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A Swedish farmer in 1684 watched his neighbor walk three times around a barn at midnight, murmuring something that sounded like a lullaby. The neighbor was arrested nine days later for trolldom. The farmer’s cows had stopped giving milk. That is the world Nordic folk magic comes from: a place where words spoken at the wrong hour carried the weight of evidence.
Nordic folk magic is the pre-Christian and early modern magical tradition of Scandinavia and Iceland, built on three distinct but overlapping systems: seidr (a shamanic divination and fate-working practice), trolldom (a later folk sorcery tradition), and the runes (an alphabet used for inscription, divination, and magical intent). Unlike the ceremonial magic of continental grimoires, Nordic folk magic was domestic, practical, and deeply embedded in daily survival.
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Nordic folk magic explained: the three systems of seidr, trolldom and runes, their historical roots, practical uses, and how they differ from modern Norse paganism.
What Exactly Are Seidr, Trolldom and the Runes?
The three terms describe distinct but historically connected traditions. Seidr (SAY-dhur) is the oldest, attested in the Viking Age (roughly 793–1066 CE) as a form of magic associated with prophecy, shape-shifting, and the manipulation of fate. Trolldom (TROLL-dom) emerges later, in the medieval and early modern periods, as a catch-all for folk sorcery: healing, love magic, finding lost objects, and cursing. The runes are a writing system, the Elder Futhark (24 characters, in use from roughly 150–800 CE) and the Younger Futhark (16 characters, Viking Age onward), but they were also understood as carriers of inherent power.
A single practitioner might use all three. The sagas describe women who performed seidr while chanting runic formulas. Court records from 17th-century Sweden describe trolldom practitioners who carved runes into wooden staves for protection. The systems bled into each other, and trying to separate them entirely is a modern impulse the original practitioners would not have recognized.
Where Do These Traditions Come From?
The Viking Age Roots of Seidr
The oldest written source for seidr is the 13th-century Elder Edda (specifically the poem Völuspá, “The Seeress’s Prophecy”), which describes a völva (a seeress) who performs seidr to reveal the fate of the gods. The Saga of Erik the Red (written around 1265, describing events of the late 10th century) gives the most detailed account: a völva named Thorbjörg travels between farms in Greenland, wearing a black lambskin hood, a necklace of glass beads, and a staff wound with brass. She sits on a raised platform, eats a porridge of goat milk and the hearts of various animals, and chants while a circle of women sings songs called vardlokkur (spirit-summoning songs).
Seidr was primarily women’s work. The Old Norse word seiðmaðr (male seidr practitioner) exists but carries a strong stigma. In Lokasenna (another Eddic poem), the god Loki mocks Odin for practicing seidr, calling it ergi: unmanly, passive, sexually deviant. The magic required the practitioner to enter a trance state, to receive rather than impose, and Viking masculinity had no room for that posture.
Trolldom in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
Trolldom as a named tradition appears in Scandinavian legal codes from the 13th century onward. The Norwegian Gulating Law (c. 1270) bans “trolldom and blót” (sacrificial feasts). By the 16th and 17th centuries, trolldom had become the primary term for folk magic in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and it was prosecuted aggressively. The Swedish Trolldomskommissionen (Witchcraft Commissions) of 1668–1676 tried hundreds of people, mostly women, for using trolldom to cause illness, steal milk, or raise storms.
Trolldom was not a unified system. It was a collection of local practices: a charm to stop bleeding, a rhyme to make butter churn, a knot tied in a red thread to cure a sprained ankle. The Black Book (Svarteboken) tradition, common in Norway and Sweden from the 16th to 19th centuries, compiled these charms into handwritten grimoires. A typical entry might instruct the user to carve a specific rune into a birch stick, say the Lord’s Prayer backward, and bury the stick at a crossroads at midnight.
The Runes: Alphabet and Magic
The runes were never exclusively magical. They were an alphabet used for everyday inscriptions: names on combs, ownership marks on weapons, memorial stones for the dead. But the earliest rune poems (the Old English Rune Poem, c. 8th–9th century; the Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems, 13th–15th century) attribute meanings and powers to each character. The rune Ansuz (ᚨ) is associated with Odin and communication. Fehu (ᚠ) with cattle and wealth. Thurisaz (ᚦ) with giants and protection through threat.
The most famous magical runic inscription is the Björketorp Runestone (c. 600–700 CE, Blekinge, Sweden), which reads: “I, master of the runes, hide here runes of power. May he who breaks this monument be tormented by anger, deceived by treachery, and die a miserable death.” The runes were not decorative. They were carved with intent, and the carver understood that the act of cutting the stone released something.
What Did Nordic Folk Magic Actually Do?
Seidr: Seeing and Shaping Fate
The primary function of seidr was framvisyn (foreknowledge) and ørlögssjón (seeing fate). The völva did not predict the future in the modern sense. She saw the web of wyrd (the interconnected threads of past actions that shape present circumstances) and could sometimes alter it. The Saga of Örvar-Oddr describes a völva who sees that a child will die from the bite of a specific horse, and the family kills the horse to prevent it. The child dies from stepping on the horse’s skull years later. Fate in the Norse worldview was not a fixed line. It was a net. You could cut a thread, but the net still held.
The seidr ritual involved a seiðhjallr (a raised platform or high seat), a staff (stafr), and a group of singers. The practitioner sat on the platform, entered a trance, and sent her spirit (her hamr, or shape) out of her body to travel across distances or through time. This is the origin of the term “shape-shifting” in Norse contexts: not physical transformation, but the sending of the spirit in animal form.
Trolldom: The Magic of Daily Life
Trolldom was about results. A farmer whose cow was sick did not want a prophecy. He wanted the cow to live. The trolldom practitioner (often called a klok gubbe or klok gumma, “wise man” or “wise woman”) worked with herbs, knots, runes, and spoken charms.
A typical charm from a Swedish Svartebok (Black Book) for stopping blood: “Write these runes on a piece of birch bark: ᚦ ᚦ ᚦ (three Thurisaz runes). Place the bark on the wound. Say: ‘Blood, stand still as the water in the Jordan when the ark passed.’” The Christian reference is common. Trolldom absorbed Christian elements freely. The practitioner did not see a contradiction. The power was in the words, not the theology.
Trolldom also included malign magic: causing illness, stealing milk through a mjölkstöld (milk theft) charm, or sending a skadevarelse (a harmful spirit) to a neighbor. The early modern court records are full of these cases. In 1675, a woman named Karin in Mora, Sweden, was accused of using trolldom to make her neighbor’s butter fail. She had been seen tying a red thread around a churn while whispering. The court convicted her.
The Runes: Carving Intent
Runic magic was inscription magic. The act of carving was itself the spell. The Sigrdrífumál (a section of the Elder Edda) lists runes for specific purposes: “Victory runes you must know if you want victory. Carve them on your sword hilt. Some on the guard, some on the blade. Name Tyr twice.” The rune Tiwaz (ᛏ), named after the god Tyr, was associated with victory and justice.
The Kvinneby Amulet (c. 11th century, found in Öland, Sweden) is a small copper plate inscribed with runes that read: “Here I carve protection for you. May Thor protect you with the hammer that came from the sea. Flee evil. You get nothing from him. The god is under the hammer. The god is above the hammer.” The amulet was worn or carried. The runes did not just represent the words. They were the protection.
Seidr and trolldom are often confused in modern writing, but they are historically distinct. Seidr is older, shamanic, and focused on fate and spirit travel. Trolldom is later, folkloric, and focused on practical results. A völva would not have called herself a trolldom practitioner. A 17th-century Swedish wise woman would not have recognized the term seidr.
The runes sit between them. They were used in both seidr (the völva’s staff might be carved with runes) and trolldom (the Black Books are full of runic charms). But the runes also had their own independent tradition as a writing system and a divinatory tool. Modern rune casting (drawing runes from a bag for divination) is a 20th-century reconstruction, popularized by Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes (1982). The historical evidence for runic divination is thin: Tacitus mentions Germanic tribes casting lots with marked sticks in 98 CE, but those marks may not have been runes.
Compared to Celtic folk magic, Nordic traditions are less concerned with the Otherworld and more with the immediate, material world. A Celtic charm might ask the fairies for help. A Nordic charm carved a rune and told the problem to stop. The difference reflects the landscape: the Norse world was harsh, and magic had to work fast.
What Do People Get Wrong About Nordic Folk Magic?
The most common misconception is that modern Ásatrú or Heathenry is the same as historical Nordic folk magic. It is not. Modern Norse paganism is a 20th-century reconstruction, heavily influenced by Romantic nationalism and the writings of figures like Guido von List (1848–1919), who invented a system of “Armanen runes” that have no historical basis. The runes used in modern Heathenry are often the Elder Futhark, which was obsolete by the Viking Age. The Younger Futhark (16 runes) was what actual Vikings used.
Another misconception: that seidr was universally respected. It was not. It was feared, stigmatized, and associated with women and the unmanly. The sagas show respect for individual völvur, but the practice itself was suspect. Odin learned seidr from the goddess Freyja, and the other gods considered it shameful.
Finally, the idea that Nordic folk magic was a “nature religion” is anachronistic. The practitioners did not worship nature. They lived in it, and they used magic to survive it. A charm for safe childbirth was not a celebration of the natural world. It was a desperate attempt to keep a woman and her child alive where one in three children died before age five.
FAQ
Is seidr the same as Norse shamanism? The term “shamanism” comes from Siberian traditions, and scholars debate whether it applies to seidr. The similarities (trance, spirit travel, a community ritual) are strong, but seidr lacked the drumming and animal-guide relationships of classic shamanism. Most scholars use the term cautiously.
Can anyone practice trolldom today? Trolldom as a historical tradition is dead. Its charms and methods survive in archives and Black Books, but the social context (a pre-modern Scandinavian village, a Christian legal system that prosecuted magic) cannot be recreated. Some modern practitioners reconstruct it, but they are working with fragments.
What is the difference between the Elder and Younger Futhark? The Elder Futhark has 24 runes and was used from roughly 150 to 800 CE. The Younger Futhark has 16 runes and was used during the Viking Age (793–1066). The Younger Futhark simplified the alphabet, dropping eight characters. Most runestones from the Viking Age use the Younger Futhark.
Were the runes used for divination? The historical evidence is weak. Tacitus (98 CE) describes Germanic tribes casting lots with marked sticks. The Norse sagas do not describe rune-casting as a divination method. Modern rune divination is a 20th-century invention, popularized by Ralph Blum’s 1982 book.
Where to Go Next
Nordic folk magic is one thread in a larger weave. The same impulse that drove a völva to climb her high seat drove a Finnish tietäjä (wise person) to carve a protective symbol into a doorframe, and a Sami noaidi to beat a drum until the spirits spoke. If you want to understand how folk magic works across cultures, start with the folk magic hub. For the tools and symbols that appear across these traditions, the glossary of magical symbols is a better place than the rune poems. And for the specific tradition that ran parallel to Nordic magic in the Baltic, read our guide to Finnish folk magic and the Kalevala. The fire is not decoration. It is the hearth.