Re: complex definition question

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie Fessenden
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 9:55 AM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [norse_course] complex definition question

It is sometimes interpretted as meaning "effeminite" or "homosexual,"
but that may have been a case of the translators allowing their own
cultural bias to color the translation.  I haven't yet found a clear
definition of the word, in the context of Snorri's passage.  It's been
speculated (see the article by Neil Price, in the Smithsonian's
"Vikings:  The North Atlantic Saga") that only women (and possibly
homosexual men) practiced Seidhr -- a form of divination, in which the
practitioner enters into a shamanic trance state, to communicate with
the dead.  Odin, of course, was an exception to the rule, but Loki
teases him about it in Lokasenna.

Jamie