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In the Lore, which is what we heathens call the body of literature collectively chosen by the heathen community as our canon, Hodur is either Baldur's brother or his human rival for Nanna or both.  In the story in which Hodur and Baldur vie for the affections of Nanna, which ends with Baldur both winning the girl and getting killed, there are three basic versions in the lore. The lore has two stories in which Hodur and Baldur are brothers and a different story in which Hodur is a human warrior. In only one of these stories is Loki even a character in the story. In the non-Loki stories, Hodur and Baldur fight with swords. In the story with Loki, Baldur dies in a mock sacrifice that turns into a real one when weapons that can’t hurt him are hurled at him but one of them is magically turned into a lethal weapon. This weapon is made of mistletoe, the only substance which his mother has not made to promise not to hurt him—she made everything else promise because of a prophetic dream he had. This story is in one way a story about self fulfilling prophecy, and in another way about the nature of a sacrificed god who is also prophesied to rise again as king in the next universe.

Now, the novel gnosis: The reason Frigga did not bother asking mistletoe not to harm Baldur is because mistletoe was his own sacred plant. She must have not it wasn’t necessary to ask. But of course that is what also makes it perfect for a sacrificial ritual. Mistletoe is a liminal plant, neither of earth nor of air but partaking of both. It blooms and produces berries but they are poisonous. It grows without roots, and is green in the winter when its host tree is dormant. It’s a bundle of paradoxes, which is what makes it sacred. That is Baldur’s symbol when he is alive. But after his death, his symbol is the ox-eye daisy.  Daisies in general are also a symbol of the dead.

Continuing this series on my religious insights I gained while writing a novel, that is, novel gnosis. In Some Say Fire, Hel the goddess is called Hela. Hel the place is called Helheim.

Hela, the goddess

Heimdall is the Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge. After Odin sculpted humanity, there is a story in heathen Lore that the god Rig then fathered new kinds of humans, and most Asatruars consider Rig to be a name of Heimdall. 

In the Fireverse, Heimdall is partly a participant in a lot of the shenanigans that Thor and Loki get up to in Jotunheim, because he is the one who lets them in and out. He opens the Bridge for them when they go and listens for them to call on him to send down the Bridge for their return. He’s a friend to both of them. There is Lore that Thor does not walk on the Bridge because his mighty footfalls would destroy it, but in the Fireverse he walk on it like everyone else.

Garm is the helhound of Norse mythology. He is literally Hel's hound.

In the Fireverse, after Fenris is bound, Zisa misses having a puppy around the house, and takes steps to produce Garm. Garm’s parentage is kept secret and when he starts showing signs that he is not an ordinary dog he is sent to be Hel’s watchdog before anyone in Asgard guesses the truth. In the Fireverse, this is the secret behind Loki’s claim in Lokasenna to have had sex with Tyr’s wife.

Frigga wears cloud gray. Sometimes she wears a blue head scarf. In the stories in which she and Odin favor different champions, they are not truly antagonists but are engaging in a contest they both enjoy, pitting the universe’s two best minds against each other, somewhat like playing chess. There is one thing they genuinely disagree on, and that is the best way to handle prophecy. While Odin tries his best to fulfill prophecy, Frigga tries to use knowledge of the future to change the future.

Frigga makes a lot of fiber art, and makes all the clothes for Odin’s family. When Thor and Loki were unmarried and lived with Odin, that included them too.

In the Lore, Freyr the twin of Freya sends his servant/ avatar to woo Gerda in a story widely interpreted as a metaphor of the warmth of spring bringing fertile green growth to the earth. In that story, Freyr gives up his sword for marriage. This is interpreted to mean he becomes a god of peace when he marries, which is why his temples forbade weapons inside. The Asatru wedding ceremony includes the transfer of the groom's sword to the bride, which may be an echo of this tale. In Voluspa, the Prophecy of the Seeress, Freyr is foretold to wield antlers instead of a sword at Ragnarok. Because of his, he is sometimes depicted as an antlered god.

In the Fireverse, Freyr and Loki don’t really get along that well after Freyr’s marriage. Fireverse-Gerda was an important witch in Jotunheim and had been being considered to take over the spot that Hel had originally been expected to fill before becoming queen of the world of the dead. (At first Angrbodha didn’t know if Hel was going to survive birth, since she sloughed half her skin almost immediately, but after it became clear she was going to live it was thought she might become the priestess of the hot well of the Iron Woods, the keeper of the source of the river that powered Jotunheim’s thermosynthetic ecosystem.) So Gerda becoming part of Asgard society kind of messed up some of Loki’s relatives plans, and Loki wasn’t convinced Gerda really wanted to be there and that ticked him off. That is plot-driven story stuff, though, so I don’t know if any of it applies outside the Fireverse.

In the Fireverse, Freya’s big house Sessrumnir has the same characteristic as Frigga’s house in that both of the houses can generate whatever sort of room is needed at the moment, with whatever sort of décor and furnishings, while still having some permanent areas. Most of the cats live in the field with the warriors, but some of them live in the house.

Even though the name of Freya’s house means “many rooms” and traditionally all the dead that go to a particular god go inside the god’s house or the building set aside for them (such as Valhalla), in the Fireverse, Freya’s legion of warriors camp in the field of Folkvangr, between Freya’s house and the main road of Asgard. Freya’s army is not meant to be used at Ragnarok, but to survive Ragnarok and help build the new world. She doesn’t have her entire army train every day the way Odin’s warriors do, but some of her warriors do choose to battle each other as training. There are also combat sports contests such as jousting tournaments, occasionally. Freya’s warriors can choose to participate in such contests or not. As a nation-building army, not all the members of her army are combat oriented, even though they all died in battle just like Odin’s warriors.