ABSTRACT

An understanding of seidr and Northern magic, in the old literature or today, requires consideration of the times and places referred to, the political struggles taking place, and the location of people as seidworkers or clients within frameworks of everyday life and work including dimensions of gender and social class: and further a recognition that neither gender nor class are static properties of individuals, but constructed and reconstructed by and within the community. Today’s gendered processes are not those of the tenth century, or before. Nor are they those arising after Christianisation, at the time of writing of the old accounts.