Let me tell you of my spiritual journey to the awakening that changed my life, and fulfilled a big step in my shamanic journey; but first – let me share a story from Norse myth. A story that leads to inner healing, spiritual enlightenment, and a personal discovery of energy modalities within the Norse culture.    

There is a myth in the Poetic Eddas of Norse lore called Fjölsvinnsmál, which describes this place that exists in the mythos as Healing Hill, or Lyfjaberg as it is called in old Norse.¹ The tale is actually a love story where a young man named Svipdag is sent by his mother to meet the Jotun who lives on this hill, a woman named Mengloth. She lives there with 8 other healing goddesses, who all embody different aspects of healing in Norse culture, Hilf, Hlifthrasa, Thjodvarta, Bjort, Blid, Blidr, Frid, Eir, and Aurboda. The tale in Fjölsvinnsmál goes on to explain that should someone make the journey to healing hill to drink and bathe in its waters and receive healing from the goddesses, that they’d be healed of their ailments. The history attached to this is that in early Norse culture people would make offerings to healing hill and its deities in exchange for getting better when sick or going through hard times.  

What began as a trance journey to this mountain has since become the foundation of my healing practice. Lyfjaberg is not only a mythic hill of healing, but a living map that revealed to me the healing energy current which is the core system of my healing work as a practitioner. Through the nine goddesses of Lyfjaberg, I was given nine healing modalities. This piece is more than a retelling of myth; it is the story of how myth became my map, and how I now guide others up their own healing hill.

I’ll expand on the different goddesses for a moment, because from a shamanic perspective, their names and few things we have about them which have survived through the years tell us a lot about who they were and what they did. How I explain each one, will be from my own personal relationship with each of their energies, what I’ve learned and am still learning from each one, and how they might relate to a Trolldom practitioner and holistic healer helping someone in their journey. 

Mengloth is the ruler of the hall of Lyr within Gastropnir, the fortress on the mountain. Early in the poem the hall of Lyr is referred to as the hall of the giants high. As well, guarding the mountain is the Jotun Fjolsvith,  which tells us that everyone in the dwelling on the hill is a Jotun, which makes the teachings and practices associated with the goddesses, ancestral Jotun magic. 

I believe this is as significant as acknowledging that Odin had to go to Jotunheim and give his eye to Mimir at his well, who was also a Jotun, in order to get the runes. So despite all of the stories of the aesir and old ones getting along with Jotuns or not, it can not be ignored that when a person truly surrenders to elemental forces beyond their control, ad lives in relation with these energies, there is in fact a primal, ancestral connection and wisdom that takes place. 

That being said, I don’t  get a simple modality out of Menglod’s name, which means "Necklace glad”.  I feel her love story with Svipdag who braves the pit of fire to get to her, along with normally only allowing women up the mountain is an allegory of the divine feminine's capacity to heal, being more exclusive to women because healing is inherently a feminine energy, as we clearly see from the goddesses. As well, this thought of readily accepting women while waiting for men who are willing to make the journey up their healing hill, then they will be accepted. As my friend Marie once said “Only when the divine feminine makes space for the masculine to heal in the presence of the feminine, can he do so.”  This in itself has a double meaning, that when well meaning women hold space and intention for men to heal, it is safe for them to be vulnerable enough to do so - and that anyone, male or female may heal their wounded masculine through integrating with their feminine. So their "fated marriage" is like the inner marriage associated with someone merging with their own masculine & feminine parts. When a person makes that journey, braves the fire of their transformation, they will get the treasures waiting for them within their own inner union. 

Then there are the other maidens. Hilf’s name means “cover, shelter, shield/protection” or help. So her modality is shielding and protection of one’s energy. This could look like helping someone with developing boundaries, letting go of things that muddy their energy field, and psychic energy shielding. 

 Hilfthrasa’s name includes Hilf + Thrasa, which means snort or fight. I see her helping more with the physical body’s ability to fight illness & build immunity through breath and breathwork. It’s no geographical coincidence then, that in our modern day, it was a man from the Netherlands, Wim Hoff - who truly pioneered the understanding and science in today’s breathwork and its ability to heal the nervous system and immune response³. While others might say that his discovery was influenced by his trips to India and learning yoga, I would agree, and counter that this is simply evidence that such concepts as breathwork are universal in human consciousness, and he was merely leaning on yogic practices because at the time in the 70s to 80s, the Norse reconstructionist movement was just catching its stride. There’s also the fact that Hindu, Buddhist and Norse spirituality share many similarities, but that’s not something I’ll get into too much in this article. 

Thjothvara’s name can be reduced to (Thjoð) people/family (Varta) nipple in old Norse. Some say she could be called on for new mothers, I think she would also assist in healing family matters & haminja, helping  a practitioner with soul retrievals and ancestral healing. 

 Bjort is, “bright & shining one”. My relationship with this has taught me she teaches care for our image, our avatar body and astral form.  The way we care for ourselves, to the way we love inward and outwardly. 

Blek means “the blonde one” or “white”, which I’ve always understood as having childhood innocence, teaching us to heal childhood wounds,  to laugh and play, and specifically healing children. 

Blith is the friendly or joyous  one. She helps with mental health, mindset & mindful well being. 

There is some conjecture on Frith or Fríð, as some scholars debate whether her name means beauty or peace depending on if the I has an accent. Bjort is already associated with shining outward appearance, so as a shamanic practitioner, I air on the side of the intuition I get when I listen to the spirits. Because that's what these are. Spirits, with names, energy, and lessons, if we listen long enough to hear. So the lesson from her is similar to the old custom of holding frith, which is a social pact not to cause harm. Which in healing spaces is such an integral concept. For her, holding space is a state of being, an agreement to aid in one’s healing by not doing or saying anything to cause harm, which could be from practitioner to client, or one person to another. 

 Eir is interestingly enough, the most popular healing goddess among modern pagans, despite the whole poem in the Edda being about Menglod, mostly because she’s also listed in Snorri’s prose Edda among the Aesir goddesses as “the best of doctors”. As well as being one of the Valkyries - she chooses who doesn’t die, or eases their passing. Which is why she’s also called on in palliative care units. Her name means help or mercy. Due to her status as a healer who goes between Asgard, Lyfjaberg & Freyja's Valkyries, I believe she's like a healing Norn carrying the healing water of Lyfjaberg with her and giving it to people. Her modality, as it influenced my own work, is energy healing, and healing in general, to all Hvels & parts of the soul. 

The last is Aurboda, which means damp earth. She’s also the mother of Gerd - Frey’s wife and goddess of  spring. Her method is akin to grounding to & connecting to earth, nature, & herbal medicine. 

Considering all of this, there is a song by Wardruna, the Norwegian folk band, which I realized was a trance meditation when I studied the translated version years ago, as many folk songs are meant to invoke such things. The song tells the story of going to a healing hill in meditation. It starts out by connecting to this spinning spindle wheel - which I believe is akin to the spinning energy of the threads of fate in Norse lore, closing the eyes and practicing galdr, which is a practice in Norse Folklore and Trolldom (shamanism) of breathing and entering a trance like state, much like doing Om’s and connecting with one’s breath to go into altered states in other modalities. Then walking to Lyfjaberg in this personal journey, which could be in the astral plane, or a mountain which exists in the primal parts of the collective unconscious, given that the sources imply the hill is in Jotunheim. Either way, it’s a journey of the subconscious.

You start walking, then you stop, leave all your clothes behind - you won’t need them where you’re going. Keep walking, and at the second stop you pause and leave all time behind, and weighty thoughts – you won’t need them where you’re going. Keep going. At the third stop you pause and leave all fears behind. Let fall all masks – where you are going they’ll be of no use. But heavy is the trail ahead. Naked at the top the mountain knows you, the song and meditation go on to describe the healing goddesses dancing around you and this experience healing you from any ailment. 

This is where I made this wonderful connection and discovery that the story and the journey to Lyfjaberg, is an allegory to the spiritual journey of awakening to nirvana and the enlightened self. It starts, sitting down breathing and tapping into spirit, you connect to source. This spinning ball of energy above you in the start of the story in meditation, could reflect the initial connection of people’s spiritual awakening, which feels really powerful, but then often leads to their Dark night of the soul and many trials to grow. 

Then at the first stop, leave all clothes and possessions behind, you won’t need them where you’re going. In a very practical way this relates to the art of letting go of attachments to shed and begin shadow work, or letting go of your old self and parts of your old life that simply have no place in the one you’re building, which we must let go of to grow. 

The second stop, leave all time and weighty thoughts behind. These themes connect to being. Be-ing. Here and now, letting go of intrusive thoughts, self doubts, or any expectation of how long your healing journey should take. 

At the third stop you pause and leave all fears behind, dropping all masks. This is the ego death we must go through to grow out of our current state. This is realizing fear is normal, that it’s simply a survival response to learn what you need to shed doubt towards. This is letting go of all you were, thought you would be, or what was expected of you. It’s loving awareness of who you’re transforming into.

 “When we take our masks off, we give others permission to do the same” – Ram Dass

Although heavy is the road ahead, which reminds me of what my yoga teacher used to  say: No mud no lotus, which essentially means you need to go through the inner work to reach the divine self. Naked at the top, with feminine goddesses and divine healing energy around you, you can heal anything you wish. This last part refers to the final achievement of the inner god power in spiritual awakening and enlightenment, feeling like your soul is exposed to the universe, naked to the world, and this divine healing energy is the divine feminine connection that is crucial to spiritual growth. 

This is one of the wonderful ways I love how myths can be allegories for our understanding of esoteric, ancient wisdom encoded in stories, which were the only way our ancestors knew to convey ideas, and even ties to current wellness concepts today. Through the moral of this story and even the experience I had in meditation; I reached the peak of my healing hill in my own way. Over the years amongst deep periods of inner work, I’ve gone through every single one of these phases in my path to Norse healing shamanism. I’ve shed various attachments to my old self, the fears, the learning to take my mask off, and most of all a deep gratitude for the struggles I’ve gone through that led to profound growth, and a deep connection to spirit and the sacred in my life. 

When I reached the end of my first  journey with runes in the summer of 2021 which involved working on and studying all of the Norse Futhark runes, I had this big breakthrough where with the act of galdr breathing and building energy in my body while doing reiki on myself – I felt this sudden flood of water like energy, and I felt the feminine Freyja and Eir Blast the reiki attunement from my body, replacing it with this watery healing energy.

I now find myself in another turn of the wheel, studying the runes and working through the direction of the north in the Norse Medicine wheel that I started over 2 years ago the summer after my initial Lyfjaberg journey and discovery of my healing energy system blasted open my awareness, my understanding of it has deepened so much. 

LyfjaoðStraumr as this method is called, is similar to reiki, in the sense that it is a current of the universal energy source we all have access to. Different in that it connects to the 9-chakra system observed by many other sources like human design as opposed to the eastern Hindu 7 chakra system. This system includes the 2 extra chakras, the second heart, and spleen. The second heart is also referred to as the god chakra, which I believe to be because it is the center of a person’s ancestral and soul identity. And the other extra chakra is the spleen, which in the perspective of this it relates to intuition, survival, and self growth, a stream of water which flows through the system. I break this down more in my Book - Mind. Body. Soul.

What I learned after my connection to this is that my experience was in every way exactly like a full kundalini awakening, and that I had received this Re- attunement to an energy that comes from my own culture and path, so that I could offer a big piece in understanding re constructing Norse spirituality and paganism today, in applying it to my practice instead of Traditional Usui Reiki; and so that this energy clearing technique I now work with and offer in my services flows to me through a different frequency, from Lyfiaberg, and gives me the ability to guide my clients up the struggle of their own healing hill journey, to do their inner work and reach a state of wellness, Be-Ing, and wholeness, whether from my healing sessions or my spiritual counseling and shamanic work. 

Pillar of Lyfjaberg: The Hill of Healing

Standing in the river I’d gone to for each of my 24 rune stones every day, I received my initiation attunement to Lyfja-oðstraumr, which was a re-attunement into a Norse healing current that replaced the Reiki I had practiced before. I have known for years that Usui, the founder of Reiki, fasted in the mountains while connecting with nature and spirit, to recover a healing system that had been forgotten since Buddhists practiced it 2000 years ago¹. Across cultures, the experience and truth is the same. Whether through Buddhist practices, Norse & pagan beliefs, indigenous healing methods or other cultures with shamanic roots. Through consistent commitment, faith, and surrender to the unknown - one goes into nature, surrenders to an energy bigger than themselves, to being broken open, and returns with a current of medicine for the people.

When I first wrote of my journey to Lyfjaberg - the Healing Hill, back in the fall of 2021, it felt like a personal vision. Four years later, I see it for what it is: The first core pillar of my practice, a mythic teaching that keeps unfolding in new layers. The most recent layer - an expansion of the system, in that Lingwauz is one of the stave symbols I use, much like how reiki uses different symbols for different workings, and the system itself is called Lyfja-oðstraumr, which means healing energy stream, in old Norse. The climb up Lyfjaberg, and the information I’ve intuitively gathered is more than a story in the Poetic Edda or an ancestral folk practice - it is an allegory for the healing path itself, a Norse medicine wheel hidden in plain sight.

1. Non-attachment from the old self
   At the first stop on the hill, your current life is left behind. “Leave your clothes and all you own” In my practice, this has become a mirror for shedding attachments to the old self - possessions, identities, habits, or relationships that no longer serve the journey forward. The Norse path reminds us that to heal, we must be able to surrender who you were before, because you won’t need that version of yourself anymore. 
2. Timeless surrender
   At the second stop, time and heavy thoughts are left behind. This echoes teachings across traditions - that true healing has no clock or schedule. The Norse path to one’s healing hill affirms - that growth cannot be forced. Healing demands presence. It is timeless surrender: not rushing the process, not comparing our personal journey to another’s, not holding ourselves to invisible deadlines. Lyfjaberg teaches us to breathe, to be, to let the pace of the mountain guide us.
3. Unmasking
   At the third stop, the masks fall away. All the masks we’ve learned to wear since childhood to protect ourselves, and hide from the fear that our truest weirdest selves won’t be accepted. Unmasking, ego death, shadow work, vulnerability - whatever name you give it, it is universal. It is the terrifying and liberating truth that only by showing up naked in spirit can we be met by our true selves with confidence. This was, and still is, one of the hardest steps for me. Unmasking before the gods, ancestors, and myself was natural - but unmasking before my partner, my family, and my clients was hard. Yet each time I do, I remind myself it’s an act of self love to be the most authentic version of myself, and the goddesses of Lyfjaberg are present: reminding me that in removing my mask, I give others permission to remove theirs.
4. The Medicine Wheel of the Norse
   These three stages together revealed something profound to me: the Norse had their own medicine wheel, their own Hero’s Journey encoded in myth. Lyfjaberg is our mountain of initiation, every bit as valid as the pilgrim paths of other cultures. Recognizing this gave me courage to begin shaping a Norse medicine wheel - which is a framework that honors seasonal cycles, ego death, rebirth, and the feminine presence in healing; wrapped in the Norse wisdom of the runes, parables of the old ones, creation, Lyfjaberg, and ragnarok. This revelation was a stepping stone that deepened my practice immeasurably, tying the mythic hill to the spiral of my own life.

The 9 steps of healing: 

1. The inner marriage
2. Energy shielding & protection
3. Familial & ancestral healing
4. Breathwork
5. Innocent wonder, play, & childhood wounds
6. Mindset, mental health & mindfulness
7. Holding space
8. Energy work
9. Grounding, connection with nature & herbal medicines

This is why Lyfjaberg is not just a lesson hidden in a story I recite from old parables. It is a pillar I stand on. Every rune I sing, every client I guide, every word I write is downstream from that mountain.

This jelling has been part of my journey as a Norseman, a shamanic Trolldom practitioner, runologist, and helper, to a place of oneness in this modern world. This article also serves as my prose for the book I intend to write on transformation, personal growth, spiritual awakening, shamanism, and the journey to oneness from a Norse Canadian practitioner’s perspective. 

1. Stein Diane, Essential Reiki (New York:Crossing Press, 1995)
2. Forn Seðr, Voluspa.org
3. wimhofmethod.com/origins-of-breathwork
4. https://wyrddesigns.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/the-healing-gods-and-goddesses-of-the-northern-tradition/
5. Voluspa.org
6. https://thelongship.net/frith/