The Viking God Odin: Archaeological Evidence of Norse Shamanism

Introduction: The Shamanic All-Father In popular culture, Odin is often envisioned as a stout, warrior-king ruling over a martial Valhalla, a northern equivalent to Zeus. However, the medieval Icelandic texts and poem collections like the Poetic Edda paint a far more complex, eerie picture. Odin was a god of ecstacy, poetry, the dead, and fundamentally, seiðr —a form of late Iron Age Norse shamanism. Unlike the structured, state-sanctioned priesthoods of ancient Rome or Egypt, Norse shamanism re