odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”
Oðinn spake:
Bright the sun shone | at the time of Þor’s birth, And bathed his count’nance fair. Loki, wolf-father, | the trickster, the liar, I found on the cold pavement While returning in glory | from a grand hunt For a 3 AM quesadilla.
Viking traveler’s amulet, based on the Lillbjärs picture stone. The back reads: “Unharmed Go Forth, Unharmed Return, Unharmed Back Home”, Frigga’s blessing to Odin, possibly from Vafþrúðnismál.
How does this have almost 10,000 notes ?
Because the world is full of trouble and every little bit of help counts.
bare with me here I’m gonna ramble about Christmas trees.
Well, the first piece of evidence comes from the writings of Adam of Bremen. According to his work, there was once a grand temple specifically for Freyr, Thor, and Odin. In front of it was an evergreen. The significance of this tree was that it was always green, in snow or spring. Freyr as a god of growth and life was seen in evergreens.
In a cold climate like Germany and Scandinavia, all the other trees would be totally dead by late October-November, but Evergreens would still be lively. The ancient people believed that this was a sign that these trees were holy. Depending on where you were, it was a sign of Baldr. In other places, it was Freyr.
It is worth noting that Baldr & Freyr share a lot of the same symbols: sunlight, pine, gold, peace etc etc.
Freyr’s festival was at or around Christmastime, over the course of several days. The practices of decorating evergreen trees for Yule was fairly common in Europe for various deities: Baldr, Freyr, and others. The Bible even talks about the pagans and trees:
Jeremiah 10:2-4: “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. Faces of heathen idols are then carved into the trees.” (King James Version).
His statement’s backed up by a lot of accounts of the Anglo-Saxons and Nordic people worshiping specific types of trees. Pine, in particular, was believed to be a defense against evil. Some modern Asatruar put pine sprigs into water as a purification/holy water type ritual.
There’s a ton of little passages I’ve read over the years that call Freyr the pine torch, but hell if I can find them now. Specifically, when it came to rune books, Freyr was often associated with the positive aspects of Kennaz.
At last, a page for Freyr! As was the case for Thor, there are actually quite a few Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders) that contain fascinating chapters involving Freyr, especially Gísla saga Súrssonar, Víga-Glúms saga, and Ögmundar þáttur dytts! I highly recommend checking out those sources in particular, if you have already read the Eddas and are able to get a hold of a copy of each text (check here, if you’d like).
Verið vel, vinir! (Be well, friends!) – Fjorn the Skald
Sadly you’re right that googling Norse stuff can easily lead you to Nazi stuff. And you are correct that this isn’t my ballpark, but I do know people who are Norse Polytheists and are anti-Nazi, anti-racism, anti-other-isms. The two who immediately pop into my head who are on tumblr is @edderkopper and @answersfromvanaheim . I’m sure either one of them would be able to help you with resources!
Here are some non-folkish, LGBT+ friendly links (which include recommendations for actual books and stuff) which I point folks to. If there’s anything specific you’re looking for that’s not covered here, feel free to ask.
As you research, be aware that most of the books written by Heathens for Heathens are
either written by racist, homophobic, or otherwise dangerous people or just
generally very inaccurate. Until you have a basic grasp of the lore to
help you differentiate between fact and BS, I really recommend sticking
with academic sources. Not that academics can’t be full of it too, but
assuming you stick with recent sources, they are less likely to be
neonazis. (For obvious reasons, this does not apply to academic stuff
from the late 19th/early 20th century when certain movements were at
their height.)
I know this is MCU and not myth, but now all I can imagine is Steve Irwin doing a report on the Midgard Serpent.
“Now, there’s a story about Thor, big guy, and he wanted to tussle with this big guy here, and he hooked him right through the lip with a big old fish hook… He was just wrapping his way around the Earth, around all of Midgard, and he hooked him up…”
Steve pauses to tickle the serpent of Midgard under the jaw, and gets a thumb into the corner of its mouth, revealing fangs the length of his forearm,
“And that’s not nice. Look at that scar, it probably took him a good while to heal that up, and he won’t have been able to eat much whilst he did. Poor little guy. You don’t need to be rough with these animals, you’ve got to respect them. And I respect him – Look at the teeth on him! He could have my arm off if he wanted!… He’s struggling a bit now, I think he really wants to go, and get back to causing earthquakes and tidal waves, so I’m going to let him go on his way. But he’s a great snake! Feels like a real privilege to have seen him in the wild.”
“Now, rumour has it that somewhere around here, there’s a big wolf – A god-eater, called
Hróðvitnir by the locals; He’s actually bitten off the hand of one of the villagers at their last attempt to cage him up, so I’m going to go and find him, and see if I can get him into this cage trap, so that the rangers can move him to live somewhere else, where he won’t bother people, and people won’t bother him…”
teakepp 