Þungt ymur Þorrinn

Engan órétt þoldu aldrei láttu þó þínu hjarta hatrið spilla þey, þey og ró. He/him or they/them. Heathen decolonial anarchist from occupied Lenapehoking. This blog is mostly for Old Norse mythology and religion, Icelandic folklore, and North Germanic linguistics. Folkish fuck off. 

[thorraborinn]

As a follow-up to my last question. I realized that a lot of those people are citing the same person. J.G. Harker's blog Norse Mythology and Germanic Lore. From what I understand, this person is also the host of the podcast Norse Mythology: The Unofficial Guide. I don't know if this person is really a credible source even though I have been told in those subreddits that they're credible even though they're not an academic because they cite up-to-date research on what they're talking about, but I'm skeptical, especially because the people most frequently citing this person don't like Loki or his modern-day worshipers, and they don't even seem to like Thor either, possibly. This person is supposedly not a pagan, but they use a lot of the suspicious language that these types tend to use even if they're citing scholars like Lieberman, Lindau, and Larrington. 

I think I just need to look into their sources a lot more, but I just wanted to let you know that I found what I think is one of the sources of this and to know if you've heard of this person or have other places where these points could be coming from. I know I'm always cautious when it comes to lurking in those subreddits or even on Facebook and some groups because just because I know something's inner sources doesn't mean that the person talking about it is interpreting it correctly. They might not actually want to have a discussion on the merits of the argument or are particularly arguing in good faith if they're just sharing their interpretations or speculations. I don't deny that the Norse had an idea of good or bad/good or evil, but I do question if we can really know what they thought given they were not a homogeneous society but rather a group of different tribes in different places that often feuded with each other, and when it comes to the gods, the blanket statement that they say is, "Well, look, Loki was evil, so that's why he wasn't worshiped" and "If he was evil, that's why they didn't worship him," which is, to me, circular reasoning when they won't apply that to other gods who are in similar places like Heimdall or many of the goddesses, and I bring this up because I know this person argues that the gods have this paternal inheritance thing in myth, which I don't entirely disagree with, but it's like they forget or purposely choose to ignore that Heimdall and Týr either didn't have a father in the poems or their parents were both jötnar. This is not even to include the fact that scholars are equally as prone to these sorts of things as laypeople even though they try not to be because they want the gods to fit into neat categories too, more often than not because they want it to be like some taxonomical species system, like it's science rather than oral stories that were far more fluid than we often give them credit for being simply because we don't live in a world that has that level of oral transmission. Most of our stuff is written down, and so once it's written down, it becomes this concrete thing that can be checked against itself extensively, and I don't really think people, including scholars, often realize how much being able to read and write impacts storytelling when you only have your memory to rely on. especially because memory is not consistent over time for one person, but it also varies so wildly between different people even if there are constant through lines and narrative consistencies across the stories, and of course poetry tends to be a lot more rigid because of linguistic restrictions upon the medium compared to prose, but memory still impacts it, and I wish the Pagan community would actually realize that more.

Did tumblr get rid of answering privately? I did that very recently. For anyone reading, this is the previous response.

I wasn't familiar with J.G. Harker but briefly skimming his substack, he seems a lot more measured than the kinds of things you mentioned in that last ask that I guess are coming from people who quote him. From his essay on Loki:

Most of the Æsir clan and their extended membership are individuals with deep flaws (except maybe Thor). Theyʼre guilty of incest, promiscuity, perversion, cowardice, and even having their mouths used as urinals (Lokasenna stanza 34). Unlike the gods of certain other religions, their behavior is not used as a model for proper living.

I agree with you that Harker's scope is narrow but he's clear about that, it's narrow by design, because he restricts himself to talking about things with clear evidence. From the same essay:

The Loki we see in our sources is a product of a particular time and place in Scandinavia. Surely he is different in some ways from older religious concepts that came together to form his character during the late Viking Age and he would be somewhat more different today if ancient Norse paganism had not died out in the medieval period. With regard to the way Loki is portrayed in our sources, it isn’t accurate to refer to him with any modern terminology regarding gender and sexuality, and to be clear, that includes words such as straight and cis.

I see him making the occasional disclaimer that what he says about people a thousand years dead shouldn't matter for the values of modern people; it's not a surprise to me that there are people who ignore that but I don't think there's anything he can do about that. I know I've never been able to prevent it.

To be clear I'm not endorsing or approving of him, I skimmed one site and I haven't listened to his podcast and I'm not going to, and I just found out he exists today and I'm probably going to forget he exists in about an hour.

Beyond that I don't know what to say other than to repeat either the things I said in my last response, or to repeat things you said back to you. I have extremely limited attention for these kinds of arguments among heathens.

[Edit] sorry if this sounds dismissive, but I'm really checked out of this stuff these days and am way better off for it.

[thorraborinn]

How can I go about explaining to somebody (or what resources can I show them) that solidarity doesn’t and shouldn’t stop at the colonial border of where they reside? Context: I was explaining to someone in my circle of consistent interaction that building community and solidarity needs to go far past the people within the same colonial borders we live in together because I should give a fuck about not just the patriarchy of our occupied turtle island but also give equally a fuck about the patriarchy of places like various countries in the Middle East, and this person told me that they read a testimonial excerpt in some book about global feminism and the excerpt she read was about a woman who fled domestic violence & overarching societal violence against women in the Middle East to America only to be disgusted at how women treated each other in America, and the question I was left with by this person is “Who am I to tell that person that I’m in solidarity with their oppression, solidarity they didn’t ask for because it doesn’t look like oppression to them?” and I was extremely taken aback to be completely honest….

Sorry, I started a response to this around when you sent the question and saved a mostly-finished draft but I so rarely think about this site anymore that I kind of forgot for a while.

I don't know that I'm the best person to respond to this, and it can be difficult to give advice without knowing more about the situation. It seems there's an opening to frame this disagreement as not about whether or not to be in solidarity, but about what form it should take, with the other person favoring [avoidance of paternalistic imposition] as the appropriate response. Maybe they have an unhelpful understanding of the semantics of the word "solidarity." I'm triangulating a guess from abstraction here, but a generous interpretation is that they fear that their expression of solidarity will result in paternalistically imposing your own values on others; or in the ungenerous interpretation is that they're using this (admittedly quite real possibility) as an excuse to do nothing. The first thing I would do in your situation is find that book and read at least the relevant parts and see if you think the other person is misunderstanding it, or if you have general disagreements with the book. Maybe it's me who's interpreting wrong, but it sounds like this person is arguing that because the woman from the book has disagreements about the west, she shouldn't be supported in escaping domestic violence? It's hard for me to buy that they're saying that, so some kind of communication error is very likely (even if it's just me misunderstanding the situation).

But taken at face-value, the way I'd respond to this person is to say that solidarity doesn't mean imposing your own values on someone else, nor is it about agreeing with each other, but about materially improving others' ability to determine their own lives. Solidarity - as opposed e.g. to charity -- doesn't assume that you always know what's best for others, and it isn't granted and withheld like a carrot and stick. This doesn't mean you have to support things you're opposed to, but it definitely does mean that people don't have to perform a perfect victimhood to demonstrate themselves worthy of your solidarity. It's not about having a minimum of agreement with each other but about relation to power. These systems of oppression are global and so our liberation is interconnected with the liberation of others globally; this is not to say that it's uniform globally. Especially being a citizen of the American empire, international solidarity is a natural conclusion of understanding of the international character of the systems we're fighting.

Anyway the thing I got caught up on that delayed me responding was that I remember reading an interview from some 5+ years ago about one of the squats in Greece that housed a combination of Greek anarchists and refugees, and how they had vastly different and clashing views about a wide variety of things, but how they were able to arrange things so that these theoretical clashes didn't prevent them from living side-by-side and supporting each other. I can't find that particular one now. But there's such an overabundance of stuff to read on this subject that I have a hard time singling anything out. The idea of letting states control the horizon of my solidarity by means of national borders is difficult for me to conceive of to respond to it. I find it more likely that this other person's position was poorly articulated or misunderstood than that it's actually "internationalism is bad."

[thorraborinn]

I've noticed a trend on Reddit where people claim that Odin isn't fighting his fate; I'd like to know if you've seen any similar comments and what you think. This idea is frequently accompanied by the claim that the Norse people saw their gods as entirely good and the jötnar as entirely evil. I feel like this take lacks nuance on how the gods were actually seen, seeing as we don’t really have much in general, let alone about how the Norse viewed good and bad. Never mind the questionable use of etymology in terms of the words “good” and “evil,” because just because Old Norse had words that roughly translate to that doesn’t mean the underlying conceptual framework is the same, and the words in English are heavily influenced by Christianity, but this seems to be ignored in terms of the fact that the Christian view on good and evil has changed significantly over the last 1,000 years.   

I know I’m essentially asking two different questions, but the reason these two things seem to be intertwined is because these people are trying to justify everything the gods did as being viewed as good simply because they protected humans, and even though they did things like chaining Fenrisúlfr and raping women, it wouldn’t have been viewed as wrong but simply as something that Odin had to do because of fate. I see a problem with this because I don't think we'll ever really know whether the Norse people would have seen their gods' actions as purely good and treated them as benevolent deities simply because they protected them. I suspect that this idea is heavily influenced by Christian dualism, which is not being acknowledged, and I recall instances in the sagas where the gods were not viewed favorably, despite being worshiped. This doesn’t even include local beliefs in spirits who definitely weren’t viewed as purely good and who are mostly ignored in contemporary paganism in my experience. Hopefully, this makes sense.

I've had a hard time responding to this because it seems inadequate to just call it incorrect and move on. It's incorrect in a way that I think can give us some insight into the risks of reconstructed religion and the responsibilities that come with taking them on. I have a lot more to say about this, and have repeatedly started and stopped trying to say it in the drafts of this post, but that isn't what you're asking me to do, and I should save it for another time.

What I'll say briefly is that I've long had concerns that, as a modern religion still in an early development stage (if we're optimistic about its future), the foundation of heathenry is being formed in the context of social media that hijacks our need for community and redirects it to serve corporate interests to our detriment. I think the arguments you're seeing rise to the surface, not necessarily by anyone's conscious choice, for their fitness in an argumentative social media environment. They're not only good at shutting down arguments because of the asymmetry involved (it takes a lot more work for me to make the claims I did in my bullet points below), they also maintain an amount of exclusivity because few people would want to take these positions because they suck (if you think this is what heathenry is, the obvious choice is to just not be heathen… nobody is making you). I really do not have the capacity to believe that someone else believes the meanings of the words "good" and "evil" have been exactly consistent for their entire existence and someone who says they believe that is lying, possibly including to themselves.

I already linked it below but I'm gonna highlight a recommendation for the paper "De Natura Deorum: A Few Theses on Gods and Pantheons" by Jan A. Kozák.

Anyway here's my bullet-pointed actual response:

There was never a single, cohesive "Old Norse religion," but a broad spectrum of beliefs that differed regionally and probably along gender and economic lines, so at best any blanket statements about Norse religion generally are limited in scope. Clearly certain features would have been common throughout, but that has to be argued for and not assumed.

sub-point to the previous: the preservation of the myths that we still have record of was influenced by a Norwegian warrior aristocracy that we shouldn't assume to be representative of the entire medieval Nordic world.

sub-sub-point: the only place other than Saxo (who I'll remind you was not even attempting to relay mythology accurately, and who hated the gods almost as much as he hated women) that we get any reference to an abusive relationship between Óðinn and Rindr is in a praise poem for either Sigurðr jarl or Hákon jarl, the latter of whom was in fact a mass rapist as he believed he was entitled to be by his office of king, so this claim of an ontological buffer between the world of myth and the actual real world falls pretty fucking flat. Heathens like Hákon jarl because he was the last bastion of heathenry in Norway and don't have the guts to face the fact that because of him it died without honor. Sorry if that's cheesy but I don't know how else to say it.

We have basically no idea what people thought about the myths. There is good reason to doubt that the mythic genre approach to the gods was how they thought of them in other contexts.

The gods disagree with each other in myths all the time so I don't know how anyone squares that with the idea that they are all only capable of good. How were Óðinn and Þórr both doing good when they went tit-for-tat alternately blessing and cursing Starkaðr?

We have only a kind of weak idea of what anyone thought about the gods at all, and then nearly only for the land-owning elite, and all of this needs to be taken critically due to the time between the events described and their recording.

Norse people were capable of recognizing things as "good" and "evil" (or maybe we should just say "bad") but it's extremely doubtful that these were fundamental and unchangeable principles, and if we're to take seriously the claim that Norse religion was animistic then we should understand good and evil as emerging from negotiable relationalities rather than prior to it.

I know this is beating a dead horse but Þorvaldr holbarki worshiped Surtr. The recon crisis-avoidance response is that it was propitiation rather than worship but if we're "orthoprax not orthodox" (which might not be a given, but I'm used to people treating it like it is) then there's no real difference that matters.

The theme of unintentionally bringing about prophecy in the attempt to avoid it recurs throughout Norse literature and there's no reason to doubt that it's exactly what it looks like.

Rape is always wrong with no exceptions and a religion that says otherwise is a bad religion that you shouldn't practice.

[thorraborinn]

@avatar216 sorry I'm taking long to answer, I've been busy lately. The short version is that I agree with you but I'll get around to the long answer some time soon.

[thorraborinn]

Hi, do you have your writings anywhere else? I was very interested in your philosophical posts and how they intersect with heathenry. You're a good writer and I'd love to read more. Thank you.

Thanks for the message. No, I don't have anything anywhere else. I have been stuck in a "before I write this, first I should read this; but before I read this, I should read that" loop. Plus general disconnection from heathens.

You might consider looking into Thomas Nail's concept of kinetic materialism. The direction I was moving in was worse and less developed but I think had things in common with that. He has a lot of books but there's a lot of the same stuff between them so if you want to read him maybe just skip right to the latest one. This article is the one that got my attention.

[tastesoftamriel]

Donate to Please help me escape Indonesia!, organized by Natalia Lee

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS FUNDRAISER IS UK BASED AS THIS IS WHERE I WAS FORMERLY BASED, AND M… Natalia Lee needs your support for Please help me

Simply put, it has become impossible for me to remain here in Bali. Not only financially, but in terms of my physical safety and survivial. Even though most people think of Bali as some idyllic “paradise”, for those who live here, reality is different, and my case is worse than most.

Back in June, a friend of mine from the UK sent me a care package of UK snacks. What was also in the care package was a THC vape pen: fine in the UK, but what my friend did not know is that this is super illegal in Indonesia. Even though I didn’t ask for or buy the pen, because it was sent to my address and my name, my home was raided. I, my father, and my driver were taken in for questioning. Due to administrative delays and a long weekend I spent 6 days in Polda Bali, the central police compound on the island, in the narcotics division. Living with no privacy on a small cot surrounded by police who would spend all day smoking while I was trying to quit nicotine, eating foods I could not stand, and watching TikTok on full volume. They would also regularly harass me, inappropriately probing into my private life, my relationships, demanding to know why I don’t have children, making insinuations about my sex, and displaying an absolute lack of regard for mental health. At one point it got so bad I suffered a psychotic break. I was eventually released but the ordeal has not only given me PTSD, but has brought up past trauma as well. Since then I’ve been constantly struggling just to stay alive.

My mental health is in full-blown crisis, but Indonesia has limited mental health services, and even those that exist often come with long wait times and high fees. My family and Indonesian society in general have a very tenuous grasp of mental health and will actively make my bipolar worse while also forcing me to mask and pretend to be coping which in turn exacerbates my state even more. Every day I am slipping further and further down the rabbit hole and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going.

On top of this, being Indonesia, my family had to pay some £10,000 to get me out out Polda Bali. Money I am now expected to pay back without any job or stable income. In truth, this debt isn’t about the money, rather it is being used by my father to keep me here in his house where I, and the rest of my family, have to suffer his narcissistic and psychopathic outbursts. Every day it seems to get worse as his mood becomes more erratic and he is more and more prone to sudden aggression, coercive control, and displays of violence. We all live in fear that one day soon he will kill one, if not all of us.

Compounding this, as many will have seen on social media, tensions in Indonesia are at breaking point and Bali is no exception. There are protests regularly and government buildings, including the police compound where I was held, are being targeted. While I have nothing to do with these protests and do not attend, we live very near to the military police HQ (Brimob) on the island and are afraid that martial law will soon be imposed. Worse yet, I am ethnically part Chinese-Indonesian. While this would not be significant information in the West, here in Indonesia the Chinese population are regularly targeted for racial violence. This is partly due to long standing inter-ethnic distrust, but moreso because in times of crisis the government will try to save themselves by driving the peoples’ anger towards ethnic minorities. And we are one of the most visible and most othered minorities in the country. Many of my Chinese friends around the country are living in fear that they could be targeted next.

Ultimately, I just cannot stay in Indonesia. Every day is already a struggle just to stay alive and to be blunt, I won’t survive an other year here. This envornment is not only toxic, it is going to kill me. I have tried to find a way out of this situation but there’s nothing here in Indonesia that I can do. It’s all dead ends. My only hope is to go to Europe, find work, and start to build up a life that I can actually live. The irony of course is that to find a job, you need to be in Europe, but to go to Europe you already need to have a job offer. Catch 22. So, my best chance is the Chancenkarte, a job seeking visa in Germany. Unfortunately in order to even qualify to apply, I need to have just over €13,000 show money to prove that I am a legitimate job seeker. Money which I do not currently have.

I have tried every resource and connection I have at my disposal to get out of this pit but nothing has worked and despite my skills and capacities, and dozens of wonderful people in Europe who would happily vouch for and help support me, my passport and myopic migration laws are holding me back. This is my last ditch effort to save myself. If I can raise enough money to apply for a job seeking visa, I can finally escape this nightmare I’ve being held in, move to a stable country, get the help I need, find work, pay off my family, and be free to live my own life.

Any help, no matter how little, is a step in the right direction for me. I am not expecting money for free; as a Social Anthropologist with an MA in Humanitarian and Environmental Crises from the UK, I have been offering editing, proofreading, and university-level academic coaching services for over four years. I am a hard worker and do not expect handouts. If you find yourself in need of my services, any donation above £100 will come with editing assistance for any 2500 word essay.

I also ran the popular Elder Scrolls recipe and worldbuilding blog, @tastesoftamriel/Talviel's Kitchen between 2017-2024. If you would like a custom stylised fantasy tavern menu (please bear in mind I'm an Elder Scrolls expert but can attempt other franchises) of 4-6 courses, donations above £25 are eligible for one!

[tastesoftamriel]

Hi all, just wanted to thank you for all the support so far, and to give a minor update.

This week marks a year since I left Europe. I am in a period of mourning the life I had to leave behind, and my mental health has gotten so bad that it is now impacting my physical health. I have been bedridden for a couple of days now, and frankly my will to live is tenuous at best. I will probably be okay, but realising that it's been a year since the life I built for myself over seven years is truly over is taking its toll on me.

Donations have stalled over the past four days, so if possible, it would be really wonderful if you could boost this fundraiser on whichever social media platforms you use. I haven't had a huge amount of luck doing this as my social circle online is small, so any help in this regard would be so very appreciated.

You can also donate at my Ko-Fi page.

Stay safe, eat well, be kind. ~Tal

[thorraborinn]

Dumézil, Ideology, and the Indo-Europeans.pdf

The author suggests that Dumézil's most important contribution was his insistence on the ideological character of myth, while other aspe

Beginning with a situation where similar -- but not identical -- phenomena are distributed widely over space, the reconstructive endeavor constitutes that state of affairs as a problem to be resolved through an audacious temporal regression. The goal is to reach (i.e. posit) a single, primordial, originary point that lets one view the phenomena scattered in the present not just as similar, but as genetically related. Archeologists keep fighting over when and where to locate this magical point, not knowing it is a space of the imagination. One reaches it via a flight from the diversity of the present to the most ancient past, and the further one regresses the less there is to resist the projections of one's desire for perfect unity.

[thorraborinn]

The reason I ask about the land lord thing is because I’m having conflict with a very close friend of mine who wants to build a studio/one bedroom in her backyard so that she still has an income when she retires and she keeps telling me that she just wants to build a space for people most in need during the housing crisis and she has no interest in charging more or equal to the current local rent prices.

Sorry to hear about the conflict you're having. It sounds like this is less a matter of detached analysis of capitalism and more that your friend has a justifiable fear of failing to accumulate the wealth needed for survival, a fear that keeps many of us replicating these exploitative systems. But there's not really a way to get around that this is leveraging power differences in relation to property, not to mention that the people "most in need" are the ones who couldn't even afford this. Your friend might be able to mitigate some of the problems caused by someone more focused on maximizing wealth extraction, but can't change the fundamental structure of the relationship. I don't have any advice for you unfortunately. Maybe if I understood money better I could suggest an alternative but my retirement plan is to die in a work accident.

[thorraborinn]

Do you have any resources/reading material on why landlords are bad?

Leftist critiques specifically of landlords emerge from leftist critiques of private property in general so it's uncommon for someone to lay out stuff just about landlords, though here is a recent and beginner-facing thing that is basically that: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/revoluciana-what-is-rent

But you're probably gonna want to read about private property in general and I don't really know where to start you on that, you can always poke around at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/property?page=1 but maybe someone else can shout out specific pieces.

[thorraborinn]

This happened a while back but I suddenly remembered - I've read another academic paper, which someone wrote as a rebuttal to Ginevra's Sigyn etymology?

On the grounds that we have relatively little surviving texts and most of those are Christianized / very heavily focused on men, even though women featured prominently in Viking society. It also refutes it on the basis that Ginevra's paper is based largely on the assumption of Loki as a fire god, and argues that Sigyn/Sigin - lacking the long -i's - were names attested among women during that time period.

I had a point to this. Um. Is there a reason why Loki is still considered a fire deity, outside of the misidentification with Logi? I've seen the interpretation of his parents' union as lightning striking a tree and generating wildfire, and some associations with the kaun rune I've never found any historical basis for. Ginevra proposes a link to Prometheus, which I don't inherently disagree with - except Prometheus is a fire thief associated with trickery and enlightenment, not a fire deity in and of himself.

Within Norse studies Loki is one of the most debated figures and people haven't stopped arguing about him for hundreds of years, and if there's any indication that this might be starting to slow it's probably because more people are concluding that we'll just never really have answers to a lot of these questions. It's not a surprise that "fire" keeps coming up when nothing else sticks either. I think most of the time when people go right to "fire" to explain Loki they're trying to simplify and streamline what really is irreducibly complex. But rejecting all association with fire can sometimes be doing that as well.

In Grimm's time before Verner's Law (an important sound change law for explaining the distribution of voiced/unvoiced pairs of consonants) was established, Loki~Logi did seem more reasonable. Nature mythology (i.e. explaining divine matters in terms of what natural phenomenon they represent) had a nice long run and filtered heavily into the popular imaginary where it continues to circulate, not just with regard to Loki but really to polytheism in general. This creates a solution in search of a problem -- if Loki has to be the god of a natural phenomenon, then what phenomenon? Fire seems to resolve that. And then of course Wagner made Loki a fire god and presumably that still has an impact on the popular reception of Norse myth. We can easily dispense with all of this but it has a lasting effect on people's beliefs and expectations. Also, let's acknowledge that fire is a potent metaphor, and it's just easy to compare Loki to it: both are simultaneously helpful and dangerous; both cause transformation, both creation and destruction; both cast light on otherwise obscure things. Fire is also easily available. If you can choose to believe your god is present with you with the flick of a lighter it might be pretty tempting to accept that belief.

Meanwhile there are more peer-reviewable reasons to associate Loki with fire, though they do admittedly change the nature of that connection. In an earlier time Loki might have been identified directly with fire, the way Logi is, or like how Ægir is with the sea. Now, it's more common to associate him more narrowly with hearth fires, and not as the hearth fire itself, maybe more like how Njörðr is a "sea god" but isn't the sea the way Ægir is (digression: if you don't like Ginevra's stuff about Loki and Sigyn just wait until you hear what he says about Njörðr). The evidence for this is mostly folklore collected by Axel Olrik (link in Danish) and more recently taken back up by Eldar Heide (now writing after the discovery of the Snaptun Stone). But someone who isn't careful might start with this more recent, more nuanced body of theory, and take it as support for that older layer of theory that is still floating around.

Maybe a digression, but my own thinking on the matter is influenced by Algirdas Greimas' description of a complex of beings surrounding the hearth in a barn where grain was stored and dried on Lithuanian farms, chapter 6 of Of Gods and Men. There are multiple household deities pertaining to the sphere of the hearth fire and/or living in the hearth, without being fire, being both protective and vindictive, associated with spots of reflected light (see Olrik/Heide on Loki's folkloric association with the same) and including some bits about these beings being bound or chased around angrily to beat them up (in case unclear, I am making a comparison to Loki running away from Ægir's hall). I'm oversimplifying and I definitely don't think we could lift the Lithuanian customs and drop them directly into a Norse context, but I do think they broaden the field of possibilities for what we might imagine for lost Norse customs.

Heathen misunderstanding of academic theory is a complicating factor. Ginevra himself is one of the best examples. He's not committed to the idea that the Loki of the Eddas is a fire god (though the way he abbreviates his position can lead to believe he is; also, his Sigyn etymology is in no way reliant on Loki having ever been a fire god). He's saying that Loki is the inheritor of narrative and phrasal structures that were once associated with a fire god, some 5,000ish years prior (and yes, that he has some vestigial aspects of fire-godhood without necessarily being a "fire god"; and yes, that Sigyn gets her name directly from the wife of this fire god). This is even more true of what he says about Prometheus, whose story he says only contains "partial reflexes" of these narrative and phrasal structures. Though there is an obvious family resemblance to old stuff like Dumézil's "Heimdallr and Agni are the same god and are fire" the differences are important.

A while back I saw that a bunch of people on Tumblr were spreading the idea that Loki was originally a hearth spirit, later made into a god. I'm mostly cool with this theory (though I don't maintain it myself), but it was being spread as if it were established fact, and it turned out many of them had never actually read any of the papers on which the theory is based, which makes it more likely that the body of theories, explanations, and evidence claims are subject to drift and misunderstanding. I believe one of the major motivations in this turn toward [Loki/Ash Lad/hearth vätte] was arguments with Nokeans. If it's being treated as unquestioned that Loki was a hearth spirit from early times, it's impossible to claim that he was a "late invention" or some other dismissive claim that he shouldn't be recognized at all. My point is, what modern pagans believe about the past is conditioned by what license it gives them to act in the present. As much as some Lokeans might claim not to care about reconstruction, they are usually deeply committed to whatever evidence there is for recognition of Loki in medieval and earlier times. And I've never met a Nokean who said "Viking age peoples worshiped Loki, but shouldn't have." Both the full-blown "fire god" and the more nuanced "associated with hearths" are, in addition to being basic theories about the past, legitimizations of current practices (by both sides of debates -- "Loki is a fire god" is at least partly associable with Nokeans emphasizing his role in ragnarök). I don't want it to sound like I'm accusing everyone of picking their beliefs opportunistically but I do just think it's unavoidable that we all have biases based on our experiences and I do in fact think the structure of social media and various struggles over social capital are having impacts on heathen theology in ways that aren't good for anyone.

Finally, religious pagans have concerns about religious change over time that scholars don't have to worry about. We all know religions and myths and customs change over time but a believer may have to maintain that along with some kind of metastability underneath it all. Ginevra doesn't have to concern himself with what Loki himself was up to during all this linguistic and religious change. He is free to discuss free-floating narrative structures, and even names of deities, without worrying about any underlying loci of individuality. Pagans may or may not get away with that, depending on their theology, but combined with pagans' tendency to appeal to earlier forms of things as a means of legitimization, it's often hard for them not to see claims about [developments in reception of deities by religious communities] as about the deities themselves, when the idea wouldn't even occur to the author to think about. I don't know how exactly this effects the fire debate but it's underlyingly present any time a bunch of pagans are discussing academic theory, and I suspect it's why people for whom the Eddas are important sometimes misunderstand attempts to reconstruct stuff about Proto-Indo-European mythology.

I have more to say but this is getting unwieldy as it is. If you find that paper I'd be interested in reading it but I don't see how anyone can rebut Ginevra's Sigyn etymology on any grounds other than phonology, since it's a phonological argument. You'd have to explain why actually we should expect Þjóðólfr to have fucked up his poetry, or why actually Sievers' Law should have worked differently in this case and a nominative *seikʷ-n̥-iéh₂ would actually have produced a genitive **Sigynar or something like that. I'm open to someone proving it wrong but it's not gonna be me because I've failed every time I've tried (linguist speak for "I agree with him").

[thorraborinn]

Can you find a point in recent history where “peaceful protests” actually worked against an authoritarian regime? Having a hard time not laughing in these passive ass liberals faces.

There probably isn't much you can do about it unless they, or people they're close to, get gassed and beaten and labeled violent while they're just standing there holding a sign, and then get patched up by the same people they previously wanted to call the cops on.

[thorraborinn]

Do you know of any (preferably free to access) papers and/or books that discuss or mention the etymology of the Nornir? (the plural word, not their individual names)

Most people who look into it hit a dead end too quickly to write a whole paper about it. In The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, Karen Bek-Pedersen's entire commentary on the etymology is a quotation from Folke Ström (Nordisk Hedendom – Tro och sed i Förkristen Tid) and one paragraph of discussion:

"The original meaning of the word norn is disputed. In connection with the prophesying function of the nornir it has been set in relation to the Swedish dialect word norna (nyrna), a verb which means ‘secretly communicate’. Another etymology connects the word to an Indo-European root ner, meaning ‘twist’, ‘wind’. This should stem from the notion of a fate-thread, which the nornir twist and twine." (Ström, 1985 [1961], p. 202) As evidence for nornir twisting and twining threads is so sparse, the suggested link to thread production should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. The suggestion of ‘whispering, carrying messages in secret’ is more interesting, especially in the light of the discussions in this chapter. The Indo-European root (s)ner- has two meanings — ‘murmuring, rumbling’ and ‘turning, winding, drawing together’ (AeW, s.v.; Pokorny, 1959–69, s.v.) — and a link between them is by no means impossible. Of these two options, ‘murmuring’ seems more convincing, as the nornir speak, making decrees and pronouncing verdicts. ‘Turning, drawing together’ also fits into the greater picture, albeit less directly related to the nornir. However, producing any proof for an etymology of the term norn remains beyond reach.

This is also what Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon says, except that he doesn't even express a preference between the possibilities.

I don't know of anything else that adds something to the above.

[embervoices]

Huh! Fascinating.

The only bit of lore I remember clearly on the Nornir has to do with them collecting and pouring water from Urdabrunnr on the roots of Yggdrasil. I always assumed the idea that they spin threads was people correlating them with the Greek Moirai... It works fine for modern lore, but I didn't think it was old lore.

[thorraborinn]

The connection between norns and threads production comes from Helgakviða Hundingsbana I. Pettit's translation:

They twisted fate-strands [ørlǫgþættir] with strength, when he broke strongholds in Brálundr; they set in order the golden strings and fastened them under the middle of the moon’s hall. East and west they concealed the ends, where the praiseworthy one possessed lands in between Neri's kinswoman threw onto the north-road one fastening — she decreed that it should always hold.

This is the only example that connects them directly to threads, which is why Bek-Pedersen favors the "secret communication" interpretation. She also wrote the article "Are the Spinning Nornir Just a Yarn?" in which she speculates about what, precisely, they're doing here. Her conclusion does still work with the *ner- interpretation above, but you're right that spinning is not nearly as present in Norse mythology as the popular reception reflects.

In Völuspá, the norns are said to carve ørlög on pieces of wood.

Weaving can be associated with fate in Norse literature by means of Darraðarljóð but the beings doing it there are not norns, but valkyrjur.

[thorraborinn]

Do you know of any (preferably free to access) papers and/or books that discuss or mention the etymology of the Nornir? (the plural word, not their individual names)

Most people who look into it hit a dead end too quickly to write a whole paper about it. In The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, Karen Bek-Pedersen's entire commentary on the etymology is a quotation from Folke Ström (Nordisk Hedendom – Tro och sed i Förkristen Tid) and one paragraph of discussion:

"The original meaning of the word norn is disputed. In connection with the prophesying function of the nornir it has been set in relation to the Swedish dialect word norna (nyrna), a verb which means ‘secretly communicate’. Another etymology connects the word to an Indo-European root ner, meaning ‘twist’, ‘wind’. This should stem from the notion of a fate-thread, which the nornir twist and twine." (Ström, 1985 [1961], p. 202) As evidence for nornir twisting and twining threads is so sparse, the suggested link to thread production should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. The suggestion of ‘whispering, carrying messages in secret’ is more interesting, especially in the light of the discussions in this chapter. The Indo-European root (s)ner- has two meanings — ‘murmuring, rumbling’ and ‘turning, winding, drawing together’ (AeW, s.v.; Pokorny, 1959–69, s.v.) — and a link between them is by no means impossible. Of these two options, ‘murmuring’ seems more convincing, as the nornir speak, making decrees and pronouncing verdicts. ‘Turning, drawing together’ also fits into the greater picture, albeit less directly related to the nornir. However, producing any proof for an etymology of the term norn remains beyond reach.

This is also what Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon says, except that he doesn't even express a preference between the possibilities.

I don't know of anything else that adds something to the above.

[determinate-negation]

just a reminder that i am still managing the fundraiser for my friend mohammed @save-mohamed-family

he’s with his 3 young kids trying to remove debris from their home and bury their relatives who were killed in a bombing much earlier during this genocidal war. please keep supporting him and his family even through the ceasefire, they still need help

Save Mohammed and his family from the Gaza Genocide

Hi, I'm a grad student in NYC who has been active in Palestine solidarity for a while and am absolutely horrified and heartbroken by the amo

[determinate-negation]

this chuffed campaign is automatically ending in a week, please keep supporting mohammed in the meantime.

[moxayesh]

The last post, there is only 7000 pounds left for the success of my campaign. I need you to pay attention to it and donate. I am now busy cleaning the rubble of my house to put the tent for my family. I need your support at the last time. Thank you. I will come back in 3 days. I hope the campaign is over or at least it's almost over. Thank you all from my heart.

[moxayesh]

There are only 5500 left, can you stand with me because I don’t have internet in my entire area, it only costs you to make a reblog with writing some words to urge others to donate 🙏🏻

[thorraborinn]

[thorraborinn]