occurrence of miniature chairs together with the snake and ‘valkyrie’ pendants further supports a connection with the supernatural. The grave finds strongly suggest that such chairs were among the symbolic equipment of the volur and their kind.
Although not specifically connected with seiðr, we may also note the existence of some kind of structure connected with clairvoyance, namely a form of door-frame over which the performer is lifted to ‘see’ into another world. The famous example of this comes from Ibn Fadlan’s eye-witness account of a Rus’ ship burial on the Volga:
It was at the time of the asr-prayer [afternoon] on a Friday they brought the servant-girl to something they had made like a door-frame. She placed her feet on the hands of the men and was lifted up to look over the frame, and she spoke with her words and then they lowered her and then they lifted her again and she repeated what she did the first time, and then they lowered her and lifted her the third time and she did again what she had done twice. Then they handed her a hen and she cut its head off and threw it away and she took the hen and placed it on the ship. Then I asked the interpreter about her actions and he said, “She said the first time they lifted her up: ‘Look there! I see my father and my mother’; and she said the second time: ‘Look there – all my dead relatives are sitting’; and she said the third time: ‘I see my master sit in Paradise, and Paradise is beautiful and green, and with him are men and boy-servants; he calls me so lead me to him’.”
Ibn Fadlan, Risāla: 90; translation after Sass 1995, original text (not given here) after Togan 1939
Vilhelm Kiil (1960: 86ff) has suggested that the ‘door-frame’ may have actually been a seiðhjallr, on which the slave-girl climbed to see into another world. Although superficially appropriate, this interpretation is not supportable from Ibn Fadlan’s description alone.
In other respects, this passage and its strange ‘door-frame’ is often taken to be without parallel in the Old Norse sources, but this is not the case. It is in fact corroborated by a surprisingly little-known strophe from the poem Volsa þáttr (see below). After witnessing a fertility ritual involving a horse’s phallus, the Christian king Ólafr throws the object away in disgust. Enraged, the woman conducting the ritual utters the following verse, asking the men of the house to:
| hefi mik of hjarra | lift me over door hinges |
| ok of hurðása | and over door-lintels |
| vita ef ek borgit fæ | to see if I can retrieve |
| blætinu helga. | the holy sacrifice. |
Volsa þáttr str. 13; my translation
Four elements are striking in this description: the context of a sacrifice (and specifically one with strong sexual overtones); the woman being lifted up by men; the looking out over a door; and the vision of some unspecified ‘otherworldly place’ beyond. All of this bears an astonishingly exact resemblance to Ibn Fadlan’s account, with no possibility that the poem could have been influenced from that direction. This passage is discussed in more detail below, in the context of the poem’s sexual content.
We cannot say for sure what the ‘door-frame’ was, but the combination of Ibn Fadlan and Volsa þáttr does indicate that such a construction had a place in the Norse paraphernalia of vision experiences (and not least the poem also confirms that what Ibn Fadlan saw really was a door, rather than this being merely his choice of imagery). Several scholars (Arrhenius 1970; Andrén 1989, 1993a; Eriksen 2015) have discussed Viking door symbolism in terms of points of entry to other worlds, especially those of the dead, and this would again fit well with the two texts. As we shall see in the discussion of Volsa þáttr below, there are also good grounds for interpreting the woman in charge of the rituals as something resembling a volva, and this again provides another link to the ritual architecture of seiðr.
