The völva, vala, wala (Old High German), seiđkona, or wicce was a female shaman in Norse mythology, and among the Germanic peoples. They practiced the seid (shamanism), which was regarded as unmanly. Also associated with them were incantations called galdra (see also the A-S quote below).
Examples of völva in Norse literature include the seeress Heidi (alt. Heith) in Voluspa and the witch Groa in the Svipdagsmál. The word witch is the modern form of wicce.
During the christianisation of Norway, king Olaf Trygvasson had male völvas (sejdmen) tied and left on a skerry at ebb. A terrible and long wait for death.
The red coloring apparently comes from remains of a floccose-fibrillose red surface layer of the volva that may be more clearly seen on the edge of the ring and at the stem base.
The volva is filmy, white with an outer covering of thin, red fibrils and scattered with pieces of the volva that are more apparent on the edge of the ring and near the base of the stem in age.
The volva's double-layered nature and the inconsistency of pigmentation in even those cells of the largely red layer are too very distinctive characters.
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