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Mark Kielty 🇮🇪

I've been reading about and here's what I've learnt:

The first frost giant, , gave birth to his offspring by sweating out his armpits.

is Odin's adopted brother, not Thor's, as would have you believe.

lost a wrestling match to an old crone, the personification of old age, teaching us that old age will eventually beat us all.

Dwarves are pretty good at making stuff.

I do think being licked into existence by a cow is the weirder origin story.

@Markkielty

@oligneisti Fantasticly trippy origin story! I love how weird is in general.

From my time at UCC I seem to recall that the Irish have some wild stuff as well.

@Markkielty

@oligneisti Love Irish myths and folklore. I wonder if there is any crossover with Norse due to the vikings 🤔 I'm sure there's a thesis in there somewhere.

@Markkielty

There has not been much written about this connection. Not well researched stuff anyway.

I always meant to write about how the Icelandic elves seem to be connected to the Irish tradition rather than Norse/Scandinavian.

The late Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, folklore professor at UCD, taught a class when I was at the University of Iceland. He explained how his first name was pronounced in Middle-Irish and we responded, yeah that is the Icelandic name Daði.

@oligneisti Interesting 🤔 would love to know more about the Norse elves. It would be cool if there was a connection to Ireland in some way.

Iceland was settled by a mix of Norse (mostly men) and Irish/British (mostly women) so it is not unexpected that our folklore is also mixed.

In Norse mythology the elves can be understood (with caveats) as being almost synonymous with the Vanir (Freyja/Freyr) while in Icelandic folklore they are very much like the Irish fairies.

@Markkielty

@Markkielty Snorri Sturlusson taught us all the myths!

But, what was his motive?