If Freyja wept tears of gold, we would expect them to be the colour of the drops above, right? However, in the Prose Edda, Snorri describes them as “red gold”, rauðr gull. (Gylf. 46) Was this just poetic license, or was gold different in the Middle Ages?
The Norse sea-god – if he reminded you of anyone in the Graeco-Roman pantheon, wouldn’t it be Neptune/Poseidon? And yet, when the medieval Icelanders were copying out Greek myths, they explained the god Saturn/Kronos to their readers as “Njord”. What did the two have in common, that Njord would stand for Saturn to an Icelander?
Odin and Brigit may not seem like the most similar deities, but they actually do have more in common than you might think. Both are patrons of poets, both give up an eye voluntarily, and both these losses are connected with water.
The Greek god Apollo is the most rational, artistic and fastidious of the Olympians. So why is an animal noted for its ravening nature part of his cult?
Horus is one of the oldest Egyptian gods, possibly reaching back to predynastic times. His conflict with Set, the desert-god, was one of the basic myths of Egyptian religion, long before Horus joined to the Isis-Osiris family.
In an earlier post, I discussed a possible magical formula for preserving and reviving dead body parts. This time I want to consider who these revived bits were being offered to: the giantesses.
This is a post by a Roman polytheist about Freyja. It has a lot of insights into the nature of the Lady, and how similar she is to Odin. All the Vanir are travelling deities, in one way or another, but I think with Freyja this gets overlooked.
There’s certainly no obvious reference to it in the surviving lore, where She’s…
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You might wonder, why are salmon wise? Their ability to return to their birthplace to spawn may have given rise to the idea that they had special knowledge. Their travelling between salt and fresh water shows an adaptability most fish don’t have, and their jumping (immortalized in the Celtic warrior’s salmon leap) is impressive, and gives them their English name (from Latin salire, to jump).
There are many figures in Irish myth and legend whose names are Finn or Find, or some variation, such as Fintan. Many of these are associated with inspiration and wisdom, and some also tap in the archetypes of the divine child and poet. The name means “fair, bright, white, lustrous, light-hued”, which connects it to Welsh Gwyn and the Gaulish god Vindonnus.
We Are Star Stuff 