Hearthside

Loki had been away from Asgard for some time. He had been with the Jötunn woman Angrboda. When he returned to Asgard to Odin's hall he had with him 3 children. There was Jormungandr, a great serpent. The gods saw him and were fearful. They cast him into the sea and there he grew ever longer until he wound his scaly body around the world. It was said that Jormungandr would defeat Thor at Ragnarok. The second child was Fenrir, a great Wolf. And again the gods had a foreboding, for they had heard that he would kill Odin at Ragnarok. Unlike Jormungandr, they wished to keep him close so they could keep an eye on him as he grew. But only Tyr was brave enough to go to him and be in his company. Only Tyr would bring him food and watch him tear the neat with his terrible teeth. The third child was a girl, Hel, who was beautiful and fair to look at until she turned her head, and then you saw into death. Odin felt pity for her, and was not as afraid of her as the other two. Still, he reasoned...

I have been spending too much time on TikTok lately. Which is probably a poor use of time, however, occasionally something interesting comes of it. For instance, I recently was just flipping through content and found a song sung by bella.dandrea which is a "Norse Pagan" (for why this is in quotations, read here ) song meant to be sung to your daughter as you are waking her up in the morning. The lyrics are as follows: There once was a little lady Little idel leigh And she stood up tall and proud The drums they are so quiet To the way that her feet pound Freya smiling down Idunn she’s oh so proud Nott so joyous Syf so happy Hamynga dares to grin Hel can’t help but stare The little lady there They all feel so proud Happy little lady found Chorus: Little idel leigh, del leigh, little idel lay Little idel leigh, del leigh, little idel lay Hey! (x2) I thought this was quite beautiful and it sent me down a rabbit hole on heathen lullabies, and what was out there. It will probably ...

I find myself circling back time and time again to the story of the wooing of Gerðr. You are probably wondering why. It is true from a modern perspective that the story is extremely problematic. (And I will say right now that the subject matter of this post may be troubling to some and you may not want to read any further.) I am sure there are a lot of parts of the Lore that we all are often tempted to gloss over, and this is probably top of the list. That probably is exactly our problem in approaching it, however. Sometimes you can’t go into something with a modern mindset and take anything of value from it, and the importance of the story isn’t the story itself, but its value.  Now what value can I possibly deriving from a story that seems to glorify rape culture and remove female agency? That is exactly where we get stuck with this story, is making assumptions based on modern understandings. There are quite a few scholars who try to pick apart whether or not Gerðr has feminine a...

So I have been on a bit of a hiatus, but for an important reason. I was getting married. I have had the blog entry below already written but in need of some editing for months, but I have a lot of ideas in the works most of the time. Now was the right time to put it out there, because our marriage speaks further to the topic at hand. We were supposed to be married last July, but of course pandemic times put plans on hold. We were blessed this year to have a small gathering of 26 people, and then through the wonders of modern technology livestream to friends and family all over the world.  Our ceremony was a meaningful and moving combination of our faiths as well bringing in elements of our combined story and emphasizing the importance of family in all its unique forms. At first I wanted to keep faith out of our ceremony, but my spouse wanted his father to say a prayer, and I knew that this would be a very meaningful moment between father and son and that it must happen. As such I a...