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Chapter 7. At the Well of Urð 188
skills He taught to the sacrificial priest. They were next to Him in all manner
of knowledge and sorcery.” 27
He is also said to have intentionally engaged in shape-shifting (non-consensus reality)
while His body lay “as if asleep or dead,” 28 travel in animal-shape while entranced,
and 29 had direct access not only to Mímir’s Well (as opposed to indirect access),
as in the mythic tale above, but spoke with Mímir’s head physically (necromancy)
which Snorri felt was different enough to report in a list of Óðínn’s other “odd”
qualities. He fits all the criteria as reported above.
Many of the above skills are reported in literature and folklore sources as being
available to the “average man” through the use of charms and access to power/
luck, i.e., by practicing some of the methods as outlined above, but shape-shifting,
working while entranced, and speaking physically with the dead (Mímir’s head),
all, by their nature, took place outside of consensus reality. In the sagaic literature
and in folklore both ancient and modern, there is a general agreement that these
activities are not part of everyday, normal life although the working of charms,
prayer, and medicine is part of everyday life.
There are many figures in the early Germanic literature who fall outside the realm
of the norm for a given community but whose skills are utilized by the community
by temporarily bringing these folk within the boundaries. The women known as the
seiðkonar (seeresses) are reported not to have engaged in the normal activities of
divination, such as the reading of lots or the taking of omens, for their information
and are described as somehow being separate entities wandering from settlement
to settlement being called in from the outside, indeed most of these did not even
live within a community per se with the exception of the seeress described in the
Groenlendigasaga. Egil Skallagrimsson, a master of runes and charms related to
poetry, is described as a normal man who was able to perform extraordinary feats,
but Eyvind Kelda in the Saga of Ólaf Tryggvason is described as a “sorcerer and
exceedingly skilled in wizardry,” 30 the same words used to describe Óðínn earlier in
the Ynglingasaga. The ”Angel of Death” as described by Ibn Fadlan in his autobiographical
tale of his travels among the Rus 31 also seemed to use techniques or
methods other than the normal acceptable ritual, charms, or divination.
In the Ynglingasaga, Snorri records that the Germanic people of at least his
period of time considered the practice of seið and other related sorceries to be
27 Sturluson, Snorri Heimskringla, Lee, Hollander, tr. (Univ. Of Texas Press; Austin, TX)
1964, p. 11.
28 ibid., p. 10.
29 ibid., p. 10-11.
30 ibid., p.202.
31 Turville-Petre, E. O. G. Myth and Religion of the North (Greenwood Press; Westport, CT)
1975, p. 272-73.