Anonymous asked:
Hello! I was wondering if birch or oak had any special meanings/symbolism in Norse Mythology;
Specific aspects regarding Norse mythology and Norse paganism still remain elusive to me, but I have done my best to find some helpful information. I have read in many places that Freyja and Frigg are associated with birch, but I have not found that in historical sources for myself just yet. However, Thor is often associated with oak, and I have been able to find sources for that.
I am not sure if I will necessarily do a good job or not in answering your question, but I do hope I am helpful. I am more of an Icelandic saga, language, law, and society kind of guy. I have a lot of work to do in mythology still.
If you want, I suggest you ask @fuckyeahnorsemythology or even @hedendom for more information. They seem to be much more adept in mythology than I am. I am sure there are many other people who could give you more insight as well, and perhaps they will see this and reach out to you by leaving a reply here so I can make a post about it.
Anyway, here are my findings:
Birch:
To be honest, direct references to birch seems to be a bit difficult to locate in historical sources (at least those pertaining to Norse mythology). When searching the internet, I can find many, many sites claiming Frigg and Freyja to be associated with birch, but I have not seen one site include a direct source for that claim. I have also never run into this nor was I able to find a source for myself to support it. If the birch tree is associated with fertility (whether in Germanic culture of another, such a Celtic), then I would not be surprised if someone decided to make a connection.
However, there is a rune named after birch, called “bjarkan” in Old Norse (the rune for “B”, also known as “berkana”). I am no expert in runes, but I do believe that “bjarkan” symbolizes fertility and growth. If that is the case, it would be to no surprise that a fertility goddess like Freyja (I include Frigg here, since Freyja and Frigg are regarded as to having derived from a common “ancestor” goddess called Frija) got associated with such a rune, since she is also heavily associated with magic (especially seiðr). So, my conclusion would be that birch ties in to elements of fertility, but my evidence for such a claim relies on that rune alone for the moment.
There is a brief mention of birch wood in Ibn Fadein’s account of a famous Viking ship burial, though. I will include it mainly to dance momentarily with curiosity, so here it is:
“Thereupon they heaped over the place where the ship had stood something like a round hill, and, erecting on the center of it a large birchen post, wrote on it the name of the deceased, along with that of the king of the Northmen. Having done this, they left the spot.” (Somerville and McDonald, 110).
This is interesting because Freyja its also sometimes said to be associated with the dead. If she is associated with fertility, which is sometimes represented by the rune “bjarkan”, then it may have been possible that birch was invoked for this purpose of bringing the two meanings together. However, this is just my speculation. You may ponder it, but I have not done any extensive work on such a claim. Still, an interesting element of historical account.
Oak:
I found much more success with oak references than I did birch. This is likely because Thor (whom is often associated with the oak) was (and still is) a very popular god. Therefore, we have a much more rich pool of sources about him.
Here are some segments of a mythological analysis on Thor by H.R. Ellis Davidson:
“Grove which the Germans held sacred to the gods are mentioned by Tactitus at the end of the first century. Later on, a number of Christian missionaries…counted the felling of a tree sacred to a heathen god among their achievements in the cause of Christ. There is mention of ‘Jupiter’s Oak’ more than once…Before that of the thunder god, Perkuno, was a fire which was never allowed to go out…The name of this god is linked to the Latin word for oak, quercus, and is probably that Donar (essentially Thor) too was worshipped in sanctuaries of this type.” (Davidson, 87)
“The Forest of Thor on the north bank of the Liffey outside Dublin existed in the year 1000 CE. In that year King Brian Boru spent a month destroying it, burning down the undergrowth and demolishing younger trees, until, as we are told in an Irish poem, ‘the great trees and the lordly oaks alone stood upright’.” (Davidson, 87)
“In Iceland there were no great oaks, and thus the link between the thunder god (Thor) and the trees has become blurred in the Icelandic sources. But the link was still there all the same, and we can discern it in the custom of settlers to take the oak pilar of Thor’s temple with them to Iceland. The pillar, as we have seen, was sacred to the god, and there seems to be good reason to believe that this was because the pillar represented the sacred tree, in which the power of the god dwelt.” (Davidson, 87-88)
“In one case in Landnámabók (Iceland’s ‘Book of Settlements’) we read of an early settler who had no high-seat pillars to bring with him, but when he reached Iceland he prayed to Thor, and the prayer was answered. A great tree was washed ashore, big enough to provide pillars for him and for his neighbors also.” (Davidson, 88)
As you may have noticed, learning about pagan customs and aspects of mythology often requires looking into a great many sources. Eventually, we bring those many sources together to make judgements about beliefs and connections. I also noticed that both of the Edda do not seem to spend much time on what symbolisms are attached to given deities, which is why I resorted to non-mythological sources to answer your question. Rather, to figure out the roles of worldly things in mythological matters, we must look into the rather sketchy record of ritual and spiritual practices.
I hope this was helpful, at least to some extent.
Sources:
- H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe.(1964; repr., Penguin Books, 1990).
- Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald, The Viking Age: A Reader (First Edition). (University of Toronto Press, 2010), 110.
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