Celtic and Norse Shamanic Traditions: The European Roots

The Shamanism That Europe Forgot

When most people hear the word “shamanism,” they think of Siberia, the Amazon, or the ceremonial traditions of indigenous North America. Few realize that Europe itself possessed profound shamanic traditions — practices of trance journeying, spirit communication, divination, and nature mysticism that predate Christianity by millennia and that survived, in fragmentary but recognizable forms, well into the medieval period and beyond.

The Celtic and Norse spiritual traditions represent two of the most well-documented of these European shamanic lineages. Though they differ significantly in cultural expression — one rooted in the misty islands and oak forests of the Atlantic fringe, the other in the fjords and frost-bitten landscapes of Scandinavia — they share a common core: the understanding that the visible world is only a thin surface over vast, living, invisible realms, and that trained practitioners can cross the boundary between worlds to bring back knowledge, healing, and power.

Norse Seidr: The Magic of Fate and Trance

Seidr (also spelled seidhr or seidh, pronounced roughly “SAY-th”) was the primary shamanic practice of the pre-Christian Norse world. It was a form of magic concerned with seeing and shaping fate, entering trance states to communicate with spirits, performing divination, and directing spiritual forces for healing or harm.

The origins of seidr are largely unknown, but the mythological texts attribute its introduction to the Vanir — the older, earth-connected family of Norse gods associated with fertility, wisdom, and the natural world. According to the Ynglinga Saga written by the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson around 1225 CE, it was the goddess Freyja who first brought seidr to the Aesir gods. Freyja is thus the archetypal seidr practitioner — the original volva, the prototype of all who followed.

The Volva: The Staff-Carrying Seeress

The central figure in Norse shamanic practice was the volva (plural: volur) — a term that translates literally as “staff-carrier” or “wand-bearer.” The volva was a wandering seeress who traveled between communities, performing divination rituals at the invitation of local leaders who sought knowledge of the future, guidance in times of crisis, or healing for the sick.

The most detailed description of a seidr ceremony comes from the Saga of Erik the Red, which describes a volva named Thorbjorg who visited a Norse settlement in Greenland during a time of famine. She arrived wearing a distinctive costume: a blue cloak set with stones from hem to collar, a necklace of glass beads, a cap of black lambskin lined with white catskin, catskin gloves, and calfskin shoes. At her belt hung a skin pouch containing her magical paraphernalia and a walrus-ivory handled knife. She carried a carved staff with a brass knob, also set with stones.

To prophesy, Thorbjorg sat upon a raised seat with a cushion stuffed with hen feathers. A woman sang a special song called the vardhlokur — a spirit-summoning chant — while the rest of the community sat in a circle around the seeress. The song drew spirits to the ceremony, and through her trance, Thorbjorg was able to see what would come: the famine would end, spring would bring relief, and specific events would unfold as she described. The saga records that her prophecies proved accurate.

Odin: The Shaman God

No figure in Norse mythology more perfectly embodies the shamanic archetype than Odin, the All-Father. Odin is not the comfortable, paternal sky-god of popular imagination. He is a restless seeker of wisdom, willing to sacrifice anything — including parts of himself — in pursuit of knowledge.

Odin’s hanging on Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is one of the most explicitly shamanic episodes in all of European mythology. As described in the Eddic poem Havamal, Odin hung himself on the great ash tree for nine days and nine nights, pierced by his own spear, without food or water, as a self-sacrifice to himself:

I know that I hung on a wind-rocked tree, nine whole nights, with a spear wounded, and to Odin offered, myself to myself; on that tree of which no one knows from what root it springs.

This ordeal — voluntary suffering, hanging between worlds, death and rebirth — precisely mirrors the shamanic initiation found across Siberia and Central Asia. Through this sacrifice, Odin gained the runes, the sacred alphabet that encodes cosmic knowledge. He also sacrificed one eye at the Well of Mimir in exchange for wisdom — the loss of outer sight in favor of inner vision, another classic shamanic motif.

Odin also possessed the ability of hamfara — sending his spirit out of his body to travel through the nine worlds in animal form (usually as a raven, wolf, or eagle) while his physical body lay as if dead or asleep. This soul flight is indistinguishable from the shamanic journey practices found across the circumpolar world.

Utiseta: Sitting Out

Another seidr-related practice was utiseta — literally “sitting out.” The practitioner would go to a liminal location — a crossroads, a burial mound, a wild and lonely place — and sit through the night in a state of receptive trance, seeking contact with spirits of the dead or with nature beings. The practice required courage, as the spirits encountered were not always friendly, and the experience of sitting alone in darkness at a burial mound, deliberately inviting contact with the dead, was understood as genuinely dangerous.

Utiseta bears striking resemblance to both the indigenous North American vision quest and to practices found in Celtic tradition — sitting on burial mounds to receive poetic inspiration or prophetic vision.

Galdr: The Magic of Sound

Complementing seidr was galdr — magical chanting or incantation. While seidr was primarily associated with trance, vision, and fate-work, galdr was the magic of the spoken or sung word — the power of sound to shape reality. Rune-chanting, protective spells, healing incantations, and cursing songs all fell under the domain of galdr. In both Norse and Celtic spiritual tradition, inspired poetry is a strong trait and is often ecstatic — the poet-magician enters a heightened state in which language itself becomes a vehicle of power.

Celtic Tradition: The Otherworld and the Druid’s Art

Celtic spiritual tradition — spanning ancient Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany — represents another great stream of European shamanic consciousness. While the historical Druids left no written records of their own (their teachings were transmitted exclusively through oral tradition, with writing deliberately avoided for sacred knowledge), later Irish and Welsh literary traditions preserve extensive mythological material that reveals a deeply shamanic worldview.

The Three Realms: Land, Sea, and Sky

Celtic cosmology divides existence into three interconnected realms: Land, Sea, and Sky. This is their version of the universal three-worlds model found in shamanic traditions globally, though with distinctly Celtic character.

Land corresponds to the present moment, to the physical world, to nature spirits and the immediate experience of being alive in a body on the earth. It is the realm of relationship with the visible world — the trees, the animals, the turning seasons.

Sea corresponds to the past, to the ancestors, to the underworld, and to the emotional and psychic depths. The sea in Celtic tradition is a boundary — the liminal space between the known world and the Otherworld. Many of the great Celtic myths involve voyages across the sea to reach enchanted islands where time moves differently and the dead still live. The sea represents the unconscious, the depths from which wisdom and danger both arise.

Sky corresponds to the future, to the gods and goddesses, to the Otherworld in its highest aspect, and to the spiritual dimension of existence. The sky is where the great celestial events unfold — the movements of sun and moon that mark the turning of the year and the unfolding of fate.

The symbol that best encapsulates these three realms is the tree — because a tree simultaneously inhabits all three. Its roots reach into the underworld (Sea/Below), its trunk stands in the present moment (Land/Middle), and its crown reaches toward the heavens (Sky/Above). Every Celtic tribe had a bile — a sacred tree under which oaths were sworn, councils held, and ceremonies conducted. The most sacred of all was the oak, whose Celtic name daur is the linguistic root of the English word “door” — the oak tree was literally the doorway to the Otherworld.

The Druids: Priests, Poets, and Shamans

The Druids were the intellectual and spiritual elite of Celtic society — simultaneously priests, judges, philosophers, astronomers, healers, poets, and intermediaries between the human world and the spirit world. Classical Roman and Greek sources describe them as taking up to twenty years to complete their training, during which they memorized vast bodies of sacred lore, astronomical knowledge, law, poetry, and healing arts — all without writing anything down.

The Druids practiced divination through multiple methods, entered trance states for prophecy and healing, performed rituals at sacred natural sites (groves, springs, hilltops, caves), and maintained the ceremonial calendar that connected the human community to the rhythms of the cosmos. They were mediators between humanity and nature, between the living and the dead, between the visible world and the Otherworld — roles that are functionally identical to the shaman’s role in other cultures.

The Druidic order was divided into three grades, each corresponding to specific functions: the Bards were the poets, singers, and keepers of oral tradition; the Ovates (or Vates) were the diviners, seers, and healers; and the Druids proper were the philosophers, judges, and ceremonial leaders. Each grade practiced forms of what can be recognized as shamanic technique — the bards entered ecstatic states to compose prophetic poetry, the ovates went into trance to foretell the future and diagnose illness, and the druids conducted the great ceremonies that maintained the cosmic order.

Brigid: The Triple Flame

Among the Celtic deities most associated with shamanic function is Brigid (also spelled Brigit, Bride, or Brighid) — a goddess so powerful and beloved that she was later absorbed into Christianity as Saint Brigid of Kildare. Known as the Triple Goddess, Brigid presides over three realms of transformative work: smithcraft (the transformation of metal through fire), healing (the transformation of illness into health), and poetry (the transformation of raw experience into wisdom through inspired speech).

Brigid’s festival, Imbolc (February 1), marks the first stirring of spring within the depths of winter — the moment when the light begins to return. Sacred fire is central to her worship, representing the flame of inspiration, the fire of the forge, and the warmth of healing. The perpetual flame maintained at her shrine in Kildare was tended for centuries, and its rekindling in modern times represents the continuity of this ancient spiritual current.

The Wheel of the Year: A Shamanic Calendar

The Celtic Wheel of the Year — a cycle of eight festivals marking the solstices, equinoxes, and the midpoints between them — functions as what might be called a shamanic calendar: a systematic framework for aligning human consciousness with the rhythmic cycles of the natural world.

The four Celtic fire festivals hold particular significance:

Samhain (October 31 / November 1) marks the Celtic New Year and the beginning of the dark half of the year. At Samhain, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest. This is the night for communing with ancestors, for divination, and for acknowledging death as a necessary part of the cycle of existence. Samhain is the original source of what became Halloween.

Imbolc (February 1) celebrates the first signs of returning light and the quickening of life within the apparently dead earth. Sacred to Brigid, it is a festival of purification, healing, and the kindling of sacred fire.

Beltane (May 1) marks the beginning of summer and the full flowering of life. It is a festival of fertility, sexuality, and the celebration of the life force. Great bonfires are lit, and cattle are driven between them for purification. The boundary between worlds is again thin at Beltane, but whereas Samhain opens the door to the dead, Beltane opens the door to the faerie realm.

Lughnasadh (August 1) marks the first harvest and the beginning of the transition from growth to gathering. Named for the god Lugh, it celebrates the fruits of labor, the generosity of the earth, and the bittersweet awareness that abundance and decline are two faces of the same reality.

These festivals are not arbitrary dates on a calendar. They are experiential thresholds — invitations to enter into conscious relationship with the specific quality of consciousness that each season embodies. Taken together, they form a complete cycle of spiritual practice: death and communion with the dead (Samhain), purification and the return of light (Imbolc), the explosion of life force (Beltane), the gratitude of harvest (Lughnasadh), woven together with the solstices and equinoxes into a continuous spiral of deepening awareness.

The Faerie Faith and Nature Spirits

Both Celtic and Norse traditions maintain a rich tradition of relationship with nature spirits — beings that inhabit the landscape and exist in a dimension parallel to but distinct from ordinary human reality. In Celtic tradition, these are the sidhe (pronounced “shee”) — the faerie folk, the people of the mounds, the shining ones who dwell in the hollow hills and beneath the sacred springs.

The sidhe are not the diminutive, winged creatures of Victorian fantasy. In the original tradition, they are tall, powerful, beautiful, and potentially dangerous beings who command respect. They are the original inhabitants of the land — the Tuatha De Danann of Irish myth, who retreated into the Otherworld when humans arrived but never truly left.

In Norse tradition, similar beings include the alfar (elves), the dvergar (dwarves), and the landvaettir (land-spirits) — powerful beings associated with specific places in the landscape who must be honored and propitiated if humans wish to live in harmony with the land.

This relationship with nature spirits — found in both traditions and in shamanic cultures worldwide — represents something deeper than superstition. It is a way of acknowledging that the natural world possesses consciousness, intelligence, and agency beyond human understanding, and that human well-being depends on maintaining respectful relationship with these non-human intelligences.

Reclaiming the Roots

The shamanic traditions of Northern Europe were suppressed — first by Roman imperialism, then by centuries of Christian conversion, then by the witch trials of the early modern period that specifically targeted practitioners of folk magic, herbalism, trance-work, and spirit communication. Entire lineages of knowledge were broken. Libraries of oral tradition were lost when their keepers died.

Yet the fragments that survive — in the Eddas, in the Irish mythological cycles, in folk practices that persisted into modern times disguised as “customs” or “superstitions” — reveal traditions of extraordinary sophistication and depth. The resurgence of interest in these practices today is not mere nostalgia or fantasy. It is the recognition that these traditions carry genuine wisdom about the nature of consciousness, the structure of reality, and the human capacity to engage with dimensions of existence that modern materialism has denied but never disproved.