Hearthside

I am of a few minds about Jotunn women in the Lore. To me the Jotunn represent a different tribe from the Aesir and Vanir, for better or for worse. They are often “othered” because their ways are different. (Then again, the Aesir and Vanir did not always get along either.) The Aesir have a tendency to marry or court Jotunn women, and fight with Jotunn men. So are the Jotunn really as monstrous as they are made out to be? It seems like if a Jotunn woman marries an Aesir then she becomes an Aesir.  Many have argued that the Jotunn are the raw forces of nature, that are to be respected and feared but not worshipped, but that also seems a bit reductive, like saying Thor is only the God of Thunder. Angrboða faces the same reductionist logic, with some people having suggested she is one and the same figure as Gullveig/Heiðr. They have even gone as far as to equate her with Gerðr’s mother, Aurboða, presumably just because their names are similar. My interest in Jotunn largely is surroundi...

It is not uncommon for me to pull from other sources for my Heathenry, looking at Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Baltic, or Slavic traditions to see if I can fill in some of the missing gaps in the Nordic sources. My interest lately has been going into pre-history, looking at the Proto-Indo-European root myths. In this case, I want to try to flesh out the Nordic “goddess.” There is so little preserved about goddesses, because I believe the Christians tried to intentionally erase them to take power away from Nordic women. Now I cannot reconstruct every goddess this way but I feel it is a solid way to construct the mother goddess, the earth goddess. In the Hellenic tradition she is the one known as Gaia. In Nordic traditions I would see her as Nerthus, and also as Jörð. Over time they became separate deities, but I think their roots both lie in the Proto-Indo-European goddess, Dʰéǵʰōm (earth) or Pleth₂wih (broad one). There is a huge problem in the Lore with goddesses being labelled as Jötunn, in ...