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mythology
I think what we get of Norse myth and belief is heavily filtered by time, place and population. A lot of what we get is medieval, Icelandic, male, upper class sources. There are a lot of Aesir and Vanir we barely know about, but they obviously must’ve been important to farmers, fishers and women (so practically everyone). I also think regional devotion to the disir was huge and largely lost.
Why are there *three* war/chief gods? Could that actually reflect regional cults?
mythology
@Leucrotta yes! I really wish we had more about the vanir, and I think the split of the “sky god” job with Odin/Tyr/Thor is really interesting and must have had some unusual root cause. It’s pretty unusual in an Indo-European context I think
mythology
What I suspect but am not sure is that we’re seeing a relatively late and modernized gloss of vital folk beliefs, and that what people practiced in the 300s-400s when these bigger kingdoms come along, was different from what had evolved by the time of the Viking Age, and that Snorri and others are a further refinement of those later beliefs. I have some UPG about the myth of the Fenris Wolf which relates to that one.