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Chapter 7. At the Well of Urð 195
necessarily mean that the magico-religious life of the corresponding people is
crystalized around shamanism.” 39
Because a culture has the elements of a shamanic complex, does not necessarily
translate into the idea that a culture ever engaged in shamanism in its truest sense.
Here, there is agreement between what was found by Mr. Gundarsson and the a
posteriori approach taken here: the Germanic peoples do not seem to have ever
engaged in shamanism per se, at least according to the writings which have been
preserved. However, there is definite record of a phenomenon which correlates well
with the knowledge to which shamans had and have access, to the skills they have
demonstrated, and to a role, or at least part of a role, which shamans play within a
community.
Some of the pieces of the “classical shamanic complex” found in Germanic culture
were outlined above, but they are simply pieces and seem to have always been
pieces. Wizards or Whole-makers, in Germanic folk-memory, often travel in the
company of others, and this is most notable in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings where
Gandalf in but one member of a ”council of wizards” each demonstrating one or more
skills of the entire shamanic complex, but with none actually practicing as a single
independent unit, practicing all the elements. This division of labor also occurs in
the sagaic, folkloric, and historical literature, where the “Angel of Death” functions
as a psychopomp; the seeress in the Groenlendiga Saga, Þórrbjorg, functions as a
diviner; Kotkell, his wife, Gríma, and their two sons, were death-bringers; Þórrveig,
in Kormak’s Saga, was a changer of ¸orlög; and Heið, the völva in Hrolf’s saga Kráki,
was a hide-farer (“spirit-traveler”). There is no evidence that a single person did
not practice several elements of the so-called shamanic complex or practice his art
alone, although there is much evidence to the contrary, but there is also a large body
of evidence that these people practiced in larger groups (much like the Midewíwin
Society of the Ojibwa) 40 which may have given rise to the numerous legends of covens
of witches meeting on certain mountain tops on the eves of Winternights, Júl, and
Summernights. In all, there is no documented case where any individual actually
functioned in the capacity commonly associated with the technical definition of
“shaman.”
What existed, then, was a subculture of men and women who demonstrated
powers beyond the average man, who had access to a wisdom which reached beyond
the lineage of any individual person or community, who engaged in forms of trance
or ecstasy to access their knowledge and to perform their acts, and who often banded
together with others so that a group of specialists could function as a single, whole
unit. These men and women were called seiðmen and seiðkonar, respectively, and
39 ibid., p.5.
40 See Landes’ book cited above.