The Saga and the Seidhr Ethan Osterman

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The Saga and the Seidhr

Ethan Osterman

Already a fictitious past has supplanted in men’s memories that other past, of which we now know nothing certain J. L. Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Universal history, in the most general (i.e., most abstract, i.e., most fitting) sense of the term, concerns itself only with those archetypes which we have allowed it. The ability (rather, the compulsion) to recognize categories is not without evolutionary benefit—foods of this sort are safe, creatures like that deadly, and so on—but it would be a disservice to ourselves to consider this a total analysis; the deepest recesses of the human mind cannot be explained by mere Darwinism. On such a view, we are left, for example, with the following question: why do we see patterns where there are none? I will attempt an answer, if only in the hope that its inadequacy may point towards stronger, more well articulated conclusions. From an early age—say, around the time that we first begin to form lasting memories—we acquire an almost paralyzing fear of the unknown; why else should children begin to fear the dark, or the first day of school, with such intensity that it brings them to tears? Having had a taste of certainty, its absence becomes that much more terrifying; we become drunk on the power of our own intellect; we create (as if out of thin air, as if without desperation) the grounding principles of universal order: the One of Plotinus, the assumption (by Kant) that objects must conform to our cognition, the vast conspiracies of secret

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and otherwise invisible societies… and so on. To put it succinctly: we see order everywhere, not because it necessarily is there, but because we need it to be there. Such a framework may shed some light on universal history: its traitors and heroes, warriors and captive maidens, outcasts and their opposites… all of these categories are developed and reiterated for the sole purpose of making the past digestible.1 Without such a conceit, the vast history of our ancestors would be overwhelming; without Caesar, for example, without Alexander, what are we to make of Napoleon? Without the myth of the west, what groundless abyss must we now inhabit? To include a third example would be to indulge my reader in his own prejudice—and history is just that: a prejudice, a facelift, a post hoc imposition—but how vital, this fiction of ours! Footnotes are especially egregious, intimating at their farflung sources, drawn out from an infinite library, suffocating the mind with an excess of data… In the next few pages, I hope to add one chapter to the extensive volumes of our redacted past. It may at times meander, but I assure my reader of its essential truth. If, instead of little fragments, I busied myself with something more comprehensive, I might make what follows a section of a chapter titled Homo Sacer, Outcast, Oath-breaker. I could write a number of variations on the theme, but such a task seems redundant. For now, I will settle for just one.

… A sepulchral mist, thick with the extinguished spirits of the drowned, had fallen over the rocky coast. The shadow of the sorcerer mingled strangely with the fog; his lips worked tirelessly over an incantation or a prayer; his cupped hands waited coolly

1 We may find parallels with the supposed magical tradition of true names, wherein the ascription of a name to a thing gives us power over it. We may also recall the biblical tradition of Adam naming (and therefore gaining dominion—or stewardship—over) the animals.

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on the fire. It was a paltry flame (and a paltry shadow), borne of dampened twigs and dewey brambles, but it suited his purposes well enough; it warmed him through the night, although it burned not bright enough to draw unwelcome eyes. In spite of its association with Óðinn, the all-father, we are told that it was unbecoming among the Norsemen for a man to practice seidhr2—a magic art which supposedly gave one the power to tell (and, by extension, to shape) the future. For this reason, the sorcerer (whose name has been lost or otherwise obliterated) had been condemned a níðingr—that is, one lowered in social standing; an outlaw. The exact circumstances of his exile have been forgotten, largely by virtue of the “unfortunate success” (the phrase belongs to Isaac Disraeli, although I have coopted it here for my own purposes) “of the first christian missionaries.” We might speculate—but it does no good to mingle fact with fiction. What we know is this: to protect, house, or feed a man of his standing was forbidden; as one source puts it, “he must seek shelter alone in the woods like a wolf.”3 And wolflike he was, decked in furs and covered in grime, choking out the embers in the dawn. But the sun had risen to overtake the dying flame, her indifferent rays bleeding out across the earth to lighten the loamy soil. That same soil, according to the beliefs of his former kinsmen, was cursed by his mere presence. He spat at the earth, kicking dirt over his makeshift fire-pit. Again, an incantation crossed his lips. These were the most uncanny moments; for although the night was dark and still, yet greater stillness seemed to prevail in the witching hours of the dawn, when the sun had risen but life had yet to stir. He shook himself. Such thoughts, polluted as they were by dreamish deliriums, were unbecoming. It would do no

2 See, for example, the Lokasenna, in which Loki condemns Óðinn himself for practicing such an “unmanly” art. 3 Schwerin, Claudius v. (1950). Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte

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good to stay in one place, lost in thought or otherwise; wolf that he was, they were hunting him. It has been well established that the coastline, when measured in broad strokes (say, by the mile, as the crow flies) becomes strangely smaller than it would be when measured with more fine-grained instruments; for, in order to measure with larger units, one would have to discard the minute details of the immediate coast—and so, for all intents and purposes, they disappear. The dilemma persists for an infinity; for no matter how small the measurement, an untold multitude of details must remain unaccounted for; the rounded curvature, for example, of a trillion pebbles. In describing the phenomenon, Mandelbrot mysteriously remarks that “each portion [of the coast] can be considered a reduced-scale image of the whole”4—that is, can be understood as a fractal, iterating the same patterns for an eternity. Although he would have been completely in the dark regarding these mathematical peculiarities, the outlaw must have been struck by a similar thought: how wonderful it would be to secret himself away into a forgotten corner of the coast, to disappear there, to die there, so that his shame and his solitude could evaporate like so much dust! Again, the incantation—and the water beat interminably, indifferently, gradually reshaping the glacial scars along the coast of Norway (and across the north sea, across the centuries, the port of Dunwich was ultimately borne into the open sea…) but, wolf that he was, they were hunting him. Over the course of weeks, harried by the cold and the mist and the fear and the shame, a dream was percolating in his heart—and so every night, his shadow mingling strangely with the fog, his hands waiting silent on the flames, he worked this

4 The quotation is from Madelbrot’s paper “How Long Is Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension”

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magic spell: that his name might be erased; that his deeds, and those of his enemies, might be forgotten and obliterated; that he might die, and die completely. What magic act may have sealed the spell, I cannot say. In Faust, it is a signature writ in blood; in other traditions, a wringing of the hands or a historied dance would suffice; for the Kabbalists of ancient Israel, the letters of the alphabet—without which no thing may be expressed—may have exerted some magic influence. In any case, his pact fulfilled, his spell enacted, he slept an often dreamless sleep; the night was filled with almostsounds, hinting at the threat of an unseen enemy. But nothing emerged, enemy or otherwise. In his sleepless delirium, he wondered whether the gods, too, had abandoned him. But again, such thoughts were worthless; unbecoming. It would do only to keep going, plodding along the rocky coast, shrinking from the light, shying from the sound… On an afternoon like any other, they found him; hardly a word could have escaped his lips, ‘ere their weapons pierced his borrowed hide. Fearing that his vengeful spirit might return, that his cursed body might pollute the land, his hunters set about building a funeral pyre. For a day and a night they labored, and on the second dawn, they set his corpse aflame. Perhaps they left a memento, although no trace remains. They would have returned home, triumphant, indulging in laughter and drink, cursing the nithingr in their cups, toasting to the health of their families and their gods, living their lives and dying their deaths… And over the course of the centuries, the old faith was whittled down and obliterated; the faith of the cross pushed steadily northward, the sagas were replaced with the bible and the lives of the saints, Valhalla with heaven and the garden of Eden, a warriors spirit with original sin… and save for these sparse misremembered fragments, the culture of the so called Vikings (what a name, Vikings, what a dumb lie…) no longer

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exists. And the waves beat on, and that desperate word was made incarnate, and the coasts and the past were rendered incomprehensible, and now we are here, and that sorcerer’s saga has been forgotten, as was his wish. His sole indication is this dream of mine, conjured up in the magic hours of the dawn.