THE FAMILY OF GODS Part 1
From Odin's Wife by William P. Reaves (2018): Chapter X
Rather than a pantheon of gods, the Nordic deities are more often portrayed as an extended family, a clan. This structure can be seen in mythological as well as historic sources. In the tenth century Second Merseburg Charm, for example, the gods named can be identified as a husband and wife, parents and a child, and two sets of sisters. The verse begins: “Phol and Wodan rode into the woods, there the foot of Baldur’s foal went out of joint.” From the context, Phol appears to be the rider of Baldur’s horse, i.e. Baldur himself. Wodan or Odin is, of course, his father. Nearest Phol-Baldur rides Sinhtgunt and her sister Sunna, the sun goddess. Then comes Odin’s wife Frija (Frigga), who is Baldur’s mother, with her sister Volla, whom we recognize as Fulla, Frigg’s handmaiden, in the Icelandic Eddas. In succession, they each attempt to heal the sprained leg of balderes uolon, until at last, Odin succeeds. The riding party is thus a family unit. Based on their relative positions, Sinhtgunt, being first on the scene, presumably because she rode closest to Phol-Baldur, may be Baldur’s wife, Nanna, under an epithet. Her sister Sunna, the Sun, accompanies her, suggesting a celestial procession. At the very least, a minimalist reading of the charm yields two sets of sisters, Odin and his traditional wife Frigg, along with the earliest record of their son Baldur’s name. Likewise, in the poem Lokasenna, the gods gathered together for a feast are acknowledged as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. At Loki’s instigation, Aegir’s feast becomes a family quarrel with charges of cowardice, infidelity and incest until “Earth’s son” arrives to drive the accuser out. Throughout eddic and skaldic poetry, we are informed of the gods’ familial ties: Earth is Thor’s mother, Thor is Odin’s son, Frigg is Odin’s wife, Baldur is their son, etc. Even relationships that are no longer understood are enumerated. In Harbardsljóð 9, Thor is said to be Meili’s brother; in Hymiskvíða 5, we are told that the giant Hymir is Tyr’s father; and in Hrafnagaldur Óðins 6, we learn that Idunn is Ivaldi’s daughter. Bonds of kinship were obviously important to the ancients. Poems such as Hyndluljóð are overtly concerned with the genealogy of heroic figures and members of the god clan appear liberally in their family trees. In at least two Anglo-Saxon genealogies, royal lines descend from Odin and his son Bældægg, commonly recognized as Baldur.
Some sources make this kinship plain. When the heathen king Chlodwig, the first ruler of the Franks (c. 486 AD), rebukes his Christian wife for deriding his gods as nothing but feckless bits of stone, wood and metal, he responds: "By the will of our gods all things are created and produced. Evidently your god can do nothing, nor has it yet been proven that he [Christ] belongs to the genere of gods.” The word genere (from genus) is Latin for “family, house, ancestry, race, class, noble birth,” and again points to a divine hereditary monarchy, to which Jesus was an outsider.
