Summary
The Wyrd Thing Team talks about Yule and Valkyries
Transscript
00:00:09 Rich: Welcome to the Wyrd Thing podcast. This is our Yule episode. I’m your host, Rich Blackett, and with us today we have our full complement of people. Would you like to introduce yourselves?
00:00:20
Frigga: Do we still need to introduce ourselves? Is that weird?
00:00:23
Rich: You should. It’s a special.
00:00:25
Frigga: Team. Oh, let’s rephrase that. The Wyrd Thing Podcast team.
00:00:32
Rich: The Wyrd thing podcast team is here.
00:00:34
FriggaYay! All of us. Hello.
00:00:37
Rich: Frigga and Sif.
00:00:38
Sif: Hello.
00:00:39
Rich: And Jens.
00:00:40 Jens: Hi.
00:00:41 Rich: This episode, we’ll be talking about you from a slightly comedic perspective, but also from a more serious perspective. And particularly, we are going to be touching on something that Sif isn’t very familiar with, which is Valkyries.
00:00:53 Sif: Yes.
00:00:54 Rich: How do you see Valkyries linking in with Yule?
00:00:58 Sif: Well, do you want my jokey one or the the actual thing? Well, what I was going to do was to do a very tortured kind of comparison between Santa’s reindeer and the Valkyries, you know? And actually, it was started off as a joke. Then as I was digging a little bit like into it, I was like, hey, there’s quite a lot of comparisons here that kind of line up. Obviously, I’m not saying that Santa’s reindeer are Valkyries. That would be silly, but I’m not not saying it. There is just I really want to know more about the etymology of the reindeer names. And obviously you got Donner and Blitzen, which have connections to lightning and thunder and which is very strange for the reindeer names, but they are, you know, the Valkyries themselves have connections to storms and lightning, as we see in some of the eddic material. So it’s all very interesting there in terms of Santa’s reindeer being able to fly. That’s also an attestation of Germanic animals in terms of horses, stallions, mares, and the idea of flights being attributed to normally quite grounded animals. And of course, Santa reindeer are all female because otherwise they would lose their antlers over the crucial Yule period. It’s quite a tortured metaphor, but it’s something I really want to kind of dig into a little bit more because it’s so interesting. But in terms of the Valkyries, generally, they have, despite their more kind of warrior aspects, which I do prefer, they do have quite a few appearances which align with mead bearing and hospitality, which obviously is very much associated with this period of time in terms of the holiday. Um, so yeah, they are linked in as much as they might not appear so at first glance.
00:02:43 Jens: I’m just looking at the names of them, and some of them may be older, but an awful lot of them were named more recently. But I just wonder how Dasher and Dancer would translate to German. You know, Dasher, one who dashes. I don’t know whether he could get the more, more Germanic sounding, uh.
00:02:58 Sif: Kennings
00:03:00 Jens: to dash means to to push forward? Or what does it actually mean.
00:03:05 Jens: To go quickly? One who dashes when he moves. I don’t know what the German literal translation would be.
00:03:10 Sif: Move quickly into battle. Maybe chase the front line. I feel like there is something very tenuous, but I’m going to chase it anyway. Who knows, maybe I’ll discover something that is interesting.
00:03:24
Speaker 1: Well, sadly, a Google Translate does not provide any literal translation for Prancer either. But there is also the lesser known reindeer, Olive. But again, a lot of these are more modern additions. But but why not? We should adapt. We should be a forward facing belief system. Absolutely.
00:03:38 Sif: I think a lot of it, as a final note, is kind of how I’m reminded of skaldic poetry, of things having an internal rhyming system like Dasher, dancer, Prancer all being in that one line in terms of, um, like the earlier poetry that had these kind of reindeer mentions that that’s a bit more non tenuous. But you know it’s kind of how they would have sort of similar to how the old skalds sort of composed the reindeer poetry.
00:04:04 Rich: Well I think that also you can see people trying to emulate that in some of these, shall we say, slightly tortured translations of the havamal, where they’ve used very odd phrasing to make it sound more old vikingey, for want of a better phrase. Yeah, but I think it depends whether you’re going for literal or new ones. But yes. But I mean, in terms of the Valkyries and their connections to Yule specifically, is there any sort of connection to this time of year?
00:04:26 Sif: Um, it depends how much you want to lean into the Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt is definitely an interesting thing, because it is a sort of Pan Germanic thing that pops up here and there. In terms of the Norse world, it kind of originates from this kind of spec, lone spectral rider, and then it kind of like grows almost quite literally into something that’s almost like a horde, something quite menacing. We see that with a lot of the post conversion writers, when you start to have the cult of the Norse gods being more demonised and becoming more enemies of people and humanity, which you see across the board, especially with Valkyries. They kind of go from obviously they have quite animalistic origins when you’re going all the way down to like the Anglo-Saxon sort of Valkyga, and then they become more domesticated and the daughters of kings and these, like the wives of heroes and more kind of like, you know, um, like to use the word civilised but a little bit more civilised in terms of how close they are to humanity and being literally mortal. And then after the conversion period, they become more monstrous again.
00:05:34 Rich: You just reminded me of something there. I’m sure you know which I’m referring to, where somebody tries to summon a Valkyrie as a curse on somebody. It’s like way after the conversion period.
00:05:43 Sif: Yeah. I held the spirits of Gondal at you. One bites you in the back. It’s a Regenhold, I think is her name. The witch trials.
00:05:51 Rich: Yeah. The king of teeth, I summon Gondal. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
00:05:55 Sif: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly how they would utilise. There was more kind of like menacing and kind of like these old pagan spirits that we’re going to kind of that lingered in places where, you know, Christianity couldn’t quite touch them. But yeah, like dream states, which is where they tend to appear most frequently. Valkyries are often dripping in blood, which is fantastic imagery very closely tied to this idea. There’s a really cool bit in the longer saga where you have this. They’re in a dream again, and the man that’s dreaming, uh, stumbles upon two Valkyries in basically a long hall and blood is dripping from the ceiling and is just like everywhere. And it’s just like. And they’re just in the centre. Just like they’re kind of like, rocking, talking about how they’re going to be summoned to another place. But yeah, so they become quite horrifying in many respects. But back to Yule. It’s when I get started, I start like tangentially kind of talking all over the place. Um, yeah. We have this idea of the Wild Hunt now. The Valkyries aren’t the later thing where they get tied into the Wild Hunt. In the Norse world, it tends to be almost suggested that the Disir are related, in that we have Guthrum mentioned as being one of the Dis, and she’s leads the hunt in some respects in the Nordic world, at least in Iceland and Scandinavia.
00:07:14 Rich: Just if you could expand on on what you mean by the Disir. I’m familiar with the term, but just in case anybody listening because I’ve heard a few different explanations. Some people call them like the ghosts of ancestors and other heard, other people sort of dismiss that.
00:07:25 Sif: This is a rabbit hole. The way that I distinguish them is that the Disir are related. Their ancestral, they tend to be matriarchal. What was your ancestral line? The way that I distinguish them from Valkyries, because the Valkyries are sometimes referred to as Disir, I see them as the Disir were once mortal is the way that I see them. But then again, we have this semantic weakening of the term. You have, obviously, Freya, is called Vanadis. So it’s this idea of my own personal theory is that the Disir has something to do with, like, religious. They’re like priestesses, almost. They have this very priestess sort of idea. And Vanadis was the title that came in when Freyr was called Blotdisir in Snorri Heimskringla. At that point she was memorised into a mortal person, and she was the last one remaining of the gods. That’s what Snorri says. And she kept up the sacrifices. But there is other interpretations. It is used so varied across the material that you can probably justify it, almost any kind of interpretation of it. Frigg, do you want to come in with this?
00:08:30 Frigga: Well, I’m not a scholar. When I first heard about Disir in a book, it was both Alfar and Disir and indeed used as both male and female ancestral spirits. I used it for a long time in that way. I go a little step back because you rushed into Yule and Valkyries. And I had in my mind, what are the Valkyries. And now you pop up with the Disir. I realised that I never gave the Valkyries much shot. So what I knew was the usual things that are said in books, like they are the Wish Maidens of Odin and that kind of things. And now I gave it a thought I had. What the fuck? This is crap. I mean, one male god who has this huge amount of female spirits as his wish maidens. Yeah, right. So then you start thinking where that comes from and is that. It’s fun to know that, but I think it’s part of the Christianisation. Or you call it conversion in English. I think we, as with many other things, look in different ways at the Valkyries, at the Disir, from a romanticised picture of shield maidens made more of women in their own power and their own strengths, and having their own place, rightful place in society.
00:09:48 Rich: That’s that’s an interesting perspective there. Because I’m a bit deaf. I misheard you for a moment. And you said there were Odin’s wish maidens. Yes, yes, a maiden. You’ve all a wish. Well, that would be pretty low quality.
00:09:59 Frigga: That is what they are called.
00:10:00 Sif: That is what they’re called. Yeah.
00:10:03 Frigga: As I understood it, the point of view that Valkyries don’t have their own. What is it? Oh, right. They’re connected with Odin. And also on the the wyrd part. So they carry out his wishes.
00:10:16 Rich: Oh, really?
00:10:17 Frigg: And part of that is collecting the fallen warriors from the battlefield and bring them to Valhalla. That’s how I understood it.
00:10:24 Rich: Right, okay. No I didn’t. See you then. Later on, I thought you meant witch maiden. I thought, well, that sounds pretty cool. That sounds much more badass. Like a witch. Yeah.
00:10:33 Sif: Wish maiden. It’s probably my most hated of the the Valkyries sort of names because it’s heroes. Yeah. Who’s a Jotnar? Nah, she’s called me and that’s Wish Maiden. And yeah, it’s kind of the justification for that name is a bit all over the place. I mean, I think probably might as well just take it a bit at face value. You know, Odin sends them to every battle. He is wishing them to choose the dead. The idea of them and not having their own wyrd is interesting. Not encountered that before, but that is a fascinating thing. It’s probably one I wouldn’t agree with.
00:11:06 Frigga: That is why in the Volsunga saga, he puts Brunhilde to sleep because she didn’t act upon his wishes. At least that is what I read somewhere.
00:11:17 Sif: Yeah, it’s one of those often stated things of the. Obviously, if you want to get into the details on that one, it’s, um, Brunhilde is kind of a I feel like a continental Germanic, kind of like she’s been placed in the Nordic setting because you have those, you know, Nibelungenlied, uh, is a continental Germanic story that obviously dresses itself up in, um, kind of like Scandinavian dressings. But yeah, I do. I do take issue with the, uh, the Sigfridr / Brunhilde incident, as I call it, because that is usually a bit of a bludgeoning tool for the Valkyries being seen as servants, and it’s the only incident of the type. You know, we have many more simple examples with King Haakon, where they get free rein on who to choose. And is that very much their decision to kill Haakon in that scenario? But yeah, it’s it’s interesting. You kind of I very much take a feminist perspective on it, and a lot of this material was not written with that in mind. They kind of like, summarise all of this. The Valkyries are older than the material that, you know, obviously mentions them. We can see them. I do connect them with the Hellenic Furies as well. This idea of this kind of almost demonic, kind of like, uh, battlefield spirit or like violent in some ways. But yeah, they they predate Valhalla, especially in the kind of heroic, heavenly sort of image of Valhalla. So it’s interesting how they get into the idea by later writers.
00:12:46 Jens: I think they get into Valhalla.
Not in Christianisation, but a bit before and Viking era, because that’s when we see how Valhalla is emerging as this idea of the heathen sanctuary for the fallen warriors, because they were on Viking, and suddenly many more of these people died abroad. Suddenly Valhalla was glorified and placed after death, whereas before that it was more. Stay close to home and be with your ancestors and things like that. Suddenly they went out for Viking raids. They died far away from home, and they glorified that. And in this whole image, you have Odin emerging as the main god and this idea of Valhalla as the place for the warriors be after death. And that’s a very late period in the whole of the heathen period. And as you said, the Valkyries are older, so there is a broader perspective on them as well. But we see the latest period best because we have the most sources about that.
00:13:44 Jens: Yeah, absolutely. What’s funny is that the first mention of Valkyries is being kind of mead maidens in Valhalla comes from Ericsmal, which has this quite funny, kind of like image of Odin kind of rushing around because he’s got unexpected guests and he’s like, oh, you know, the Valkyries will serve your mead and all of that. And the benches get ready. The benches, whatever. And it’s it’s quite an interesting story in terms of I’d say I could talk about this for hours, but, um, it’s.
00:14:12 Frigga: But I just looked into the dictionary of Nordic mythology, you see, that are the usual things. But indeed, you know, they’re way older figures, and then they are suddenly the daemons of death. And then moving on to wish maidens, then I have.
00:14:30 Sif: Hmm.
00:14:31 Frigga: So is this. What do I miss? Maybe some, um, white male which are fitting in into their way of thinking as women in Servants and serve them, and only carry out their wish, you know.
00:14:52 Rich: Well, I had a question, though. You know, when people say there were a mead Maiden, that was not necessarily a task of demeaning. She often, if I’m right in remembering the person serving the mead, would be sometimes the highest ranking woman in the room. It was not something. Girls.
00:15:07 Frigga: Yeah, yeah, but I think there indeed is. The word maiden is not used as it is today, and it’s not a synonym to to servant.
00:15:16 Sif: Yeah, I could talk about that for ages. Okay, wait. Let me organise my thoughts. What did I want to tackle first? Yes. The, um, the, uh, hospitality aspect. Yeah. You’re absolutely right, Rich. That was very much an important role, I think, in terms of the way people in the modern day interpret it, it can be seen as servant and, uh, yeah. And to get on to the next point, the Victorians certainly did a number on this material. The common stereotype of the Valkyries as virgins stems from this misinterpretation of maiden in that they, they all thought girl or, you know, maiden as in like unmarried, you know, prime marriage material and yeah, they all all like Saxo as well. He just, he’s just obviously he’s writing in Latin, but he describes them as virgins. He describes Lagertha as a virgin, you know, and it’s all this kind of, um, this idea of maiden being a different meaning for, like, more Latin writers than the Norse. Then you also have these Valkyries as virgin serving mead in Valhalla to the heroes, it all becomes quite full, and it’s a corruption of it. And it feels, um, and then you get into the modern day, where people write on Facebook that they’re goddesses of promiscuity and that they sleep with all of the people. And it’s just. Yeah.
00:16:30 Rich: And you want to be the goddess of promiscuity.
00:16:33 Sif: I just sighed when I saw that, I thought, no, no, sorry, that’s you. But no, I mean, some of the kennings they have are just absolutely amazing. And they get into that sort of like death. Because I was saying this the other day about how one of my favourite kennings is the desiring ran of the excessive drying of veins, and that is badass. And that that’s for Hilda, Valkyrie, Hilda. And there’s so many like that, like Guardians of the Slaughter gates. And it’s just all the words that relate to them, like slaughter and carnage and blah. But yeah, like, can we have more of that, please? In modern interpretations and less of the kind of I need saving kind of approach. But yeah, I’ll stop talking.
00:17:17 Rich: To get back to the concept of The Wild Hunt, which is obviously linked into this time of the year. That was actually a question I had. Is The Wild Hunt specifically linked to winter, and or is it just linked to storms of any kind?
00:17:29 Frigga: As far as I know, it’s that these are also books from about folklore and such, from a period where they were romanticising stuff. Anyhow, it’s indeed wintertime, the dark days Yule time, but also in summer at midsummer. In the eastern part of the Netherlands, there are some names which are going around, which are now connected with the Wild Hunt, or a form of wild Hunt, but it’s also roaming around at Midsummer’s.
00:17:58 Rich: Because if I remember rightly when I read Claudia Cato’s book, which is really good overview of the material, The Wild Hunt isn’t always seen as negative in a lot of places it is. Oh, that’s the Wild Hunt, the black Dog, where we’ve got to bolt into, The Wild Hunt’s coming there. Is that part of it? There’s also people treat it as more like a oh, it’s the big storm. This, this always happens. Don’t worry about it. It’s just the wild hunt. You know, once they’ve gone, they’ve gone. So not as positive, but just like, not something to be terrified of.
00:18:23 Frigga: That’s this very practical way of thinking which you often see in folklore. But to me personally, I connect the Wild Hunt with the old time, and I see it also as a cleansing energy. You know, there’s hordes of ancestral Spirits. It’s wild because it were the dark days. But how you say that in German? Jens
00:18:47 Jens: Rauhnächte.
00:18:49 Frigga: Yeah. Which means the rough nights. The dark days. Which, I mean, if you can imagine that there is no electricity. And the winters were harsh with snow and ice. You can imagine these things, but in a modern way. And looking at things behind it, you have this cleansing in the winter when you know plants die or partly die and leaves fall off. And this is how to say that in autumn, the summer comes to rest, and the seeds are going into to the ground and compost from things from summer and autumn to me is that it is also a cleansing energy. But yeah, that can’t be, you know, fluffy and peace and white light shit in the winter. It’s a rough time. So and that’s why I think that the Valkyrie’s perfectly fit in with the Wild Hunt.
00:19:39 Jens: Two small additions to that. The German term is „Raunacht“, and some people see that also at the „Rauchnacht“, which would be the the incense night in a way. So that links again to this cleansing aspect that people use that to use incense to cleanse their room. And then as far as I’m aware of the North German mythology about the Wild Hunt, it’s usually led by Woden and Frau Holle or two similar figures like that and all their household. So and if you understand Woden as the North German version of Odin, the Valkyries are obviously a part of that. That just the part, because it makes sense that if Woden and Frau Holle and all those around them go chasing over the land, there are Valkyries.
00:20:23 Frigga: And there are also these folk customs that you had to for the farms that they had to bring in their tools, ploughs and stuff needed to be inside, otherwise the wild hunt could take them.
00:20:36 Rich: Oh well, that ties into something that may have existed in some parts of the world where there was a sort of analogue. I wouldn’t say Halloween because that’s the wrong time, the wrong word. But there may have been a folk tradition where people would dress up and bang on your door, and you wouldn’t let them in. Would dress up and still get scary costumes. They wouldn’t be asking for anything, but it was just as like re-enacting where they’re playing the part of the Wild Hunt. Maybe. So a bunch of young lads or young people in the village would just run around and bang on people’s doors late at night during the middle of a storm, and people would half know it was them, but half know it was also a participation in that. So would they be stealing your blouse or would it be, you know, the gods? And I think that’s a really interesting kind of connection there.
00:21:13 Frigga: In the Netherlands, in Groningen. It has been for a very long time folk custom that young people, if you left things outdoors on New Year’s Eve, that they would take them. And I heard from a friend that they put a car on the roof of a shed. You know this silly things to teach people and just want to get back to the Raunächte. And indeed, there’s not only incense, but they use certain herbs and burn them, and then go through the houses and the sheds and the stables where the livestock was to cleanse that.
00:21:48 Sif: This is, um, also reminding me I was lucky enough to speak at a conference a few weeks ago. Um, the Lifting the Veil conference by the Scottish Pagan Federation, and there was a talk there by Scott Richardson Reid and Eileen Bird about like, obviously it was all to do with ancestral customs in the dead and, um, specifically from a kind of a Scottish perspective. And Eileen was telling stories that had been passed down to her through generations. So it’s a lot of like folk lore coming in, tying into this. And like one of her stories was about the good neighbours, you know, the fair folk knocking on doors as well and being asked to let it be let in. And they were like, almost like coaxing kind of things from the house to come to open the door for them, like the fire and the water from the, the basin and all of that. So it’s also about cleansing in that respect as well, being kind of looking after the house at times of when storms were overhead and these uncertain happenings were going on outside. It’s really interesting how you have this consistent imagery, like across a decent chunk of Europe, you know, in Scandinavia that all have like this idea of like the unknown and these, these elements of pagan traditions that continue on, you know, and it’s all so interesting.
00:23:03 Frigga: Something I am thinking now for years. I mean, the climate changed. So we don’t have this harsh winters anymore, but still you have the dark days of December, you know, little sunlight and short days. So I think we need winter celebrations. So to get us through this and still through winter, even if we are in our modern houses and we have central heating and all this luxury, but the dark days are still there.
00:23:31 Sif: I‘m Travelling in the dark all the time now. Quite nice though it’s. I know a lot of people find it quite horrible. This idea of like waking up in the dark, getting home in the dark. It’s obviously, you know, you have like sad, you know, seasonal. There is something really comforting in kind of. So I take the train a lot now. So it’s this idea of being in this space of kind of like almost protection, as it were, and just watching this kind of the night and like the lights flashed by and it almost feels like quite, almost like a hug in a weird way, in terms of the unknown out there and all of that. I know that’s very a lot of people would see that as horrifying, but it’s like.
00:24:11 Rich: Well, I think it’s the same sensation of being inside when there’s a torrential storm outside, knowing nice and dry and safe. Yes, nature is happening. That’s fine, but I don’t have to be in it.
00:24:21 Frigga: Yes, you know, cosy and warm you the rain and indeed the storm.
And yeah, that’s.I love the seasons getting older and due to my illness and being too much alone, the winters are difficult for me in the short days, but I still love them. After the abundance of summer. So much light. You know, it’s growing darker in the evenings because often there is so much this, you know, light is okay and dark is wrong. But I have know there is so much in the darkness, in the calm of the evening. And that’s what you have in this period of time. You know that it’s becoming dark earlier, and if you’re outside in the dark, it’s it’s calm. It’s, it’s, you know, less people on the street and less noise.
00:25:04 Rich: The one thing I really like at this time of year is almost the reverse of what you’re talking about. But during certain times of winter, although it was climate change, we see this less now is it’ll be incredibly cold, but the sky will be cloudless, bright, you know, clear blue sky. But you know, I don’t care how cold you can wrap it. But if it’s that really bright, bright, clear sky love it.
00:25:22 Frigga: Mhm. Yeah. Indeed. I mean if it’s really cold and there is snow and it’s freezing, it can be so lovely when the sun is shining. I can remember the winters as a child. I recently thought of that. Absolutely not every winter we had snow and ice when I was little. But in my mind when I was a kid, you know, six, seven, eight. We rushed home after school, we put on our skates, rushed to the pond and started skating. And in my memory, it’s the whole day skating, for hours skating. But we came home at 4:00 and we had to be home at 6:00. So it was only maybe not even two hours and we had time to skate. But fond memories of being a child.
00:26:05 Rich: Well, I do remember my dad talking about like, well, how did you cope? You know, getting to work back in the 70s, you know, where we lived. It was like once a very rural, but certainly outside of a major city. And I said, well, the gritter has never came round. There was no, no salt on the roads. I said, well, how did you did you just stay off work? Oh, no, no. Me and all the other men in the street dug our way out of the street because of the snow. I said, right, but then it’s there was hills. Oh, no, it’s fine. I just put a slab of concrete in the boot of my car. Just had a bit of stability. It was fine. Sounds incredibly dangerous, doesn’t it? And if it was extra icy, he’d put two slabs of concrete. Yeah. There you go. Well, I mean, I’ve heard of people getting sort of particular lamps or certain colour of lights to help them with seasonal affective disorder at this time of year. And I wonder if you could tie that into a ritual act, if you could get a sort of, I don’t know, say you’re into a good friend of mine is into Sunna. So you could have like the symbols or the words Sunna carved on the lamp or something like that. You could build that into your practice as a way of sort of affirming your sort of, uh, Sunna will come back. Yes. Um, so I quite like that idea. But also, you know, the whole sun and moon thing as Sunna and Mani. And I think that’s, um, for a long time, you didn’t see that much in in rituals. But I see it more and more now. People mentioning Sunna and Mani and I, I find that really interesting that the personification and the sort of really, really interesting approach, because I think there’s so many gods who need more than two hands to count all our gods. Then, then we should include more of them. You know.
00:27:30 Frigga: Likewise the Valkyries.
00:27:32 Sif: Absolutely.
00:27:34 Frigga: Let’s not forget about the Valkyries. Please.
00:27:39 Sif: Yes, please. Yeah.
00:27:41 Rich: Oh. One final note on the Wild Hunt, which I heard this long, long time ago. And some. It was at a pagan event. I can’t remember which one it was now, but, um, somebody was talking about, well, does it exist outside of Europe? And there’s some discourse about this or that? And somebody said, well, what about America? Well, not really. And then said, well, no, no it does. The Ghost Riders in the sky. Oh. And as soon as you thought, okay, it’s a much more recent myth, but the number of times that comes back and how it’s been reinvented and like old warriors and old soldiers and Native American sort of links into that as well. So that is about, you know, all even the Doors Riders on the storm and all that kind of stuff. You can see how it’s like building into a new mythology there. It’s new, but, you know, in 100, 200, 300 years, you can easily see that becoming a new mythology. Why not?
00:28:22 Frigga: I was inspired when we talked about this episode. I said, because I realised that I never gave Valkyries much thought at first and I have to look into it? And I almost ask Sif: Please send me your book. And no later. I would love to have you book. And you read it. No. Not necessary. You don’t need that, in my opinion, to get to know spirit. So well, you know, it was in my mind and then I was a bit thinking about it. And of course I came up first, the flame of forest and forest weaving, because that is my part. Why shouldn’t there be Valkyries who are interested in Frith weaving? And so the ritual I came up with is Frith weaving with mighty mythic maidens. And what I do then is I just call upon them and simply said this hello, Valkyries, I’m Frigga and I say I would like my thoughts. And I felt some presence and I had the idea that they liked it because also, from their point of view, words can be weapons as well, and I think that is what we need. If you look at the world around us. We need different kinds of weapons and we can use our words as weapons. And yeah, that’s what I’m more or less built my ritual about. I call upon the shield maidens in general, as in ancestral female spirits who in their lifetime fought for what was necessary and it might not be on the battlefield. And yet there are all kinds of different battlefields. So I thought of a forked branch, you know, these ones, and and use that as a loom and ask the people who join in the ritual to, to bring some pieces of yarn. And in the ritual we make some peace weaving, first weaving together with the Valkyries, and we actually go into performance. So I’m very looking forward to work with the Valkyries for the first time and how that is going to work out. So I’m curious if would you come up with?
00:30:26 Sif: I actually it’s kind of in the same sort of vane. Obviously, I tend to focus on their more warrior aspects, but I felt like this wasn’t the time. So the rituals that I definitely want to be doing at this time of year in a very similar vane, because despite having a lot of Valkyries that kind of have terrifying sounding names. Devastation. You know Herja. And obviously a lot to do with war. Like Gunner, Hilda, I wanted to focus on those that I kind of kind of pushed to the back a little bit, mostly because they’re so divergent from that naming convention. There’s a couple that I wanted to very much focus on. Like Alrun, who means ale rune. Now that’s interesting because of the number of times that runes are seen to be carved on various drinking vessels. And actually, Sigdrfer mentions carving runes on a horn, I think. Is the specification there to empower the drink, Sigurd and all those sorts of mentions. Obviously in the sagas we tend to have that being either to incite courage or rage or something for that effect, something that’s quite hostile. But who’s to say that it can’t be something that’s more of a wish towards peace and collaboration and words similar to that. There’s also Wrath Grazer, who means various like translations, counsel, truce being one, you know, wise counsel. We have various Valkyries that are named in that sort of way. So it’s there are they’re not all, they’re not a monolith. They’re not all like war all the time. They have these aspects to them which lean into more of that hospitality aspect. So again, very much into frith weaving and peace and negotiations. And there was an interesting thing that happened at Tyrs Moot this last summer, where me and two of the people were doing the Consecration of Tyrs‘s God Post just for the hour and going in we thought that, you know, we were thinking Tyr. You know, he’s very much like more of a war of, uh, God kind of. I mean, that’s that’s debateable, obviously. But what we felt during that consecration was mediation and this idea of him being Lord of the Thing. And what was interesting about that was that a Valkyrie appeared, you know, to us during these sorts of almost like, trance like states, periods of contemplation. And that stuck with me in this idea of reinforcing this idea of them not being all one thing. They are what comes after war, potentially as well. And in terms of making sure war doesn’t happen. So my rituals that I’m fleshing out now are all about, again, mediation, resolving conflict, patching up disagreements, calling on them to, you know, aid in that and, you know, in reinforcing bonds as well, the idea of friendship and community being very much central to that idea, which I think is so important. These days I feel like with social media, words can be taken the wrong way. But once you’re in person, you know it’s a very different sort of atmosphere. And and again, obviously you can do these rituals online as well, but it’s all about, you know, it’s more now more than ever in this world, which seems to be rife with violence, disagreement and awfulness, that these the bonds that tie us together need to be strong. And, um, you know, united, I guess community. Yeah.
00:34:02 Rich: And do you see that specifically this time of the year as well?
00:34:04 Sif: Yeah, I think it’s because obviously we have for me, the idea of gathering this happened in the summer during the nice weather. We don’t tend to plan like events or like, uh, even more like just casual kind of meetings with people and friends. In the colder months, it tends to be kind of more concentrated around you can bear to walk outside. So yeah, I think a lot of people can feel very isolated during colder months. And I think these are the times of year that you need kind of like this reinforcement of friendship and community.
00:34:38 Rich: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. Yeah.
00:34:39 Frigga: I would like to read out a few lines of the ritual I came up with, and the text of the ritual will be posted with the episode I call them actually the Valkyries, the Frith Weaving Warriors. They said before, I think we need a warrior aspect these days to have the courage to stand what we think that is important. And one of the other lines is the wielders of spear and spindle. You can use all these tools also in a magical way. A spear is not only a weapon to kill, it is also to defend, but also to carve runes into something. And for the Frith Weaving, I’m going to ask them:
Break the chains of a constricting culture,
The stifling, strangling norm,
Without bloodshed, without war.
Rouse rebellion, fuel the Flame of Frith!
I think that is what we need. We need warriors to get rid of the norm. And I think I like that. But what you said Sif that brings me inspiration as well. The mediation. Isn’t that part of being a warrior? It’s not only the killing. Something else. As say often, I think there is more courage needed for peace, maybe, than for war. It’s different ways of courage.
00:35:57 Sif: Absolutely.
00:35:58 Frigga: The courage for inclusivity and diversity, courage for dialogue. To listen to others, to see others in their way of life. Maybe how far away it is from yours and maybe always scared of it. If you don’t like it.
00:36:12 Jens: There is an understanding, and at least in Germany, that the word Valkyrie literally means the chooser of the victor, and it’s more prominent in the German word „Walküre“ Because „Küren“ in Germany still means to decide or to choose who is getting a title, who is winning a contest. And from this understanding, the Valkyries have a very, very active decision part because they’re really deciding, okay, this is the one who’s going to Valhalla. This is the one who’s winning the battle. And it’s an interesting idea to see some of them, at least as Frith Weavers as well, because we have no idea why they are deciding the way they decide. And of course, that could be the motivation of some of them. And we should hope. And when you said that’s so diverse, there are probably at least some of them who have these ideas about, okay, I have this power to decide here. I’m not just the servant to carry out Odin’s wishes, but I am deciding this conflict. I am ending this conflict in a way. How and why do I do this? I think we can see them as ending conflicts in a way as well.
00:37:15 Sif: Actually, that’s a good point.
00:37:16 Frigga: Yeah. And what immediately pops up to mind? You use the word decision making that they can make is that we can learn from them to make decisions. Also the hard ones.
00:37:27 Sif: I like the idea of I’ve never really thought of it in terms of the framing of ending conflicts, but you’re right. I mean, the English and the Norse have that element of choosers of the slain. You know, that’s the real key here is the Anglo-Saxon. And that means that the same choosers of the slain and their assigned severity, you know, they are often seen as they just are they’re, you know, they don’t have any agency. But what we actually see in the material is very much the opposite. They are given this decision to choose who dies, who lives, who’s victorious, who loses the battle. And obviously there it ties into this idea of ending conflict, which, you know, is is kind of a way that I haven’t really thought about it. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. And yeah, I also when we were having this discussion, I also this idea of mediation struck me from in Lokasenna the my namesake, Sif, she offers Loki a drink and obviously is handing him that, and it’s just like she’s trying to smooth things over, you know? Stop. You know, we’re all okay. Cool, cool. Yeah.You know, like justnow. So there is that again, tying into this idea of keeping, like, the frith of a space, the grith, you know, of. And again, that ties into this idea of serving drinks and being a good host. And that ties into managing make sure that violence doesn’t break out, you know.
00:38:51 Rich: I think that’s a very important skill that a lot of people seem to lack. Being able to bridge that gap between people, even if it’s only if we say a temporary peace. You know, I don’t know how true this is, but I like the idea of the really old in, uh, maiden with the mead cups of book. Again, issues with that word, but let’s move on from that. It’s all the people gathering for the big, you know, for a maybe a week long sort of gathering, feasting and what have you. And the highest ranking lady goes around and pours mead, but what she’s actually doing is saying, how are you? Everything okay? You know, or. Yes, I know that other guys here. But I’m going to have a word with him. He’s going to behave himself, you know, while he’s here under my roof. And he goes to the next person. Oh, my son wants to ask for the hand of so and so in marriage. Well, okay, I’ll put in a word for you can’t promise anything. And she goes around and speaks to everyone and just okay. Getting the gossip. Great. Awesome. Because I’m a gossip queen myself. But I like the idea, but that it’s the sort of speaking with everybody and kind of just trying to sort of keep the peace in a literal and figurative sense. And that would obviously, in my mind, always take place, you know, in the big sort of winter gathering and as everyone’s in the big hof or the big sort of, uh, hall, you know, to see out the winter.
00:39:53 Frigga: Yeah. And peace is way more than only the absence of violence. And I think that is why I like the word frith.
00:40:01 Rich: Absolutely.
00:40:02 Frigga: And grith I’m a bit less familiar with. I mainly use phrase, but that is expressing for me way more that part of peace. The dialogue, the community living together, giving each other space.
00:40:15
Rich 1: Excellent. So if we could move on to, on a lighter topic. Movies for you. Because so many Christmas movies are very schmaltzy and very, very Christian based. Is there anything we could pull out that would be something you would watch at Christmas or something like that around this time of year?
00:40:31 Frigga: I don’t know if that movie is available with English subtitles, but in the Netherlands, of course, we have Sinterklaas, which we celebrate the beginning of December already about ten years ago. A movie has been made which is actually a horror movie with this Sinterklaas nowadays. This is very, you know, the Bishop of Myra. And to me, it’s both all kind, you know, this mixture of Christianity and Heathen. But she’s just called the friend of children. But I never thought of a horror movie because I don’t like it. But then Saint Nicholas is a disgraced bishop. The movie is centred in the Middle Ages and he is roaming the countryside with Robert looting and burning villages. I just read it because otherwise I can’t remember it. And the villagers kill him. But then of course, he still exists in the other world. And every time there is a full moon on the 5th of December, then they return and bring all this horrible things out. So the year the movie is placed in, of course there is full moon on the 5th of December, but I love it so much. You know, this friendly friend of children and this whole has suddenly turned into something completely different. It’s just called „Sint“.
00:41:47 Rich: Yeah, I’ve just found it though. I’m just going to put that in the chat. Amazing, because I don’t know why, but there seems to be this funny thread of like, people liking a horror at Christmas time or a spooky, scary story.
00:41:58 Frigga: It’s not strange. I mean, to me, that dies in the Wild Hunt. You know when you said before that you are in indoors and safe and outdoors is all this?
00:42:08 Rich: Well, a thing we have in England, which has been going on for a long time. So obviously the the writer, M. R. James. And before he sent all his students home, and now he was a complete atheist and believe in the supernatural at all. But he knew his students did. So, and every Christmas he would write a short little story that would absolutely, you know, really scare them and then say, anyway, off you go home. Now it’s about midnight, away you go. But these have since been adapted and adapted many times for the BBC, has often done them, and often quite short, but only about 30 minutes or 40 minutes. And they always have a creepy, horrible sort of twist and stuff like that. They’re not always set at Christmas even. They’re just they would do them every Christmas. And I don’t know why, but it was great. And a couple of years back they one of the vintage channels showed all of them. So the fantastic sort of stories, you know, ones about a haunted painting. And every time you look at the painting, there’s a thing coming slightly closer in the painting. Yeah. The mezzotint, there’s that one, and there’s one called The Signalman, which is another club with Denholm Elliott, and there’s one where that guy finds an old pair of binoculars, where the guy is basically dug up the bones of criminals, boiled them down and painted the lenses so he can see into the past his descendant looking through them, and sees this church which has been knocked down like a hundred years ago. Then he starts saying, you know, the bones of the dead man. It’s brilliant. It’s very, very low tech, but wonderful, wonderful stuff. If you if you know, M. R. James stuff. And more recently, other people have done updates of his stuff with, you know, same story, but with a newer cast. And there’s one about this, this haunted book, you know, whoever reads it, the old man who cursed the book will kind of come and get you. Yeah, the tractate mid-off, which is a very odd little title, but there you go. I like the idea of a haunted book.
00:43:47 Sif: Always.
00:43:47 Rich: I know other countries have things that they always show at Christmas, even though they’re not related to Christmas or Yule. I don’t know which country it is. It’s sort of like Jens. Is it a German one where it’s like, um, so many for dinner? It’s a it’s a British play.
00:44:01 Jens: Oh, that’s New Year’s Eve. Dinner for one. That’s always on New Year’s Eve on all the various public channels in Germany. All over it. You get schedules for New Year’s Eve when it is shown on which channel.
00:44:14 Rich: Can you tell us a little bit about?
00:44:16 Jens: Yeah, it’s extremely. And my husband totally does not get it, which is also quite interesting. Miss Sophie, this old lady wants to have her traditional birthday dinner, although all her friends who participated are dead now. So her faithful butler, James is preparing this dinner and she is having the dinner and he is doing the toasts of all the deceased people there over several curses. So he gets more and more drunk during the dinner. And in the very end, the assists are getting upstairs. And yeah, there are some repeating catch phrases like „same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?“ „same procedures every year. James“ so repeated quite often in that „Dinner for One“. Very British, but it seems to be the kind of humour only Germans get.
00:45:09 Sif: Amazing
00:45:10 Rich: Terms of Yule movies. I mean, obviously that since when I’m going to try and track that down, that looks fantastic. I mean, I like all the, as I said, the ghost stories for Christmas. What I have heard of some people doing because they’re somewhat bring this into inclusivity. I was in a chat at work and somebody said, I keep on being invited to all these things and I really don’t want to go. I don’t celebrate Christmas or Yule like, but how do I say no without seeming like I’m a grump? So I said, well, what you do is you invent your own tradition. Are you coming over for, you know, Christmas? Oh, no. No, on December the 25th, I always sit in and watch four horror movies back to back. That’s my thing. So whatever. Just. Just invent your own thing. Say, well, no, but I have this other thing I do. Rather than saying no, I’m going to do nothing. Build your own tradition. I’ll be running all of the Fast and Furious back to back or whatever.
00:45:55 SifThat would be a thing. Wouldn’t you be there all week?
00:45:58 Rich: Yeah. That’s why you can’t come out. No, no. I’m busy. I’m only up to Fast Furious 12. Now I’m still going. You know, I’ve heard of people doing that. There’s other sort of fun traditions I’ve heard about. I believe in Japan. Everybody goes out for, is it Kentucky Fried Chicken? Oh, Christmas Day
00:46:13 Sif: Yeah. I don‘t understand Why?
00:46:15 Rich: And in America I believe, because obviously a lot of Jewish community there. They don’t do Christmas dinner, but they all go and have a Chinese meal. For a long time, when I was still doing the Christmas Eve, sort of wrapping presents and stuff like that, couldn’t be bothered to eat or cook. So we would always get a Chinese meal, you know, because that would be the only place open. You see, I’m thinking now, you know, because I’ll be in my new place for Yule. So I’m thinking like I need to. It’s previously only been like a rental property, and now it’s going to be a purchase property. So I’m going to have to do a sort of Yule sort of like welcoming him in the house spirits and whatever, you know, I’m going to have to do. I’m going to put that to some thought, because I can double up with like a consecration of the House or whatever, you know, but also welcoming, saying hello to the house spirits and all that kind of stuff.
00:46:58 Frigga: Wonderful to do at Yule
00:47:00 Sif: Yeah.
00:47:00 Rich: Excellent. Oh, that could be good.
00:47:03 Frigga: Oh, back to Valkyries.
00:47:04 Sif: All right. Valkyries.
00:47:07 Jens: If Frigga is not coming to it, I have to barge in. I’m not into horror movies. We spoke about the Valkyries and the past time Sif mentioned the Victorians a bit. At the same time you painted your picture of the Valkyries in Victorian England. The Valkyries got a new image in Germany. And as much I don’t like Wagner in general, I would love you to come with me. I don’t want to. So we have this forever: Da da da da da da.
00:47:42 Frigga: Da da da da da da da da da da da.
00:47:48 Sif: Da da da.
00:47:52 Rich: Wonderful.
00:47:53 Sif: Mr. Wagner. Absolute oxymoron, worst.
00:47:55 Jens: … to the melody and the music. And completely forget about all the content he‘s put in there. And the cliches he‘s forged. His music was kind of ahead of its time or very much on the peak and extremely modern and progressive in that time.
00:48:11 Sif: Mhm.Yeah that’s true. I mean I also the kind of compound on my misery. A few weeks ago I noticed that someone has updated the list of Valkyrie names to include Wagner Valkyries. So I was like what are you doing? Get that fanfiction out of here. I will just include all of them. Then you might as well just pick up a book that has Valkyries in it and just list them like.
00:48:30 Frigga: We’re back to the reindeers, because you can add the name of the reindeers as well.
00:48:35 Sif: If Wagner gets his list of Valkyries in the list of Valkyrie names, I’m putting the Santas reindeer in there as well.
00:48:42 Rich: I’m just visualising, like, you know, Santa’s sleigh being pulled by a whole bunch of Valkyries, and it’s like, you know, hi, I’m Dasher, just this big sort of butch woman. Kind of like, who are you? I’m Prancer. Whoa. Okay.
00:48:53 Sif: Don’t tempt me. I’ll draw it.
00:48:55 Rich: Please do. I want to see them all.
00:48:56
Frigga: To me, all these figures like Santa Claus and like Sinterklaas, they are winter spirits.
00:49:02
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you see the image of Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas was one thing, but Father Christmas specifically was a completely different character. They’re now seen as synonymous. But he was not an old, ruddy faced man. He was a big, broad chested, sort of very masculine, sort of. And you can see him actually portrayed by Edward Woodward in Scrooge A Christmas Carol. He’s in that wearing the green outfit. So he’s wearing green with his chest sort of exposed, sort of looking very sort of, you know, big brown beard. I’ll see if I can find a picture of it. But that was he would see this as very virile character rather than like a passive sort of, um, elderly old man as he’s often portrayed as now.
00:49:36 Frigga: But then also look at Germany in different parts. It’s Austria, isn’t it, with Krampus, and they are way more fun and scary.
00:49:46 Jens: Oh, there’s so many of them.
00:49:48 Rich: There’s at least one Krampus movie, isn’t there?
00:49:51 Sif: Are we saying that Santa Claus has undergone a transformation similar to the Valkyries from, like, demonic? Yeah, like mediate, like. Oh, dear. I mean, in terms of movies, though, I did want to quickly mention that I think my one of my new traditions is going to be watching Violent Night. The one that has the Viking in it as Santa. So I’m definitely doing that.
00:50:14 Rich: Well, isn’t there another one? I think we talked about in the pre chat about whether somebody hires a hitman to kill Santa. It’s just called Fat Man.
00:50:22 Frigga: But then I think the Pratchett’s book The Hogfather and it’s all thought about that. Is it this old know that the Hogfather is lost or something, and then. Oh, yeah. This whole way. I love Terry Pratchett’s ways of thinking in his book that because of the belief is gone. All kind of things go wrong in the Discworld. I like that, and I think that is partly true. In our world, we’ve lost our belief in things, even, you know, in good things, in community things. But I’m getting serious again.
00:50:51 Jens: Well, watching the Hogfather is one of my husband’s Christmas traditions.
00:50:56 Frigga: Is there a movie of it?
00:50:58 Jens Yes.
00:50:59 Frigga: Then I try and find it. I mean, then we’re talking about movies again.
00:51:02 Rich: Yes.
00:51:02 Frigga: It is. Okay. I think we’re coming to an end. So I guess we have to wish all our listeners a wonderful Yule time, a scary old time, if they like to.
00:51:13 Rich: Yeah, absolutely. And remember to, you know, weave your frith with those who are important to you and reach out to those who you might not have spoken to in a while, I think is often good. And I don’t mean that as a depressing thing. I mean, that should be a positive thing to reach out to people. So I think it only remains for me to say, um, farewell from the Wyrd Thing podcast and co-hosts.
00:51:32 Frigga: Bye.
00:51:33 Jens: Bye bye.
00:51:34 Sif: Bye.