Seiðr: The Magic of (Trans)formation

Ségdae Richardson-Read, PhD Candidate at the University of Liverpool

Abstract

Text sources that describe the Viking Age contain multiple examples of magical practices, including acts of seiðr. Seiðr has been broadly defined as a practice that enables the practitioner to see the future, change the environment, and affect the wellbeing of other people. Seiðr has also been positioned in traditional scholarship as a practice predominantly of women, containing heteronormative sexual elements,
and a source of shame when practiced by men. This framing of seiðr in this decidedly patriarchal context ignores the fluid and transformative elements of the practice.

Using a lens of queer theory seiðr becomes a practice marginalised for its enabling of transformation and movement through gender expression, defined both in the response and perception of its practitioners within the text sources.

Through applying “scavenger methodology” as proposed by Jack Halberstam we are asked to focus on what lies in the “margins” of the sources, looking at what is pushed to the side, marginalised, and often ignored in heteronormative interpretations. This project examines and elicits seiðr as a practice of transformation, as a queer practice, that enabled movement through gender for those who practiced it.

Bio

Ségdae is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. Their research looks at queer bodies and identities in text sources of Old Norse mythology, with a specific focus on transformative practices of magic found in the texts.
Ségdae has a Masters in Viking Studies from the University of Highlands and Islands where there these touched on the broad queer themes in Old Norse myth. They are also one of the co-founders of the Performing Magic in the Pre- Modern North Conference.