"Some Old Norse Sources Also Indicate That Óðinn May Be Reached By Travelling Down Through Water (Heide

"Some Old Norse sources also indicate that Óðinn may be reached by travelling down through water (Heide 2011: 67–68); some place names and cult places indicate the same thing. The small lake Odensjön in Scania, named after Óðinn, if indeed the name is ancient*, is one example. The water of the lake is gathered in a circular, crater-like hole in the flat landscape; the lake lacks inflows, and in old times it was believed to be bottomless (Nordisk familjebok 1888: 101). This has a similar character to the north Sami sáiva ponds (cf., e.g., Pakasaivo in northern Finland), which are typically small and without inflow, believed to be bottomless and containing passageways to another pond rather than the visible one (Wiklund 1916, Bäckman 1975, Mebius 2003: 82). There is reason to believe that this passage was considered in the past to be a link to the otherworld – the noaidis (Sami shamans) most often used the guise of a fish as transport when they went to the land of the dead; they were said to ‘dive’ when going there (Olsen 1910 [Etter 1715]: 45, cf. 46; Heide 2006: 232–33), and in southern Sami regions, sáiva – in the form saavje (aajmoe) – means ‘ancestral mountain’ of a similar type to the Old Icelandic Helgafell (Eyrbyggja saga: 19, Landnámabók: 125) and Kaldbakshorn (Njáls saga: 46). Judging from its name and from the examples of the sáiva ponds, there is reason to believe that Odensjön was imagined to be a passageway to Óðinn / Valhǫll. The argument is corroborated by sáiva / saajve being to all appearances a loan from Proto-Scandinavian saiwa-R ‘lake’ (the etymological ancestor of sea / sjö / See; Weisweiler 1940), which indicates that the ideas of such water passageways existed in old Germanic tradition. This is confusing in that one is able to travel through water to a mountain visible on earth, but this is also the case in Eyrbyggja saga and Njáls saga: both Þorsteinn Þorskabítr and Svanr of Svanshóll drown before they can enter the mountain."

-Eldar Heide, from "Contradictory cosmology in old norse myth and religion – but still a system?"

*Stig isaksson (1958: 29) believes that the name Odensjön is a learned invention from the early modern age, but if so, we ought to have heard of an older name. We have not, and Isaksson does not seem to have conclusive arguments. His strongest is that d- in Oden- is pronounced, while it is not in Scanian legends about Odin (Odens jakt). But there are many examples of peculiarities in the pronunciation of place names, and very many have had their pronunciation influenced by writing, without being for this reason learned constructions. There are many examples that an inter-vowel d because of spelling pronunciation is pronounced in ancient names (e.g. Eide in numerous places in Norway), in dialects that normally skip the d in this position.

Thralls of Skuld - Prologue

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"Long is the way,

long must thou wander,

But long is love as well;

Thou mayst find, perchance,

what thou fain wouldst have.

If Skuld her favor will give.

- Verse 4 of Grougaldr (Groa’s Spell) from Svipsdagsmol in The Poetic Edda

The fates of all living things were utterly and hopelessly implacable. The only thing within the control of mortals was how they lived through their destiny and met the death that had been spun for them. The Norns, named Uðr, Veðrandi and Skuld, weaved the Web of Wyrd, the very fabric of all that had been, all that was now, and all that would come to be. In Midgard, the mortals knew it was no use trying to appease the Norns, whose web was absolute. That was why the Norns were not worshipped like the Æsir and the Vanir, who could change the outcomes of wars, shorten the merciless winters, and decide the yield of the harvests. The Norn’s just were - and so was fate. All of this was well known.

Eira did not agree with that in the least.

She had been there the day Ulf's children had been taken by the nøkke. The screams that cut through the damp pine forest that day still rang in her ears sometimes. It had sat in her throat for months. A lump, threatening to well up and flow over at the slightest encouragement. Sometimes the dull greyness of the sky, like the one that had watched them that day, was enough to make her chest catch with terror and the tears well up in her eyes. Looking at Ulf was the worst. She barely could, for so long, when the grimness of death had still been painted on his face, dragging down his shoulders. If the shame and desperation she felt in her heart for what had happened was anything to go by, Ulf must have been a shell of a man in those months.

She was not sure if she had seen it out of the corner of her eyes or not. Years later, when she could not sleep, she vividly imagined how the monster, in the shape of an enticing white horse, had egged on the children, whinnying and inviting, until they had grabbed its tail in playfulness.

When she turned to look, both children were being pulled forcefully from the rivershore into the murky waters by that invisible string. She had sprinted the few steps until she reached the shore, looking desperately into the waters. They had been playing on the rocks just behind a gorge, where the current of the river was roaring and fast. The children had been gone even before Eira’s desperate outcry had made Ulf turn around to look. The deathly silence that ensued had settled permanently into the pits of her stomach. The only thing in the world that kept moving was the river as it thundered on, unphased by what had transpired.

Where Ulf had blamed the inevitable will of the Gods and the Norn's web, Eira had blamed herself. She was the one who had pointed Ulf in the direction of the fishing snares further down the river, as she had gone to open the trap closer to the children. Ulf said the deaths had already been woven before any of them had woken that day. Eira knew in her heart that she could have changed the outcome, could have tugged the string of the web of Wyrd in another direction. She knew not how, but it pulled at her to think of it, over and over again.

It had festered in her a deep belief that there ought to be a way to challenge the decree of divine order, which decided unjustly who should live and who should die.