Real World Inspiration: The Norse Seeress

Read to the Bottom for a Limited Time Offer

Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest issue of Lazy Wolves, the newsletter for Lazy Wolf Studios and the Thrones & Bones games for Tales of the Valiant and Dungeons & Dragons.

Recently, I’ve been going through the Norrøngard Campaign Setting and talking about the real world inspiration behind some of the fantastic locations.

Today we’re going to look at a druid subclass unique to Norrøngard recently revised for the Player’s Guide to Norrøngard (ToV edition). And if you read to the end, you’ll find a LIMITED TIME COUPON for same!

In Scandinavian culture and Norse myth, there is a figure known as the völva (pronounced VOOL-vah). She is a revered practitioner of the arts of seiðr, spá, and galdr, disciplines which encompass shamanism, witchcraft, and prophecy. As a figure who stands on the border between this world and other realms, the völva lives outside the community, typically with an entourage of young woman who follow and learn from her. She roams the land, visiting communities and helping when she arrives.

I say “she” because the practice of magic is seen by the Norse as a woman’s art. However, for a people whose ideas of humor are most akin to that of a college frat boy, the Vikings were surprisingly into gender swapping and cross-dressing. And, perhaps inspired by Odin himself, who was very into magic, young men would sometimes take up the path of the völva, and when they did, they were expected to wear the full costume the women wore. I like to think (and I believe there is some evidence for this), that folks who were trans may have found being a völva a socially acceptable way to be their authentic selves in an otherwise pretty macho culture. (There are a lot of toxic things about Viking culture, and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla does a great job of deconstructing this, by the way, but the Norse were ahead of their European counterparts in women’s rights, and yes, Virginia, there were women warriors. Their literature also featured a lot of female adventurers, as contrasted to the damsel-in-distress and evil temptress that filled the European stories of the period. But I digress..)

So, I obviously needed a vølva subclass. Now the name “völva” literally translates as “carrier of the magic staff,” and a völva was never without her seiðstafr, which was a magic staff or wand. I got stuck on that, and for the longest time, I was trying to make the völva into a subclass of wizard. After all, völvur (plural) carried magic staffs and practiced magic right? And Odin was one. And he’s the prototype for Gandalf, whose name means “staff-elf” in Norse.

So wizard subclass, right?

Well, wrong. Try as I might, I could not make it work.

And that’s when I got out of my own head—I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to see this but sometimes the brain gets stuck in grooves—and I thought not about their staff, but about what they actually did.

The völvur were said to heal, tell the future, aid in crop growth, speak to animals, control the weather, roam the wilderness, and shapeshift into beasts.

Yup, the völva is obviously a druid.

Once I realized that, the subclass practically wrote itself. And it became one of the creations for the setting I’m most proud of. And here is my völva:

Druid: Circle of the Völva, illustration by William O’Brien

Now, I promised a COUPON and here it is. For the next week, until February 1st, you can get the Player’s Guide to Norrøngard in PDF for just $4.99, which is 50% off! Just click the link here (and not at the top of the page) to have the discount automatically added.

Thanks so much for being here, and as the Norrønur say…

Be healthy!

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