Slavic Seiðr? Reconsidering the Volkhvy of Northern Rus´

Abstract

Slavic Seiðr?Reconsidering the Volkhvy of Northern Rus´ Jacob Bell (bio) In the Primary Chronicle's entry for 1071 CE (6579 in the chronicler's reckoning of the years since Creation), the reader learns that volkhvy (sorcerers, sing. volkhv) led a rebellion against ecclesiastical and secular authorities across Rus´.1 The following events occurred: a volkhv appeared in Kiev and convinced the populace that within five years, the Dnieper River would run backward and various countries, like Greece and Rus´, would change geographic positions; near Rostov, two magicians supposedly led a crowd of onlookers in the murder of several women, potentially as a sacrifice, to stave off a famine; the same magicians then moved to Beloozero, where they and their supporters fought a pitched battle against princely forces before they were captured and executed; a Novgorodian man went out from the city and found a Chud´ sorcerer to help him divine his future; and, finally, a Novgorodian magician led an armed rebellion against the bishop, which was ultimately put down by the city's prince, Gleb.2 The chronicler's fascination with sorcery during the year 1071 has traditionally been read as pointing to (a) the anxieties of a fragile Christian hierarchy insistent on its own supremacy over the continued popularity and subversive potential of indigenous beliefs; and (b) a description of a local rebellion against the political authority of the Varangian princes.3 [End Page 245] This article considers another possible dimension of how we study and conceptualize the magic of the volkhvy in northern Rus´. When Janet Abu-Lughod first discussed and outlined the parameters of what she called the medieval "world system," her focus looked south, siting the Mediterranean and Near East as arenas of exchange, but she did not consider the possibilities of a similar system existing to the north of Europe, in what is today the British Isles, Scandinavia, and former Soviet republics.4 A recent issue of The Medieval Globe, however, has highlighted the connectivities and exchanges that articulated a "global north," revealing links in trade, culture, and religion among northern societies that have long been evidenced by archaeological traces of shared material culture.5 Scholarship of this kind invites us to investigate narratives of how such diverse peoples interacted and traded, alongside the potential for cultural exchange. The purpose of this article, then, is to excavate a potential underlying cultural connection between the peoples of Rus´ and their circumpolar neighbors, the Norse and the Finno-Ugric peoples: magic. To achieve this aim, it places described practices of divination and mind magic within the context of circumpolar practices of trance-induced sorcery and shape-shifting, particularly as an extension of the art of seiðr (pronounced SAY-ther) identified in Norse textual and archaeological sources, and explores how similarities between them may point toward some connection between these traditions. Correlation between the volkhvy and seiðr could very well have been a part of the general patterns of trade, settlement, and exchange that marked the northern world in the early medieval period. Though the East Slavic annals and early histories of imperial Russia highlighted the role of Scandinavians in the founding of Rus´ian political systems (the fabled "invitation of the Varangians"), the so-called "Normanist controversy"—the debate over the existence and extent of Scandinavian settlement—remained a disputed topic in both the imperial and Soviet [End Page 246] academies.6 Yet archaeological finds of the past several decades indicate that Scandinavians were present (and buried) in Kiev, Novgorod, Korosten´, Shestovitsa (near Chernihiv), Pskov, the Staraia Lagoda site, and various parts of Belarus.7 While evidence suggests that initially only Scandinavian traders and warlords with their retinues ventured into the lands that would become Rus´, eventually a large contingent of rural laborers migrated and settled in the east.8 The Staraia Lagoda site, specifically, demonstrates both a material and a textual tradition of pan-polar links, showing extensive connections among Norse, Finno-Ugric, and Slavic societies.9 Some evidence suggests that settlements in this northern world were not ethnically segregated: peoples of numerous tribes and origins made up the populations of urban centers.10 The documentary, funerary, and archaeological landscape of northern...