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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7523025" data-attributes="member: 58172">Norse texts describe how the Norse culture interacts with æsir as well as with other clans of nature spirits.For example, Þórr is the lifeforce of summer electrical storms. Some farmers ask this nature spirit for protection from the winter weather that kills crops. Some fishers ask Þórr for protection from arctic sea storms that sink ships. These requests are for certain nature spirits to prevail over certain other nature spirits. They tend to be cosmic in scope, somewhat impersonal, and for a natural environment that can be hospitable to human activities.Occasionally, nature spirits intervene personally in human affairs, but normally with tragic outcomes. For example, Frigg the wife of Óðinn the sky calendar spirit helped an infertile woman become pregnant. She gave her one of the golden apples. Thereby the woman healed becoming youthful and fertile, and then was able to become pregnant. But she remained pregnant for six years without being able to give birth. Finally, the woman gave up, had a caesarean section, and died while the child was born. This personal ‘help’ from one of the æsir guaranteed that the woman would die without being able to be a mother. There are many examples of tragedy from the æsir. Þórr the summer storm spirit shows up at the home of a family of human farmers. When the children accidentally injured one of his goats, Þórr took away the children as compensation to make them his servants, and the parents never saw their children again. And so on. It is safer to avoid entangling the æsir nature spirits in ones own personal affairs.The clan of æsir are responsible for the natural environments that are inhabitable for the clan of humans. In this sense, they are ‘helpful’.The Norse mainly call on a helpful nature spirit to safeguard against a hostile nature spirit.Norse spirituality values rugged self-reliance.When it comes to personal affairs, the Norse are more like to use their own personal magical skills to remedy a situation, or else get a friend to help, who they know to be skilled at magic.Occasionally, a nature spirit intercedes in personal affairs, but normally the outcome of such is tragic.There is the example of Bárðr, who is the lifeforce of Snæfell − Snow Mountain − in a peninsula on the west coast of Ísland. This particular nature spirit is actually half-human and half-jǫtunn. His mother is human, and his father is jǫtunn.All jǫtnar are ‘troll’. The term ‘troll’ means ‘witch’, where this term denotes the magical powers of jǫtnar. (In Old Norse, ‘witchcraft’ is trolldómr, and ‘to bewitch’ someone is trylla. In modern Norwegian, alternative medicine in the sense of herbal remedies, acupuncture, and other spiritual remedies is referred to as trollmedisin, ‘witch medicine’.) The jǫtnar divide into two groups, the beautiful risar and the grotesque þursar. Those jǫtnar of mixed ancestry tend to be vaguely referred to as ‘troll’. Specifically, the father of Bárðr is half risi and half troll − connoting his beauty and magical power.Bárðr grew up among the jǫtnar in Norway, under the fostering by the spirit of the Mountain of Dofri (today Dovre that marks the boundary between southern and northern Norway). Fostering is the Norse educational system, moreorless the same thing as apprenticeship. Bárðr fathered three daughters with the daughter of Dofri. But later, he married a fully human woman having an additional six daughters, and eventually a son. He and his new family left Norway and immigrated to Ísland, where he spent his life among the clan of humans. Eventually, Bárðr leaves human life and rejoins once again among the clan of jǫtnar. At this point he becomes of the lifeforce of Snow Mountain. The spirit of Bárðr sometimes manifests as a hiker among the glacial white summit of Snow Mountain, wearing a hood and carrying a kind of forked staff that assists for navigating icy patches. He often comes to the rescue of humans against hostile nature spirits.At one point, a troll of the clan of jǫtnar traps a fisher who is said to be Þórr, of the clan of æsir, incognito. Bárðr who is himself of the clan of jǫtnar rescues Þórr from this jǫtunn.The saga describes Gestr the son of Bárðr. A human ghost who lives among the clan of náir manifests to dare Gestr to try rob his burial mound. The king encourages Gestr to accept the ghost’s challenge, and a royal retinue accompanies Gestr that includes a Christian who is a priest and a man and a woman who are both skilled in telepathic seið-magic. Bárðr himself has a power animal, sotospeak, a dog that is better in combat than four warriors.The king and others had pressured Gestr to become a Christian, but Gestr lacked interest, and refused.Traveling by sea to the location of the ghosts grave, Óðinn the chieftain of the clan of æsir visits Gestr on the ship. He discusses the Norse aboriginal spirituality with him. But then, the human Christian attacked Óðinn, hitting him on the head, and knocking Óðinn overboard, whereon this particular manifestation from the clan of æsir ceased.The crew arrive to the location of the grave site. Gestr alone enters the burial mound to challenge the ghost. His entry into the grave translates him into the netherworld of Hel. He sees the large crew of warriors of an unusually large longship that was buried with the ghost. Gestr succeeds in defeating them, then travels lower into the burial, where he sees the ghost sitting on a throne. The ghost seeks to attack, but Gestr wards it away by the light of a magically imbued candle. When the candle goes out, the ghost attacks and starts to prevail.Gestr calls out to his father for help against the ghost. One nature spirit might help combat an other nature spirit, in this case a jǫtunn versus a nár. In answer, Bárðr manifests but proves unable to help his son. At this point, afraid of dying, Gestr promises to convert to Christianity if the Christian God will save him from the ghost. Then the spirit of Saint Óláfr manifests, luminously, and Gestr gains the power necessary to defeat the ghost.Later, Gestr undergoes the Christian baptism that he promised to do. At this time, Bárðr the half-jǫtunn kills Gestr his own son, because in the battle with the ghost, Gestr behaved like a coward who lacks personal integrity. True to his nature, Bárðr apparently went into a jǫtun-móðr, a berserkr rage that jǫtnar are notorious for, and did more harm to his son than intended.Gestr dies as a Christian while still wearing the sacramental garb of the Christian baptism.Most sagas are realistic and grim. This saga is more dreamlike. Yet it stays true the Norse worldview that all of the kinds of nature spirits are moreorless equal in power.Here, a human defeats Óðinn of the clan of æsir. This human is a Christian, but Bárðr of the clan of jǫtnar kills Gestr an other Christian. The Christian God is unable to save Gestr from the clan of jǫtnar. Bárðr the jǫtunn suffers the shame of his own son being a coward − afraid of the clan of náir − and by killing him, loses his own son, and his own connection to humanity. The ghost of the clan of náir is vanquished and robbed. Among the human clan, the two seið workers who were outside the burial mound went insane, but a Christian healed them, so they could continue to do seið magic. The power animal, the dog, drowned while trying to swim a great distance.All of these possibilities are true to the Norse worldview. These vagarious clans of nature spirits, including the human clan, are all aspects of nature interacting with each other. In this case, they interact tragically. No clan enjoys hegemony.In some sense, the Norse clans of nature spirits resemble the ‘races’ of D&D, including the human race, the jǫtnar race, the æsir race, and the náir race, and other races. Each race comprises high level members and low level members. Heroes from different races that are about the same level are about equal in power.The Norse saga refers to Bárðr by the nickname Snæ-fells-áss, the áss of Snow Mountain, despite him being of the clan of jǫtnar with no relation to the clan of æsir. The saga explains the nickname. The explanation thereby explains how the Norse perceive the æsir themselves. Likewise, within the Norse worldview, the æsir are understood to be a kind of ‘bjarg-vættr’, literally a ‘nature spirit of help’.The æsir are helpful nature spirits.As numerous Norse texts attest, the æsir are one of many kinds of nature spirits. Any kind of nature spirit can be viewed as ‘helpful’, sometimes even a troll.</blockquote>

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