From: Jamie Fessenden
Message: 2091
Date: 2002-09-04
-----Original Message-----It is sometimes interpretted as meaning "effeminite" or "homosexual,"
From: Jamie Fessenden
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 9:55 AM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [norse_course] complex definition question
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