We’re so used to thinking of jotuns as monsters these days that even I was surprised to learn that a lot of them were supposed to be kind and handsome. The more you know.
Tag: norse
I’ve seen a lot of non-Scandinavian heathen women say they feel like they can’t worship Freyr because of how he treated Gerd which I always thought was a strange thing to say. Freyr never wanted to hurt Gerd. He gave Skrinir gold and apples to give to her. It was Skrinir who insisted on bringing the sword and later used it to threaten her. Besides it would be straight up illegal by Norse standards to force a woman to marry. Odin got kicked out of Asgard for 10 years for raping a jotun woman once, so if Gerd didn’t like Freyr she could easily divorce him. In some versions of the text Skrinir doesn’t even threaten Gerd.
Anyway, Norse mythology is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, like most other religions that had to make way for Christianity. The few stories we have left were written down by monks who didn’t care that much, so a lot of information is given that we don’t know the backstory to. Gerd is worried about “the man who killed her brother” but we never hear about her brother dying, who did it or even who he is. Freyr kills a jotun named Beli with an antler because he no longer has his sword so some speculate that Beli is Gerd’s brother, but the timeline doesn’t match unless it happened between Skinir leaving Freyr and getting to Gerd’s house.
The reason why Freyr is sometimes considered protector of queer people is because in one story he is worshipped by men who move like women, dance and ring bells in his honor. His house might even be filled with such people depending on how you read the text.
All in all, this is just one theory about what exactly is going on with Freyr and Gerd. We know Freyr was super important and probably had hundreds of stories told about him because so many places are named after him and worship of him is mentioned in texts from other countries, but the story of how he fell in love with Gerd is the only one we have left where he is the main character.
Both Tyr and Freyr appears to have been immensely important in Scandinavia because so many places are named after them. The only story we have left where Tyr plays a major part is how he lost his hand to the Fenrir wolf, and the only story that has Freyr as a main character is how he fell in love with the jotun woman Gerd.
It is however implied in the story Lokasenna that they are close friends. When Loki verbally attacks Freyr, Tyr jumps in basically saying “How can you hate on Freyr!? He is the most perfect and soft and gentle person who looks amazing and is a better man than any of us will ever be because he loves peace!!” Like damn Tyr, contain your boner.
Loki then says Tyr can only make humans fight, which seems to genuinely upset Tyr. It’s all kinds of sweet that a god of war would idolize the god of peace.
Then again, it does make some sense. Thor is god of brute battle in war, Odin is god of war tactics, Freya is goddess of war with compassion, and Tyr is god of lawful war. He’s the one to call upon if you want things to be fair and by the rules (That’s why he put his hand in Fenrir’s mouth. They made a contract, and when Fenrir realized it had been cheated it rightfully bit Tyr’s hand off) so of course he also loves peace.
In case you don’t know this story, the Norse gods wanted a wall around Asgard to protect themselves and a jotun only known as The Builder offers to make it in exchange for Freya, Sun and Moon. Freya gets rightfully pissed and refuses (no word on Sun or Moon’s feelings about this), so Loki turns into a female horse and lures The Builder’s horse away, causing all work on the wall to stop. Because he can’t finish the wall The Builder has to leave without Freya, Sun and Moon. Loki disappears for 9 nine months and returns with an eight-legged foal (yes, he had sex with the horse and got pregnant. I know you all love that part). The end.
For some reason people often leave out that The Builder wanted Sun and Moon too, and English translations often translate it to “the sun and moon” as if he wanted the heavenly bodies, but no, he wanted the goddess and god responsible for said heavenly bodies. He absolutely intended to have sex with all of them which is why a lot of translations leave out Moon because ew that’s gay.
Freya didn’t want to marry a Jotun, let alone as part of a god damn harem me thinks.
The lindorm is a creature from Nordic folklore, which has the stupidest name possible. Lind means snake and orm means snake, so it’s called snakesnake. Guess what it looks like.
They tended to curl around everything from treasures, towers or towns guarding whatever they considered valuable inside. If they were just a regular monster a knight or heroic man was needed to defeat it.
BUT sometimes it was a prince who had been cursed, and then a young woman willing to marry it was needed. On their wedding night when the lindorm asked her to remove her dress she’d ask it to shed it’s skin, and when the soft new skin was exposed she’d have to give it a good hard whipping, and when it was sobbing on the floor she’d bathe and cuddle it. This would lift the curse from the lindorm and it would turn into a beautiful prince.
So there you have it, a BDSM snakesnake.
Why are the Æsir like this!?
Høner was the only hostage who survived. Mimer got his head cut off when the Vanir found out Høner was useless without him. They probably spared Høner because he was an Æsir god, so killing him would have offended the Æsir too much. Odin later made Mimer’s head come back to life.
To be fair, Kvasir wasn’t made from any old random spit. When the Æsir and Vanir made peace they all spat in a bucked, mixing their spit, and that was turned into the very wise man Kvasir. He was probably kicked out of Vanaheimr (land of the Vanir) because he traveled the world and met two dwarfs who killed him to get hold of his blood. They mixed it with honey and made a magical mead that turned anyone who drank it into a poet. When the gods asked what happened to Kvasir the dwarfs told them he “drowned in his own wisdom”.
Høner is one of the very few gods who survive Ragnarok and get to live in the new world (Mind you, most of the goddesses survive)
We no longer know who was the ruler of the Vanir, but I made them a woman here because Æsir are often said to be the male aspect of the world and the Vanir female (and jotuns are a mix of the two)
Basically it’s the story of man and woman fighting but they are equally important so they come together, mix bodily fluids and create life. Aaaand then man is unfair to woman and she cuts his “head” off for it. Such a beautiful love story.
Heortland ᚻᛇᚱᛏᛚᚪᚾᛞ [heorˠtlɑnd] ‘hart-land’
I’ve a number of these bronze pendants in stock 🙂 They depict Sleipnir, an eight legged horse which was ridden by the Norse god Odin. They are based on an image found on a 9th century stone carving from Gotland, Sweden.
Available here: Sleipnir Pendant
teakepp 