Völva – The
Norse Priestess
“All witches
[völur] are descended from Widening Wolf
All transsexual
sorcerers [Seiðberendr] from the Tree of Intent
All sorcerers
[Seiðmennir] from Black Head”
(Hyndluljóð, st.
Poetic Edda)
“Wed
to the Wand” – the Völva, a Norse Witch
“Then came
the völva Gróa there, wife of Aurvandil the Bold. She sang
her galðr [spell-songs] over Thor until the piece of stone loosened
[from his flesh]. When Thor noticed this, and understood that there was a good
hope that she would be able to completely remove the byrnie-piece, he wished to
reward Gróa for her healing by doing her an honor…”
Snorri Sturluson, Skaldskáparmál,
Prose Edda
All
free Norse and Germanic women were expected to be versed in magic, but some
women more so than others. Most of the Germanic tribes, as well as the Vikings,
nurtured groups of wise women, witches or priestesses who usually lived
unmarried (though not necessarily in celibacy), and who could, it appears,
travel alone wherever they liked without fear. A woman who carried the wand of
the witch would never be harmed. They were allied with the fate goddesses and
thus wielded the greatest of powers. In the Viking Age Norse context, these
women were called the völur, singular völva. The literal translation
of this title is “Wand-Wed” or “Staff-Carrier”. In this book I will often refer
to them as just “witches”, since that is in my opinion the best description.
This
was a time and age when witches were honored and revered and sought as wise
women, healers, prophets, oracles, shamans and priestesses. Sagas show that if
a witch came to visit, the lord and lady of the house would give up the high
seat to her, a very powerful way of indicating that the witch had higher
authority. The sources also make a point out of how the witch can talk or not
talk to anybody at whim, regardless of their status – which means that she was
outside and above the normal hierarchy of society. The primeval witch was the
goddess Freyia, who introduced the art of seiðr [fate-magic, shamanism]
and the art of conquering death to men and women, and in the first instance
even to the gods.
I
choose not to refer to the völva as “priestess” because that gives a
different association, even if she sometimes leads ritual like a priestess.
Priestesses in the old Norse settings were called blótgyðiur[sacrificial
priestesses] or hóvgyðiur [temple priestesses]. In the cult of Freyr,
a high priestess would live as a wife to the god. These women were not
traveling witches but usually homebound practitioners, often of high status
within the clan. Again, the goddess Freyia serves as role model to the female
practitioner, as Snorri in his Heimskringla identifies her aso as
a blótgyðia among the gods. Apparently, the division line
between a witch and a priestess is unclear, and the two functions may be
overlapping.
The
practicing völur appear to have been buried with the wands they had
wielded in life, a fact hinted at in some sagas and confirmed by archaeological
finds. Witch or priestess burials from the Germanic Iron Age and from the
Viking Age testify to the high status such women could achieve in life.
Many
burials that appear to have been royally endowed were the graves of
wand-carrying witches, such as that of the Oseberg ladies. These two
high-standing women were in the year 834 A.D., Norway, laid to rest in a ship
burial accompanied by more than 20 horses and several other animals, alongside
incredible riches unequalled of the Viking Age. The burial contents clearly
points towards a religious cult, complete with a witch´s wand, tapestries
showing hanging sacrifice and cart processions, magical amulets and pouches
filled with cannabis seeds, wagons and sledges of exquisite craftsmanship
suitable only for ceremonial use, countless artistic references to the world of
the gods, to the dísir [female powers such as norns, valkyrias and
giantesses] and to the underworld, to the Sacred Marriage ritual and to the art
ofseiðr.
The Maiden in
the Tower: German Oracles and Matrons
“…it now seems
correct to speak of an actual widespread cult which emphasized reverence for
astaff-bearing prophetic goddess [in Western and Central Europe during the
Iron Age]…The connection between women and various peculiar looking staffs and
containers goes back at least that far in European prehistory [as La Tene, 450
B.C. Switzerland]…
The rich female
grave of the fifth century B.C. contained a large number of
amulets…a staff with hanging chains and a peculiar Ringgefäss [a
ceremonial mead vessel]
…has rightly
opted for “cult staff”…such staffs “are always found in very rich female
graves” and scholars appear to be agreed that “a cultic meaning must also be
ascribed to them”. But the exact significance of the staff is unclear. It
obviously serves no practical purpose but must nonetheless have had a symbolic
association with leading women…”
In
the literary sources, Norse witches have their predecessors in the German
tribes described by Roman authors such as Tacitus in
his Histories and in hisGermania. Most German tribes nurtured groups
of women known to the Romans as matronae – “mothers”. These “mothers”
traveled with the warbands and the armies and gave strategic counsel to the
war-leaders based on oracular divination. They also performed sacrifice and other
religious services. There are also description of particular women who were
used as oracles, much like in the ancient Greek and the Roman traditions [i.e.
the Oracle of Delphi]. One such woman was Veleda of the Bructeri, who two
thousand years ago led her people in revolt against the Romans through her
prophecies. It is now generally thought that Veleda is not actually a name, but
a title, meaning “seeress”. According to Tacitus, she had divine status among
the Germans. How much power she had in her own right and how much she was the
pawn of tribal leaders who needed a religious legitimizing of their actions is
not known. Veleda performed her divination while seated in a high tower, much
like the Norse witches were described as seated on high platform during their
séances.
The Cosmic Völva
I remember
giants born before time:
Those who in the
olden days had me fostered!
Nine worlds I
remember; Nine witches within wood!
The Mead-Tree
like a thorn in the ground.
Völuspá st.2
Poetic Edda
The
Poetic Edda collection begins with the famous poem Völuspá, literally
meaning “The Prophecy of the Völva”. In this poem, avölva, the speaker of
the verses, divines the entire history of the universe from beginning to end –
and then some. The fact that the poem is a prophecy spoken by the witch means
that the entire poem is an example of a séance of seiðr, the art of
oracular divination.
In
the poem, we first learn that the god Óðinn has requested the séance,
and that his wish is to know her “ancient message” as she remembers it. The
second stanza, quoted in the textbox here, reveals that the witch is so old
that she remembers the time before time itself. We learn that the witch was
fostered among pre-time giants and that the World Tree (the “Mead Tree”
[mjötvið– could also translate as Wisdom Tree]) was nothing but a seed.
She
remembers nine worlds before this one, identified as
nine iviði.. This word is the plural form of iviðia,literally
translating as “In-Wood” but referring to a sorceress, völva or
giantess (hence my translation: “Witches within wood”). We will be discussing
the subject of the original witch and the nine sorceresses in chapter 5. For
now, it is important to note that the völur, the witches, have a mythical
ancestress who is older than the present universe itself, and that her
divination about the past is in fact a memory.
The
importance of the mythical witch-ancestress in the history of the universe that
she is relating becomes obvious as she spends several stanzas relating how the
original witch came into the world of Aesir and of men as an
operating völva after a trial of initiation, teaching the art
of seiðr to human women, and later to the male gods. A lot of
space is given to the consequences of the Aesirs´ greed for her knowledge –
warfare and the loss of wisdom, all events leading to Ragnarök, the
apocalypse, are the results. The connection between the old
cosmic völva and the younger völva who enters the world of
men is strong to the point of identification, and the
younger völva is most certainly identical to Freyia, who is the
divine counterpart to a human witch.
It
is extremely common – almost a given – among shamanistic cultures to revere an
“ancestral shaman,” the first shaman who may have been a human being but who
has gained divine or semi-divine status. This shaman created the path and
opened the dimensional doors for other shamans to follow, and will often turn
up to guide fledgling shamans. Sometimes the first shaman was divine or
supernatural to start with. In
shamanistic societies, the shaman is the intermediary between normal human
beings and the supernatural world, just like the völva was an
intermediary between humans, gods and the all-powerful fates. The shaman, thus,
is a very important religious personage. The mythology of these people is
transmitted by the shaman and is strongly influenced by shamanistic experience.
The ancestral shaman gains a prominent place in shamanistic mythology, and is
often identified as the ancestor not only of the shamans, but of all the
people, and is sometimes the same as the creator deity.
The völva might
very well be the Norse equivalent of a shaman – even her wand has its
equivalent in female Siberian shamans´ staff. Thus both Freyia and the
ancient völva who lived before time may represent the
“ancestral völva” who created the path of the witch, with her seiðr,
galðr [spell-songs] and other magical arts.
The Cult of
Wodan and the Prophetesses
“Njorð´s daughter
was Freya, she was a sacrificial priestess, she was the first to teach the
Aesir the art of seiðr, a practice of the Vanir.”
Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga Saga,
Heimskringla, chapter 4
The
Viking Age Oseberg burial is the last in a number of Germanic priestess-graves
of a kind that dates back to the early Iron Ages in Europe.
From about the 5th century B.C there is ample evidence for “widespread
reverence for a prophetic, staff-bearing goddess” as well as countless female
burials in which high-standing ladies were buried with magical amulets, the
sacred wand, and the ceremonial and practical equipment, useful for the
practice of a mead-offering ritual that evidently was practiced among German as
well as Celtic tribes during the Iron and Viking Ages. The Norse witch-goddess
Freya and her human völur seem to be direct descendants of this ancient
European “cult”.
The
ancient connection between the wand-witches and the ritual serving of mead is
interesting to us, as the male initiation ritual I am going to explain in the
second and third part of this book has the mead-offering ritual as a climactic,
consecrating event. This indicates that priestesses and/or witches participated
in the initiation rituals undergone by males.
Wodan,
and early name for Óðinn seems to have had his predecessor in the
Bronze Age Scandinavian spear-god, one in an assembly of three male gods and
their Sun Maiden. Some scholars, however, believe that the Wodan figure was
developed during the Iron Age and that his character was inspired by one or
more certain german chiefs who fought the Roman empire – three of whom were
known to be one-eyed.
Whatever
the case, Wodan came to be an important god among many tribes during the Iron
Age. The oldest Wodan temples known shows Wodan as a deity living in Sacred
Marriage with a staff-carrying, prophetic goddess, a replica of the
Celtic-Roman cult of Roman Mercury and Rosmerta [“The Great Provider”], a
goddess of Celtic Origin. The identification of Mercury with the Germanic Wodan
was a given, whereas Rosmerta in all important respects resembles both a
typical Germanic and Celtic witch-priestess, as well as a proto-image of Freya,
with her witchcraft, her wand, her necklace, her sacred mead and her Sacred
Marriage.
Through
the Sacred Marriage, Wodan is the god-king. Wodan was a warrior god who
received human sacrifice, mainly prisoners of war who were thus “honored” by
hanging and stabbing. It seems that loss in battle was in itself a sacrifice to
the god, who would receive those who died in battle as well as those who were
sacrificed by hanging, in his particular hall in Heaven, Valhöll [“Valhalla”
– the Hall of the Chosen Slain].
The
staff-carrying goddess with whom Wodan was depicted is shown as a woman who
serves drink in a cup. Thus the theme of the “precious mead” in connection to
the Sacred Marriage between the mead-serving lady and Wodan the archetypal king
and war-leader, is ancient and basic to the mythology ofÓðinn, and seems
to reflect an already ancient tradition of wand-wielding witches and the
mead-offering ritual.
The Gothic
Haliurunnae
“Then the
Hunnish people fell in over the Goths, and they were more terrible than
everything terrible. Thus we hear from ancient times about their oldest
origins. The Gothic King Filimer, son of Gadaric the Great, himself the fifth
Gothic king after they took off from the Skandza island, traveled with his
people into Scythia [Present day Ukraine, Russia, Iran etc.], like we have told
before. Then he was aware of some sorceresses – he called
them haliurunnae in his mother tongue. He thought that they were not
to be trusted, and so expelled them far away from the army: There they wandered
around in the wilderness. Then unpure spirits saw them, as they were walking in
the deserted regions, and they took them and lay with them, and then they gave
birth to that barbarian tribe [the Huns].”
Jordanes, History of the
Goths (551 A.D.) chapter 24
According
to their own legends, the Goths were one Germanic tribe that had emigrated from
Scandinavia (probably Gotland in Sweden) during the first century B.C. They
soon came to bully all their neighbours into submission and dominated large
parts of Central and Eastern Europe. But when the Mongolian or Turkic Huns
invaded Europe during the fourth century A.D., the Goths met with even bigger
bullies than themselves. The Goths were reduced to living either as vassals to
the Huns or in refugee camps at the borders of the Roman Empire.
Just
like later Icelandic Vikings a thousand years later brought
nine völur with them in their emigration to Greenland, so the Goths,
like all Germanic tribes, brought with them their collective of
witch-priestesses. According to 6th century A.D. Jordanes, these were
called haliurunnae in the Gothic language. I am certain that this
must be a Latinized version of a Germanic word derived from heliu [genitive
form of Hel] and rúnar[runes]. Thus we are speaking of women who are
associated with the “runes” – that is, the secrets, the whispers and the
magical symbols of Hel, the Underworld as well as its mistress.
The
Goths were the first Germanic tribe to persecute their witches – in this case
by expelling them from the tribe. We do not know why, but apparently they were
in conflict with the king, Filimer. This is by no means the first or last time
in history that a powerful priesthood have been in conflict with royalty. In
this case, royalty won, but probably to the horror of many among the Gothic
people. The ancestral, sacred position of witch-priestesses in Germanic
societies probably meant that the persecution and expulsion of the witches
could have been considered a great sacrilege by the pious pagan. The people
lost their spiritual guides and mentors.
The
Goths swiftly developed a new sort of religion in which the king (not
surprisingly) was exalted and in which one primarily worshipped
the ansir – the ancestors. The Goths were also among the very first
tribes to accept Christianity and convert. In fact, Christian Goths were the
very people who destroyed the Mystery temple of Demeter in Eleusis in 392 A.D.
But
the expulsion of the witches may have been deeply traumatic to the Goths, an
event remembered in myth and legend. When the Huns, almost five centuries
later, swept in and crushed the Goths, people still remembered
the Haliurunnae and believed the Huns to be their offspring ,and
their invasion the curse and revenge of the witches upon the people who had
disrespected them.
The Völva´s Initiation
In
my thesis, I explored the many details of the incredibly important theme of
ritual inititation in the Poetic Edda. The initiation rituals described in
these sources are the rituals of males, even if witches and female superpowers
played an important part in them as teachers and guides. An office such as that
of the völvamust obviously have required initiation rituals as well, but
the sources we are left with leave very few clues. These Medieval sources were
written by men, for men and in a time when women´s experience was considered of
no importance whatsoever. Another reason for the lack of female initiation
stories could be that these were actually secret to men, whereas women obviously
participated in men´s rituals. The exclusion of men in the women´s mysteries
may be a reason why these were not “remembered” by those male poets who through
metaphor and parable described the rituals and mysteries of male initiates.
In
the Edda Völuspá poem, the völva Gullveig/Heiðr, identified
as Freyia, submits to a trial of burning and stabbing, as related in the
article “burning the witch” I focused on the possible historical symbology
of this myth – as the story of the encounter between the Megalithic,
matriarchal cultures of the Stone Age, and the Indo-European invaders in
Scandinavia. But there is another and more important layer of meaning in this
myth: It follows the basic formula of initiation in every detail.
In
the story, the woman is hoist on spears and burned in the Hall of the High One
– that is, in the Hall ofÓðinn. This god´s name actually means “Spirit”,
so metaphorically, we could say that she is burned “in spirit”. Another
possible solution is the fact that the High Hall is also known to belong to
Hel, the mistress of the dead. In any case, the young witch undergoes a severe
trial in which she experiences being stabbed and burned. If we recall the
initiation experiences of shamans in the previous chapter, in which being
boiled, dismembered and in many ways totally obliterated was an important part
of the initiation.
The
next step is her triumph, where the young woman displays her death-conquering
feat: She is reborn and restored from the fire three times – a magical number reflecting
the three roots and wells of the World Tree, the three aspects of Fate and the
three aspects of the creator god(s), Óðinn[Spirit]Vili [Will, Intent
– also represented by Hloðurr=Heat] and Vé [Awe, Sanctuary, also
represented by Hænir, who gave the gift of intelligence and thought to
human kind].
After
her rebirth, Gullveig takes a new name, Heiðr, and starts
her life as a traveling völva, performing herseiðr, and helping and
teaching others. The entire story is in complete accordance with an actual
ritual of initiation, and could very well be the one detailed account of a
female initiation ritual for the völvaprofession left to us in written
sources.
Another
female initiation story is detectable in the Edda legends of Burgund Queen
Guðrún, the widow of Sigurd the dragon-slayer (see p….), in which Guðrún seems
to experience a spontaneous initiation at the death and burial of her husband
Sigurd. In the “Old Poem of Guðrún”, Guðrún laments:
The night
appeared dark to me
when I sat in
sorrow with the corpse of Sigurd
Better if
I was devoured by wolves
if my
bones were burned
like twigs of
birch.
After
lamenting the death of her husband and the betrayal of her own brothers, who
killed Sigurd in order to claim the kingly power for themselves, and thus
overthrowing an obviously matrilinear tradition among the Burgunds [Sigurd was
the King of the Burgunds through marriage with the Queen´s daughter, while her
sons were considered below Sigurd in rank], Guðrún curses her brothers for
their greed and their cruelty, and leaves the safety of the royal house in
favor of the wilderness.
The
young woman traverses the forests and the wilderness alone, “lives among the
wolves” until she finally descends from the mountain in order to live in “The
High hall of Half.” There she sits with a certain Tora Hákon´s daughter for
seven half-years. Tora gives golden embroideries to Guðrún, “southern-red halls
and Danish swans.”
In
this mysterious place, they weave picture tapestries, and while Guðrún is there
it is woven how the men should fight. Guðrún weaves a battle between her
brothers and the Huns in order to avenge her husband against her traitorous
brothers. Guðrún´s mother, Queen Grimhild of the Burgunds, is a wise and
cunning woman. She sits by the weaver herself when she “sees” how Guðrún is
“weaving”, that is, plotting a disastrous war, in the other place. In this
curious and obviously magical way, the old Queen also learns where Guðrún is
and what she is about. In horror, she “throws her weave” and calls her sons to
her. She demands that they make amends for Sigurd´s murder and attempt to
placate their sister Guðrún. The sons, accompanied by their mother and several
influential men, immediately set out to seek Guðrún in her hiding place in
order to beg her forgiveness.
Guðrún
refuses to forgive her brothers until Grimhild offers her a magical drink that
“draws from the power of earth, the strength of the cold sea and the blood of
the boar.” The drink is served in a horn engraved with runes. It makes Guðrún forget
and forgive.
No
sooner than Guðrún is healed from her hatred against her own brothers, she is
pushed into marriage with the Hunnish King Atli [the historical Attila].
Guðrún´s own “weaving” has caused the Hunnish King to wage war against the
Burgunds in order to avenge the death of his sister Brynhild, who killed
herself at Sigurd´s funeral because she regarded herself as his true wife. To
saver her brothers, Guðrún accepts marriage with King Atli, a marriage which
serves as a truce with the Huns. Later, when Atli has her brothers executed,
Guðrún avenges them by making him eat their sons before killing him with his
own sword, and burning his hall with all his men. While later sources attempt
to either soften this story or condemn the woman for such actions, the Edda
hails and praises her as “the last bride in byrnie”, that is, the last warrior
woman. Despite her cruelty, to all Viking Age standards she had performed her
sisterly duties to perfection.
More
important to us in this section is the fact that Guðrún´s story like many
legends hides a structure of initiation. When the Burgund princess is first
presented, we learn that she, like Sigurd, has drunk from the magical blood of
the serpent Fafnir and thus understands the language of birds. The drinking of
the blood was a part of Sigurd´s initiation, as we shall see in Part Three of
this book, and indicates that Guðrún was initiated, like her husband. But it
was not until the death of her husband that Guðrún really undergoes her
transformational journey.
From
being a passionate and nnocent young woman who “shares all the gold with her
brothers”, she becomes a seclusive, silent woman. She cannot express her sorrow
through weeping like other women, but sits in silence at her husband´s corpse.
Her feeling of utter darkness, a pain worse than being torn to pieces by wolves
and burned, indirectly describes a death-experience: Wolves are the creatures
of Hel and always hint to death and mortality, whereas the burning theme
indicates a funeral pyre, or cremation (the way her husband is to be cremated).
The following stay in the wilderness among the wolves symbolized a death
journey.
That
she finally descends from the mountain and arrives at the mysterious “High Hall
of Half” is noteworthy. The poetical formula “High Hall” refers to either the
hall of Hel or the hall of Óðinn, Valhalla. In either case, we are
presented with a typical (for initiation rites) “world of the dead scenario.”
The owner of the hall is obviously a metaphor for someone – probably
either Óðinn or Hel, both known to be divided in two in some way
(Óðinn´s lost eye, his name Ialk, which means “castrate,” or the
divided face of Hel, half young maiden and half rotting corpse). This
afterlife “hall” is through its attributes closely associated with the sphere
of the norns and/or the valkyria.
Guðrún´s
lady friend, Tora, gives her “threads of gold and southern-red swans,” symbols
of fate-spinning and the norns themselves, who, like the valkyrias, have
swan-hides and are described as “southern” and often as “red” or “golden.” In
the hall, they weave and embroider, and what they weave are obviously the
destinies of men and peoples.
Threads,
embroidery and weaving are known symbols of the norns and the
valkyrias´spinning of fates from the Poetic Edda: In Brynhild´s
Hel-Ride we learn that the valkyria, a “goddess of gold,” is assigned to
weave in Valland. In the First Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani we learn
that the norns throw their threads of fate to the east and to the west beneath
the Earth, and that the one thread pointing to the North is made out of pure
gold. In The Song of Völund, southern-red valkyrias spin “precious linen”
and “fulfill their fate”.
Since
Ásgarðr with its Valhalla is said to be situated in this sphere, and this hall
is crammed with valkyrias who spin the destinies of warriors, it seems safe to
say that Guðrún is actually a resident in Valhalla, although she could also be
in the hall of the norns. In either case, she is learning to weave fates as if
she is to be a norn or valkyria herself.
That
Guðrún, a human woman, is learning the art of the fate-goddesses in another
dimension of reality, after a typical underworld journey, resembles the typical
shamanistic structure of initiation in all respects. That she learns the art of
weaving fate is specified. Knowing that the art of seiðr is,
basically, about altering fate [so-called “operative divination”, in which fate
is altered by the divination itself, a common interpretation of
what seiðr was really about we must conclude that Guðrún, through
initiation, is becoming a master of seiðr and thus, potentially,
a völva. But like many a noblewoman, Guðrún was not allowed to pursue
this profession despite the fact that she learned the secret arts. She was
called upon to marry a king, Atli, in order to prevent war.
But
she was not to marry before she had received the magical potion of mead from
her mother – a typical element of the consecration stage of the initiation
ritual.
This
could actually reflect an ancient reality: As has been indicated before, a
woman, especially an important woman such as a queen or any mistress of a great
household, was to represent Freyia in her household – a role that included
knowledge of magic and rituals. The marriage itself not only tells the story of
how Guðrún had to leave her aspirations of a witch in order to become a queen.
At the same time, the story seems to also be telling a complete story of
initiation culminating in a Sacred Marriage – with a god.
Through
several other poems, it becomes clear that the Atli of the Edda is identifiable
with the god Óðinn.The journey of the bridal procession is quite unusual –
and highly mythical. Guðrún and her company have to traverse seven days “over
chilly land,” and another seven “over the waves”, before, at the “third week”
they come to dry land. The hall of Atli is described as a “High Hall” and is
described as a place in which the “horn is played by the watchman”
[Heimdallr and his Gjallarhorn] and in which “shield maidens”
[valkyrias] reside. It would seem that, after the initiatory death-journey, the
learning of esoteric arts and the drinking of mead led to the final stage:
Marriage – in this case to the crafty god-king. As saw above, there is a strong
connection between witches and the god Óðinn, and a mythical Sacred
Marriage between him and the proto-witch Freyia. Just like, as we shall be
seeing in parts two and three of this book, men experienced a Sacred Marriage
with the Goddess, so perhaps the female practitioners experienced a Sacred
Marriage to the God. After all, they are named after and wed to
the völ [Stallion´s Penis], their wand, which symbolizes the world
tree Yggdrasill – Óðin´s horse.
The
remains of a female initiation ritual are also detectable in the saga of Bosi
and Herraud, where we learn about a queen who owns a pagan temple, and who
is a great master of seiðr. Through this divinatory magic she has
learned that she will not live for much longer, and has magically traveled east
to the “Crystal Fields” where she has found a princess, Hleiðr who is
supposed to inherit the Queen´s position as a temple priestess, and who is now
under her apprenticeship.
The
temple itself is described very much like the world of the dead is described in
the Edda poetry. A huge eagle guards the door, just like in Valhalla, and no
one can survive the onslaughts of this eagle: Again, the eagle is a metaphor
for death. This eagle is also brooding on an egg, an egg which the heroes of
these stories are supposed to fetch. The heroes manage to subdue both the eagle
and the old crafty priestess, and finally encounter a closed room where the
young princess is seated in a chair, a captive bound by her hair and with an
iron lock around her waist. The hero frees her when she promises to marry him.
The
story is reminiscent of the other stories related earlier, but distinguishes
itself by being the one story in which the captive princess is said to be an
apprentice witch of a pagan temple. She is about to be initiated into the
position of high priestess, and the symbols of death and her being seated and
bound within the temple could very well be hinting towards real practices in
this respect. Apart from the outspoken apprenticeship of the young woman, this
story could also vaguely reflect a myth of the Sacred Marriage between a king
and a priestess representing the land and the people. This saga, with its
medieval background, is obviously very hostile towards the paganism it is
describing, and let us know that the princess is more than happy to leave her
aspirations to become an evil monster witch like her predecessor, and marry the
hero instead.
Lotte
von Motz suggests that all the legends referred to above not only reflect male
initiation rituals, but female initiation at the same time. The legends relate
a combination of the male and female initiation scenario, where the male has to
undergo trials of courage whereas the female has to be secluded by herself in
order to “wake up” to her new life as a married woman. I agree that this
is possible, although if the stories reflect real-life ritual, the females in
these stories usually take the role of an already wise woman, and the marriages
are often not happening even if sex is enjoyed. Thus the initiation into
marriage – a simple seclusion before the groom comes and whisks her away after
an initiation of his own – is a possible scenario reflected in the “captive
princess” theme, but does not cover the entire message of these legends, in
which fully fledged teaching witches seem to be rather more prominent than
pubescent girls. It is of course possible that the secluded apprentice girl
“wakes up” to her true powers as a teaching witch during these initiations.
