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Chapter 7. At the Well of Urð 192
relationship between the word for “wolf” and the Scandinavian words and phrases
which meant “outlaw,” one must wonder if the fact that these wizards were not
associated with any family or community gave rise to the idea that these people
were somehow viewed as being outlaws. Descriptions of them in the early literature
certainly lead one to believe that they must have been either transient, as in the
case of the traveling spákonar (“seeresses”), or living as hermits or eccentrics outside
the protection of communities and, as such, would have been accorded the same
adjectives as any other criminal.
In any society or culture, visionaries,
eccentrics (literally, “outsiders”), shamans
Figure
or any other such person who has access
to “a different knowledge” have a
penchant for disregarding societal roles
and for going against the grain of social
mores. Some cultures, such as the Samí,
awarded these “odd characters” a special
place in society which offered some
immunity against the law. In a similar
manner “Hole in the Sky,” an Ojibwa
medicine man, described himself as “an
evil man” and “greatly feared,”
7.2. Northern Seeress–photo
pub. dom.
from
34 but his
society did not kill such people; because
of the role he played within his community,
he was enjoyed the right to live.
Other societies seem not to have protected
these people but allowed their
wizards/ shamans to live most likely because
of the services they provided (similar
to way prostitutes and drug-dealers
are allowed to live in modern America):
divination (spá), changing luck (fjölkyngi), psychopomp (“Angel of Death”), changing
weather (görningar, fjölkyngi, gandreið), calling animals, fishes, etc. (gandreið),
healing, soul-craft (probably all forms). 35
The type of knowledge that these people dealt with often went far beyond that
of the charm-makers and runemasters. Rather than simply “reading the Waters of
Urð” to gain knowledge of ¸orlög so that actions could be adjusted accordingly, these
men and women had “drunk directly from the Well of Mímir” and had acquired
the knowledge and skills to manipulate events directly. They were no longer the
marionettes on the stage like average people, as described in Chapter 2, but are the
34 Landes, Ruth Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin (The University of Wisconsin Press;
Milwaukee, WI) 1968, p. 57-67.
35 This list is highly speculative based on how some of the border-cultures deal with these
societal problems. A person who was capable of creating charms could, of course, create charms
to handle all these situations; a rune-master, likewise, would have used runic forms of magic; a
person trained by the Samí, trance-journeying or ”diving” as they themselves call it.