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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 6682431" data-attributes="member: 6683613">To quote Wikipedia:  who?  Is this a mainstream view?  And how are we defining "god" here, anyway?  They had names, personalities, domains, powers, myths, temples, idols, prayers, rituals, and sacrifices.  I'm pretty sure that in most people's book, that constitutes a pagan god.Yeah, I'm familiar with the Hrafnagaldr, hence my confusion:  this precisely one source we have attesting her lineage describes her as an elf and the child of a dwarf.  (Regarding the interpretation of that, remember that the distinction between "elf" and "dwarf" is not always hard-and-fast in Norse folklore -- both may have referred to Ivaldi.  And the distinction between "elf" and "god" is likewise not always hard-and-fast -- the poet may have been calling her a goddess.)  But like I said earlier in this thread, a single source, written down centuries after the fact no less, is hardly authoritative.  Iðunn almost certainly meant different things to different Norsemen at different times and places over the centuries.  This link with Ivaldi may be essential to all incarnations of her, or it may be a random line spouted by just this one poet -- we simply cannot say.  The fact that no other source connects her with Ivaldi, though, tends to push us towards skepticism.  So maybe she was originally something else.  Maybe she was a jötunn.  But I know of nothing that suggests she could have been; all further scholarly speculation about her that I'm aware of connects her to the Vanir, not the jötnar, on account of the whole plants-and-fertility motif.To quote Wikipedia again:  who?</blockquote>

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