Nordic Folklore - Blog Posts

Nøkken Among the Lilies

Thought I'd post a pic of my summer acrylic painting.

The Nøkken (also known as Näcken, Nøkk, Nixie, or Nix) is a water spirit from Scandinavian Folklore. He is known to reside in still bodies of water, hiding in the lily pads and fern. Nøkken was said to play the violin, fiddle, or harp so beautifully it lured people to the bodies of water where they drowned.

In May I worked on touching up my acrylic paintings. Here's my first attempt at the Nøkken sitting in a still body of water playing his fiddle.

This is one of my favorite paintings I've done.

These are Huldra or Hulderfolk from Scandinavian folklore. Hulderfolk are seductive forest spirits and their name translates loosely to "hidden" or "secret". They're said to look like normal women with the only difference being the hole in their back that resembles a hollowed tree and the long cow-like tail which they hide under their skirts. If you encounter a Huldra and treat her with respect, she will be very helpful (sharing the best fishing spots or tending to your charcoal kiln), but mistreat her and the punishment will be severe (being beaten to death with her tail or taken into the mountains never to be seen again).

Just thought I'd share the first Scandinavian creature I ever painted.

Nisse are little gnomish creatures that live in your house. They can be very mischievous if not treated with the respect they deserve (i.e. leaving a hot bowl of porridge out for them) or if you're generally neglectful to your house and livestock.

Progress photos of my Nøkken painting back in May.

And here's the finished product. (Although I might always add touch ups because my work is never finished).

Unspoken Rules of The Nordic Countries

The trees are not malicious. They will not purposely hurt you. But they will not help, and they will not care if something else comes after you. You are not relevant.

Be careful of which small hills you traverse over. Not all of them are hills. Don’t wake what sleeps under the dirt and rock.

Always be respectful towards what lives in the forest. It will increase the chance of them leaving you alone.

If you leave an offering of food to them, the trolls will keep an eye out for you. Nothing else will.

Make sure you’re clear about who the offering is to, or something else might take it.

Always check the back of the people you meet in the forest. If it looks hollow, or if something’s moving at their waist, quickly but politely part ways with them. Do not follow them anywhere.

If they help you when they find you, thank them thoroughly. If they offer to lead you out, decline politely and ask them to point you in the right direction instead. You wouldn’t want to waste their precious time. Do. Not. Follow. Them. Anywhere.

Be alert of snow in cities. Be wary of snow in the country, and always cover your eyes. It can and will blind you.

If you’re one of the few that go to church on important holidays, don’t look behind you until you’re on church ground. The ones who were here first do not like that newcomer from the desert, and they don’t like you for abandoning them for him.

Be especially wary during Christmas. They do not like the way those desert folk and their three part god twisted their celebration and then called it their own. There’s a reason the Nordic folk still call it Yule.

If you hear violin music from a pond, a lake, a river, turn around immediately. Or else he might ensnare you and convince you to join him at the bottom.

If you hear music in the woods, take another path or return from where you came. They’ll try to ensnare you too, but they might be a bit more merciful and let you go after. But do not tempt fate. Mercy is unlikely, and they will definitely not give it to you twice.

The mountains and hills do not move. If they do, they are not mountains or hills.

If a deciduous tree is still in bloom during winter, do not approach it. Especially not if the earth around it is warm.

The ravens are always watching. They know everything. Never tell a secret in the presence of a raven that you aren’t willing to let them whisper on to something else.

If you find a child standing alone of the side of a road, greet them politely. If they ask for a name, give them one, preferably your own, if possible. They will not do anything bad with it, and will treasure it forever. You will never see them again in the world of the living, but they will remember you fondly.

If you hear the cry of a child by or under the floorboards of a house, ignore them and do some research into your family. If someone you’re related to lived in that house a couple centuries back, pray what’s locked under there never gets loose.

If a dead family member knocks of your door, answer. They have come to tell you important information.

Evil people who die violent deaths rarely pass on. They’re still there. Watching. Planning.

There are few places where no one has died, and much sorrowful history. But do not be afraid. Usually the ghost wish you no ill will. Usually.

Never board the silver metro train unless you wish to be lost forever.

Inspo for the troll drawings goes to Eoghan Kerrigan.

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 6: Eyes in the Sky

Read on Wattpad and AO3

After a night of scarce and fretful sleep, she sought out Geir. He had come to see her, briefly, when she was still bedridden, but she had not seen him since. Still in pain, the walk to Geir and Siv’s family house left her shaking and pale. When she sat down next to Geir on the wooden bench, there was a sheen of sweat on her brow, and her breathing was hard.

The house of the Geir was one of the largest in Eiklund. It had a well adorned boat-shaped oak exterior with carved wooden dragons on each end. Inside was a large central health and many benches and beds on either side. As the custom bid, four generations were living under Geir’s roof, all eating well thanks to Geir’s prowess as a warrior and subsequent investments in livestock. 

Eira indicated with her eyes that what she was about to tell Geir was not for the ears of everyone.

Siv looked none too amused as Geir and Eira shuffled to the far end of the house to carry on their conversation in hushed tones. As they settled on a small bench, Eira began telling Geir what had happened the night before. The quiet that had taken hold of Geir since Svidland reigned for a few more moments, before he said “Strange things are happening in our time” to no one in particular. 

Desperate to get back on the side of camaraderie with this sullen version of Geir, she pledged “Old friend, I need you to tell me your thoughts about all of this. I know you want to protect me, to protect everyone, and that is why you’re against it -” 

Geir cut her off: “Eira, I’m not against it. At least not anymore. What Rolf said in Roskilde.. It has stuck with me,” he took a deep breath, as if admitting to a deep secret. “What if we could really have changed all those terrible things that have happened?” His eyes moved to his wife, before looking back at Eira, deep wells of dark grey water.

Eira bent her head, pulling at a loose thread in her tunic. Without looking back to the wells of Geir’s eyes, she said quietly: “The vølve also taught Unn seiðr. That’s how she saved Ulf’s boy last winter.” 

Eira did not want to break the trust of her friend, but she knew this might sway Geir. She could not be alone in what she thought she might be getting herself into. Geir’s eyes glimmered more brightly now, ignited by her words, and Eira knew  she had cast the right net. For Eira, she was driven by the deep injustice of some people being born to power while others were born to thralldom, both figuratively and literally. But for Geir, it was a sorrowful need for bargaining with the universe, and she had just presented him a way to do it.

“There’s a far leap between whatever happened in Svidland, and saving the lives of children. Maybe I can only wield destruction, and maybe Unn can only heal, who knows,” the words flowed quickly from Eira, now a bit frantic, thinking she had struck an ore of something in the rock that was Geir “But maybe there is more to it. We can all learn magick, that’s what the vølve said. At least that’s what I think she meant. Maybe we have all been beaten into submission for so long that we have been blind to the opportunities. Maybe Geir, just maybe, we have a chance of something that has not been bestowed upon anyone else in the memory of man, and I think we’d be as dumb as trolls if we do not see it through.”

Geir looked for a long moment at Eira’s imploring eyes. Then, the strained heaviness in the air lifted around them, as his face split into a toothy smile. “By the Gods Eira. I should think you are scared of me, the way you are pleading for your life. Calm down now. I agree with you.”

“You do?” 

“I do.” He reached out to pat her knee awkwardly. “I think you should find out what the vølve is on about. Eira, you are woven from a different cloth than Unn, even than the rest of us. There’s a drive in you that the rest of us do not have, I have always seen it. I worry that you may have to pull the heaviest cart in this. You’re brave, I’ll give you that, but your impulsivity and your principles make you stupid.”

Eira scoffed, but submitted to a small smile. Where Geir had needed weeks of reflection to come to his conclusion, she had known from the moment she woke after the battle against the Geats, that she was going to pursue this. She had not dedicated much energy to consider the dangers of learning forbidden magick, in the same way Unn had when it had been bestowed upon her. Eira had simply propelled herself into it.

Geir’s silence had now been broken by the many thoughts he had undoubtedly harbored in the past many weeks. “Promise me you will do everything you can to keep this from the Jarl. It might not only catch up with you, but all of us. Ingmar is not a soft man. And do not pull anyone unwillingly into this. One bird chirps quieter than a hundred. You need to stay undetected until we know what is at stake. And who knows, maybe this is all a fluke. There is no need to lose your head before we know for certain.”

Eira nodded, although she knew that it was not a fluke. The vølve had given her a clear mission to find the magick around her, and she was brimming with ideas of how to do it. She stayed at Geir’s house for a little while longer, as they discussed in hushed tones the many opportunities that may be before them.

Naturally, she went to the vølve’s hut next. The low wooden structure was covered in turfing on the ceiling and outer walls, blending it completely into the tall grass around it. It had none of the typical adornments of most houses, yet there was a mystical air about it as she approached and realised that she had never been this close to the seeress’ hut.

As she stepped in the door, an odd darkness engulfed her. Unlike the airy longhouses made for socialization between family members, the vølve’s small hut was divided into even smaller sections by large pieces of dark, musty cloths hung from the walls. She entered into a small receiving room, furnished only with a small open fireplace with sleepy embers in the middle of the room and a few stools. When Eira knocked, the vølve had called for her to enter, but somehow seemed completely unaware that Eira was now standing in front of her. The pale woman was dressed in simple, dark robes and sat on the stamped earth floor in front of the embers, staring blankly ahead.

It was as if a large, soft fur had been laid over all of Eira’s senses, and the silence and darkness felt suffocating in the small space. She waited for a moment, shifting from one leg to another once, twice. Then she cleared her throat. Still, the vølve said nothing.

“I have thought about what you said yesterday,” Eira muttered through the thick air. “I would like for you to teach me.” 

At this, the vølve’s eyes clipped to look directly into hers. It was the first time she had looked the odd woman in the eyes. They were like fog on bleak autumn mornings.

“I cannot teach you,” she declared.

“But you said-” 

“I said you must look around.”

Where the vølve’s eyes the night before had danced in and out of Midgard, they were now overwhelmingly present on her. Eira had to avert her eyes, pretending to take in the hut around her, although she could barely see a thing.

“How in the nine realms am I supposed to learn on my own? Nobody can do that, not even those born to it.” she protested. Had the vølve truly sought her out, opening a door so significant, only to leave her no better off? 

“To share my knowledge untethered with you will be to invite destruction upon all of us. There are eyes in the sky.” 

Something about the vølve’s reluctance to say outright what she meant provoked Eira. Perhaps it was a tool of the trade, she thought, but she did not appreciate it. “You taught Unn!” she blurted her words accusingly. “Why is it different with me?”

“You will see eventually. Now you have to trust the world around you. Be quiet, and listen. Find the magick, it is there, I swear it to you.” 

“Will you not even tell me how?” 

“No.” the vølve said plainly. “Now leave me to my rumination.”

The seer looked back down into the embers before her, and seemed to almost fade into the darkness as she did. The suffocating air of the hut pushed Eira out.

Eira stomped away on the path back towards Eiklund. Her mission had been utterly unsuccessful, but something the vølve had said stuck in her mind. There are eyes in the sky. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw two large black birds circling above the hut.

…

Sól and Máni chased each other over the sky for days on end, as she tried to do as the vølve had told her. 

She started with what she knew. She cast runes of Kenaz and Perthro again and again in a hundred different forms. Kenaz, the rune of knowledge and revelation of hidden truths, she had painted onto her skin in numerous variations, with both pigs blood and ink. She even carved it carefully with a small knife into her arm, although blood rituals were a darker kind of magick that she had never experimented with before. Perthro, the revealer of fate and the unknown, was carved into her floors, above her bed, on the amulet she wore constantly around her neck. She sang the galdr she knew, although the verses were meant for war, and she sometimes worried that if it worked, she might set her house on fire or worse. There was no need to worry. None of her efforts had revealed anything to her.

This was all the magick of the common people, warriors and old crones. Amulets and symbols, runes and song. It was not what she was looking for, and it yielded her nothing more than a hoarse voice, and maybe a number of enchanted objects or unintended curses that might backfire on her at a later time.

Next, she had sought out Unn, asking her to share what the vølve had taught her about seiðr. Unn yielded to do so, only after Eira had once again sworn herself to secrecy, a secrecy she had already broken. Unn admitted that she had indeed gone back to the vølve again several times, going at night until the early hours of the morning to avoid being seen by nosy neighbours.

What Unn taught Eira kept her engaged for days. The healing seiðr rituals were frightening and exhilarating at the same time. The galdr was long, breathy verses calling upon Eir and Freyja, less harsh than the galdr of battle spells, but somehow more forceful, more earnest. Yet far more fascinating was the act itself of drawing upon seiðr. When Unn had first explained it, it had made no sense: There should be a thread of hurt or malaide that could somehow be touched, pulled out of the suffering subject. Unn kept telling Eira over and over again to visualise it as they practiced the ritual on Eira’s own wound, and Eira kept failing. There was no thread, no unearthly manifestation of her wound.

They could not practice on anyone else, lest they give away their wrongdoings. So the two were bound to practice, repeating the same exercise until both their patience wore thin, their words short and snappy, and their familiarity with each other became a hindrance for progress.

Late one afternoon, Unn had been seated over her cauldron brewing herbal poultices, when Eira’s impatient complaints had overflowed her cup. Unn threw her arms at Eira, gnarling “By the Gods, your skull is thicker than a troll’s!” and accidentally tipping the cauldron to spill its boiling contents over her calf. Unn yelped loudly, her delicate features twisted in pain as the skin on her legs was scorched. Eira gasped when she lifted her dress. 

The ugly sight of broiled skin ignited something in Eira, and she drew close to Unn, placing a calming hand on her knee to inspect the wound as she raised her voice in the healing galdr she had been taught. Unn flinched at her touch.

The adrenaline led her voice to a booming undulation as she lilted through the verses of galdr. Looking deeply into the wound, somehow she saw it. Not physically like a vision before her eyes or a change in the world before her. Instead, somehow, inside the physical world in front of her, she saw that something else was hidden. It was not a thread, as she had been looking for all this time. Instead, a disruptive floating mass, of no particular color or shape or density. It was not in this world, not here in Midgard, but somewhere else. She had to reach into the else-ness to touch it. The sound of Unn’s wailing disappeared around her. With the delicate, precise movements Unn had taught her, her fingers rolled and danced around it, until somehow the mass dispersed.

She was not sure how long it had taken, she had lost herself in the process. Only when Unn sighed loudly in relief and thanked her, did Eira look up to see her pale and blotchy face. Eira blinked her eyes numerous times, not quite able to focus on the actual world in front of her. She remembered the vølve’s floating eyes.

Once she had mastered this method, practicing over and over on Unn’s quickly healing leg, she began feeling restless again. She had always wanted to learn the ways of healing, but now she knew that it was not the full potential of what she was seeking. 

She began sitting out at night again, trying to reach an absolute stillness of the kind she had felt in the vølve’s hut. For endless hours she sat concentrating until her head hurt and her eyes blinked slowly with sleep. Sometimes, the screech of ravens jerked her awake.

Ravens seemed to flock to Eiklund these days, often sitting perched on longhouses or roaming the skies restlessly. Eira thought she knew what it meant, but tried to shrug it off. 

…

On the second fortnight of listening intently to the universe, which offered no sound, and staring resolutely into nature, which yielded no clues, she gave up. Casting aside all that was known to her about how long it took for even highborne’s to learn magick, she stomped back to the vølve’s hut to demand more.

When she slammed open the door without warning, she was met by an entirely different house than the first time she had been there. Light streamed in from the open door behind her, illuminating the walls hung with rich red tapestries. In the middle of the room, a fire roared happily. The beaten earth flooring felt warm through the soles of her shoes.

The toastiness of the empty room took the built up tension right out of her lungs. She had prepared a speech of demands and complaints to the stubborn, uncooperative seer, but there was no one to deliver it to. 

She called out a hesitant “Hello?”

After several minutes, the vølve emerged from behind a woolen curtain, a bowl of porridge in her hand. Even the pale seer looked less ghastly in the warm light of the fire. Eira quickly snapped shut her gaping mouth, after realizing that, well, of course, even mystical seeresses with floating eyes probably needed to eat. 

“Good morrow Eira,” the vølve greeted with her sing-songy thrill, seemingly unsurprised by the unexpected disturbance “I think you may be ready now.”

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 5: Freyja's Gift

Read on Wattpad and AO3

In the first days of healing she had been hazy and weak from the pain. She had been confined to her small house, close by the cluster of longhouses that belonged to Unn’s family and a few other neighbours. Unn stayed in her house, changing her dressings while singing songs of healing Galdr. Eira slept through the days, and in turn spent many nights awake. They shared Eira’s bed at night, like sisters did. Unn woke early before the break of every day, just as Eira was beginning to blink her eyes more slowly, overcome by sleep, and Unn started singing over her again. Unn had looked weary on those days, the dark purple under her eyes sinking into her usually plump face.

Unn had been horrified, at first, by the gravity of Eira’s wound, shocked that she was still alive. But as the days went on, Unn’s shock turned to disbelief at Eira’s speed of recovery. Eira wondered if Unn had visited the vølve again in her absence, but she did not ask. She had many, more pressing questions gnawing at her mind.

As Eira’s strength gathered, Unn returned to her own home. Still unable to sleep, Eira took to sitting outside in the late evening hours. She walked slowly to the grave mounds at the back of her estate, shrouding herself in a woolen plait to keep the chill of the night at bay. She would lean against a tree or sit atop of the small grassy hills, the resting place of her ancestors, sighing deeply with the pain she still felt as she moved through the world. And there, she would open her heart to the nature around her, hoping that an answer might reveal itself to her. 

She went over what had happened on the battlefield again and again, the many impressions having faded into distortion. It was clear that the force had come from her, Magnus had confirmed as much. But even he could not explain the nature of it. Had it come from her hands, as it did with the legendary battle mages, or from the earth around her? It could have been some divine intervention from above her. How had she felt when it happened? What had she done the moment before? She did not remember. 

Then she moved onto thinking what an odd coincidence it was, that somehow high levels of magick seemed to be swirling around the sleepy villagers of Eiklund, with the vølve’s arrival and inexplicable events visiting both herself and Unn in a short span of time. It seemed like the stuff of myths.

Some nights she drew the rune of Eiwaz in the soil at her feet, thinking it would evoke some sort of revelation, although she did not know which kind she was looking for. After casting the rune, she would sit for hours looking into the darkness, searching for a physical manifestation of an answer. 

She lost herself to thinking, and her mind would often land on how the children of Ulf never got to be buried in their ancestral home of Eiklund. As if struck by the thought itself, she would stand up as fast as she could, and scuttle home. She could not push away the idea that she might see them, the little blond children, in the ghostly form of gengangere - spirits that walked the earth again, driven by things left unresolved.

The thought visited her again and again. She was starting to think that perhaps it meant something, the thought stuck in her mind like a spanner in a wheel. The day the children died was the first day Eira questioned what was natural and unnatural in this world, what must be, and what, perhaps, need not be. Maybe it was the seed that had been planted, which had later bloomed into her own super natural actions in Svidland. Perhaps she had somehow… 

A movement in the darkness startled her. She gasped audibly, preparing herself to stand, but knew that would be futile. She was still weak, and in any case she could not defend herself from spirits.

“Who goes there?” she called, telling herself it could not be them. It was a single, dark shape, much too big to be the young children. She sat gaping and waiting for it to near her, when she saw that it was the vølve. The waiflike woman moved much like she expected a spirit would, almost floating. She was walking straight towards Eira. 

Eira was dumbfounded. She had never seen the vølve leave the surroundings of her small abode outside of Eiklund.

“Do you find what you seek?” The vølves voice was whispery and rasping, but it had a sing-songy quality to it. As if the songs required for her magick had settled permanently in her voice.

Eira was still stunned by the vølve’s unexpected presence, and thought hard to look for an appropriate answer. “I am not sure what I seek”, she said finally.

“I am sure you are finding more than you think.”

“Why have you come here?” Eira observed the vølve’s light, delicate features. Her skin and hair were both almost the colour of fresh fallen snow, but her face looked youthful. Eira did not know why she had expected a vølve to look deeply furrowed and lined, like the famed Elli who was old age in human form. Her eyes were pale too, and they did not look directly at Eira. Instead, they floated as if between worlds. If it had not just been the two of them, it would be unclear if she was addressing Eira at all.

“I have been waiting for something to be set in motion. It seems that it has now happened.” 

The vølve was standing beneath Eira, who was seated halfway up on side of a grassy burial mound. The vølve was incredibly tall, thin like a draugr, but almost meeting Eira’s eye sight. 

Eira’s brows furrowed, the confusion of the nonsensical statement gripping her, making her wonder if she had fallen asleep without noticing. She decided to ask the vølve a question that had been on her mind for weeks. “You taught Unn seiðr?”

“Yes.” the vølve replied matter-of-factly. 

“Why?” asked Eira. 

“For the same reason that I am here for you now.” the vølve replied, as if that would explain everything. Eira felt a pull of impatience, unprepared to be disturbed by nonsensical riddles on this night of introspection. But she knew that it must be something significant that had moved the vølve to seek her out. Eira for the second time asked her why. 

“I came to tell you a story.” The vølve stood unmoving at the foot of the small hill, looking up at Eira, or perhaps at something behind her or inside her, as she continued her whispering song:

“The first war of time was between the Æsir and Vanir. It was a war that has since been unmatched in force and violence, waging on endlessly, neither side gaining grounds, until both the Æsir of Asgard and Vanir of Vanaheim agreed to strike a truce. Do you know what happened next?”

The impatience gripped Eira again. The vølve had come to her home, in the middle of the night, to tell her fables of skaldic poetry, children’s stories? Of course Eira knew, every child had heard of the legendary creation and divine history of the universe a hundred times over.

“They exchanged hostages,” Eira replied, willing her voice to be neutral, patient. “Some of the best Æsir were sent to Vanaheim, and likewise Vanir were sent to Asgard.”

The vølve shook her head slightly, murmuring dismissively “Yes yes, of course, but not that.” as if Eira’s answer was too glaringly obvious. “I mean what happened with Freyja. The seiðr.” Eira now listened more attentively, as the vølve sang on: “The hostages who came to Asgard were three: Njordr and his children, Freyr and Freyja. Njordr, who guards the sea and Freyr who guards the fields and prosperity of nature, were both named overseers of sacrifices from the mortals of Midgard. Their vanir magic still casts the rains of spring and the waves of the ocean to this day.”

As she continued, Eira noticed how the vølve swayed slightly as she spoke, like a seedling tree in the late summer breeze. Eira still questioned whether she was fully awake.

“Freyja also came to Asgard, beautiful Freyja who wields the most important forces of mortal life and doom. Love and war, and above all, seiðr. Freyja’s knowledge, power and skill is almost without equal. Except, of course, for Odinn, who is the Æsir allfather and in his own right a God of exceptional power and knowledge. 

As unison of the Vanir and Æsir settled in Asgard, it was Freyja who shared her seiðr with the Æsir. She bestowed this gift of unification to Odinn, teaching him to alter destiny and weave prophecy. Freyja did so generously, without corruption or fear of being overcome by her former foe.” 

The vølve’s melodic flow of whispers stilled. After a moment of silence, she asked Eira “Do you understand?”

Eira did in fact not understand anything. She strained to fit the pieces together. “Seiðr can be taught.” Eira started slowly. This was not new wisdom that had been bestowed upon her, and she thought she might be missing the mark as she followed up with: “Like how men of the Jarl’s court are taught magick?”

The highborne wielded much more powerful magick than the simple galdr and runes that the common people relied on. It was not quite the legendary manipulation of the natural world and bending of fate that the Vanir and Odinn wielded, but highborne magick-wielders could heal complex wounds and cause incredible magickal damage. Some could even spur simple but effective illusions. There were also stories of mortals changing their day of death, pushing it in front of them through the Gods’ mercy. Many suspected that was why the King Gorm, known as Gorm the Old, was still fierce at his old age. His wife was said to be blessed with strong traces of seiðr.

But all of that was not readily relevant to Eira. Those people were born with Odinn’s blood - and she was not.

“Magick is bound by blood lines.” Eira was shaping her answer slowly. “Odinn was not just the king of the Gods in Asgard. It is fabled how he once walked often in Midgard, siring many noble bloodlines. When he left to rule over Asgard, he placed his mortal sons as rulers, bestowing upon them some of his magick. Thus, magick can only be passed down through bloodlines, or obtained through deals with the Gods.” 

That was the reason, aside from puritan elitism of course, why marriages between high-magick wielding individuals and the common people were forbidden. Some said the only reason the commoners had their rudimentary magick in the first place, was due to frivolous copulation through the ages. Eira thought maybe the vølve was alluding to this - the nature of how magick was learned and taught, trickling from the goddess Freyja through Odinn to mortals in Midgard.

Lost in her thoughts for a moment, the vølve’s soft tutting brought Eira back to the present. “The magick wielded by men is not the magick I speak of. Seiðr, real seiðr can weave threads into the Web of Wyrd, commanding spirits and bending time. With real seiðr, the unseen can be made seen, and the seen made unseen. Real seiðr can alter destiny.”.

Eira wondered if the vølve somehow knew, as the pale lady recited her deepest desires back to her. If the vølve knew the depths of her despair as she thought of all those senseless sorrows that need not happen in Midgard while the Kings and Gods feasted in their halls.

“This seiðr, it is meant to be shared, Eira. In the spirit of Freyja. I have waited for you to be ready.“ 

“You have been waiting for me?” Eira sputtered. She knew that what had happened in Svidland had been an exceptional force of something entirely inexplicable. She knew that it was unheard of for a commoner to wield battle magick of the kind that had flown from her. It had not been in her control, and to this day she was still not sure it had truly come from her. She told the vølve as much.

“I am not talking about what happened in Svidland. You are practicing seiðr right now.” the vølve continued, a wistful smile floating in her eyes with her last few words: “Well, at least you are trying to.”

Now, Eira had really lost the plot of what was happening. She groaned loudly, struck by a sudden sharp headache as her blood pressure rose and the wound on her neck pulsed. The vølve was unphased by her exclamation. 

“Seiðr requires a deep connection to the threads of the world. Sitting out, like you have done for days, is the simplest, yet purest form of seiðr there is. If you just listen..” the vølve’s words trailed off softly. She lifted her chin slightly to the dark, cloudy night sky stretching endlessly above them, half closing her eyelids as if listening intently to something in the air. Eira only now realised that she had been holding her own breath for a long time, as the vølve took in a long, slow lungful of air and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“It is late,” the vølve broke the silence. “You will find seiðr is not just at your fingertips, Eira, but all around you. I encourage you to look for it.” and with that, the vølve whirled around and walked into the night.

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 4: A Frayed String in the Web of Wyrd

Read on Wattpad and AO3

After too long, Geir finally looked back to her with a deep sigh. “I do not know what I saw, Eira” he said with a finality, settling a debate she had not been privy to.

She blinked again, gaining strength in her eyelids. 

“Some of the others, they are.. There have been many discussions.”. Geir shuffled to sit next to the wooden slab she was placed on, lowering his voice as he continued into her ear, outside the privy of nearby ears. She thought of sitting up to look at him, to understand the look on his face, but it was futile. 

“How did you learn it?” he finally asked.

She wanted to speak, but knew she was not ready. So she simply shook her head.

“It cannot be.” Geir looked towards the pale sky where the sun had still not broken the horizon. His eyes, much the same color as the sky, were shifting as if looking for something. He sighed again.

“You are lucky that not many saw. Magnus, myself, a few other nearby warriors. It hasn’t left our ranks.” he assured her. She nodded in appreciation, lifting a hand to the herbal dressing on her neck. The movement made her wince again, and the stitches underneath the cloth pulled at her skin. It was marvelous that they had not needed to burn the wound.

Magnus sprung into her vision, a bright grin on her face, akin to what she had expected from Geir on her awakening. Unlike Geir, he had combed his short blonde hair back from his face, and dressed in fresh woolen clothes.

“By the Gods Eira, we almost left you!” His voice was like bells, where Geir’s was like drawn out battle horns, signifying impending doom. “That fellow from Harvang - Rorik - he found you still alive when the battle had stilled. I saw you go down. I thought surely you could not survive a blow like that.”. Magnus was emphasising each word enthusiastically, as if he was reciting skaldic tales. He was still young, still excited by everything that happened in battle. “But then -” his eyes fleeted briefly to Geir “something clearly happened, did it not? It was unlike any galdr I have ever seen, I mean, it must have been..” Magnus was immediately shot down with a stern look from Geir. He contained his excitement. 

“How’s your jaw?” he asked instead, with a sheepish smile, and she had opened and closed her mouth demonstratively for him.

The ship glided through the calm waters of the fjord as the morning finally broke and a lazy autumn sun was drawn onto the horizon by Sóls chariot.

When they reached the coast of Selund, her body felt stronger. A large lump of chewed willow bark was burning a hole on the inside of her left cheek, but the bitter juices numbed her sweetly as they flowed through her.

They anchored in Roskilde, a day’s travel from Eiklund. The victorious Danir had already had their feast in Scania on the night the battle finished. Now, most were weary and decided to stay a day in Roskilde, to have their injuries tended to or drink another mug of beer to their victory. Eira had been carried to their hosting hall on a wooden raft. While Geir had regained his jovial composure, there was a weary edge to him. Eira had fought alongside him long enough to know that battle did not have this effect on him. Something else was afoot.

The familiar band of fighters from Jarl Ingmar’s land settled in a large hosting hall for breakfast. Eira was still lying on the raft at the far end of the table as food was brought to her. Everyone had greeted her warmly, praising her escape from death. Most others had only suffered minor damaged, except for Rolf, who had lost two toes and was wobbling around on wooden crutches. Two people Eira knew had died. 

She had finally put a name to the stranger who had watched her when she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Rorik of Harvang, a nearby neighbouring village of Eiklund and from a band of fighters that often fought with the Eiklund warriors. 

She wondered why she had never fought alongside him before. 

“I do think we have.” he protested. 

“I would have remembered that sword” she pointed to the pattern-forged sword at his waist, the hilt sticking out of the sheath decorated intricately. She asked him about it, but he brushed it off saying he had earned it when he had joined the raiding expeditions in the West.

When she saw him in his neat and clean clothes, she also realized where she had seen him before. On the Sviar heath, he had been completely unscathed by the heat of the battle, catching her eye but disappearing quickly as the fighting continued. In much the same way, he had now managed to escape her attention as she looked for him in the hall, wondering why something about him struck her as definitively off.

The conversation in the hall flowed more freely now that the small band of brothers had left the company of the many strangers travelling alongside them from Svidland. She understood now Geir’s reluctance to discuss what had transpired, in front of people he did not trust. Yet even here, he was not the first to broach the subject, having sat several seats away from her. Instead, as they had all recalled the spoils of the battle, putting forth their most formidable attacks and defences, one warrior had mentioned Eira’s unlikely survival, and the room had fallen quiet. 

With a pained exclamation, Eira had fought her way to sit up halfway to look upon the room from her sickbed.

“Don’t hold back. Tell me your thoughts”, she willed her voice to fill the room gaping back at her. She needed them to explain to her what they had seen, for she remembered only the distorted impressions of her senses as her life’s blood flowed from her.

Magnus, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak, his words always working faster than his mind. “Well you must be a long lost daughter of Odinn, or maybe a vølve!” he exclaimed. 

Rolf, now Rolf the Toeless, to his left, interjected: “Vølvur do not wield the power for destruction like that.”

Magnus shrugged unphased and responded that daughters of Odinn also did not wield magick without being taught how. Which beckoned the question that Geir had been first to ask her.

“Who taught you how to do that?” someone asked from the end of the table.

“And how come you never told us?” Magnus supplied, ignoring the obvious fact that a commoner speaking loudly of such skills would certainly face death at the hand of the jarl. 

“I have never been taught anything other than battle galdr. I do not even know what exactly I did.” began Eira, her eyes shifting around to take in the eyes on her, many clearly unconvinced by her words. Geir’s eyes, which she knew the best, were also the most doubting. His grey eyes most often took the warmness and hue of molten ash, but now they were hard like iron.

A small but fierce shieldmaiden, whom everyone aptly called Thyra - shieldbearer - instead of her given name, Thurid, spoke up. “Imagine what we could do if we all held such powers. Eira, you will have to teach us everything you know.”.

Before Eira herself could protest, Geir finally raised his voice. “And risk the death of all of us? Imagine what Ingmar would do, what the King would do, if he found a flock of common karls practicing that kind of magick?” Some heads nodded wearily at this.

“If we all knew that kind of magick, we could overpower the King.” Thyra’s voice was low and hesitant, herself not fully convinced of what she was saying. What she had said was a dangerous statement, and a roar of overlapping arguments ensued - who did she think she was, to challenge the king - but also yells of encouragement “Yes! It is about time we changed the unjust ways of these jarls and kings” and “It is about time we fed them their own poison”. 

In only a few seconds, the hall brimmed with a surge of excitement and anger as discussions broke off between pairs, some yelling over the heads of others to make themselves heard. Several people gestured to Eira, arguing over how it would even be possible for her to learn magick without training, with someone else stating that no one would have any reason to teach a commoner like her. Eira thought of Unn and the vølve, but held her tongue.

Eira’s eyes fell on Rorik of Harvanger - had he been there the entire time? - standing in the back of the room watching her friends seated at the long table. He looked highly amused, a tuck on the sides of his lips as his eyes darted from face to face. He did not engage to let his opinion be known. As the only other observer of the ignited dispute unfolding in front of them, it struck Eira how Rorik, once again, did not look like he belonged here.

Geir’s booming voice cut through the chatter. “In that case, Rolf, we may as well challenge the Gods themselves!” 

“And why not? What even makes the Æsir our Gods? If all that separates us from Odinn is seiðr…” Rolf’s voice faded quickly from a yell to a more controlled volume, when he noticed the commotion around him had stilled. Eira appreciated for a brief moment that the eyes of the hall were no longer on her. Rorik’s amused face had fallen, now staring intently at Rolf too.

“What has possessed you?” Geir demanded, everyone holding their breath for the answer. Rolf averted his eyes, as if struck by the man whom many in the room considered a father figure, sometimes akin to Thor himself. But Rolf’s words had stirred something in Eira, bringing forth a wonder and yearning that she had only named to herself on sleepless nights. Knowing that someone else might share the sentiment helped her find her voice. 

“We all grow up being told we are helpless spiders in the Web of Wyrd. That whatever has been written will be, the grand tale of the inescapable fate.” Her words dripped with more disdain than she had intended. The room clung to her words. “Meanwhile, our lords and rulers are taught something very different. Kings and Jarls are blessed by the Gods with magick, but why them?” Her words hung in the air. She wanted an answer.

“There are ancient works at play, you know that, things beyond our influence. The bloodlines of Odinn and such.” Magnus offered.

“Of course, and it is in their best interest that we all believe that.” Eira scoffed. “The highborne people wield only a fraction of the magick that the Gods do, and still it is enough for us all to be ruled by them. It secures their power over the rest of us. But you know what they say - Odinn granted only the magick to the Jarls in return for their continued favor and devotion. Our rulers use their magick only to hoard their magick. Odinn did not give magick to divine beings with moral codes above the rest of us. They are but men. They’re greedy and power hungry. This means Odinn’s will in Midgard is to uphold a delicate balance of rulers and submissives.”

Somebody shifted in their seat, causing the bench to creak underneath the weight of the many people who were now staring wide-eyed at Eira. But the room remained quiet. She could not stop herself. The endless sleepless nights poured out of her mouth, desperate to be heard. 

“What the Jarls fear the most, what our new King fears most -” she did not mean to spit out the word, but she did “is to be overpowered by those beneath them. Odinn fears the same thing. That is why magick is hoarded by only those indebted to him.”

Finally, someone interrupted her. She was thankful, for she knew what she was about to utter may get her hanged or smited if she continued. It was Rorik, speaking up for the first time with a clear voice cutting through her river of words.

“Do you really not believe that this has all been written before us? We know the end of the world must come, and everything leading to Ragnarok will happen as it is woven by the Norns. Even if it is not just, it is what must happen.”

This ignited something in Eira, swelling into the pit in her stomach that had been carved by the sound of little children’s screams being swallowed by water, and Geir’s wails deep in the winter night two years ago. 

“How can the death of innocent children have any place in the outcome of Ragnarok?” Her voice was shrill now, something she was not proud of in a room full of men who looked at her with furrowed bows. But she looked each one of them in their eyes, and saw that many averted their eyes and nodded solemnly at her words. 

“You all saw what happened in Götaland, a proof that what we thought we knew may not be so. I do not know how it happened, but something changed the fate that was written for me that day. Something shifted, I can feel it. And we must pursue it. There are ways of magick available to us that we have never even imagined..” Eira’s words trailed off, as she steadied herself, trying to hold in what had happened with Unn and the vølve, to not reveal a secret she had sworn to keep.

Geir must have noticed that she had veered into a territory of something that she did not want to share widely. “Eira,” he began, in the same way one would try to steady a frightened horse. “We all wish these things could be helped. Every one of us have felt the senselessness of the Gods' wills at times, but we must trust that there is a meaning to the ways of the world.”

“You might even have changed your own fate, Geir,” Rolf reflected quietly. “You know as well as me that a Jarl's babies never die. Why do you think that is? Odinn has allowed them to avoid death, to challenge the web of fate, while the rest of us lose everything! Why not at least try to see this through? What do we have to lose?” He did not raise his voice like Eira, but there was a pained challenge in Rolf's voice, having known his own unjustifiable loss.

Geir did not answer, his face unreadable.

“That’s enough, Rolf,” Magnus stepped in. “It is not for people like us to concern ourselves with fate and destiny. They’re decided by the Gods for a reason.”

The tension in the room had reached an unbearable crescendo, and burst something fragile, sucking all the energy out of the air. A finality settled around them. Eira watched as Rorik the stranger slipped into the shadows and disappeared, while the rest of them turned their sullen faces back to their breakfast plates. As a subdued hum of chatter slowly resumed to the hall, Eira knew that thoughts had been said aloud which no one else had spoken in their lifetime. Something had been stirred, which would not settle anytime soon.

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 2: The Divine Order

Read on Wattpad and AO3

“I went to see her, you know. To ask for her help.” Unn said, throwing her head in the direction of the simple wooden hut nestled in between the tall grass and wild bushes. They were returning to Eiklund in the late afternoon, after three days of foraging. Eira wondered how flowers and plants could weigh so much.

“I thought you didn’t believe that fate could be changed?”

It was known that some of the woven threads of destiny spun by Norns led directly to vølur, woman wielders of a high magick form of called seiðr. Although they were inhabitants of Midgard, seiðr allowed them to walk between this realm and the eight others. Eira wondered what had driven Unn to call upon the services of such a seeress.

No one knew why this vølve had come to Eiklund two summers ago. Usually vølur were called upon by those in need, arriving with a following of young girls who helped them practice their seiðr through elaborate rituals of singing and drums. Yet the vølve who now resided on the far border of the Eiklund county had come alone, on her own volition. It had caused some suspicion, but she had made no demands or disturbance to the everyday life of the Danir. 

When a child had fallen woefully ill some months after her arrival, desperate parents had sought out the vølve, and she had performed a healing ritual that had fully recovered the sickly child. After that, people from all the nearby settlements flocked to her. Some even attributed last year’s bountiful harvest to her arrival. Yet many still harbored some suspicion towards the inconspicuous seer at the edge of the village. It seemed too good to be true, that she would have come simply to aid the people of Eiklund specifically. Eira herself had never sought her out, and neither had Unn until now.

“It was not for my own sake. When one of Ulf’s boys fell sick, I did not know what to do.” Unn explained. 

Eira remembered the rattling lungs of the scrawny little kid a few months ago. It had been many years since Ulf had lost his own children to the nøkke. He had filled the hole in his heart by taking in three orphaned boys, one of whom was a weak and sickly child.

Unn continued: “Ulf had come to me, you know he does not trust the vølve or anything magick, since the children…” she trailed off for a second and let the heavy words hang in the air. It felt like a small, sharp dagger stabbed between Eira’s ribs, briefly inserted and retracted again.

“But my tinctures and galdr could not help the child, and I could not bear to tell Ulf that it was beyond my powers.” Could not bear to tell him he would lose another child. Eira knew that was what Unn really meant, from the pained expression on her eyes. “So I took the child to the vølve, without telling Ulf. I thought she would heal the child through her own ritual, but instead she asked if she should teach me how to do it.”

“Teach you?” Eira’s mouth fell open. Unn nodded. “You mean, teach you seiðr?”

Eira looked back over her shoulder towards the vølve’s hut, which they had left behind as they turned onto the main road for Eiklund. The saying went ‘to wield seiðr without the Gods’ permission is to challenge Odinn himself.’ There were stories of both Gods and Jarls going to great lengths to stop the common people from using complex magick without permission. A threat to the nobility of Odinn’s chosen bloodline - and all their lucky lackeys - was a threat to the divine order itself. The commoners who showed magick prowess were plainly killed, while suspects were branded with magick runes that weakened them over time. In the olden days, entire villages had been burned to the ground or swallowed by the earth, vanquishing any rebellion that had existed in the hearts of the commoners.

“Yes, she wanted to teach me -” Unn avoided Eira’s wide eyes staring at her.

“This was months ago!” Eira interrupted whichever meek statement was coming next from Unn. “How could you not tell me?”

“I was not quite sure what to make of it. I didn’t know why she would teach me. It felt like being told a secret I did not ask for. I was afraid of what would happen if people knew.” The muscles around Unn’s brow and jaw had tightened. Eira bit her lip, considering the insinuation. It was true, this could not reach the ears of Jarl Ingmar, their vengeful ruler.

“Well -” A gleam sparked in Eira’s eyes, a curious excitement on her lips. “Did it work?”

Unn nodded again, still not quite meeting Eira’s eyes as she said “The boy is still alive, is he not? And stronger than ever.”There was a trace of pride in her voice.

Eira squealed. “Imagine!” she exclaimed, gaping. She grabbed Unn by the shoulder, bringing them both to a halt in the middle of the road. They were close to Eiklund now, the longhouse on the outskirts of the village visible in the distance. She contained herself and said more hushedly, “You must go back to learn more, Unn.”

Unn bit her cheek, removing Eira’s hand from her shoulder, gently but decidedly. “There is a reason why it is not allowed, Eira.” With that, Unn started walking again, not allowing herself to be influenced by Eira’s intent eyes on her. Eira had wanted to ask her more, but Unn walked away too quickly.

As they entered Eiklund, Eira excused herself from following Unn to her house. She had been absorbed by aiding her friend in the past few days, but knew that it was time to catch up with her warband, to prepare for what loomed ahead. They were leaving to join King Gorm’s army in Southern Selund in just a few days. 

As Eira bid Unn goodbye, Unn told her sternly “Do not tell anyone, okay?” and Eira promised, quelling the beaming curiosity inside herself to pursue this new information further. Imagine, she thought again as she made her way between the scattered longhouses of Eiklund, what real seiðr could do in the hands of the people.

Eira found a band of shield-brothers and sisters from Eiklund and the neighbouring villages, gathered at Ulf’s house. The smokey longhouse was filled with laughter and the smell of roast pork, telling Eira that she had arrived at just the right time. Ulf’s house was always a chaos of people.  The three orphan boys he had adopted chased each other around the house like Sól and Máni, the sun and moon who chased each other endlessly in the sky. The boys screeched and fought until they were sent outside with a yell from Ulf’s wife. People often flocked to Ulf’s house, him and his wife known for their exceptional hospitality. Today was no exception.

When she settled next to Geir, he slapped her shoulder heavily with his large hand and greeted her with a warning, his voice warm and jesting: “We were hoping you would not arrive in time for the discussions. We were planning on sending you headfirst into the Sviar legions, having you test out their powers before the rest of us go ahead.”

“Always the strategist.” Eira rolled her eyes.

“It’s brilliant!” Magnus, a young warrior, gestured enthusiastically between Eira and Geir.

“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” A shieldmaiden to Eira’s left jabbed at him, Magnus feigning ignorance over the thinly veiled suggestion. On the battlefield, people grew bonds beyond normal friendship. There was a deep familiarity between the frequently deployed fighters of the jarldom. Sometimes the bond developed further than friendship and loyalty. Most people did not see it in Magnus’ eyes, the utter devotion melting together with his always sparkling eyes and the expected admiration for the famed fighter Geir. For some, it was not even considered a possibility. But Eira was sure of it, and her shield sisters recognised it as well.

“Now tell us Eira, have you finished plucking flowers, so that you can actually discuss this new war with your warband?” Geir said with his roaring laugh. “We need your skills in galdr and runes to bring us to victory.”

The discussions of how exactly they would tackle this new venture continued into the night. Geir was convinced that their new foe, the Sviar, would be strange creatures with unknown powers and tricks. Of course, they had all met many Sviar traders who were as human as themselves, but Geir believed in preparing for the worst.

The coming days proceeded with many preparations before they would all leave to join their neighbours, travelling to the coast of Selund to join the army of their new King. 

So Eira had spent her last days before departure casting runes and inciting galdr in tedious rituals. It was a slow and imperfect process, the outcome never guaranteed. The galdr were rhythmic, metered songs, passed down from parents to their children, or between people of certain vocations. Eira’s verses had been taught to her by other warriors, but she had a special sense for the forceful vocalizations required for effective galdr. The galdr she knew was meant to strengthen the armor of her friends and weaken the weapons of her foes. There was never a way of knowing if it had worked, until they were on the battlefield.

She also weaved protecting words and phrases into wooden shields. Carving destructive runes of Tiwaz for strength and Isa for striking fear in the hearts of their enemies, anointing the runes with the blood of a ritually slain goat. She invoked the many Gods of war, Odinn, Freyja, Thor and Tyr, to grant them prosperity on the battlefield. Eira liked especially to call upon the oversight of Tyr, hoping for a fierce but righteous battle without unnecessary cruelty.

While she had her moments of disdain for the merciless nature of the Gods, Eira accepted the importance of these preparations in swaying the outcome of wars. It was a matter of understanding the divine order of things. Eira had always known her place as a warrior in the world. One must have courage and strength on the battlefield, but they must also know their place within the warformation. A strong shieldwall holds no cracks. This mentality was brandished into the very vocation of the commoner warriors, distinctly separate on the battlefield from the noble Jarl’s men and mages. The common men were blades, sharpened to carry out the bidding of their rulers without question, bound to steel and duty. They were rewarded with the spoils of war, fame and riches, but more importantly, a place in the halls of Odinn or Freyja in their eternal afterlife. This was the sweetest bounty, one which now urged her towards the land of the Sviar with excitement in her chest and courage in her heart.