The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

a prerequisite for the ‘seeing’ or connecting to the náttúrur (spirits) present. She does not
sing herself, but has a group of people or only one singer chanting or singing special
trance-evoking songs. Finally dreaming, or entering a trance state, during the night, is
mentioned as a prerequisite for the seiður, or a part of it.
Hermann Pálsson (1997b) calls the seiðkonur of both north and south völur
(völvur) and galdranornir, the latter term more common in modern everyday use,
meaning ‘a witch’. It has a very clear negative clang to it whereas völva is a mystical,
mythical, but rather benign word. The witches in the fairy tales, like the Grimm’s tales,
are called galdranornir. They are either old, ugly hags, evil, child-eating monsters like in
Hansel and Grethel, or the jealous, wicked stepmothers like in Snow White. Some of the
women in the tales of the Sagas and even Eddas are reminiscent of the galdranornir, but
most are not. Most are powerful wise women, either old and experienced, or young and
beautiful, women who sometimes are only beneficent in the stories, whereas others are
full of revenge. Those have most often in one way or another been betrayed or threatened
by the heroes of the stories, although of course there are also examples of the evil witch.
Those called völvur are usually of this world, wise women, without malice.
Where the line goes between seiður and galdur or other kinds of sorcery or
forneskja (old wisdom), is very difficult to decide. By the time the stories that are our
source material were written down, there might have been a general confusion, about
which was which. The term seiður might then have been applied to all kinds of magic and
words like galdur, fjölkynngi and tröllsháttur (behaving like a tröll), been used for seiður
as well. In modern Islandic the word galdur has taken over as a general term for magic or
sorcery. So in determining what seiður was about and its connection to the culture of
144