Viking Folklore: Margygr

 

Viking Folklore: Margygr the Norse mermaid.

🛶🧜‍♀️🌊

In Norse mythology, the margygr is a large mermaid like creature that's believed to live off the coast of Greenland.

Unlike later mermaid legends where the mermaid is beautiful,  this creature is described as either unnerving and hideous or strikingly beautiful both and forms always leaves it's witness's in aw/shock.

Like most mermaid sightings the Margygr is a human fish hybrid, most of the time she has the top half of a beautiful  large breasted long haired woman with webbed hands with a fish like appearance from the waist down, though she is much larger then a normal mermaid. 

In other accounts she's described as a giant terrifying and grotesque creature.

 Margygr translates to "Sea Giantess" or "Sea spirit". 

The Vikings considered these being to be more of a force of nature or powerful spirit then an actual creature, some would even pray to it for a safe voyage before they set sail. 

Sightings are rare,but when it is  spotted it's always  before a powerful storm and can be either beneficial and helpful to sailors or harmful and violent.  . 

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Norse God of Winter🌨️❄️

 

             ❄️Ullr❄️

Ullr, the Viking God of Winter 

He is the son of the grain goddess Sif, and the stepson of the thunder god Thor.

In chapter 31 of Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, Ullr is referred to as a son of Sif (with a father unrecorded in surviving sources. 

He's a highly skilled  archer, hunter, skater, and skier.

Ullr - pronounced “ULL-er,” often Anglicized as “Ull,” and sometimes “Ullinn”)

In Grímnismál, it says his home is called Ýdalir, “Yew Dales.”

 He lives at his hall Ydalir, which translates to Yew Dales: yew wood was the material of choice for making bows in ancient Scandinavia. 

Ullr was also known as the god of oaths and combat. It's said that all oaths were taken on Ullr’s ring, which would shrink down to sever your finger should you break your oath.

In some versions of the myths his wife is the giantess Skadi....(in other stories, skadi is the wife of Njord The Sae God.)

 He was the ruler of Asgard when Odin was away for ten years.

There are several locations in Scandinavia  named after him. 

A few of the city's ...

Ullevål,

 Ullevi, 

Ullared, 

Ullensaker 

And Ullensvang..

Because of his status as a winter god, many worshippers would pray to Ullr before travel in the harsh northern winter.

Within the winter skiing community of Europe, Ullr is considered the Guardian Patron Saint of Skiers (German Schutzpatron der Skifahrer).

 An Ullr medallion or ski medal depicting the god on skis holding a bow and arrow, is widely worn as a talisman by both recreational and professional skiers as well as ski patrols in Europe and elsewhere.

Ever since 1963 the town of Breckenridge, Colorado has held a week-long "Ullr Fest" each January, featuring events designed to win his favor in an effort to bring snow to the historic ski town.

Ullr is also a playable character in the video game Smite.

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Can't believe its already December, time flys I guess, bundle up and enjoy the snow .

❄️☃️🎿⛷️

Nordic Skraeling, Tiny people of the north pole

                                        The Skraeling

 

 The first written accounts of Arctic elves come from Viking Sagas- texts written by medieval Norsemen in ancient Nordic and Germanic history. 

Among the most famous of these is the saga of Erik the Red.

Erik the Red, a  Norse farmer who lived in Iceland in the late 10^th Century. 

In 982 A.D., he was banished from Iceland for committing a murder. 

Accompanied by a handful of  friends and relatives, he left his home and headed out to sea, bound for a mysterious land to the west which had been spotted by Icelandic sailors blown off course.

Erik the Red and his crew spent three years exploring this new land, and discovered that it had areas which were suitable for farming. 

In 985, he returned to Iceland and told  tales of what he dubbed “Groenland”, or “Greenland”. Having convinced a number of Norsemen to help him settle this new territory, Erik the Red returned to Greenland that year and established a colony there.

In 999 A.D., one of Erik the Red’s sons, called Leif Eriksson, traveled to Norway, his father’s birthplace, where he converted from Norse paganism to Christianity. 

 

Determined to bring the Christian religion to Greenland, he headed out into the North Atlantic. During his voyage, he was blown off course, and landed on a strange shore where wild grapes grew in abundance. 

He called this New World “Vinland”, or “Wineland”, and later returned there to establish a colony of his own. Some historians believe that Leif Eriksson’s Vinlandic colony was what we know today as L’Anse aux Meadows, a cluster of Viking ruins discovered on the northern tip of Newfoundland.

 

 

Icelanders  told of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson’s adventure in New World.

 

This collection of story's would later become the Icelandic Sagas.

Many of the Sagas mention the Norsemen's  encounter with small humans in the New World, in both Vinland and Greenland. 

 

The Vikings called these people “Skraeling”. According to the 13^th Century Saga of Erik the Red, the Skraeling “were short in height with threatening features and tangled hair on their heads. Their eyes were large and their cheeks broad.”

Many historians believe that the Skraeling were the Thule people, the ancestors of the modern Inuit. , Inuit folklore even contains some references to bearded, sword-wielding giants called “Kavdlunait”, believed by many to be Viking explorers. 

Others claim that the Skraeling were the ancient Dorset people, whom the Inuit eventually displaced.

Though some maintain that the Sagas’ references to Skraeling constitute the first written records describing a lost tribe of Arctic dwarfs, remnants of which, some say, still inhabit the Northland to this very day.(see captain foxes discovery in previous post)

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next weeks post will be the last one for 2021...

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 So what do you think, is it possible there is still a hidden race of small people living the arctic to this day?