Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern per ...

, Njörun (

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

: ''Njǫrun'' , sometimes modernly anglicized as ''Niorun'') is a goddess attested in the ''

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been ...

'', written in the 13th century by

Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of th ...

, and various

kenning A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English ...

s (including once in the ''

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...

''). Scholarly theories concerning her name and function in the pantheon include

etymological Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...

connections to the Norse god

Njörðr In Norse mythology, Njörðr (Old Norse: ) is a god among the Vanir. Njörðr, father of the deities Freyr and Freyja by his unnamed sister, was in an ill-fated marriage with the goddess Skaði, lives in Nóatún and is associated with the ...

and the Roman goddess Nerio, and suggestions that she may represent

the earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...

or be the unnamed

sister-wife of Njörðr In Norse mythology, the sister-wife of Njörðr is the unnamed wife and sister of the god Njörðr, with whom he is described as having had the (likewise incestuous) twin children Freyr and Freyja. This shadowy goddess is attested in the ''Poetic ...

Attestations

Njörun is listed (after Bil) as an ásynja within the ''

'' book ''

Skáldskaparmál ''Skáldskaparmál'' (Old Norse: 'The Language of Poetry'; c. 50,000 words; ; ) is the second part of the ''Prose Edda''. The section consists of a dialogue between Ægir, the divine personification of the sea, and Bragi, the god of poetry, ...

''. No further information other than her name is provided there.Faulkes (1995:157). In addition, the name occurs in

s for women in poetry by

Kormákr Ögmundarson Kormákr Ögmundarson (Old Norse: ; Modern Icelandic: ) was a 10th-century Icelandic skald. He is the protagonist of ''Kormáks saga'' which preserves a significant amount of poetry attributed to him. According to ''Skáldatal'' he was also the c ...

Hrafn Önundarson Hrafn (; ) is both a masculine byname, and personal name in Old Norse. The name translates into English as "raven". The Old English form of the name is ''*Hræfn''. The name is paralleled by the English masculine given name ''Raven'', which is der ...

and Rögnvaldr Kali as well as in ''

Krákumál Krákumál or the Lay of Kraka is a skaldic poem, consisting of a monologue in which Ragnar Lodbrok is dying in Ælla's snake pit and looks back at a life full of heroic deeds. It was composed in the 12th century, almost certainly in the Scottis ...

'' and verses in ''

Íslendinga saga ''Íslendinga saga'' ''(Saga of Icelanders)'' makes up a large part of ''Sturlunga saga'', a compilation of secular contemporary sagas written in thirteenth-century Iceland. The ''terminus ante quem'' of the compilation is disputed (between the o ...

'', ''

Njáls saga ''Njáls saga'' ( ), also ''Njála'' ( ), ''Brennu-Njáls saga'' ( ) or ''"The Story of Burnt Njáll"'', is a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga that describes events between 960 and 1020. The saga deals with a process of blood feuds in the ...

'' and '' Harðar saga''.Finnur Jónsson (1931:429). ''Eld-Njörun'' (meaning "fire-Njörun") occurs in women kennings in poetry by Gísli Súrsson and Björn Breiðvíkingakappi while ''hól-Njörun'' occurs in a somewhat dubious kenning in a stanza by

Björn hítdælakappi Bjorn (English, Dutch), Björn (Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch, and German), Bjørn (Danish, Faroese and Norwegian), Beorn (Old English) or, rarely, Bjôrn, Biorn, or Latinized Biornus, Brum (Portuguese), is a Scandinavian male given name, or less oft ...

. ''Draum-Njörun'' (meaning "dream-Njörun") is cited in the ''Poetic Edda'' poem ''

Alvíssmál Alvíssmál (Old Norse: 'The Song of All-wise' or 'The Words of All-wise') is a poem collected in the ''Poetic Edda'', probably dating to the 12th century, that describes how the god Thor outwits a dwarf called Alvíss ("All-Wise") who seeks to ...

'' as a word from the language of the dwarfs for the night. The same word occurs in ''

Nafnaþulur ''Nafnaþulur'' (Old Norse: ) is a subsection of the ''Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland d ...

''.

Theories

Njörun is a "mysterious ... figure" of whom nothing else is known; Andy Orchard suggests that she may be fictitious.Orchard (1997:119). Several scholars have suggested that the stem syllable in her name, ''Njǫr-'', may represent the element *''ner-'' as in

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...

' earth-goddess

Nerthus In Germanic paganism, Nerthus is a goddess associated with a ceremonial wagon procession. Nerthus is attested by first century AD Roman historian Tacitus in his ethnographic work ''Germania''. In ''Germania'', Tacitus records that a group of Germ ...

(*''Ner-þuz''), whose name is etymologically identical with that of the Norse god Njǫrðr, and that Njörun may therefore be a name for

. Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon additionally suggests a connection with the Roman goddess Nerio. The possible etymological connection with ''Njǫrðr'' and ''Nerthus'' suggests that Njörun may be a preserved name for the

, who is highly unusual in the Old Norse context in being unnamed. As was noted by Albert Morey Sturtevant, ''Njǫrun'' and ''

Gefjon In Norse mythology, Gefjon (Old Norse: ; alternatively spelled Gefion, or Gefjun , pronounced without secondary syllable stress) is a goddess associated with ploughing, the Danish island of Zealand, the legendary Swedish king Gylfi, the legendar ...

'' are the only female names recorded in Old Norse texts that have the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

''-un''.Sturtevant (1952:167). Two other god-goddess pairs distinguished by suffix are preserved in the Old Norse corpus,

Ullr In Norse mythology, Ullr (Old Norse: ) is a god associated with archery. Although literary attestations of Ullr are sparse, evidence including relatively ancient place-name evidence from Scandinavia suggests that he was a major god in earlier ...

and Ullin and Fjörgyn and Fjörgynn, and there is a possible third example in

Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old Hig ...

Phol and Volla.Hopkins (2012:42; 43 note 5).

Notes

References

* Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989). ''Íslensk orðsifjabók''. Orðabók Háskólans. * Faulkes, Anthony (Trans.) (1995). ''Edda''.

Everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...

. *

Finnur Jónsson Finnur Jónsson (May 29, 1858 – March 30, 1934) was an Icelandic-Danish philologist and Professor of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. He made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature. Finnur Jónsson was b ...

(1913). ''Goðafræði Norðmanna og Íslendinga eftir heimildum''. Hið íslenska bókmentafjelag. * Finnur Jónsson (1931). ''Lexicon poeticum''. S. L. Møllers bogtrykkeri. * Hopkins, Joseph (2012)
"Goddesses Unknown I: Njǫrun and the Sister-Wife of Njǫrðr"
''

RMN Newsletter ''RMN Newsletter'' is a peer-reviewed and open access academic journal published on a bi-annual basis by the University of Helsinki’s Department of Folklore Studies."About". ''RMN Newsletter''. University of Helsinki website. Online/ref> Publi ...

''; volume 5. pp. 39–44. * Orchard, Andy (1997). ''Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend''.

Cassell Cassell may refer to: Companies * ''Cassell Military Paperbacks'', an imprint of Orion Publishing Group * ''Cassell's National Library'' * Cassell (publisher) (Cassell Illustrated or Cassell & Co.), a British book publisher now owned by the Orion ...

. * Sturtevant, Albert Morey (1952). "Regarding the Old Norse name Gefjon" as published in ''Scandinavian Studies''; volume 24 (number 4, November). ISSN 0036-5637 {{DEFAULTSORT:Njorun Ásynjur Earth goddesses