Episode 19 - The Goddesses Time Forgot

Welcome to Norse mythology, the unofficial guide. It's unofficial because I'm neither a credentialed academic nor a time-traveling medieval Norse pagan, but ideal with this material directly from the sources interpreted through the lens of the experts in their opinions. If you're looking for depth and detail in a simple and accessible way, then you're in the right place. At the end of the last episode, I alluded to the idea that today we would start talking about events leading up to Ragnarok. But I've changed my mind. We'll get to that stuff soon, but as we've been going through the mythology story by story, a couple things have started weighing on me a little bit. One is how Thor's centric are corpuses. I worry it could make it seem like I'm not devoting enough time to stories about other characters. When in fact, I'm just working my way through all the stories we have that aren't just big lore and cyclopedias delivered through dialogue. There are also one or two other things that we have sort of neglected that we need to bring up before Ragnarok occurs. But this leads me to the other thing, which is how male centric are corpuses, making it feel like we aren't devoting enough time to the goddesses. What's funny about that whole setup is that even though most of the preserved myths focus more on the men, when we tally up all the goddesses mentioned in the sources, we actually come up with about 30 different characters, whereas there are only about 20 different gods we know about mentioned in those same sources. These numbers are approximations, of course, because not everything is always perfectly clear. But I thought now might be a good time to start introducing a few of the lesser known female deities in the Norse tradition, just to break things up a bit. There are a bunch that we could talk about, so I may end up doing a few more episodes like this one in the future, but to start, I'm going to be relying largely on a few articles written by Joseph S. Hopkins published as a series in the R.M.N. newsletter that he titled "Goddess's Unknown." Like most things, though, before we start talking specifically about these characters, we should probably establish a little context. Scholars of the past have had a tendency to focus a lot more effort on studying male characters from the Norse sources than female ones. On the one hand, this is somewhat understandable as a natural result of the fact that the sources contain a lot more information and stories about a select few of the males. But on the other hand, there was also a really weird scholarly push starting around the mid-1800s to find some reason to believe that all goddesses ought to be merged together into a single goddess figure somewhere in the distant past. And not just Norse goddesses, the idea actually started in the field of Greek mythological studies, and at its most extreme, one proponent of the idea named Johann Bachaven advanced a theory that every culture in the world must have individually held a tradition of a single great mother goddess at some point in the distant past who eventually split into all the individual deities known to that culture. This so-called great goddess theory seems to imply an idea of original matriarchy, which understandably looks attractive at face value from the feminist angle. And for that reason, it resurfaced a little bit in a milder form in the second half of the 20th century. But there are a few problems with it. For one, its roots are far from feminist. Bachaven himself viewed this type of matriarchal system as something mankind needed to evolve away from in order to achieve a more advanced modern society. And in general, the theory has never been met with any kind of widespread acceptance in the modern academic community and is rarely ever mentioned today. One potential reason for this is that there seems to be no real rational explanation for why we should try to merge all the females into a single character but not the males. It's an idea that while striving to provide evidence for some ancient idea of European matriarchy requires us to strip ancient societies of their ability to venerate women in equal numbers and roles as they did men. As we push towards finding the one great goddess, we accidentally sacrifice the individualities and the uniqueness assigned to the numerous goddesses actually attested in our sources, assuming that such and such is just another name for so-and-so and that this goddess over here was forgotten in favor of that goddess over there. This is not to say that matriarchy never occurred anywhere in ancient Europe, of course, and there are bound to be moments here and there where one figure does split into two or a couple different figures merge into one for one reason or another. But this can happen with males just as equally as with females. The reason I bring all this up now is because as we talk about individual goddesses, especially ones who are a little more obscure, a lot of the analysis we have to sift through will unavoidably be looking at similarities between characters and trying to draw relations between them and guessing about where they might have come from. It's important as we ask those questions to make sure we aren't accidentally gravitating towards this old weird idea that turns all the women into a single character. I recommend keeping that in mind whenever you hear theories about goddesses in ancient religions. So with that out of the way, let's jump way back in time to a first century Roman I've mentioned a few times before named Tucketus. Tucketus lived hundreds and hundreds of years before the Norse period began. And he wrote a book called Germania that was ostensibly about the Germanic inhabitants of Continental Europe. Tucketus, of course, was writing for Romans from the Roman viewpoint, describing the people he wrote about in Roman terms. And there's some debate about whether or not all the groups he talks about were actually Germanic groups, and about whether various claims he makes are really all that accurate. But in spite of all that, Tucketus provides one of only very few written records describing Germanic people from near the beginning of the first millennium AD. And there are various things he mentions, such as certain types of burials that have since been confirmed to a degree by archaeological finds. So there's definitely some value there. In section 40 of Germania, Tucketus mentions seven Germanic groups who he tells us are unified in their dedicated worship to a goddess he calls Nertus in Latin. Specifically, he tells us, quote, "There is nothing especially noteworthy about these states individually, but they are distinguished by a common worship of Nertus, that is Mother Earth, and believe that she intervenes in human affairs and rides through their peoples. There is a sacred grove on an island in the ocean in which there is a consecrated chariot draped with cloth, where the priest alone may touch. He perceives the presence of the goddess in the innermost shrine, and with great reverence escorts her in her chariot, which is drawn by female cattle. There are days of rejoicing then, and the countryside celebrates the festival wherever she designs to visit and to accept hospitality. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms, all objects of iron are locked away. Then and only then do they experience peace and quiet, only then do they prize them, until the goddess has had her fill of human society, and the priest brings her back to the temple. Afterwards, the chariot, the cloth, and if one may believe it, the deity herself are washed in a hidden lake. The slaves who performed this office are immediately swallowed up in the same lake, hence arises dread of the mysterious and piety, which keeps them ignorant of what only those about to perish may see." So what does a protogermanic goddess have to do with Norse mythology? After all, there's no Nertus in the Norse corpus that we know of. Well, if we assume Tachetus's Nertus can be translated into protogermanic "Nertus," this word actually works as an etymological precursor to the name "Norther," who is a pretty well-known Norse god, albeit strangely "Norther" is male, and Tachetus describes "Nertus" as "female." "Norther" also has a pretty strong association with the sea, as we learn from the story about his marriage to Skathi, and here we have Nertus' chariot residing in a sacred grove on an island in the ocean. It's been speculated that this could be a reference to the island of Zealand, which was the seat of the ancient kings of Denmark, and the names of some of the tribes Tachetus mentions as worshippers of Nertus, such as the Angli, also clue us into the idea that we are probably dealing with the area around the Danish peninsula here. So how exactly does Nertus become "Norther"? We can't say for sure what's happening here, but it's interesting, as Hopkins points out alongside other scholars, that the Norse sources also include references to a goddess named Njordun, and also to another wife of Njordur, who we are told was his sister. So let's start with Njordun. Njordun appears in a list of goddesses named among the Asyr clan in the Prozetta, but we are not given any other information about her at all. Like some other goddesses, her name is sometimes used within Kennings and Scaldic poetry, which are flowery poetic phrases used to refer to simple things, in this case two denote women, sort of generally. The one reference we have to her name in the poetic era is in the poem "Alvi small", where the dwarf "Alviis" claims that the dwarfish word for "night" is "draum Njordun", meaning the "njordun of dreams". Unfortunately, this isn't really enough to conclude much of anything. For all we know, Alviis could just to easily have said "draum Freya" or "draum Edun". What we can do is take a stab at what the root of her name might mean. McKinnell notes that the root "njordun of dreams" in Prozetta is "njordun of dreams", looks like it could be cognate with old Irish "njord", which means "strength". And by the way, if two words in different languages are cognate, it means that they are descended from the same origin and often have similar meanings. So in this case, "njordun of dreams" could mean something like the strong or powerful word. Which, by extension, would apply to "njordun" and "njordun" possibly as well. Another option is that it could be related to Old English "jenaerth", which is a beautiful word, and in which case, it could mean something closer to "contentment". McKinnell also notes that "Takitis's description of the way the "njertus" idol was washed after the festival" seems uncomfortably similar to what we know about rituals surrounding "magnamata" in Rome, which was represented by a black stone, and which "Takitis" was apparently intimately familiar with. McKinnell notes that "Whereas some have taken this to mean that "Takitis must have invented the whole thing", there are actually a lot of details in his account that are echoed by later Germanic sources and are supported by archaeology. For example, keeping the idol in a sacred grove on an island, the fact that "njertus" is represented by an idol at all, the idol being attended by a single priest of opposite gender to herself, the festival being a unique time of peace and feasting, and the event ending with a human sacrifice in a lake. To explain how the male norther evolves out of the female "njertus", McKinnell's conclusion, which also takes into account things like different spellings in different manuscripts and some more boring stuff like that, is that, originally, "njertus" might have had both a male and a female form, something like a twin, as we see echoed later in Norther's children, Freyr and Freya. This could also potentially explain the existence of the enigmatic "njorun" in our sources, as well as any possible female counterpart to Norther. This idea of a male and female pair of deities, with similar names, is also reflected in the fact that the Norse corpus gives us both a male and female version of the name of the god "fjorgun", so this is really not an uncommon idea. Speaking of Freyr and Freya, the poem "Lokisena" contains an accusation made by Loki that these two have some kind of incestuous relationship. In Stanza 32, Loki says this to Freya, "Be silent Freya, you're a witch, and much imbued with malice. You were with your brother, all the cheerful god surprised you, and then Freya, you farted." In the next stanza, Norther chimes into assert his opinion that this isn't even a big deal. Quote, "That's harmless if a woman has a husband or a lover or one of each. What's surprising is that a pervert god comes in here and he is born children." He goes on to mention that his son, Freyr, is a person who no one hates and is considered a protector of the Asyr. But Loki sees this as just another opportunity to double down on the incest accusations. He says, "Stop now, Njord, keep some moderation. I won't keep it a secret any longer. With your sister you got that son, though that's no worse than might be expected." So, just cruising right on past the glaring question of how Loki was the only person who knew about this and why he had been keeping it a secret, who exactly is Norther's sister? If Norther and Njordun are Norse versions of a male and female Nerthus, then they could easily be brother and sister, in which case we would be able to place Njordun into the role of mother for Freya and Freyr. Keep in mind, though, that even though this is a pretty common speculation, even among scholars, it's only a speculation, and it's ultimately based on no other evidence than that Norther and Njordun both have Njord in their names. It's what causes us to think they could both be related to Nerthus, and then everything else follows from that. But Snory builds upon the idea of incest being commonplace among the Vonir in his engling Asaga, which I will never stop reminding you is euhemeristic, meaning it is a largely fake history book inspired by Norse mythology. But here's the quote, "When Norther was among the Vonir, he had been married to his sister. For that was the law there. Their children were Freyr and Freya, but it was forbidden among the Asier to cohabit with such close kin." For a little clarity, this probably isn't supposed to mean there was a law stating a person had to marry a sibling, but more that the law allowed for it, making it something more like a custom. Whether Snory built this entire idea upon the information provided by Lococena, or whether it was a more common Norse idea that incest was customary among some group called the Vonir, we can't say for sure. But at the very least, Lococena does a test that Norther has a sister by whom he fathered his children, which is why most people tend to presume that when Scotty refers to Freyr as her son in the poem, "Skeerness Mall," she may be speaking more in the role of "Stepmother" rather than "Biological Mother." Hopkins also notes that the prose edit contains a quote from a lost poem about Norther that, "For all we know, might have provided more information about his sister." But at the same time, he points out that various sources across both Edda's and other eohemeristic accounts all contradict each other about when and where Freyr and Freya were born, so it's a complicated thing to figure out. This is one of those instances we talked about in episode 7, where the idea of Vonir gods becomes a confusing problem. To recap, the traditional idea is that the Vonir are a clan of gods or godlike beings, who once had a war with the Asyr that ended in a truce. Scholars tend to note that deities named as Vonir in the sources, which are specifically Norther, Freyr, and Freya, are particularly associated with wealth and fertility. However, some scholars diverge from this opinion and have even gone so far as to suggest that we have inherited a misunderstanding of the word Vonir from Snory, and that it was originally meant to be a synonym for gods. I'll leave it to you to make your own decision on that, but the point is, assuming the traditional idea is correct, it's fun to wonder about whether Norther's sister is an Asyr goddess or a Vonir goddess, and whether her relationship with her brother Norther had to be broken up when he was traded as a hostage to the Asyr after the Asyr Vonir war, and whether she really is Njordun, or someone else entirely. One interesting possibility noted by Hopkins draws upon information in Gesta Da Norum, which is another eohemeristic history written by Danish author Saxo Grammaticus. Saxo tells a fascinating story about a character named Hoddingus that appears to be informed by some of the same information Snory gives us about Norther in his own works, according to Saxo. Hoddingus has a relationship with his foster sister, who ends up being killed by some mysterious monsters. Later, Hoddingus rescues a princess named Regneilda from a giant, and the two of them get married, after, as Hopkins says it, a leg-based choosing incident that is similar to Scothi's choice of Norther's lovely feet. Saxo then adds a poem about their problematic marriage, wherein Hoddingus complains about being away from the sea and how he doesn't like the sounds of the wolves, and Regneilda replies that she doesn't like the sea because of the shrieking goals, which now makes it obviously clear that this part of the Hoddingus Regneilda story is inspired by Norther and Scothi. Hopkins notes that an earlier scholar named Dumasel theorized that Saxo might have drawn his information about the death of Hoddingus' foster sister from an older narrative about the death of Norther's sister-wife. But he points out in so many words that it is easily just as likely that Saxo made that piece up. Another name that shows up alongside Njordun in the prose Edda's list of goddesses is Ilnir. This name is even more obscure in that it never shows up in any surviving edict poetry, and is only referenced one other time in the prose edda in a list of what else but cannings for women. Because there isn't much information about her in the eddas, there aren't a ton of scholarly papers to draw from. However, back in the 1880s, Jacob Grimm took a crack at interpreting her name. And even though his interpretation is a little shaky, it appears to be the best guess anyone's been able to come up with so far. Grimm made the obvious connection between the feminine proper noun Ilnir, serving as the goddess's name, and the masculine common noun, also pronounced Ilnir, which means sweet scent. In these words appear in different grammatical roles they take different forms, so we can't be sure these aren't just hominemes in certain cases. However, if we expect to find parallels between the Norse tradition and other related Indo-European traditions, then it shouldn't be surprising to find a Norse goddess associated with a sweet scent, given that we see the same thing in the Greek tradition where Aphrodite is also known for her fragrance, both in literature and in cult practice. Although she doesn't feature in the Eddas, Ilnir shows up nine times in Scaldic poetry across works by seven different poets. In at least six of these instances, her name is used as a Kenning for a woman, as we might expect. For example, there are phrases like Ilnir Sorghva and Ilnir Erma, which mean "respectively Ilnir of necklaces and Ilnir of sleeves." Now most of the time, when we see the Kenning formula of name plus clothing or jewelry, we're usually seeing a goddess's name. But sometimes, certain poets will use Valkyrie names in this formula, too. And there just so happens to be one verse preserved in Lahn Namibok that refers to "battle" as Ilmar Jalmar, meaning Ilnir's noise or racket. This is exactly the type of Kenning we would expect to see referencing Valkyrie names, but not at all what we would expect to see in a Kenning referencing a goddess who is not associated with Valkyries. Hopkins notes a point made by Magnuson that if this is a clue that Ilnir is a Valkyrie, then it's odd that she would have a name that means "sweet scent." Alternatively, he suggests, Ilnir's name could actually be etymologically related to the other word in that Kenning, "Yalmar," meaning "noise." If so, that would put her in line with another Valkyrie named "hulk," which is a name that also means "noise or battle," and could help unify this idea of who she is. Another option is that her name could be related to Old Norse-Almer, meaning "elm tree." If so, we would have yet another fascinating tie-in between supernatural beings and trees. Hopkins points out that this could also explain why Ilnir seems to have faded out of the record we see preserved in the Icelandic Eddas. If she was particularly associated with Elm trees, her role might have begun to lose meaning on an island that was so quickly deforested after the arrival of Norse settlers. If we can draw a little crossed Germanic inspiration from the English record on Elm trees, we find that in England, Elm trees have traditionally been considered treacherous and hostile, probably because healthy-looking Elms have a tendency to drop branches out of nowhere that can injure unsuspecting people. But their association with death goes even deeper in the fact that Elms are traditionally used in graveyards, and their wood was traditionally used in the past for making coffins. There is even one record of an Elm tree that Hopkins highlights in a quote by Watts, that quote, "used to be called the prophet tree." It was said to foretell each death in the family of the Eccles, who used to own the place by flinging off a limb. Hopkins suggests that with the Elm being so tightly coupled with death, this interpretation of Ilmir's name works well alongside evidence that she could have been considered a chooser of the slain of Alkary in the Norse record. Hopkins also discusses one other goddess worth bringing up here, and in this particular case, he takes pretty much the entire scholarly community to task over their treatment of the character, "Hlean." The trouble begins in Volusbaw 51, quote, "Then Friggs's second sorrow comes about, when Odin advances to fight against the wolf and Belly's bright slayer against sort, then Friggs dear beloved must fall," end quote. This stanza is describing events at Ragnarok, when Odin is fated to be eaten by the wolf Fenrir. It's a moment described by the poem as Friggs's second sorrow, her first sorrow, of course, being the death of her son, Baldur. Except that's not what the source text actually says. Odin's death is not called the second sorrow of Frig, but the second sorrow of "Hlean." So why would Larrington replace the name "Hlean" with "Frig?" Well, first of all, it's not just Larrington. Oliver Bray, Jeremy Dodds, and Jackson Crawford all do the same thing in their own translations. This appears to be a real pet peeve of Hopkins, and to be honest, I don't really like these types of so-called corrections of the text either. The reason this happens is because, traditionally, scholar after scholar after scholar after scholar has concluded because this stanza appears to say that Odin's death is "Hlean's sorrow" and because Odin is Friggs' wife, that "Hlean" must simply be another name for Frig, used in this case to facilitate alliteration. If this is correct, then replacing the name is done to prevent confusion. But that's just the thing. Is it correct? As Hopkins notes, your answer to that question probably comes down to how much you trust Snory. Snory places the name "Hlean" alongside the name Frig in lists of goddesses twice in the prozetta, strongly implying that they are not the same character. And in Guilviginning 35 specifically, he's explaining the roles of various goddesses and includes this information about "Hlean", "twelfth lean". She is given the function of protecting people whom Frig wishes to save from some danger. From this comes the saying that someone who escapes finds refuge. The word "falks" translates to "finds refuge" here is "Hleanir", so what Snory is saying is that he believes this word "Hleanir" is derived from the name "Hlean". Unfortunately, "Hleanir" is a "hapaxlegamanan", meaning that it only occurs naturally this one time in all the Old Norse texts that we have, so figuring out exactly what it means is difficult. The most common interpretation is that it's related to the English word "lean" as into "lean" against something. A couple of alternatives include the idea that "Hlean" could be related to Old Norse plune, meaning warmth, or "Hleanir", meaning "maple tree", which is admittedly kind of tempting because it starts to create a pattern of obscure goddess names possibly related to tree names. And as we mentioned before, there's a possibility of a connection between Thor's wife Siv and the Rowan. But all this stuff is very speculative. Hopkins points out that what Snory tells us about "Hlean" falls really well in line with what we believe about the Germanic mothers. These are goddesses we typically find outside of Scandinavia, commonly artistically represented in trios, often carrying items like breadloaves, diapers, and baskets of fruit. The common belief is that these goddesses had protective influence over various areas within the family sphere. In Scandinavia, the concept of the mothers seems to have given rise to this whole "valkery, torn, desir complex" of women who influence fate and often serve a protective function. If Lien's role as Snory claims is to protect people that Frig wants protected, it makes perfect sense why the death of Odin would constitute Lien's second sorrow, it being a potential case where she was unable to fulfill her responsibility. Hopkins notes that we should not be so quick to assume two characters are the same, just because a single stanza and a single poem mentions them both together in another wise confusing way. As an example, he brings up the goddess Fula, who we don't have time to go into today, but this is another character who only shows up once in the poetic era in the role of a handmade for Frig, but whose Snory calls a virgin goddess in the prosetta, and assigns her the role of carrying for Frig's footwear and sharing her secrets. If we had no other sources, it would be pretty easy to assume Snory misinterpreted Fula as well. But as it turns out, we have a little piece of text called the second Merciborg charm that was discovered in Germany, and describes an event where Wodon and Baldur are riding through a forest, and Baldur's horse injures its ankle. A few goddesses and Wodon then magically conjure a healing spell for the horse, and among these goddesses is a woman named Vola, an old high German, which by all accounts seems to be the exact same word as Old Norse Fula, and who we are told in this charm is the sister of Fria, the old high German equivalent of Frig. So now we have a clue that Fula actually did hold some importance that has been lost to us in modern times, and we don't attempt to merge her together with some other character, or just breathe past her like she's a random side character that Snory invented a backstory for. Anyway, it's unfortunate that we have such little information about so many of these goddesses, but I hope you found this interesting as an insight into some of the lesser-known topics floating around in scholarly circles. One thing that's absolutely clear is that goddesses played a major role in the lived religion of Norse people and other related Germanic groups. There are a lot of factors that play into why most of the surviving myths focus more on men. Scalds were often composing for male leaders, for instance, among other social and cultural factors, but we should never forget that our source is a test more goddesses than gods, and if you took nothing else away from this episode, remember this. We don't have to smash all the goddesses together into a single character, obscure as they might sometimes be, maybe it's best to let them exist the way we've been told they exist. And with that in mind, hopefully I'm not lying this time when I remind you to join me again next time, as we begin to take our first steps towards Ragnarok on Norse mythology, the unofficial guide. Sources for this episode include Germania by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, 1st century. Four papers all by Joseph S. Hopkins, great goddess theory in ancient Germanic studies 2019, goddesses unknown one, new order and the sister wife of new order, 2012. Goddesses unknown two, on the apparent Old Norse goddess Ilmer, 2014, goddesses unknown three, on the identity of the Old Norse goddess Clean 2017. Hames Kremler, translated by Allison Finley and Anthony Falks, 2011, meeting the other in Norse myth and legend by John McKinnell, 2005. Repoetic Edda, translated by Caroline Larrington, 2014 and the Pro Zeta, translated by Anthony Falks, 1995.