Songs Of Seiðr: an interview with Rúnahild
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This interview is part of the Pagan Music List, a project compiling the best animist, pagan, heathen, and esoteric music available. Rúnahild is featured in collection six.
Perhaps one of the most authentic and haunting animist musicians I’ve come across in the last decade is Rúnahild. Ethereal and earthly vocals that sound both like ancient stone and mossy forests, intoxicating lyrics, and expert musicianship are all ways to describe her music, yet even this feels inadequate.
Originally from France, Rúnahild now lives in a small cottage in Northern Norway. Unlike many other pagan or animist themed music projects where the singers lament the modern world in the hopes of returning to an ancient way of life, she is literally living that life. This comes out profoundly in her music: her chanting and drumming don’t just sound like attempts to recreate something old, but actually feel ancient and otherworldly.
Needless to say, I’m a deep fan of her music, and was deeply honored to get to interview her. For those who haven’t heard her music yet, I’ve included links to my favorite songs of hers (most can be purchased digitally through bandcamp), and also the Spotify playlist for her music. And for physical copies, see her website.
Rhyd Wildermuth: Hey there! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that you’ve agreed to be interviewed. Your music has been a constant accompaniment for me this last year in particular, arriving into my world right at the time I was experiencing a profound transformation in my own life. Since then, many of your songs have become a kind of soundtrack for my world, and several of them get played on repeat while I’m writing.
You’ve mentioned in several interviews elsewhere that you were born in northeast France and moved to Norway. Could you tell us about that journey, what drew you to relocate, and what your relationship to the land there is?
Rúnahild:
Thank you so much, your words go straight to my heart!
I came to Norway in February 2010. The only life I could picture that would give meaning to my existence was a life close to nature and to the wilderness. I have always had this need to feel a part of nature’s cycle, growing my own food, collecting my own firewood, drinking water from the source and so on… So, at a point in my life when not much was keeping me rooted in France, I decided to come here to the long awaited northern mountains of Norway I’ve dreamt of since my childhood. Here, it is easier for me to live my dream the way I envisioned it, because there is more wilderness and the regulations are different than in France, partly because it is less populated.
I settled here on an organic farm and I have now my own tiny cottage on the hills where I live off-grid, both independently and as a part of the farm’s community. The nature is quite different here than where I come from though, so it took a little while to get to know a new ecosystem, learn about new plants and adapt to a new climate. But the more time goes, the deeper I fall in love with these mountains which welcomed me home here. I have grown a strong bound with this place and with this community, I found my home on this beautiful earth!
Rhyd: Your online journal has several short photo essays (with some really breathtaking photos!), including one about creating Birch syrup, and in another you mention finding and drinking a tea of Chaga, which is a mushroom that grows on Birch wounds. You also mention singing to the Birch as you tapped them for sap. So it sounds both that you have a deep relationship to Birch and to traditional crafting through a very animist framework. I think our readers would love to hear more about all of this. What brought you into relationship with the nature around you? What other crafts do you engage in? And how does this relate to your music?
Rúnahild:
I have always been very close to nature. My bedroom window in the house where I grew up was facing the forest where I spent my whole childhood and teenage-hood, creating my own little world between the trees and observing the stars in the night sky. I was very young when my grandmother first told me that she talked to her plants because they do listen and that they too thrive most when being loved. It has always been a part of me that I recognise every living organism as sentients.
I have indeed a special connection to the birch. It is one of my spirit plants (like the plant equivalent of spirit animal). It has awoken my curiosity and thirst for more knowledge about the plant kingdom, and that naturally extended to the fungi kingdom as well. I am always learning more about the medicine and food growing in the wild or that I can grow on the hills where I live, and how to live in symbiosis with them. There is just so much to learn that I feel I have just started on this journey though.
This lifestyle is what gives me the high-spirited energy I depend on not only for surviving but for being fully alive: a deep connection to Mother Earth! That’s what gives my music its identity.
Rhyd: A writer who has been really influential both on my life and this project is Peter Grey, who wrote that “the witch is created by the land to speak for it.” You have said that you practice seiðr, which could be described as Norse traditional witchcraft. I’m deeply curious about this, and I also have a deep sense that the land and your relationship to it comes through in your music, as if in a way you are singing—or rather echoing—its existence for the rest of us to hear. Can you speak more about your relationship with the land and its spirits and how it weaves in with your music?
Rúnahild:
For me, everything has a soul, or frequency. I have always had this feeling that when I am in nature, I can somehow “melt” with my environment. Like I no longer feel like an observer, but as a part of the flow of energy ongoing around me. In that kind of state, the beauty of nature intensifies and it feels like it goes beyond the realm of the 5 senses, although it is pretty much impossible for me to define it exactly. It feels transcendental and ecstatic and to me that is the core of seid.
My music is the expression of life experiences, everything that touches my soul gives birth to inspiration.
Rhyd: Regarding your music itself, it’s utterly haunting in the most beautiful of ways. My three favorite songs are Ørnedans (both the original and the revised version), Seidrúnar, and Urseid, each of which have particularly epic and liminal qualities to them. Each feels like a ritual in their own right. Do you mind talking about each of these, what inspired them, and about their meaning?
Rúnahild:
Ørnedans means “dance of the eagle”. It is a song about connecting to the eagle spirit. One day while I was working in the field, I suddenly heard a strange bird sound from above. I lifted my eyes and there was an eagle soaring right above me… from I laid my eyes on it, it became silent and it felt to me like my attention was sought. As I was admiring it, I was wondering if it was carrying any special message to me and my instant thought was “see a situation from a higher perspective”. I was at one of my life’s crossroads and for me, this meeting with the eagle signified that I had to see a situation from above in order to find my path onward. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice something, surrender and let go. This song is about rising above what weights you down to soar toward the light.
Seidrúnar is a song inspired by a sweat lodge ceremony held in Northern Norway. It was my first sweat lodge ceremony and it was quite intense. At some point, it was getting harder to breathe into the moist heat. My sisters, who are experienced with sweat lodge ceremonies, gave me the advice to breathe toward the earth where the air is less hot. At that moment, I started seeing runes coming in my thoughts in a very random order, like I was absorbing them within me one by one… and when all of them had shown up, I started feeling a tickling sensations rising within me from the tip of my fingers and slowly crawling into my entire body, inducing an intense feeling of pure ecstasy…
Urseid is inspired by a few drum and song circles that I was invited to hold together with Gustav Holberg, Lasse Ström and Viktoria Nilsson in Sweden. When I am within such a circle where we all connect intuitively to each other by drumming and singing together, I feel home! With this song, I wanted to express this feeling of being a part of a drum circle, with many different melodies being woven into each other, creating unity in diversity.
Rhyd: On your website your creative process is described as being initiated by “an emotion, an energy, or a vision.” This seems to parallel the creative process in many other traditional cultures—for instance, the moment of “awen” or “imbas” in Welsh and Irish bardic traditions where inspiration seems to “seize” the person from outside and they become a channel for something greater than themselves. I realize it isn’t very easy to translate such experiences into words, but could you talk about how you open yourself up to such moments?
Rúnahild:
Channeling feels indeed to me like I am no longer in control, like silencing my thoughts and just entering a flow of energy, picking up tones resonating within me. It doesn’t necessarily feel like a force from the outside taking over though, the way I experience it it also comes from deep within… for me, it is more like a fusion of my inner world with the infinity of the universe.
I think the easiest way for me to describe how I open up for this is that I hold space for whichever energy or emotion needs to be expressed and release it into music by singing and composing.
Rhyd: My friend and fellow writer Alkistis Dimech first introduced me to the concept of unleashing the voice—literally removing the leash society puts on the voice, especially the voices of women—as a form of magic and transformation. Your singing seems to exemplify this better than any other that I have heard. Your voice is really incredible, with really skillful range, growling throat chanting, and moments of feral, ecstatic wails that carry the listener elsewhere. How did you learn to sing this way? How long were you singing? And do you have any advice for people who would want to become more comfortable with their own voices and their wild potential?
Rúnahild:
I have always been an extremely shy person. I’ve always been the silent guest who can sit a whole evening at a social event not participating in any conversation, but just sitting there and listening. Singing is how I have opened up to express myself and share my inner world. I started writing songs at a very young age, but I was very sensitive to criticism and just a few wrongly interpreted words locked me up so I didn’t sing my own compositions again until the year 2006. I have learnt to use my voice the way I do mostly by going into trance, play a rhythm on a drum and let the flow of emotions from within transform into sounds. That is when the throat singing came naturally to me for example and that gave me the key to also use it in everyday’s life. I have also had wonderful people around me who encouraged me in this direction, I would like to name especially Gustav Holberg (Astralseid) and Benny Braaten (Folket Bortafor Nordavinden).
If I should give any advice, that would be to create a safe space for yourself, whether you are alone or with a few trusted friends, connect to your inner self and let sounds pour out of you… any kind of sound, laugh or scream even if you feel for it, and just relax, enjoy the situation and have no expectation whatsoever. Try to forget the idea that singing beautifully means singing in tune compared to a specific given scale, because all that matters is that you sing in tune with yourself!
Rhyd: Again, I thank you deeply for taking time to talk about yourself and your music with us. One last question if you don’t mind. What would you like to see born into the world because of your music? What do you hope people will take from the experiences you create with your songs? And is there anything else you would like to say?
Rúnahild:
I would hope that my music can contribute to inspiring a world where humankind finds a way to live in harmony with nature and with each other. My music reflects also my own healing journey and I would hope that by sharing it, it may also help others who are struggling, by giving some kind of relief. But, in the end, it all comes down to one thing: touching the soul! That’s all that matters…
I thank you from the depth of my heart for giving me the opportunity to talk about my music and the world that bring it to life!
You can find the music of Rúnahild on her website or at bandcamp.
Please support musicians by purchasing their music.
Rhyd Wildermuth
Rhyd is a druid, theorist, writer, and the primary reviewer for the Pagan Music List. He is also the director of Gods&Radicals Press and Ritona a.s.b.l. See more about him at RhydWildermuth.com