The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

that, especially if we assume that the poem is an old spellchant, related to or belonging to
the songs required for the art of seiður, the magic still living strong in Island a thousand
years ago.
My first acquaintance with a feminist exploration of the old Islandic literature was
when Helga Kress 36 announced to the patriarchal world, her idea that the author of
Völuspá was a woman. This was in the eighties, and the world of patriarchy 37 was
shaken. Sigurður Nordal, Björn M. Ólsen and Finnur Jónsson, all respected experts on the
Old Islandic literature, discuss the gender of the author in footnotes. Björn M. Ólsen
(1914, p. 135fn) points out that from certain stanzas, where goddesses as mothers and
wives mourn or protect their sons and lovers, one might get the impression that the author
is a woman or else he emphasizes the womanly characteristics in the expression of the
völva (see also Sigurður Nordal, 1923). Sigurður Nordal comes to the conclusion that the
author must be a man. In a paper published in 1924 he identifies that man as a certain
Völu-Steinn, since he was the son of a völva and as such had almost first hand knowledge
about a völva's way of thinking and seeing. It did not occur to Sigurður Nordal or other
scholars at that time, or even as late as the 1980s that Völuspá is - as the name indicates -
a völva’s vision, and therefore the original author is most likely a völva, who has
inherited the wisdom, kept it in her memory, and then grounded it in poetry. Although
today’s scholars have different ideas about the author, more and more agree that the
author is probably a woman. Hermann Pálsson suggests that she was a völva from
Hálogaland in Norway, a disciple of the Sámis (1994 and 1997). Archaeological finds,
almost a century ago, of the existence of the Sumerian/Acadian priestess and poet
Enheduanna in 2300 BCE (Meador, 2000), should have erased any doubt about the ability
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