The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

From the sea under the tree emerged the nornir at time’s beginning. They are the
first ones, scoring the örlög of earth’s children into pieces of wood, into the tree. Seeing,
remembering, scoring örlög is the function of the völva as we shall see. Urður, Verðandi
and Skuld are the viðólfur, or ancestresses, of every völva. Ásgeir B. Magnússon (1989)
traces the roots of úlfur (wolf) to the IE *uel 115 and it so happens that he does the same
with the verb völva (see below). Whether the völva and her wolf are originally one and
the same in the myths, I will not dare to suggest, but leave the possibility for the reader to
ponder on.
The völva has been said to take her cognomen from her staff, the völur (masculine
singular), also called gandur (Simek, 1993 and Ásgeir B. Magnússon, 1989). Hermann
Pálsson (1997, p. 87) agrees and says that the völva and her staff were so interconnected
that the meaning of völva is obviously “woman with staff”. To me it would make more
sense that the staff is called after her - one would assume that the völva comes first, then
her völur - or that both words have the same root and meaning, because the völva and her
völur are so interconnected. We find the same root in the Latin volvere (to turn), and the
English ‘evolve’, and from that root comes also the English word ‘vulva’ (see Helga
Kress, 1993, p.35 and Hermann Pálsson, 1997, p.87). So the name for the priestess
practicing seiður comes from her place of femaleness, her vulva, or both words derive
from the evolving regenerative function of woman as mother and gyðja of life and death.
To make this even more obvious the masculine noun völur (also spelled völr, olfr, olfi,
like in viðolfi) and the verb völva is, according to Ásgeir B. Magnússon (1989), derived
from the Germanic wel-, IE *uel meaning ‘to bend’, ‘turn’ or ‘to tear’, ‘destroy’. The
verb völva means ‘to take the edge off a knife’. A völur is a staff, as well as ‘hub’ (of the
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