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Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a strange harvest or insult an old woman or fritter away their name as though there’s no power in it. They’ll never underestimate the youngest son or touch anyone’s hairpin or rosebush or bed without asking, and their steps through the woods will be light and unpresumptuous. Little ones who seek out fairy tales are taught to be shrewd and courteous citizens of the seen world, just in case the unseen one ever bleeds over.
S.T. Gibson (via sarahtaylorgibson)
Even given potential foreign influences, however, the fact that boars and herds of swine became memorialized in both narrative and placenames in Iceland undoubtedly reflects the sacrality of pigs as symbols of successful pioneering behaviours and reproduction. The Vanic associations of pigs extended both to nomenclature and to myths. In poetic diction, boars could be called vaningi (sons of the Vanir), while an epithet of Freyja was sýrr (sow).
Diet and Deities Contrastive Livelihoods and Animal Symbolism in Nordic Pre-Christian Religions by Thomas A. DuBois (via hyacinth-halcyon)