Herding cultures around the world use sticks for a variety of reasons. Norse women alone on the seters (summer farms high in the mountains) used them too. Keeping cows and sheep in order, keeping one's balance in the rocky terrain of the summer farms, fending off foxes (or worse), and as working rhythm for spinning, threshing, weaving, churning.

The Stav/Distaff - Used in hand spinning, it has associations with trance work as well. The Norns or fates spin, weave and cut the fabric of our lives.

Here is a wonderful site on Distaff spinning: AnneLiese

Stav is connected to the Runes. A stav or stave is one rune marking.

Runes

Stav in seidr work, Norse Shamanic Women's tradition. These women are described throughout the Sagas and Eddas. Carrying distaffs they further unite the traditions of spinning and trance work.

.
Sami women's staff used for driving the reindeer sledge.

photo by Ceile Hartlieb

"Kari leads the exploration of stav work to balance at the Equinox,
Groveland UU, March 2006."

Stav as a martial art - a tradition of martial arts dating from the Viking era using rune symbols, body positions, and the use of the stav. It has been preserved by the Hafskjold family in Norway (which I discovered in 2005)

Here are links to two sites on the Hafskjold family system:
Sunnyway.com and Stav International

Having studied and incorporated Eastern martial arts in my work for twenty years and the runes since 1988, I have intuitively combined rune postures with my herding staff!

Contact Kari :
email karitauring@yahoo.com

phone USA
(612) 729-4019