Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige consecrated

Photo: Ewa DeMahina

On 21 February 2026 the circle finally stood together at Skogheim in Ljungskile. At the forest's edge, where the wind from the west coast meets the sound of drums and voices, Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige was formally consecrated as the sister federation to Sjamanistisk Forbund Norge. The flames from the ceremonial fire mirrored a journey that had begun many years earlier – both in the inner lives of individuals and in a larger, Nordic animistic community.

From Norway came vision-keeper Kyrre Gram Franck and chairman Christoffer S. Eid to be witnesses, fellow travelers and bearers of the living tradition that had already taken root on Norwegian soil. They brought with them a brass plaque with the consecration date engraved, and a ceremonial ring that from this day on would be used in marriage rites in Sweden – concrete symbols that the federations belong together, like two trees with a shared root, but each with its own trunk and crown.

Around them stood the Swedish board: vision-bearer Emelie Berg, chairman Marie Sandberg, treasurer Karin Ax and secretary Ylva Hästlav Jonsson. All four with their own story, but bound together by one and the same experience: nature had called them back, and shamanism had given the language, the structures and the community where that calling could be lived out.

Emelie grew up in the forests near Partille outside Gothenburg. As a child, the night was never quite still for her. In dreams and inner journeys she moved between worlds, received answers to questions she had barely had time to formulate, and experienced nature as alive, near and speaking. But in meeting a world that could not mirror this, the gifts became heavy to carry. When no adults could put words to what she recognized as true, or confirm that what she experienced was not «wrong», she alternated between inner light and deep depressions.

She tried to find answers in psychiatry, in the systems that society offers when something hurts and does not fit in. Eventually it was as if she had walked all the corridors to the end. In the end it was no longer possible to ignore the voice that had always been there, that whispered through the trees and through the body: this is not all. The capitulation became a journey homeward – to nature, to the spirit world, to the drum, to art. In meeting shamanism she found both language and practice for something that had really been there all along. Thus the role emerged as vision-bearer for Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige: the one who holds the direction, listens to the currents and pulls the threads where the community needs to be strengthened.

Photo: Ylva Jonsson

At Skogheim, the place that eventually became her home with husband, children and animals, it was therefore especially meaningful that the consecration ceremony took place precisely here. Ground where she herself had put down roots, and where the threads between Sweden and Norway had long since been tied. For Emelie it was like seeing an inner vision materialize, layer by layer: from the first vague sensations that «there must be a larger place for us», through the small circles she started at home, to the consecration fire where a new faith community was welcomed into the Nordic animistic family.

Marie carried a different, but related story. She grew up with nature as the first teacher. The forest's spirits and beings were not metaphors, but presence; something she could feel, listen to and interact with. Nevertheless she, like so many others, entered the attempt to be «normal» – to put a lid on what did not fit into the usual frameworks. The ability to sense more than the eye sees was temporarily shut off, like a door she learned not to open.

But Mother Earth does not forget her children, and the call from the earth always finds its way back. For Marie the turning came in her 30s. Through yoga, meditation and the first drum journey, the old room opened again. The gates she knew from childhood were suddenly ajar, and she went in, this time with more life experience and a clearer language. The way onward led her into various shamanic traditions: Siberian shamanism, the priestess path in Freja's service, seidr. At the same time she worked as a homeopath and herbal therapist, and held people in processes where body and soul would not let themselves be divided.

When she today stands as chairperson of Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige, it is with a deep awareness that the work is about more than organizational structures. For her the federation is a tool to awaken the lost respect for nature and all its beings, and to create space for the ancient, intangible knowledge to live on in our time. The consecration ceremony, with Norwegian and Swedish representatives side by side, became a high point in this lifelong movement: a public confirmation of something she had long felt in her body – that animism has a natural place also in our modern everyday life.

Karin Nineravens had long found herself in a seemingly entirely different world: IT, systems development, vehicle development. A world of logic, structure, technology and processes. But long before her encounter with codes, system architecture and technical requirements, there was a strong longing in her for something more subtle – what she describes as the soulful and the healing. This longing led her into reflexology, zone therapy, herbal medicine, aromatherapy, massage, astrology and spiritual guidance. Each individual practice became like a piece pointing toward the same thing: a desire to understand the whole, and to serve what heals and connects.

Nature was a backdrop all along – a place she sought out, a room for immersion and recognition. In 2017 she set out on a vision walk / outdoor sit under the guidance of a shaman. For two nights she sat outside, alone in nature. This became a clear initiation, an inner confirmation of a path she had already begun to walk. It was as if the landscape around her answered: you are on the right path.

As treasurer and IT manager in Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige, Karin today carries a dual competence. She can both hold the structures needed for a modern faith community to function – finances, payment solutions, websites, membership register – and at the same time stand in the circle as ceremony leader. In the ceremony leader school she experienced an education that was both professionally and spiritually grounded, with practical and theoretical exercises that challenged and developed. Through full moon ceremonies, equinox markings and work with ethics and ritual understanding, she gained a grounded perspective on how shamanism can be lived in everyday life. This duality was evident during the consecration: behind the ceremonial acts there also lay an extensive work with statutes, legislation and systems, where her experience came into its own.

Photo: Emelie Styrèn Berg The movement of life and the longing of the soul

Ylva is a person who lives in relationship – with people, with nature, with all living beings. She works in and around Vänersborg and is training, just like the others, to be a ceremony leader. For her the ceremonial work is first and foremost about holding space: being a bridge, a balancer and a guide. She tells of how a simple nature experience – a blackbird and a small, peaceful brook – set in motion the last part of the journey that eventually led her to the federation. It was as if the landscape itself, the birdsong and the movement of the water showed her the way onward.

Ylva does not remember large parts of her childhood, for the challenges were many and overwhelming.

There was a lack of guidance in community. There was a lack of safe places. So Ylva lost herself.

Ylva has done that often and much throughout life, but the longing has always sung within her and awakened a restless search. This life path has resulted in deep transformation, where aching longing and restless search have landed in the medicine of presence.

The memories of PURE authenticity and joy that Ylva has come from experiences of deep contact with nature, where she got in touch with her own power and wild wisdom:

On horseback.

Up in a tree.

Jumping on stones in Pinebobäcken.

Bathing and playing in Åsunden.

Running in the forest with a friend.

Picking and eating wood sorrel (the plant)

So rooted in presence that she now sees that she would have needed guidance as a child, youth, young adult and so on.

Both guidance from wise adults and from her own inner wisdom. In the absence of these invaluable supporters in life, it was the outer guidance that came in and took its place.

NOW SFS, and SF as a whole, are building a community where we remind one another of where we come from and call each other home.

As secretary she is responsible for the membership register, the board's written work and a monthly newsletter to the members. But behind the words and the lists lies the same intention as in the ceremonies: to strengthen relationships. Each email, each text, each invitation is an invitation to a community where each individual can build their own direct relationship with nature and the spirit world. During the consecration ceremony she therefore stood in the circle not only as a board member, but as one who has long felt a longing for a «larger context» – a place where animism is not a private matter, but a shared way of life.

The circle is closed.

The road up to the consecration day in February had been long and also woven into the history of Sjamanistisk Forbund Norge. Already in 2012, when Emelie began her priestess training, she began to look for a gathering place for those who called themselves shamans, priestesses, witches and animists. She sought a safe place where everyone could be received, regardless of which words they used about themselves, but did not quite find what she longed for in Sweden. There were goddess temples and Ásatrú communities, but not that bridge between god, goddess, Mother Earth and «the all» that she felt she herself belonged to.

The turning point came when, through friends, she was invited to Norway and met the community around Sjamanistisk Forbund. On her first festival experience (Naturefest) there she describes the feeling as coming home. She and her partner traveled with dog, tent and a friend in the car, and were met by a community that received them with a matter-of-factness as if they had always been there. It was here she met Gro Hilseth Adriansdatter, who later became her mentor. It was here she felt that what she had dreamed of actually existed – not as a distant idea, but as a lived reality.

Through the years that followed, she continued to travel to Norway as often as she could, also after she became a mother. In the meantime she built circles and community at home in Sweden, both for her own practice and to gather others. At the same time the contact with the Norwegian federation grew. When the Norwegian chairman visited one of her gatherings in Sweden in 2024, the question came that would change everything: Would she like help to start the Swedish federation? If she gathered the people she wished to collaborate with, they would get access to education, ceremony book, experience and knowledge that had been built up over many years in Norway.

From there the process went quickly, but not too quickly. It was about finding the right people – like Marie, Karin and Ylva – and translating both language, structure and ceremonies into a Swedish context. Words had to be adapted, concepts adjusted, statutes written into Swedish legal frameworks. But at the same time the core was to be preserved: animism, respect for nature, the ceremonial work through the cycles of the year and of life, and a clear ethics.

The consecration ceremony on 21 February therefore became more than a simple marking in the calendar. It was a collective initiation – of the federation as structure, of the board in their roles, and of a larger community of people who had found their way to Skogheim that day. The brass plaque with the consecration date became a lasting memory; a physical reminder that this is not just an idea, but an actual faith community inscribed in Swedish reality. The ring that was presented as a wedding ring carried another promise: that love between people shall be able to be celebrated and blessed within an animistic framework, in keeping with nature's rhythm and the federation's ceremonial tradition.

That Kyrre as vision-keeper and Christoffer as chairman stood in the ring together with the Swedish board tied the past, the present and the future together. The long journey of building up Sjamanistisk Forbund Norge lay as a backdrop – all that work which meant that Sweden now did not have to «reinvent the wheel», but could adapt it to its own conditions. The federation's experience from board work, legislation, religious policy and practical organizing gave support into the concrete work that now stands before the Swedish board group.

Behind the ceremony there also lies a clear vision for the way onward. Shamanistiskt Förbund Sverige will not only gather individual practitioners, but also facilitate local chapters around the country. In the board's inner images there already exists the map with living points: a local chapter in Kalmar, one in Norrbotten, and eventually more places where people take responsibility for their region, with their own boards and regular ceremonies. The national federation functions as an umbrella – a gathering tree – while the local chapters are the branches that bear fruit locally.

At the same time the federation is clear that this is a place for community, not an arena for marketing one's own business. Many in the community already conduct ceremonial work, courses and treatment in their own enterprises. In the federation context they are invited to contribute their competence as part of the whole, but without mixing private business and the federation's ceremonies. In that way space is created both for personal livelihood and a shared, non-profit, sustainable faith community.

Families and children are also central to the vision. The ceremonies are to be places where children can be children – playful, curious and present – within safe frameworks. It will be possible to take a form of confirmation within the federation's shamanic worldview, so that young people can mark the transition to adult life in a context that mirrors their own relationship to nature and the spirit world. To safeguard this, the federation emphasizes that the ceremonies are held in a sober manner, so that all generations can take part.

Through all of this runs a clear longing: to be a natural voice in society. Emelie expresses a hope that in ten years the federation will have a strong engagement, many local chapters and a self-evident place in public discourse. That animism is no longer understood as something distant and exotic, but as a fruitful and life-near perspective on how we live with one another and with the earth. That intangible cultural heritage – stories, rituals, prayers, songs, practices – is not only preserved in books and museums, but lived in today's people.

The consecration ceremony on 21 February was a first, clear step in this direction. In the light from the fire, between the trees at Skogheim, people from two countries stood and shaped a shared, Nordic animistic power. The brass plaque gleamed in the fire, the ring lay safe, ready to bless the first weddings on Swedish soil. And above all this sounded drums, song and silence in turn – as an answer to a longing that had lived long before the federations got names, and that has now found a new form to live in.