Ritual solitary vigil outdoors through the night to seek visions or spirit contact.
Útiseta, to sit out, was an Old Norse ritual practice in which the seeker spent the night alone at a mythically charged site, often a burial mound or crossroads, to receive knowledge from the spirits of the dead.
The practice is attested in sagas and law texts that prohibited it as a pagan custom. It resembles other shamanic traditions of isolation and dwelling at the boundary between the living and the dead.
Attestations
- Kormáks saga, kap. 22
- Example of útiseta as a ritual act in saga literature.