If you met a Viking-Age Scandinavian in the street, you would have seen their hamr—her or his ‘shell’ or ‘shape’—essentially what for us is the body. Conceived as a container for other aspects of the person, the hamr was the physical manifestation of what somebody was, but, crucially, it could alter. This is where the concept of shape-changing comes from, in the sense that the actual structures of the body were believed to flow and shift. But this was not true for everyone, only for the gifted (or, perhaps, the cursed). Most people stayed as they appeared, but some, in special circumstances—on certain nights, when stressed or frightened, in anger, or at times of extreme relaxation—could become something else.

For men with these abilities, the alternative form was most often a large predator, such as a bear or wolf (one of the most famous Vikings of all, the warrior-poet Egil Skalla-Grímsson, had a grandfather named Kveldulf, ‘Evening-Wolf’, with all this implied). Women seem to have borne a special affinity with water creatures, particularly seals, as we learn in tales of sea-wives and selkies that have parallels in many Northern cultures. Some women could change into birds. Whatever the form of these shifters, their eyes always stayed human.

Such individuals crossed the borders between people and animals. We do not know how they were really perceived by their contemporaries, but in our terms, they perhaps formed a very special kind of gender. Our own happily expanding spectrum includes many variations of the self, but they are all bounded by the human; the Vikings may have gone beyond even that, into what we now call posthumanism (but they got there first). However, it is possible, although strange to the modern mind, that such abilities were treated more as a sort of skill than anything else. Some people were good at carpentry, others had a fine singing voice, and your neighbour could become a bear when irritated.

Inside the ‘shape’ of a person was the second part of their being, the hugr, for which no modern translation really suffices. Combining elements of personality, temperament, character, and especially mind, the hugr was who someone really was, the absolute essence of you, free of all artifice or surface affect. It is the closest thing the Vikings had to the independent soul found in later world faiths, because it could leave the physical body behind. The afterlife beliefs of the Vikings, which they certainly had in elaborate variety, will be considered in due course, but it is less clear what part of a person ‘moved on’ after death. As far as one can tell, it was probably the hugr.

Crucially, some people with different, equally disquieting gifts could see these aspects of others. In the poetic fragment known as the Ljóðatal, the ‘List of Spells’, Odin boasts of his magical ability with a series of individual charms, and in one of them we see the true viciousness of his power:

I know a tenth [spell]:

if I see sorceresses

playing up in the air,

I can so contrive it

that they go astray

from the home of their shapes [heimhama]

from the home of their minds [heimhuga].

The spell is directed against the independent spirits of witches, sent out from their bodies on their mistresses’ errands. Odin’s charm is terrible in its severance of their very souls, cut away to dissipate forever.

In the Viking mind, somewhere inside each of us is also a hamingja, a remarkable being that is the personification of a person’s luck. This was a very important attribute for the people of the North in the late Iron Age, as everyone’s path in life was determined by fate but rode on a wave of luck. A woman or man who was lucky, and seen to be so by their contemporaries as a result of their success, was a fortunate—and respected—person indeed. It is no accident that Leif Eiríksson, allegedly the first European to land in North America, was also known as hinn heppni, ‘the Lucky’. Interestingly, the hamingjur (in their plural form) could leave the body and walk about, mostly invisible except to those with the right kind of sight. There are saga accounts of men retreating from a coming battle because their opponents clearly had too many luck spirits with them, and nobody in their right mind would go against such odds. Curiously, a hamingja also had independent will and in extreme situations might even choose to leave its person. The English saying that someone’s luck has ‘run out’ is actually using a Norse proverb—except that the Vikings meant it literally.

The last part of the fourfold soul was something else entirely: a separate being that somehow dwelled inside every human, inseparable from them but also distinct. The fylgja was a female spirit—always female, even for a man—and accompanied a person everywhere throughout life. How marvellous, and how utterly subversive of the male-focussed stereotype, that every single Viking man literally had a spirit-woman inside him.

The word fylgja means ‘follower’, although sometimes it is translated ‘fetch’ and equated with similar beings from neighbouring cultures. The fylgja was a guardian—a protector—but also the embodied link to one’s ancestors (in some texts, they are strongly reminiscent of the dísir, and at times the two beings appear to be the same). She moved on at death, continuing down the family line (although exactly how is unknown—did the fylgja wait for the next to be born, or could a person inherit one long after birth?). In any event, everyone carried with them—through them—the spirit of their family, watching over them and guiding their steps. The fylgjur could not be seen other than in dreams, where they appeared with warnings and advice. Of all the Viking-Age spirit-beings, these have proved the most tenacious. Modern Icelanders roll their eyes at being asked by visitors, again, if they believe in elves—but question them about their fylgjur and you may be met with a level stare and perhaps a change of subject.

This sense of something utterly alien beneath the skin, occasionally manifesting itself in action or words, may have been one of the most significant differences between the Vikings and the people they encountered. Certainly for a European Christian, the composite soul with its shapes and shells would have been deeply unnerving. It may also have felt unnervingly familiar because pre-Christian Europe held many such beliefs, and they were deep-rooted enough to survive the coming of the new faith, buried in memory and folklore.

{excerpt from Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm ]

All this is to say:

commissioning art of your fursona: :cringe:

Commissioning art of your Flygja: :gigachad: