Looking for confirmation on something about Norse Magic

If anyone here happens to be knowledgeable about it?

I\'ve been doing some research into Norse magic, mostly just out of curiosity\'s sake, and as the title says I\'ve run across something I\'d like to get some confirmation on.

It\'s been pretty consistently pointed out that Norse Society was pretty heavily Gendered, and that Magic was very much considered a woman\'s business - to the degree that Loki felt he had room to taunt Odin over Odin\'s practice of magic. Practicing magic was considered so unmanly it was grounds for claiming Ergi, which was, in my limited understanding, a pretty serious claim that couldl ead to a lot of fallout for both the accuser and accusee, depending on how stuff went.

Anyhow, the thing is I\'ve never found a consistent account for \'\'why\'\' this is the case. From some accounts it\'s that it has a heavy association with sewing and weaving - in other words, it\'s pretty arbitrarily gendered. By other accounts it\'s because the practitioners needed to induce a trance or otherwise altered state, thus making themselves weak and defenseless while practicing it.

I\'ve found one account, however - and this is what I\'m looking for confirmation or denial on - that the reason for this is because the magic required fuel, and that fuel could only be replenished by contact with, or consumption of, semen.

Are there any accounts that could solidly point to one case or the other? Or is this possibly on of those things where it\'s difficult to ever \'\'really\'\' know, as there just happen to be multiple different reasons cited by contemporaries, or no reasons cited at all?

Like I\'ve said, this is just curiosity on my part. I\'ll admit, I\'m rather enamored by the idea of Ancient Viking Twink Wizards.

This part is very much a point of contention, but there is some evidence that many acts related to Seiðr were sexual in nature. While there are comparatively few real accounts of how it occurred, some evidence does point us to that sort of act being done in general as related to magic, but it's really up in the air how much is true.

So it's not all that too hard to suggest it to be the case, but nothing is really agreed on, but very few will ever flat out deny it.

I see... that's interesting to know. I didn't realize this was the sort of thing that was debated over. Still, regardless of whether the effects were real the practices were, so I suppose it does count as history.

Thank you very much! Might not exactly clear it up, per se, but at least I'm not going about with a headfull of definitively wrong information on the subject. Never know when this sort of information might be useful or applicable for a story or a game or whatnot.

There's some parts which can be agreed upon - for example, how much magic was sexual in nature, and that it had its own form of vision quest because the Norse sagas show their beliefs to be very shamanistic.

We also have some evidence that the staves used were often associated with the penis, especially from Icelandic sagas which show there to be phallic terms used in relation to them - but we still can't be sure for other areas.

There's some parts which can be agreed upon - for example, how much magic was sexual in nature

Ah, really? In that case, may I ask as to how much of it was sexual, vs. the parts that weren't sexual?

Generally a fair bit of it - what evidence we do have points it at around 30-40%.