We don’t much remember that Freyr, the Norse god of harvest, also had the unique property that women couldn’t be harmed near him. Not because he would attack those who wanted them harm, but because it was like a magic shield was put on them. Weapons would literally break on impact with women’s skin if he was around.
Gerd is the only jotun woman romantically involved with the gods who is consistently depicted as big, and often fat. That’s because in the story about Freyr falling in love with her he especially admires her “big, white arms”. It also makes sense that a god of harvest and plenty would love a woman embodying that.
Freyr, his sister Freya and their father Njord (who also married a jotun btw) are all gods of fertility in each their own way, so I like to depict them as overweight too, though not as big as Gerd.I also like depicting Freyr as something of a classic romantic hero because of how hopelessly and dramatically he falls in love with Gerd. He longs for her and cries when he thinks he can’t be with her, and gets depressed because he has to wait a whole week to meet her in person. Also, the reason why he doesn’t have a sword is because he gave it to Gerd as a present.
And Gerd is a tough lady. Freyr’s servant threaten her with death (without Freyr knowing) and she doesn’t give a shit. He had to threatened her with bad luck for the rest of her life before she agreed to meet Freyr.
Her father is the sea jotun Ægir which is why I tend to give her a sea inspired look.
Tag: hey queue there
I’ve seen a lot of non-Scandinavian heathen women say they feel like they can’t worship Freyr because of how he treated Gerd which I always thought was a strange thing to say. Freyr never wanted to hurt Gerd. He gave Skrinir gold and apples to give to her. It was Skrinir who insisted on bringing the sword and later used it to threaten her. Besides it would be straight up illegal by Norse standards to force a woman to marry. Odin got kicked out of Asgard for 10 years for raping a jotun woman once, so if Gerd didn’t like Freyr she could easily divorce him. In some versions of the text Skrinir doesn’t even threaten Gerd.
Anyway, Norse mythology is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, like most other religions that had to make way for Christianity. The few stories we have left were written down by monks who didn’t care that much, so a lot of information is given that we don’t know the backstory to. Gerd is worried about “the man who killed her brother” but we never hear about her brother dying, who did it or even who he is. Freyr kills a jotun named Beli with an antler because he no longer has his sword so some speculate that Beli is Gerd’s brother, but the timeline doesn’t match unless it happened between Skinir leaving Freyr and getting to Gerd’s house.
The reason why Freyr is sometimes considered protector of queer people is because in one story he is worshipped by men who move like women, dance and ring bells in his honor. His house might even be filled with such people depending on how you read the text.
All in all, this is just one theory about what exactly is going on with Freyr and Gerd. We know Freyr was super important and probably had hundreds of stories told about him because so many places are named after him and worship of him is mentioned in texts from other countries, but the story of how he fell in love with Gerd is the only one we have left where he is the main character.
I suffer from the second kind mentioned here. I felt a need to make this because even people I’ve known for years and who knows about my condition still get angry at me when I can’t hear what they say in noisy areas.
Many many years ago I tried writing a classic mad scientist story, monster, deformed assistant and all.
It was simple enough. Doctor Griffin Waller was hired by a wealthy man to help him walk again which he accomplished with a combination of drugs and an exoskeleton of sorts. The drugs eventually made the man go mad and mayhem ensured.
I never really liked the story though. It annoyed me how “Hollywood” it was. The only part I really liked was the relationship between Dr. Waller and his Scottish assistant, Cailean.
Many years ago Waller wanted to invent something to help burn victims heal and asked all factory owners to send any victims they might get his way. The “lucky” patient turned out to be Cailean who was rushed to Dr. Waller who started experimenting on him (He didn’t torture Cailean though. Cailean lived in the mansion and was free to leave. He stayed because he hoped it would help). After several months of pain from having ointments smeared directly on his open wounds and the infection that followed, Cailean healed up worse than he probably would have if his body had been left to do it’s own thing. However, he had been so good at following instructions and explaining what was happening to him that Dr. Waller offered him a job as his assistant. Besides the shitty medical treatment Dr. Waller had been incredibly nice to him so Cailean took the job. He knew no one else would want to hire him now anyway.
He soon learned just how much his new looks disgusted other people and let his hair grow long to hide it and started walking a bit hunched over hoping people wouldn’t notice him. The only person who never showed any disgust was Dr. Waller who even mocked others people for being afraid of Cailean, so Cailean developed a rather strong affection for him.
Throughout the story his main concern was to protect Dr. Waller from harm. I imagined their relationship to be sorta romantic in nature but not sexual at all.
Oh well, maybe some day I will come up with a proper story for them.
I never expected to care about the Good Omens tv series, but here we are. It does sometimes feel like I’m the only one in it for chubby Michael Sheen rather than ginger David Tennant though.
Ah, village life. In my defense I’m never actually trying to scare him. I stomp through the grass but he never hears me because he’s always off in his own little world, but I think this is how he sees me anyway.
I’m not entirely sure if this story has a supernatural element to it or not. Are they just run of the mill cannibals or vampires/demons? Occultists? Maybe only Adam? So many possibilities.
I also struggled a lot with Adam’s looks. I wanted him to look like an honest to god nice, charming guy who also looked super creepy in the right (wrong?) light.
There was supposed to be a whole backstory about Mrs. Poppel’s husband and when Adam came into her life, but I decided to leave it out as it was already pretty text heavy.
Trolls and gnomes making Rygeost, Danish smoked cheese.
Rygeost is the only cheese that is purely Danish, and what’s really cool about it is that people make it at home in the summer. All you need is milk, smoke and time. You can of course buy it in stores too if you so please. I’m personally a huge fan. It sorta tastes like smoked fish without the fishy taste. That probably doesn’t make any sense if you haven’t tasted it…
I think the gnomes and trolls agreed to make cheese, so the gnomes brought milk from the farm where they live, and the trolls made the fire. Teamwork!
A gnome collector. I know that thanks to those old cartoons people think trolls eat gnomes but there’s nothing like that in folklore. If anything gnomes tend to have the upper hand over trolls. There’s stories about gnomes chasing trolls away from houses and churches with the use of magic, so these little guys can fend for themselves if they want.
I kinda hope every time these two jackasses appear in a movie they get their asses handed to them the same way it’s tradition by now that Loki should be in some kind of bondage at least once per movie. I love them, but they deserve it.
The leaked scene from Infinity War of *spoiler* Thanos torturing The Collector to the brink of death does seem promising.
