Þorbjörg lítilvölva

Thorbjörg the Little Sybil is the seeress of the Vínland sagas — the last of nine prophetess-sisters, and the figure through whom the corpus gives its fullest, eeriest portrait of the völva's art. In a time of famine in the Greenland colony, she is summoned to foretell when the hard times will end, and the saga describes her in famous detail: her blue cloak set with stones, her staff and her pouch of charms, the high seat with its cushion of hens' feathers, and the spirit-songs that must be sung to draw the spirits near — sung, in the end, by the Christian Guðríð, who alone knows them. Settled in her seat, the sybil prophesies the famine's end and reads the futures of those present. Thorbjörg is the saga's image of the old seeress in full ceremony — the last of her sisterhood, carrying the deep pagan craft of prophecy into a world already turning Christian, honoured and a little feared, at the edge of the known world.