Skip to content

The journey in the mound

Jenny Blain

September 2, 2003 DOI: 10.4324/9780203398333-8 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Commentary
Key points The author argues that narratives of seidr experience are shaped by their intended audiences, and that her own account is a partial selection from various sources, including fieldnotes, poems, and conference papers.

Abstract

Every story is told for an audience. Pieces of the narrative that follow were addressed, initially, to various audiences: friends, colleagues, co-workers within seidr. The account of my first encounter with oracular seidr was written for two friends; later, part of it was incorporated into a paper given to the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (Blain, forthcoming) and used again, together with Jordsvin’s narrative of visiting Hel’s realm, at a folklore conference (Blain 2000). Other pieces come from fieldnotes, from poems, from email discussions, from a website I constructed to share with others who journey in quest of knowledge of self. The narrative is, of course, partial, selected for the particular readership of this book.