My recent trip to Sweden took me across the whole country, which is bigger than France, I drove about 2800km (1800 miles) and I often passed areas of deep endless forests. When I stopped for a break, the air was full of woody and flowery fragrances and humming trees. I love it when you hear the wings of the birds flying above you, that’s when you know that you have left the tyranny of the sound of the turbine engine which often drowns out everything else in our modern time.
During this trip to my homeland, I was on a mission to speak to cultural personalities that I had wanted to interview for some time. I was very excited to drive West to the Norwegian border to meet Ulrika Jäger, a traditional “lövjerska”. She lives with her jet-black cat on the edge of the forest where she forages for herbs and conducts sauna rituals in her rural community.
What is a Lövjerska?
“Lövjeri” is the name of the healing art of our Northern European ancestors and the “lövjerska” is the female name of a traditional healing practitioner. The Lövjerskorna were "the wise ones", whom the population in the Finnforest of Western Sweden called out for when a person or animal became ill and part of their treatment was through medicinal herbs, and other parts was ritual and verbal magic.
The word “Lövjeri” comes from the Icelandic lyf, lif, which originally meant medicine and healing with herbs and flowers. Lövjeri is therefore nature's medicine and has a strong spiritual and feminine anchoring with deep roots in Northern Seidr. We can read in the Edda, in Fjölsvin's stanza, about Lyfjaberg, the Healing Mountain, where Goddess Freya and her nine female helpers, the Disir (female spirits) lived - forming the original image of the lövjerskans historical roots.
Plans are afoot to run a retreat with myself and Ulrika Jäger in the Finnforest of Western Sweden that borders Norway. It will be a time to be immersed in culture, to bathe in the lakes, have sauna ceremonies, and enjoy dusk and dawn with practices and meditations. We haven’t finalised the programme yet, but you will hear it here on the Substack when its done. We aim to have a group of people to make it a week to remember, it will be especially geared for those interested in the traditional healing arts, runes, storytelling, folkmagic and folklore.
Enjoy the interview, I have more material that will feed into the Stack in the near future, but this gives you a rare glimpse of a Lövjerska, who is an endangered species in our day and age, especially in the European hemispheres and how wonderful it is that someone is carrying on the tradition and carefully gathering this knowledge, it is so important that their voices are heard. It is a work of re-weaving the wisdom of the past carefully with respect, one piece of the puzzle at a time.
Hail the Days,
Andreas Kornevall
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