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Sif is the grain goddess in heathen mythology. She is married to Thor. Continuing my Novel Gnosis series, in which I present religious insights gained through writing fiction, today I'm talking about Sif and also Kvasir, the being made from brew. In Russian the word Kvas means a beer-like beverage.

In the Fireverse, Sif looks young with her shining gold hair, but her son Ullr looks old. Thor notices this when he marries Sif but he dismisses the thought because the appearance of age and actual age are not always related when it comes to gods and goddesses. Sif enjoys baking bread, and also enjoys eating it and other grain based foods. Sif’s representative color is gold. The cutting and regrowing of Sif's hair is an obvious agricultural metaphor, a snapshot of the wheat harvest.

Continuing the Novel Gnosis series, in which I tell you about my religious insights gained via writing a novel, we come to Jotunheim. That means the home of the Jotuns / Jotnar, aka giants.

Jotunheim is flat, but the only time in the story human characters were aware of its flatness was when Freya crossed dimensions with Ottar to bring him to see a wisewoman. Most of the time, humans journeying in Jotunheim experience it as if it were a three dimensional universe. (Most of the time, humans experience Asgard that way too, and other worlds.) When Thor and Loki visit Jotunheim, they usually arrive in an empty snowy field near their destination. Jotunheim also has forest and riparian habitat, and even city. It is always winter in Jotunheim. Some Jotnar manage to grow things anyway, variously by creating sheltered spaces, by staying close to the river, by using magic, or by choosing to grow evergreens and other permafrost adapted things.

Jord, pronounced Yord, rhymes with horde, is the mother of Thor. Her name means earth.

Jord goes by her alternate name in the Fireverse and is part of the twin pair Fjorgyn and Fjorgynn.The name Fjorgynn is linguistically related to the names of thunder gods in other Indo-European cultures.

Like his brothers Odin and Loki, Honir can shapeshift, but his shifting power goes far beyond theirs. Honir is a soul changer. He can not only mask as other gods like Odin and Loki can, he can actually become other gods. Odin, Loki, and Honir can borrow each other’s powers. In the Fireverse, Loki used the soul changing power once, when he needed to get a wagon full of warriors into a city and decided to do it by driving a legitimate wood cutter’s cart through the main gate using the proper passwords, which he was able to do by taking not only the cart and the carter’s appearance but the carter’s memories too (the carter was a jotun, and the city was in Jotunheim.) He was able to do that by borrowing Honir’s powers.

Honir was rarely in the story much in the Fireverse because he actually lived in Vanaheim as a hostage, and only manifested in the story in the presence of both his brothers, usually only while they were on the triple throne. Honir didn’t have a physical body but he could manifest one if he wanted to. In one of the episodes in the story, the three brothers were called to Midgard to heal someone via summoning “God, Wod, and Locke.” Honir took the role of God, and thus, he responded to a prayer ostensibly directed to the Christian deity, although the formula clearly reserved that space for the brother of Odin and Loki.

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.