The Völva Is Awakened

Award-winning director Anja Behrens brings the myth of The Prophecy of the Völva — the Norse creation myth — into the present as a transformative and monumental theatrical experience.

In the ancient legend, the Völva is raised from the dead to deliver her prophecy of the world’s creation, destruction and rebirth: the world is formed, humankind is created, and then comes Ragnarök, where everything dissolves so that a new world may rise.

In KATARSIS, Signe Egholm Olsen and Patrick Baurichter step forward in a sensuous ritual of invocation on stage, seeking to make the Völva speak to our time.

In a universe of electronic sound, naked bodies, optical illusions, water, earth and Nordic choral resonance, the performance moves through creation, collapse and rebirth — a new beginning. For when the stories that have united the Western world break down, can we find solidarity and reconstruction in our Nordic origins?

KATARSIS is a poetic performance universe where Norse mythology meets the contemporary longing for hope, meaning and transformation. In Christian Albrechtsen’s set design, reality is distorted and grotesque — a mirror of a world in dissolution. The Völva’s prophecy is reactivated in the present as a tool for imagining what may rise again after the end.

Photo: Jasko Bobar