Simplicity in Devotion
Recently, over the past couple weeks, I've gotten back into digging through various sagas and folk stories to learn more about the beings that are mentioned in them. The stories are great but something grabbed my attention, and that's how many troll-women and giant-women (often used interchangeably in Icelandic literature and sometimes Norwegian, but not as much as you move west into Swedish stories) are mentioned briefly in a line or two but still hold important parts. Because of this I've made it a point to learn their names and stories, and as I dive more into reading, I keep finding more and more (I think I'm at 62 or 63 on my list currently). It's become a devotional act to sit with their names, consider their meanings, what parts they played, how they interacted with the "hero" of the story and more. Each new tröllkona and gýgr is another piece of women that have been mostly forgotten to time. Though I don't speak to them directly, remembering their names, hearing their stories, and sitting with their information feels like a devotional experience to me. It's really opened my eyes as someone who's practice operates almost completely in trolls, risar, jotnar, and thursar (with an exception or two) to how much more I can find so long as I am willing to learn and research (something I've debated offering to Vafþrúðnir). Maybe I will offer to some of them, so their names and stories aren't forgotten. Maybe I'll add the ones without names to my hearth cult as the gygjar and trollkonur who have been lost to time. I don't know if they'd appreciate it, but I know that I would enjoy it.
