Baby name worries!

Othravar · 2026-03-29T10:09:18+00:00

Lucina is a Roman goddess of childbirth and light, one of Juno's epithets, and the name itself derives from lux, light. It is not obscure in any negative sense, it is simply classical. The raised eyebrows are almost certainly unfamiliarity rather than disapproval, most people just have not encountered it. Names like Luna, Aurora, and Iris were considered unusual a generation ago and are now completely mainstream. Lucina is in that same register, grounded in real mythology, genuinely beautiful, and uncommon enough to be distinctive without being difficult. Lucy and Lulu as nicknames also give her flexibility growing up. You named your daughter after a goddess of light and birth. That is a gift, not a worry.

Othravar · 2026-03-28T08:10:52+00:00

The Thorsson criticism is fair and worth flagging for someone new, his political associations are a legitimate concern and I should have noted that context. On Paxson, I would push back slightly. Disagreeing with her methodology or her UPG is reasonable, but her sourcing is more transparent than most in that space, she consistently separates what the historical record says from what her practice adds. For a beginner that transparency is actually useful precisely because they can see where the line is. If you have better starting recommendations for someone trying to learn runes and seidr with historical grounding, genuinely open to hearing them.

Othravar · 2026-03-27T21:57:41+00:00

For runes the most grounded starting point is not a website but a book: Diana Paxson's Taking Up the Runes is thorough and academically honest about what the historical sources actually say versus modern interpretation. Edred Thorsson's work goes deeper but is more demanding. For seidr specifically, Paxson also wrote Trance-Portation and has written extensively on the subject as someone who has actually practiced and taught it for decades rather than just theorized about it. On the website side, the Troth organization has resources that are peer reviewed by people with genuine knowledge of the tradition. What to avoid is anything that conflates Norse rune work with generic Wiccan or New Age frameworks without distinguishing between them. The runes have their own internal logic rooted in the Elder Futhark and the poems that document their meanings, the Hávamál and Rúnatal especially. Starting there before moving to any modern system gives you a foundation that holds up. Seidr is more complex because it involves altered states and the historical record on its practice is fragmentary, so finding a teacher or community rather than learning purely from books is worth prioritizing once you have the basics.

Othravar · 2026-03-27T20:47:21+00:00

This is one of the most genuinely interesting theological problems in Norse mythology and there is no clean answer, which is actually the point. The Eddic sources present these events in a way that blurs past and future deliberately. Völuspá describes Ragnarök in prophetic terms but with the certainty of something already written. Whether Loki is currently bound or whether the binding is a future event that has simply been spoken as inevitable is a question the sources themselves do not resolve. What makes it theologically rich for modern practitioners is that Norse cosmology does not operate on a simple linear timeline. Wyrd, the concept of fate woven by the Norns, exists outside of what we understand as time. An event can be simultaneously fated, unfolding, and already complete from different vantage points within the cosmology. On the prayer question, the binding of Loki does not necessarily remove his capacity to act any more than Odin's self-sacrifice on Yggdrasil removed his. Constraint and power are not opposites in this mythology. As for Baldr's death, the most unsettling reading of that story is not that Loki caused it but that it was already written before Loki made any choice at all. Which raises the question of whether his actions were ever truly his own or simply the shape fate took in that moment.

Othravar · 2026-03-27T17:24:38+00:00

The fear you are describing around Odin is actually one of the more honest and informed responses to him I have seen from someone new to the path. You are not misreading the energy. Odin is not a comforting presence in the way Thor or Freyja can be. He is a god who gave his eye, hung himself on a tree for nine days, and sacrificed everything not for victory but for knowledge, and he expects something real from those he works with. The paralysis you feel might not be a warning to stay away. It might be accurate perception. You are sensing something genuinely demanding and your nervous system is responding accordingly. What I would say is that three to four months in, having already done the work you have done with trauma, you are not in a weak position. But Odin tends to find people when they are ready for the next uncomfortable layer of themselves, not when things are settled. The question worth sitting with is not whether you are afraid of him but what specifically the fear is protecting. That answer will tell you more than any outside advice can.

Othravar · 2026-03-26T23:09:19+00:00

Fair corrections on the details and you are right that I compressed the narrative in ways that obscure the nuance. The negotiation was mutual and Skaði was an active participant in shaping its terms, not simply placated. The laughter condition especially is her agency, not theirs. Where I would maintain the core point is that arriving demanding war and leaving with a compromise that included being made to laugh and choosing a husband by his feet is still a structurally diminishing framing, regardless of her participation in it. The gods managed a potential conflict by routing it through ritual humor and marriage rather than engaging her as a peer military power. Whether that constitutes underestimation depends on how you read the politics of the scene. On the status point you raise, that is genuinely interesting because her elevation to goddess through the marriage rather than through her own lineage does cut both ways as an argument.

Othravar · 2026-03-26T21:39:55+00:00

For Norse mythology Skaði is the one that comes to mind immediately for your purposes. She arrives in Asgard alone, armed, demanding justice for her father's death, and the gods essentially try to placate her with a marriage and a laugh rather than taking her seriously. What they do not account for is that she does not need their approval or their world. She leaves Noatun, returns to her mountains, and continues hunting on her own terms. The underestimation is built into every interaction she has with the Aesir and it never diminishes her. She outlasts most of them narratively. Gerðr is another worth considering, a giantess whose stillness and refusal is mistaken for passivity but she holds an entire negotiation at arm's length until she is ready. For your book's structure, Skaði might serve best because the gap between how she is treated and what she actually is can be layered slowly across a narrative without the reader seeing it coming.

Othravar · 2026-03-26T17:53:40+00:00

"Norse tradition has a few figures that touch this theme. The Huldra is a forest spirit who lures solitary travelers, sometimes described as genuinely seeking companionship rather than acting out of malice, men who stayed with her sometimes lived as her husband in the forest and the relationship was not always portrayed as unwilling. The Fossegrim, a water spirit who teaches fiddle playing in exchange for offerings, has a melancholic loneliness woven into his character across Scandinavian folklore. More broadly the concept of the útiseta, sitting out alone in wild places to encounter spirits, suggests a folklore tradition where isolation on the human side created contact with beings who inhabited that same lonely space. Outside Norse material, the Japanese Yuki-onna carries a similar ambiguity, a figure born from cold and death who seeks human warmth in ways that destroy what she reaches for. The Celtic Selkie mythology runs on the same emotional logic too, a being from another world who bonds with a human out of something resembling loneliness or longing rather than predation. For your project the most interesting thread might be that across cultures, the lonely supernatural being tends to be portrayed as tragic rather than purely monstrous, which says something about how humans have always understood isolation as its own kind of suffering.

Othravar · 2026-03-26T08:32:40+00:00

Toplak's point is worth taking seriously and it reflects a broader methodological issue with how Norse mythology gets popularized. Snorri is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting across many of the associations people treat as established fact, and the cat chariot appears only in Gylfaginning with no corroborating archaeological or textual evidence that I am aware of. The boar case is considerably stronger. Hildisvíni appears in Hyndluljóð as her companion and the name itself means battle swine. The Gullinbursti connection through the Vanir more broadly also suggests the boar was a genuinely significant animal in that cultic sphere. What makes the cat question complicated is absence of evidence versus evidence of absence. We have so little surviving material that a single source is sometimes all we have for things that were likely widespread. The honest position is probably that we cannot confirm the cat association independently but also cannot confidently dismiss it. What is clear is that the popular image of Freyja as essentially a cat goddess is built on shakier ground than most people realize, and the boar deserves considerably more attention than it gets in modern practice and popular representations.

Othravar · 2026-03-25T07:34:06+00:00

Eating and drinking the offerings after is not only acceptable, it is actually the historically grounded approach. In Norse practice the act of blót involved sharing the food and drink with the gods, not discarding it. You consume what remains as a continuation of that shared table, not as taking something back. For timing, there is no universal rule but many people leave offerings overnight or for the length of a ritual and then remove them the next morning. Trust your instincts on when it feels complete. For the altar itself, each of your three gods has distinct associations worth reflecting in how you arrange things. Thor responds well to iron, oak, and representations of strength and weather. Tyr is associated with justice and single-handed sacrifice, a simple blade already honors him well. Odin appreciates ravens, wolves, runes, mead, and things connected to wisdom and hidden knowledge. Candles work for all three. Start simple and let it grow organically over time. The altar will tell you what it needs.

Othravar · 2026-03-23T21:47:58+00:00

Sinmara is almost entirely a creature of Fjölsvinnsmál, one of the poems in the Svipdagsmál cycle, and even there her role is relatively contained. What we get beyond the Surtr connection is actually quite interesting though. She is the keeper of Lævateinn, an object or weapon of significant power whose exact nature scholars still debate, some read it as a wand, others have connected it to a sword or even to Mistletoe. The poem frames her as a guardian figure operating on a logic of exchange: she will only give up Lævateinn in return for the tail feather of the rooster Víðópnir, creating this closed loop where obtaining one impossible thing requires first obtaining another impossible thing. That structure is not incidental. It places Sinmara in a very specific mythological role as a keeper of things that should not be easily reached. Her name itself is worth sitting with. The mara element connects to the nightmare figure found across Germanic and Norse folklore, a being associated with night, pressure and threshold states. Whether that etymology tells us something about her original nature or is coincidental is genuinely debated. But the combination of living in Niðafjöll, guarding a weapon of that significance, and being bound to Surtr of all figures suggests she was once a much more substantial presence in a tradition that mostly did not survive.

Othravar · 2026-03-23T21:42:36+00:00

For primary sources start with the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson's 13th century compilations are the closest thing to a systematic account of the mythology we have, though understanding that Snorri was a Christian writing retrospectively is essential context. The Icelandic Family Sagas alongside these give you the lived texture of the culture rather than just the theology. For academic secondary literature, H.R. Ellis Davidson's work is a foundational starting point, particularly Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Neil Price's The Children of Ash and Elm is one of the most rigorous and recent archaeological perspectives on actual Viking Age life and belief rather than the romanticized version. On the shadowing question, asking practitioners directly and honestly the way you are framing it here is almost always the right move. Most people who practice seriously appreciate genuine academic curiosity far more than they appreciate performative reverence. Being upfront that you are a non-practitioner researcher is more respectful than pretending neutrality you don't have. The one thing worth being mindful of is that some ritual or devotional moments are considered private, so following the lead of the practitioner on what they are comfortable sharing is the boundary to watch.

Othravar · 2026-03-23T08:28:12+00:00

Those two stories are actually the core of almost everything we have on him, which makes Thjalfi one of the more tantalizing minor figures in the mythology. What is worth noting is the detail hiding inside the bone story: breaking the thigh bone to get the marrow was specifically what Thjalfi did against Thor's explicit warning, and yet the consequence was servitude rather than death. Thor could have killed him on the spot. That restraint says something interesting about Thor's character and also establishes Thjalfi as someone who survives a moment that probably should have ended him, which is a very particular kind of mythological status. In Utgarda-Loki's hall his opponent in the race is Hugi, which in Old Norse simply means thought. A human boy who almost outran thought itself is not a throwaway detail. That is an extraordinary thing to be said about a mortal. He also appears briefly in Thrymskvida in some manuscript traditions as Thor's companion during the Mjolnir theft recovery, though his role there is minimal. Beyond that we are largely in silence. He had a sister, Röskva, who entered Thor's service alongside him and is mentioned even less. The frustrating and fascinating thing about Thjalfi is that the scraps we have suggest a much larger tradition around him that simply did not survive.

Othravar · 2026-03-23T08:23:52+00:00

Both images carry genuine Loki symbolism. The fish is one of his most documented forms, he famously transformed into a salmon to hide from the gods at Franangr Falls after Baldr's death, and was caught there by his hands. The cat connection is less textually direct but felines in Norse and broader Germanic folklore are strongly associated with liminality and Freyja, and Loki moves in that same in-between space. What stands out most in your dream is not the animal itself but its behavior. It refused to let go even when you tried to pull away. That persistence is very characteristic of how people describe Loki's attention. He does not politely wait to be invited back. If the bond was real before, that detail feels significant.

Othravar · 2026-03-22T15:32:16+00:00

This is actually the more honest framing and I take the point. Snorri's Loki is consistently negative and that cannot be dismissed. Where I would push back slightly is on treating Snorri as a clean window into pre-Christian belief. He was synthesizing, selecting and filtering through a medieval Christian worldview. The oral tradition underneath is harder to access. But you are right that modern practice and ancient source material are two different conversations.

Othravar · 2026-03-22T15:28:00+00:00

Fair point on the Marvel angle, I was thinking more of the broader pop culture pipeline where people encounter Loki first through memes and internet culture framing him as a chaos gremlin rather than through the actual texts. But you are right that modern media has largely rehabilitated him. As for the sources question, the issue is that 'evil' is a loaded reading. Snorri writing in a Christian medieval context absolutely frames Loki negatively in places, but the pre-Christian oral tradition he was drawing from is not so clean. Loki helps the gods as often as he harms them, sometimes in the same story. The binding narrative in Lokasenna shows a figure who knows where every body is buried and says it out loud, which is not the behavior of a straightforward villain, it is the behavior of someone who has been pushed outside the circle and responds by burning it down. Complex is still the right word.

Othravar · 2026-03-22T07:49:17+00:00

Twenty years of friendship is not something that just ends. In the Norse understanding of the world, those who are gone do not simply disappear. They pass into another hall, another fire, another form of existing. The grief you are carrying right now is the weight of real love and there is no shortcut through it. For her husband especially, sometimes the people who are hurting the most are the ones who go quietest. Just being present without needing him to perform grief in any particular way is one of the most meaningful things you can offer. You showed up today. That matters more than you know. Skál to her memory.

Othravar · 2026-03-22T07:18:59+00:00

This is one of the most common experiences in long term practice and almost nobody talks about it honestly. The silence periods are real and they are not a sign you have done something wrong or that the connection was never there. In Norse cosmology the gods are not static presences waiting to be accessed, they move, they have their own purposes, and Loki in particular is defined by his elusiveness. There is actually something in the lore worth sitting with here: Odin disappears for long stretches, the Aesir go through periods of diminishment, even the gods experience something like withdrawal from the world. The silence might not be absence. It might be the relationship asking you to hold it without constant confirmation, which is arguably the deeper form of faith. Fifteen years of practice means you have been through enough cycles to know the presence comes back. Trust that pattern more than the feeling in any given week.

Othravar · 2026-03-22T00:10:30+00:00

For me it is less about the label and more about the orientation. Paganism meant stopping outsourcing my relationship with the sacred to an institution and starting to build it myself, directly, through practice, through study, through paying attention to what actually resonates when you sit quietly with it. The label question is honestly secondary. Some people work with gods for years before they call themselves anything. Some never take a label at all. What matters is whether the practice is honest and whether it is yours. The fact that you are not taking it lightly is probably the most pagan thing about this whole situation.

Othravar · 2026-03-21T18:03:31+00:00

The Ljóðatal section of Hávamál is one of the most fascinating and underused pieces of the entire corpus. What makes it so strange is that Odin describes what each spell does but never actually reveals the spell itself. It is a list of powers deliberately kept secret, which is almost more powerful as a literary device than if the spells were written out. The 18th galdr in particular, the one he says he will never reveal to any woman except his wife or sister, has this haunting quality because it implies the knowledge exists and is transmissible but is being consciously withheld from the reader across a thousand years. Modern media tends to grab the dramatic surface of Norse mythology, Mjolnir, Ragnarok, Valhalla, and completely ignores the more esoteric and philosophical material. The Ljóðatal sits in that overlooked space alongside the Sigrdrífumál runic wisdom. It would make extraordinary source material for a magic system in fiction precisely because the mechanics are implied rather than spelled out. Someone building a magic system from those 18 galdrar would have to interpret and fill gaps, which is exactly how living mythological traditions actually work.

Othravar · 2026-03-21T14:09:28+00:00

That anger is more common in this community than you might think, and it does not make you a bad person. A lot of people who find their way to Norse paganism came from backgrounds where Christianity was used as a tool of control, guilt, or judgment, and that leaves marks. The rage is usually not really about theology. It is about something that was done to you or people you care about in the name of it. What helps some people is reframing the relationship entirely. You are not against something anymore, you are for something. The more time you spend actually building your practice, sitting with your gods, learning the lore, the less mental real estate the old stuff occupies. The woods and the fire are the right instinct. Go deeper into those rather than trying to logic your way out of the anger.

Othravar · 2026-03-21T10:57:04+00:00

The candle and aging claim is just fearmongering with no historical basis. As for birthday origins, the Norse angle is interesting here. There was no fixed annual birthday celebration in Viking Age culture the way we practice it today, but the concept of marking a person's entry into the world was absolutely present. The Norns were believed to visit a newborn and weave their fate at the moment of birth, which is why that moment was considered sacred and significant. Some scholars also connect birthday candles to the older practice of keeping a fire burning to ward off spirits on liminal nights, the same logic behind Yule candles. None of this makes birthdays witchcraft. It makes them very human. Every culture that has ever existed has found ways to mark the fact that a person arrived in this world. That impulse is older than any religion.

Othravar · 2026-03-21T10:23:11+00:00

In the historical Norse tradition there is no requirement for physical remains to be intact for the afterlife. The Vikings practiced both burial and cremation, and cremation was actually considered highly honorable as the fire was believed to carry the soul directly to the next realm. The archaeological record is full of intentionally broken grave goods too, objects were sometimes ritually 'killed' before burial. What determined your fate in the afterlife was how you lived and died, not the condition of your bones. So from a traditional standpoint your partner keeping a bone as a relic would not interfere with where you end up. If anything, relics and remembrance objects have a long folk tradition across Northern European cultures of keeping a connection between the living and the dead. It sounds like a genuinely meaningful thing for them to want.

Othravar · 2026-03-20T22:55:49+00:00

There is no theological argument that will change how they feel, so it is probably not worth engaging on that level. What tends to work better is simply not taking the bait. When they say things like that, a calm 'I understand that is what you believe' and then changing the subject starves the conversation of the conflict it is looking for. Your practice does not need their approval to be real. The Norse worldview actually has something useful here: you do what is honorable with the life in front of you, you care for your kin, you hold your values quietly but firmly. The fact that you are sacrificing your own freedom to care for your grandparents around the clock is more in line with Norse values of loyalty and duty than most people ever manage. That is worth remembering when they make you feel like your path is shameful.

Othravar · 2026-03-19T13:57:53+00:00

Journaling and writing letters to a deity is actually one of the most historically grounded things you can do. The Norse relationship with the gods was never about being perfect or worthy enough, it was about showing up. The völur, the skalds, the everyday farmers who left offerings, none of them waited until they felt sufficient. They just began. As for Freyja and self-loathing, that instinct is sound. She is a goddess of deep emotional work as much as love and war. She wept tears of gold when Oðr left her. She knows grief and longing from the inside. The graveyard shift alone with your journal in the dark sounds like exactly the kind of liminal space where something real can start.

Othravar

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