By Elliothawkey

by Stephen & Brett

«Nøkken» - Acrylic on canvas

Murstensdalen nature reserve in Västmanland, Sweden (November 6, 2020).

forest scenes

The land knows you, even when you are lost.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

by cocorrina.co

"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.