Our sources for Norse mythology are pretty male-centric. But even so, when we tally up the names of all the gods we have vs. all the goddesses, it turns out we actually have a lot more goddess names than gods. Goddesses certainly played an important role in the lived religion of ancient Scandinavians, so this episode is a tribute to a few of the goddesses forgotten by time.

Sources:

• “Germania” by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, 1st century


• “Great Goddess Theory in Ancient Germanic Studies” by Joseph S. Hopkins, 2019


• “Goddesses Unknown I: Njǫrun and the Sister-Wife of Njǫrðr” by Joseph S. Hopkins, 2012


• “Goddesses Unknown II: On the Apparent Old Norse Goddess Ilmr” by Joseph S. Hopkins, 2014


• “Goddesses Unknown III: On the Identity of the Old Norse Goddess Hlín” by Joseph S. Hopkins, 2017


• “Heimskringla”, transl. by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes, 2011


• “Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend” by John McKinnell, 2005


• “The Poetic Edda”, transl. by Carolyne Larrington, 2014


• “The Prose Edda”, transl. by Anthony Faulkes, 1995

Contact:

• Write in: waelhraefn (at) gmail (dot) com


• Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/Nvw5hmkRsW

Music:

Celebration by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/