Nøkken

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 5: Freyja's Gift

Read on Wattpad and AO3

In the first days of healing she had been hazy and weak from the pain. She had been confined to her small house, close by the cluster of longhouses that belonged to Unn’s family and a few other neighbours. Unn stayed in her house, changing her dressings while singing songs of healing Galdr. Eira slept through the days, and in turn spent many nights awake. They shared Eira’s bed at night, like sisters did. Unn woke early before the break of every day, just as Eira was beginning to blink her eyes more slowly, overcome by sleep, and Unn started singing over her again. Unn had looked weary on those days, the dark purple under her eyes sinking into her usually plump face.

Unn had been horrified, at first, by the gravity of Eira’s wound, shocked that she was still alive. But as the days went on, Unn’s shock turned to disbelief at Eira’s speed of recovery. Eira wondered if Unn had visited the vølve again in her absence, but she did not ask. She had many, more pressing questions gnawing at her mind.

As Eira’s strength gathered, Unn returned to her own home. Still unable to sleep, Eira took to sitting outside in the late evening hours. She walked slowly to the grave mounds at the back of her estate, shrouding herself in a woolen plait to keep the chill of the night at bay. She would lean against a tree or sit atop of the small grassy hills, the resting place of her ancestors, sighing deeply with the pain she still felt as she moved through the world. And there, she would open her heart to the nature around her, hoping that an answer might reveal itself to her.

She went over what had happened on the battlefield again and again, the many impressions having faded into distortion. It was clear that the force had come from her, Magnus had confirmed as much. But even he could not explain the nature of it. Had it come from her hands, as it did with the legendary battle mages, or from the earth around her? It could have been some divine intervention from above her. How had she felt when it happened? What had she done the moment before? She did not remember.

Then she moved onto thinking what an odd coincidence it was, that somehow high levels of magick seemed to be swirling around the sleepy villagers of Eiklund, with the vølve’s arrival and inexplicable events visiting both herself and Unn in a short span of time. It seemed like the stuff of myths.

Some nights she drew the rune of Eiwaz in the soil at her feet, thinking it would evoke some sort of revelation, although she did not know which kind she was looking for. After casting the rune, she would sit for hours looking into the darkness, searching for a physical manifestation of an answer.

She lost herself to thinking, and her mind would often land on how the children of Ulf never got to be buried in their ancestral home of Eiklund. As if struck by the thought itself, she would stand up as fast as she could, and scuttle home. She could not push away the idea that she might see them, the little blond children, in the ghostly form of gengangere - spirits that walked the earth again, driven by things left unresolved.

The thought visited her again and again. She was starting to think that perhaps it meant something, the thought stuck in her mind like a spanner in a wheel. The day the children died was the first day Eira questioned what was natural and unnatural in this world, what must be, and what, perhaps, need not be. Maybe it was the seed that had been planted, which had later bloomed into her own super natural actions in Svidland. Perhaps she had somehow…

A movement in the darkness startled her. She gasped audibly, preparing herself to stand, but knew that would be futile. She was still weak, and in any case she could not defend herself from spirits.

“Who goes there?” she called, telling herself it could not be them. It was a single, dark shape, much too big to be the young children. She sat gaping and waiting for it to near her, when she saw that it was the vølve. The waiflike woman moved much like she expected a spirit would, almost floating. She was walking straight towards Eira.

Eira was dumbfounded. She had never seen the vølve leave the surroundings of her small abode outside of Eiklund.

“Do you find what you seek?” The vølves voice was whispery and rasping, but it had a sing-songy quality to it. As if the songs required for her magick had settled permanently in her voice.

Eira was still stunned by the vølve’s unexpected presence, and thought hard to look for an appropriate answer. “I am not sure what I seek”, she said finally.

“I am sure you are finding more than you think.”

“Why have you come here?” Eira observed the vølve’s light, delicate features. Her skin and hair were both almost the colour of fresh fallen snow, but her face looked youthful. Eira did not know why she had expected a vølve to look deeply furrowed and lined, like the famed Elli who was old age in human form. Her eyes were pale too, and they did not look directly at Eira. Instead, they floated as if between worlds. If it had not just been the two of them, it would be unclear if she was addressing Eira at all.

“I have been waiting for something to be set in motion. It seems that it has now happened.”

The vølve was standing beneath Eira, who was seated halfway up on side of a grassy burial mound. The vølve was incredibly tall, thin like a draugr, but almost meeting Eira’s eye sight.

Eira’s brows furrowed, the confusion of the nonsensical statement gripping her, making her wonder if she had fallen asleep without noticing. She decided to ask the vølve a question that had been on her mind for weeks. “You taught Unn seiðr?”

“Yes.” the vølve replied matter-of-factly.

“Why?” asked Eira.

“For the same reason that I am here for you now.” the vølve replied, as if that would explain everything. Eira felt a pull of impatience, unprepared to be disturbed by nonsensical riddles on this night of introspection. But she knew that it must be something significant that had moved the vølve to seek her out. Eira for the second time asked her why.

“I came to tell you a story.” The vølve stood unmoving at the foot of the small hill, looking up at Eira, or perhaps at something behind her or inside her, as she continued her whispering song:

“The first war of time was between the Æsir and Vanir. It was a war that has since been unmatched in force and violence, waging on endlessly, neither side gaining grounds, until both the Æsir of Asgard and Vanir of Vanaheim agreed to strike a truce. Do you know what happened next?”

The impatience gripped Eira again. The vølve had come to her home, in the middle of the night, to tell her fables of skaldic poetry, children’s stories? Of course Eira knew, every child had heard of the legendary creation and divine history of the universe a hundred times over.

“They exchanged hostages,” Eira replied, willing her voice to be neutral, patient. “Some of the best Æsir were sent to Vanaheim, and likewise Vanir were sent to Asgard.”

The vølve shook her head slightly, murmuring dismissively “Yes yes, of course, but not that.” as if Eira’s answer was too glaringly obvious. “I mean what happened with Freyja. The seiðr.” Eira now listened more attentively, as the vølve sang on: “The hostages who came to Asgard were three: Njordr and his children, Freyr and Freyja. Njordr, who guards the sea and Freyr who guards the fields and prosperity of nature, were both named overseers of sacrifices from the mortals of Midgard. Their vanir magic still casts the rains of spring and the waves of the ocean to this day.”

As she continued, Eira noticed how the vølve swayed slightly as she spoke, like a seedling tree in the late summer breeze. Eira still questioned whether she was fully awake.

“Freyja also came to Asgard, beautiful Freyja who wields the most important forces of mortal life and doom. Love and war, and above all, seiðr. Freyja’s knowledge, power and skill is almost without equal. Except, of course, for Odinn, who is the Æsir allfather and in his own right a God of exceptional power and knowledge.

As unison of the Vanir and Æsir settled in Asgard, it was Freyja who shared her seiðr with the Æsir. She bestowed this gift of unification to Odinn, teaching him to alter destiny and weave prophecy. Freyja did so generously, without corruption or fear of being overcome by her former foe.”

The vølve’s melodic flow of whispers stilled. After a moment of silence, she asked Eira “Do you understand?”

Eira did in fact not understand anything. She strained to fit the pieces together. “Seiðr can be taught.” Eira started slowly. This was not new wisdom that had been bestowed upon her, and she thought she might be missing the mark as she followed up with: “Like how men of the Jarl’s court are taught magick?”

The highborne wielded much more powerful magick than the simple galdr and runes that the common people relied on. It was not quite the legendary manipulation of the natural world and bending of fate that the Vanir and Odinn wielded, but highborne magick-wielders could heal complex wounds and cause incredible magickal damage. Some could even spur simple but effective illusions. There were also stories of mortals changing their day of death, pushing it in front of them through the Gods’ mercy. Many suspected that was why the King Gorm, known as Gorm the Old, was still fierce at his old age. His wife was said to be blessed with strong traces of seiðr.

But all of that was not readily relevant to Eira. Those people were born with Odinn’s blood - and she was not.

“Magick is bound by blood lines.” Eira was shaping her answer slowly. “Odinn was not just the king of the Gods in Asgard. It is fabled how he once walked often in Midgard, siring many noble bloodlines. When he left to rule over Asgard, he placed his mortal sons as rulers, bestowing upon them some of his magick. Thus, magick can only be passed down through bloodlines, or obtained through deals with the Gods.”

That was the reason, aside from puritan elitism of course, why marriages between high-magick wielding individuals and the common people were forbidden. Some said the only reason the commoners had their rudimentary magick in the first place, was due to frivolous copulation through the ages. Eira thought maybe the vølve was alluding to this - the nature of how magick was learned and taught, trickling from the goddess Freyja through Odinn to mortals in Midgard.

Lost in her thoughts for a moment, the vølve’s soft tutting brought Eira back to the present. “The magick wielded by men is not the magick I speak of. Seiðr, real seiðr can weave threads into the Web of Wyrd, commanding spirits and bending time. With real seiðr, the unseen can be made seen, and the seen made unseen. Real seiðr can alter destiny.”.

Eira wondered if the vølve somehow knew, as the pale lady recited her deepest desires back to her. If the vølve knew the depths of her despair as she thought of all those senseless sorrows that need not happen in Midgard while the Kings and Gods feasted in their halls.

“This seiðr, it is meant to be shared, Eira. In the spirit of Freyja. I have waited for you to be ready.“

“You have been waiting for me?” Eira sputtered. She knew that what had happened in Svidland had been an exceptional force of something entirely inexplicable. She knew that it was unheard of for a commoner to wield battle magick of the kind that had flown from her. It had not been in her control, and to this day she was still not sure it had truly come from her. She told the vølve as much.

“I am not talking about what happened in Svidland. You are practicing seiðr right now.” the vølve continued, a wistful smile floating in her eyes with her last few words: “Well, at least you are trying to.”

Now, Eira had really lost the plot of what was happening. She groaned loudly, struck by a sudden sharp headache as her blood pressure rose and the wound on her neck pulsed. The vølve was unphased by her exclamation.

“Seiðr requires a deep connection to the threads of the world. Sitting out, like you have done for days, is the simplest, yet purest form of seiðr there is. If you just listen..” the vølve’s words trailed off softly. She lifted her chin slightly to the dark, cloudy night sky stretching endlessly above them, half closing her eyelids as if listening intently to something in the air. Eira only now realised that she had been holding her own breath for a long time, as the vølve took in a long, slow lungful of air and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“It is late,” the vølve broke the silence. “You will find seiðr is not just at your fingertips, Eira, but all around you. I encourage you to look for it.” and with that, the vølve whirled around and walked into the night.

Favorite Danish folklore I grew up with

Lygtemænd (the lantern men): Like will-o’-the-wisp, jack o’lantern and similar… Nobody really knows who or what they are. They are small creatures with lights (probably lanterns) that are moving around in marshes and swampy fields at night. Never follow them. If you follow them, you’ll never be seen again. They will probably lead you further out into the marshes where you drown. Don’t even look at them, because you may get the urge to follow the light. If you’re lost, you can however pay them (by leaving money at the roadside) to lead you back home - if you’re brave enough.

Åmanden (the river man): He lives in the rivers and lakes, and prevents overflow and floods, but needs an annual human sacrifice (aka drowned people) in return. He looks like a very beautiful young man, but has sharp teeth. If he hasn’t got his sacrifice, he will lure people into the river. He can sound like a crying baby, to make you go search for an abandoned baby at the shores, or he plays the violin so beautifully that you will follow the sound into the water, where he will drown you. Never go near a river at night or dawn!

Helhesten (the hell horse): So the first soul buried on a new grave yard will resurrect and haunt the grave yard. Because of this, the first soul buried was often not a person but a living animal, most often a horse. This hellhorse has three legs, sometimes it’s beheaded, and it brings people illness and death. When you see it, you will die. If you hear a horse neigh or stomp on a grave yard, don’t look up! Never! Never go to a graveyard at night.

De underjordiske from Bornholm (the underground ones): basically small trolls. They live on the island Bornholm in mounds, hills, cliffs or big rocks. They are small creatures, very smart and have an almost human-like farmer lifestyle. They are usually friendly and peaceful, but may be troublesome, if you dig in their mound or e.g. let your animals walk around on their home. They can also kidnap, or switch your baby out with one of their people and make him look like the baby. The new baby will become more and more ugly, stop growing, never learn to speak and eat A LOT. The only way to expose it, is to tell it something so stupid and ridiculous that it gets flabbergasted. If you visit the island ask a local - almost everyone knows somebody that met the underjordiske or had an encounter themselves.

Nisser: kind of small household gods. They are little dwarf-like creatures that live hidden in your house, typically on the loft or in the stables, if you have a farm. Usually they are helpful and some sort of nice warden, but if you treat them bad, they may trouble you. You should leave a bowl of rice pudding for them on the loft, especially at Christmas. Some may also be humorous and hide your stuff, so you think you replaced it, then they are called Drillenisse (mocking nisse).

Elverfolket (elves): They live in forests, glades and mounds and are known for their beauty and their feasts. The very beautiful elver women will typically dance around their mound looking outwards in misty nights, so you can see their beauty, but in their backs they are hollow like an old tree trunk. If you join their dance and feast, they will never let you go. Stay away from them and from their mounds and they will be peaceful. Their king is very powerful, but if you’re respectful and keep the elverfolks homes safe, he may in return bless your land.

Mosekonen (the marsh witch): She is an troll-like woman who lives in a hidden cabin in the marshes. She is known for brewing something in a big kettle, but nobody really knows what. Probably a special brew for their party’s (e.g. for Walpurgis Night). You will know that she is brewing, when there is fog and mist over the marshes. She gets help from the Lygtemænd with her fire, so you shouldn’t go out there to find her, as you may drown.

Havfolk/ nøkker (sea people): Human like creatures (like mermaids) that live in the sea and might have fish-like features like a fish tail. The women are very beautiful, sing very lovely, and may lure men into the water and (not necessarily willful) drown them as they take them into their underwater home. The havfolk may come out of the water and look human, but they will always be wet. The men can transform into a big black or white horse that comes out of the sea at night and rushes along the beach. They may lure you to climb and ride, but will then ride directly into the sea and drown you. Stay away from the sea at night to be safe, and if you hear someone singing at the sea, quickly cover your ears with your hands!

614 notes View Post

fyribua

7 months ago