April 16th N Day

To be honest today has been to hot for me to spend to much time inside in front of my computer, and what time I have spent has been mostly checking Facebook updates and email. It's a bit cooler now that it's later, so let's hope N isn't a huge day for Norse stuff, eh?

N is for Nerthus, a Germanic Goddess, probably of the Vanir, mentioned by Tacitus, possibly the consort/twin of Njörðr.

N is for Njörðr, a God of the Vanir who came to live among the Aesir as a hostage after their war. He is the father of Frey and Freyja, the consort and possibly twin of Nerthus and the husband of Skaði. He prefers to dwell near the sea shore and lives in a hall called Nóatún, which probably means something like "Ship-Yard".

N is for Nornir or "Norns" in modern English, the Nornir are Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld and they are often thought of as the Norse fates, but that is a simplistic and incomplete understanding of them. They dwell at the Urðrbrunnar or "Spring of Destiny" at the base of Yggdrasil, they have a hand in shaping the destiny of every entity, man, God or otherwise in existence. Their names are often simplistically translated as "Past", "Present" and "Future", but they are more accurately translated as "What Became or Happened", "What is Becoming or Happening" and "What Should Become or Happen, or That Which Should Come To Pass", it is a subtle, but important distinction to understand the Norse/Germanic world view.

N is for Norse, which is of course a description of everything about the people and their culture and the name of their language, which, for the record is a north Germanic language, and around the year 1000 AD split between western and eastern dialects. Modern Icelandic, and some Norwegian dialects are west Norse, Swedish, Danish and the rest of the Norwegian dialects are east Norse. I assume Faeroese is west Norse, but I don't have time to check if I am going to make it before midnight here.

N is for Norway, which is not just a major source of Vikings, it's the original homeland of all the starting PCs in my current Norse colony campaign.

N is also for No time for my weekend Dawn Patrol game report, hopefully tomorrow!