The Dictionary of Norse Myth & Legend

by Andrew Orchard

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

From Loki to Thor, Ragnarok to Beowulf

A gripping and truly mesmerising delve into the Norse legends

From bestselling books to blockbusting Hollywood movies, the myths of the Scandinavian gods and heroes are part of the modern day landscape.

For over a millennium before the arrival of Christianity, the legends permeated everyday life in Iceland and the northern reaches of Europe. Since that time, they have been perpetuated in literature and the arts in forms as diverse as Tolkien and Wagner, graphic novels to the world of Marvel.

This book covers the entire cast of supernatural beings, from gods to trolls, heroes to monsters, and deals with the social and historical background to the myths, topics such as burial rites, sacrificial practices and runes.

Release date: November 3, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 496

Sample

This is a book about the changing range of myths and legends current among the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe over more than a millennium. Its focus is mainly – though not exclusively – literary, and seeks to represent the primary evidence through relevant quotation. It is symptomatic of the subject that the majority of the artefacts usually considered should relate to material from before around 1000, and the majority of the literary quotations cited should recount matter from the eleventh century on. The year 1000 around which the evidence is spread is not in itself significant, except in so far as it coincides with the traditional date of the conversion to Christianity of Iceland (although some prefer to place the conversion in the previous year, 999), but it is worth noting that this pivotal year in terms of data (if not precise dates) falls towards the end of the so-called Viking Age, generally dated c.800–1100. This is not, then, primarily, or even mainly, a book that is simply about Vikings and Norsemen. It is also to some extent about their ancestors in the continental Germanic homelands, their cousins in Anglo-Saxon England and, most especially, their descendants, who settled widely in Scandinavia and beyond.

That so much of the purely literary evidence for the myths and legends of the North should stem from the post-conversion period does not of itself negate its value. In many cases Christian authors took great care to transmit their heathen inheritance intact, or inadvertently preserved much useful material in parody. Throughout the book, moreover, it will be seen that certain myths and legends kept their essential shape across the centuries, being dimly recalled by classical ethnographers, carved in stone in an age when the written record had barely begun, celebrated in skaldic verse and eddic song, and finally set down in sagas towards the end of the medieval period. But it is also true to say that few aspects of the myths and legends kept their shape for so long, and it is part of the aim of the book to trace the development of individual notions throughout the period, as well as the kaleidoscopic variety of so much of the material.

Within a book of this limited size, the coverage is necessarily somewhat truncated and diffuse, and in many cases I have merely attempted to suggest the bare outline of what is known, pointing instead to the wealth of further material available for study. Nonetheless, it is hoped that by offering some 750 main entries (each with references to a supplementary bibliography), together with more than 300 other headwords and literally thousands of cross-references, some conception might be given of the vast range of material involved and disciplines implied in any serious study of the myths and legends of the North.

Each headword is presented in bold type, with all names rendered in a simplified spelling and followed, where feasible and appropriate, by a translation. After each main article there follow references to individual entries in the bibliography of suggested further reading, which contains around 900 items and which is divided into general surveys, primary texts, translations and secondary criticism. Cross-references are indicated in the text by the use of small capitals.

In truncating and doubtless over-simplifying what are in many cases extremely complex questions and issues, I am quite aware that I risk offending those more scholarly readers who may be disappointed at the dearth of academic debate offered here. I have tried in the references, which often signal competing attitudes, to present some sense of the richness and vigour of the current critical wrangling in an area in which very little can be considered truly settled. A book of this size cannot hope to do more than introduce the uninitiated to the range and variety of the tales once told and beliefs once held, and perhaps to offer a fresh perspective to those who are familiar with those tales and beliefs in a particular form. In compiling this book in this rather haphazard fashion, I have had to try to tread the narrow path between the demands of modern scholarship and the pleasures of medieval story-telling, and have therefore taken some comfort in the words of the eddic poem Hávamál:

Each man should be only middling-wise,never over-clever:a wise man’s heart is seldom glad,if he is truly wise.

There is certainly much wisdom in many of these narratives, far deeper than I could hope to fathom or present here, but there is also (and more importantly, perhaps) much wonder and delight. With this book I should hope to whet the appetites of readers to look beyond its limitations and to explore further the rich legacy that still survives. For, after all, the myths and legends of the North have gladdened not only my heart since childhood, but many wiser hearts, in many lands and across many centuries.

I am grateful to Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson for his help in producing the paperback version.

Andy Orchardcentre for medieval studies, toronto

Norse myths and legends are found in a bewilderingly wide array of sources from different periods and places, reflecting hugely varying views. The sources themselves, moreover, have survived only sporadically and cannot be taken to represent anything other than a rather random sample. Such a background necessarily implies that a fully rationalized and comprehensively cohesive account of the myths and legends of the North is neither possible nor (perhaps) desirable, and that instead the best that can be produced is a somewhat fractured and kaleidoscopic picture. As in any mosaic, it is the most striking and cohesive fragments that command attention, and so it is that the often splendid literary material, with its dazzling narratives and starkly vivid verse, has greatly overshadowed other kinds of evidence in the eyes of most observers. But quite apart from the ample testimony of the literary record, whether in the form of praise-poems by named (and even dateable) poets, anonymous mythological verses of uncertain age or the prose accounts of later antiquarian authors, other kinds of evidence, whether from runes, archaeology or onomastics (the study of place- and personal names) must be weighed against the accounts of more-or-less hostile outsiders, pouring out a steady stream of propaganda, reproach and, occasionally, praise. The great diversity of sources stems directly from the huge spans of chronology and geography throughout which traces of the myths and legends of the North survive, beginning from the time when classical ethnographers described the customs and beliefs of the ancestral continental Germanic peoples and continuing through to an age of Scandinavian exploration and settlement some ten centuries later, which saw Norsemen as far west as North America and east as far as Uzbekistan.

The picture is complicated still further by periodic attempts by authors and antiquarians of differing abilities and eras to synthesize and integrate the material then at hand. On one level this book can be considered just such another attempted overview, although here it is acknowledged from the outset that the search for any single solution to the various problems of meaning and interpretation raised by the material is inevitably doomed. Instead it is hoped that by considering the variety of complementary and contradictory witnesses available, readers will be encouraged to go further in engaging and examining the sources themselves, whether through the filter of translation or in the original, and to weigh the developing opinions of successive scholars striving to interpret the evidence. To that end the extensive (but by no means exhaustive) bibliography is intended more as a spur to further exploration than a simple list of references cited. Given, however, the great diversity of the primary material available for study, it seems most helpful in a general Introduction to offer a brief summary of the main types of evidence and of some of the individual sources concerning which more information is given within the main body of the book.

In view of its comparative antiquity and (to the uninitiated) apparent impenetrability, it seems appropriate to begin by noting the existence of a large body of epigraphic, linguistic and non-literary evidence, including that of runes and picture-stones. Such evidence requires careful exposition, and it is symptomatic of both kinds of material that the interpretations of individual scholars will vary – sometimes wildly. Although often clearly more ancient (and often considered more ‘authentic’) than the literary evidence, runic inscriptions and picture-stones are no less prone to ‘imaginative’ readings. Similar difficulties beset the interpretation of archaeological finds, such as, for example, boat burials, bog corpses and burial mounds. Much exciting evidence for ritual and practice can be deduced from such finds, however, and some sites in particular – Gokstad, Jelling, Oseberg, Uppsala and, in Anglo-Saxon England, Sutton Hoo – have proved particularly fruitful. Much useful work has also been done in the field of onomastics, considering the personal and place-name evidence that attests to cult activity. Such evidence has proved particularly useful in assessing the cults not only of such well-known figures as the gods Odin and Thor, but also of more obscure deities, such as Forseti or Ull.

The non-epigraphic written evidence can be considered under a number of headings. Distinctions between what can be termed ‘literary’ and what ‘historical’ are not always easy to maintain. Following in the tradition of first-century classical historians and ethnographers, writing in both Greek and Latin, such as Strabo and Tacitus, there came a whole series of contemporary chroniclers who give an insight (and usually a Christian gloss) into the beliefs and legends of the Germanic world from the sixth century on, including such figures as Paulus Diaconus, Paulus Orosius, Procopius and Sidonius Apollinaris. Later Christian writers who came into contact with Vikings were still less generous in their assessment, and often, as in the case of the Anglo-Saxons Ælfric and Wulfstan, had to measure their contempt for the raiders with the knowledge that they shared a common Germanic heritage, of a kind witnessed in earlier works, such as the writings of Bede or the Old English poem Beowulf. Less partial (but equally astonished) testimony to the activities of the Scandinavians abroad is offered by non-Germanic contemporaries, such as Ibn Fadlan. As the Viking Age drew to a close, Christian writers from nearer home, such as Adam of Bremen, cast a baleful eye on the customs of their neighbours. What such authors offered was the perspective of the outsider, although in every case the view offered could hardly be described as objective; religious and racial considerations conspired to create a picture that was distinctly distorted. Later Scandinavian writers, looking back at the myths and legends of their ancestors and purporting to give a historian’s (or antiquarian’s) perspective on the pagan past, might occasionally offer a more rose-tinted (but not necessarily more objective) view. Modern scholarship has repeatedly shown that the confident pronouncements of Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson need to be considered with caution, notwithstanding their greater proximity to the sources and their undoubted access to material long since lost.

Snorri and Saxo were themselves much exercised by the problems of interpreting the written evidence then extant, and indeed some of the material they used still survives. Such evidence, predominantly literary in character, continues to offer difficulties of interpretation of various kinds. In the case of skaldic poetry a primary problem has been simply understanding the verses, a question intensified by the highly allusive nature of skaldic diction, with its poetic periphrases or kennings, and frequent use of poetic synonyms or heiti. A further difficulty surrounds the attribution of the texts themselves, ostensibly to named poets from the ninth century on, since in some cases the accuracy of the ascription is far from secure; in the main body of the book consideration is given to skaldic verse that has been attributed with varying degrees of confidence to a wide range of poets, including Bragi Boddason inn gamli, Eilif Godrúnarson, Eyvind Finnsson skáldaspillir, Hallfred Óttarsson vandrædaskáld, Kormák Ögmundarson, Sighvat Thórdarson, Thjódó of Hvin, Thorbjörn dísarskáld, Thorbjörn hornklofi and Úlf Uggason.

The verses of some of these poets are preserved in Icelandic sagas composed sometimes four centuries after the alleged dates of their supposed authors, and such sagas have often been taken to contain other ancient lore. Such a supposition is deeply problematic, given the innately retrospective nature of the sagas, celebrating as they do for the most part events from a distant past when Iceland was newly settled. Nonetheless, such sagas certainly offer a picture at times remarkably consistent with what can be deduced from other and much older sources, as well as bearing witness to the extraordinarily vigorous tradition of story-telling in the North, and in the pages that follow evidence is offered from the late witness of a number of these Icelandic sagas, specifically Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Eiríks saga rauda, Eyrbyggja saga, Gísla saga, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, Hall-fredar saga, Hrafnkels saga Freysgoda, Kormáks saga, Laxdœla saga, Njáls saga and Víga-Glúms saga. Some of the great manuscripts containing these works, notably Flateyjarbók, also preserve other traditions of doubtful date and authenticity, which have been taken by some to reflect much earlier narratives and beliefs, and some of these tales, too, have been considered below. The famously direct and understated style of the Icelandic sagas is, of course, no guarantee of the truth of the traditions recorded, although some have certainly been seduced into thinking that the evidence offered in so casual and apparently artless a fashion must of necessity carry some weight. More obviously fictitious are the so-called fornaldarsögur, which are positively teeming with supernatural and improbable features. Nonetheless, it is quite clear that amid all the monster-slaying and shape-changing there can be found traces of much earlier mythical and legendary material. The problem lies in deciding how to determine what can be considered genuinely old. Of the large numbers of such legendary sagas still extant, only a handful have been considered here, including Gautreks saga, Hervarar saga, Hrólfs saga kraka, Örvar-Odds saga, Thidreks saga and Völsunga saga.

Still more can be deduced about the myths and legends of the North from the Poetic Edda, a collection of poems mostly preserved in a single manuscript, the Codex Regius, which offers a marvellously vivid and detailed (if sometimes contradictory) picture of mythical and legendary lore. Many of the poems were clearly plundered for their own purposes by later writers, notably Snorri Sturluson and the author of Völsunga saga, and the broad term ‘eddic poetry’ is used to cover a great range of styles and genres of verse evidently composed over a period of centuries. The clear differences in tone that mark out, say, the stark heroism of Atlakvida, a grim tale of legendary heroes, from the slapstick buffoonery of Thrymskvida, a comic romp among the gods, should give any reader pause in supposing that such witnesses should be given equal weight. The difficulty lies in attributing to either work a date that can be agreed. Current suggestions offer leeway of around three centuries, with varying degrees of chronological difference between the texts. The dangers of synthesizing such disparate material are evident to even the most casual reader of eddic verse, and it is ironic that undoubtedly the most influential single figure in terms of the modern perception of the myths and legends of the North, namely the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, did just that in compiling the compendious work known as Snorra Edda, which also makes copious use of skaldic sources. This largely coherent overview of mythology and legendary history, which Snorri put together in the thirteenth century as a largely antiquarian exercise to help his countrymen preserve a centuries-old heritage of verse inextricably bound by its diction to a body of mythical and legendary lore, is a masterpiece of humorous and vivid composition, and it is sometimes difficult to see beyond the punchy and memorable scenes depicted. Yet it is quite clear that in some instances Snorri misunderstood, manipulated or simply manufactured material to suit himself and that Snorra Edda, although invaluable, is not a source above suspicion.

Such a brief survey of the nature of the sources available to those interested in the myths and legends of the North will inevitably focus on the hazards of interpreting a disparate body of material. The weight to be attached to each type of witness remains a matter for vigorous (and sometimes vicious) debate. A book of this size can aim only to indicate the main areas of discussion and to offer an outline of the great range of material that might be considered. Each kind of evidence has its own problems of interpretation, but together the various types of witness provide a compelling (if necessarily incomplete) picture of a vibrant tradition of myth and legend lasting more than a millennium.

Adal see rígsthula.

Adam of Bremen Author of the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (‘Deeds of the Bishops of the Church of Hamburg-Bremen’), composed after he arrived in Bremen in 1066 or 1067 to act as adviser to Archbishop Adalbert (1043–72). Adam took a particular interest in missionary activities, and consequently the Gesta contains a good deal of useful information (as well as considerable speculation) about the customs of the neighbouring pagan Germanic and Scandinavian peoples. Perhaps his best known set-piece description is that of the great pagan temple at uppsala, although it is unclear to what extent his description has a basis in historical fact rather than lurid fiction.

B48, 70; C47; D221, 280

Adils A legendary king of Sweden, married to Yrsa, the mother of the mighty king hrólf kraki, who features in several tales. The quarrel between Adils and his stepson is described in detail in a number of literary sources, including snorra edda.

B24, 28, 35, 40, 50; C5, 9, 48

Ægir (‘sea’, ‘sea-giant’) The Norse god of the sea, also known as hlér and gymir, whose wife is rán, and whose nine giant daughters are waves, named Bara (or Bára; ‘wave’), blódughadda (‘bloody hair’), Bylgja (‘billow’), dúfa (‘dipping’), Hefring (‘raising’), Himinglæva (‘heavenbright’), hrönn (‘wave’), Kólga (‘cool wave’) and Unn (or Ud; ‘wave’); in other lists the name dröfn (‘foaming sea’) is found in place of Bara.

Ægir appears in a number of poems in the poetic edda, most notably in lokasenna, in which the feast to which he invites the æsir and for which he provides the ale forms the backdrop to the slanging-match that follows. The tale of how the god thor acquired a kettle large enough for Ægir to brew ale for the Æsir is given in another eddic poem, hymiskvida. The notion that Ægir hosts feasts for the Æsir is also made explicit in both grímnismál and skaldic verse, while in snorra edda, in what is presumably a deliberate inversion of the motif, a figure called Ægir or Hlér is introduced by the thirteenth-century Icelander snorri sturluson at the beginning of skáldskaparmál as a wanderer invited to a feast by the Æsir; there he is given an exposition of much mythological lore by bragi, the god of poetry, including (appropriately enough) an account of the winning of the mead of poetry. According to Snorri:

There was a figure called Ægir or Hlér; he lived on an island, which is now called Hlésey [identified with modern-day Læssø in Kattegat, Denmark]. He was very crafty in magic. He set off to visit ásgard, and when the Æsir realized he was coming, he was given a splendid welcome, although many things were not as they seemed; and in the evening, when they were about to begin drinking, odin had swords brought into the hall, which were so bright that light shone from them, and no other light was used when they were drinking … Everything there seemed to Ægir to be splendid to look at; the walls were all hung with magnificent shields. The mead there was also strong, and vast quantities were drunk. Next to Ægir was seated Bragi, and they drank and talked together; Bragi told Æsir many of the deeds in which the Æsir had been embroiled.

The magnificent martial setting of the hall described here has much in common with other descriptions of valhall, while the general scenario, of a wanderer received among the Æsir and told tales of their deeds, consciously echoes the deluding of King gylfi also told by Snorri in his gylfaginning.

In several mnemonic name-lists or thulur, Ægir is given as the name of a giant, and, given both the description of his daughters as giants, and, at least in some sources, his own descent from the giant fornjót, it may well be that Ægir’s adoption into lists of the Æsir is a late development.

A111b; B12, 14, 20a, 23, 24, 28, 30, 35, 39, 40, 45, 50, 56, 59, 62, 66b, 72a, 73, 83, 87, 90; C2, 5, 9, 13, 16, 17, 24, 33, 46, 48; D541

Ælfric Celebrated Anglo-Saxon abbot of Eynsham, who died in 1010 after a long career as a composer of homilies, saints’ lives and a whole range of other pedagogical and didactic material. As an author whose chief concern was orthodoxy, Æfric was unremittingly scathing about all aspects of paganism, whether from the classical past or the heathen present, and in particular his De falsis deis (‘On False Gods’), an Old English rendering of a much earlier Latin discussion by the sixth-century Visigothic archbishop, Martin of Braga, contains a number of close comparisons between the pagan deities of the classical past, witnessed by literary sources, and the gods worshipped by the invading Danes. Part of Ælfric’s De falsis deis was reworked by his contemporary, Archbishop wulfstan, who produced a still pithier comparison between the classical and pagan gods of his acquaintance.

B67; D572

Æsir (‘gods’) The generic name given to the Norse gods (the singular form is Ás), although some sources seek to make a distinction between two groups of deities, the Æsir and the vanir, who, as we learn from the eddic poem völuspá, once fought a mighty war. In general, the Æsir are associated with war, death and power, the Vanir with growth and fertility, although the distinction is often far from clear. According to the thirteenth-century Icelander snorri sturluson, there are thirteen male Æsir, which he lists in the following order: odin, thor, njörd, frey, týr, heimdall, bragi, vídar, váli, ull, hœnir, forseti and loki. In the same place Snorri also lists eight goddesses, known as ásynjur, although elsewhere he gives a quite different list of no fewer than sixteen. Moreover, Snorri’s effort to produce a list of thirteen Æsir, of whom one (Loki) was to prove a traitor, looks suspiciously like an attempt to align the Æsir with the disciples of Christ and may account in part for his inclusion of some figures (notably Forseti) who are seldom heard of elsewhere.

A similar motivation to explain away the deities of the pagan past surely lies behind the elaborate euhemerism exhibited by Snorri and the early thirteenth-century Danish historian saxo grammaticus in their attempts to explain the term Æsir as related to Asia, whence the (in this view wholly human) Æsir are said to have come. In this way, the myths and legends of the north could be aligned with those of classical Greece and Rome, just as, say, the Middle English Arthurian poem Gawain and the Green Knight begins by describing Troy. Such a notion is purely the product of an impulse to ‘dignify’ indigenous vernacular tales by linking them to the illustrious world of Latin learning. By contrast, cognate forms of the term Æsir are well attested in other Germanic languages and help to testify to its antiquity: Old English speaks of esa gescot (‘shot of the Æsir’; cf. ylfa gescot ‘shot of the elves’), while Gothic contains references to divinities known as ansis, a form which is also recorded by the sixth-century historian jordanes.

Snorri provides a wealth of trivial information about the Æsir, including lists of the names of their horses: Falhófnir, Gils, Glad, Glær, Gulltopp, gyllir, Léttfeti, Silfr(in)topp, Sinir, Skeidbrimir and finally sleipnir, Odin’s own horse. Such information, matched with other details about their daily dealings that can be gleaned from the poetic edda, lends a familiar and almost homely air to many of the actions of the Æsir, of whose ultimate doom in the apocalyptic events of ragnarök we are continually assured.

B12, 14, 23, 24, 28, 30, 35, 40, 50, 55, 56, 59, 64, 73, 87, 90; C2, 5, 7–9, 17, 24, 31, 33, 46, 48; D49, 115, 120, 439, 443, 504

Æthelweard see sceaf.

Ætternisstapi (‘family drop’) According to the legendary gautreks saga, a huge cliff over which members of a particular family fling themselves in times of crisis, as a voluntary form of euthanasia. King Gauti stumbles across their dwelling while lost hunting, and he forces his way in past a servant. As one of the young girls in the family rather jauntily explains:

There’s a cliff near the farm called Gilling’s Bluff, and we call its highest point Ætternisstapi. The fall is so steep that no creature on earth could ever survive it. It’s called Ætternisstapi because we use it to cut down the size of our family whenever something remarkable happens. In this way our elders are permitted to die without delay, and suffer no sicknesses, and go straight to odin, while their children are spared all the trouble and expense of being forced to look after them. Everyone in our family is free to take advantage of the facility provided by the cliff, so that there is no need for any of us to live in famine or poverty or endure any other difficulties that may arise. I hope you realize how remarkable my father thinks your arrival at our house; it would have been extraordinary for any stranger to take a meal with us, but it really is a marvel for a king to come cold and naked to our house. Such a thing has never happened before. So my mother and father have decided to divide the inheritance tomorrow between my brothers and sisters and me, then take the servant with them and go over Ætternisstapi to valhall. My father reckons that the least he can do for the servant in return for trying to stop you coming in is to allow him to share his happiness. Besides, he’s quite certain that Odin won’t ever accept the servant unless he goes with him.

The references to Odin and Valhall may suggest that behind this undoubtedly jocular tale there lurks the shadow of an authentic tradition of human sacrifice, although such fantastic episodes are relatively commonplace in the world of the fornaldarsögur.

B69; C35, 38; D376

Afi see rígsthula.

Agnar Audabródir According to the eddic poem sigrdrífumál, the king to whom the Valkyrie sigrdrífa gives the victory in a battle against one hjálmgunnar, who is the favourite of the god odin. In revenge, Sigrdrífa is stripped of her status as a Valkyrie and struck with a sleep-thorn, to await the arrival of the hero sigurd, who will wake her from slumber. In another eddic poem, helreid brynhildar, the fierce and proud heroine brynhild identifies herself as Agnar’s champion, and so as Sigrdrífa, while the legendary völsunga saga transfers the entire account to her.

B12, 25, 30, 42, 56, 65, 68, 73, 79, 87, 90; CI-3, 6, 17, 24, 33, 46

Agnar Geirrödsson see agnar hraudungsson.

Agnar Hraudungsson According to the eddic poem grímnismál, the elder of the two sons of King hraudung. On their return from an unintentional stay with a mysterious elderly couple (later identified as the gods odin and frigg), Agnar, Frigg’s favourite, is cast adrift by his brother, geirröd, and apparently ends his days living with a witch in a cave. Looking down from his lofty vantage-point of hlidskjálf, Odin chides his wife that while his adopted son, Geirröd, is a king, hers has had a disreputable and sorry end. Frigg challenges Odin to test the hospitality of his favourite, with predictably grim results: Geirröd has Odin tied up and tortured between two blazing fires for eight nights. Throughout his ensuing ordeal, Odin is aided only by Geirröd’s young son, who, ironically enough, is named Agnar after his uncle, and is the same age that his namesake had been at his betrayal.

B12, 30, 56, 73, 87, 90; C2, 17, 24, 33, 46

Ái (‘great-grandfather’) (1) A dwarf, according to the catalogue in the eddic poem völuspá. (2) Presumably a quite separate character, who forms, together with his wife Edda (‘great-grandmother’), the first couple visited by the mysterious wanderer ríg on his travels, according to the eddic poem rígsthula. The couple invite Ríg to share both their hospitality and their bed, and nine months later Edda gives birth to Thræll (‘slave’), from whom the whole race of slaves is descended.

A111c; B12, 20a, 30, 56, 59, 66b, 72a, 73, 87, 90; C2, 17, 24, 33, 46; D5a, 280a

Albruna (‘elf-confidante’) According to the Roman historian tacitus, one of the women venerated by the continental Germanic tribes in the first century ad, in accordance with a custom that he describes as follows:

W