Jörð

Jörð is the Earth: not a goddess who governs it, but the soil itself understood as a person. Snorri presents her as the daughter of Nótt, the Night, and of her third husband Annar, which places her in the most ancient genealogy, when the powers of the cosmos are still called by what they are. Her condition is ambiguous and the sources do not resolve it: she is the daughter of giants, but the Skáldskaparmál counts her among the Ásynjur, the goddesses. That double belonging is not an oversight, but the norm in Norse mythology, where jötunn origin does not prevent divine status. Skaldic poetry also names her Fjörgyn and Hlóðyn, ancient names that reappear in the Völuspá just when the death of her son is announced.

Her domain is not described with weapons nor attributes, because her domain is the ground under the feet. In skaldic poetry her name functions as material of the language: the skalds call the earth the bride of Odin, the rival of Frigg or the flesh of Ymir, and Thor they name again and again son of Jörð, to the point that her maternity is one of the most repeated formulas of Nordic poetry. The logic of the myth is transparent: the god who defends Midgard with the hammer is son of the stormy sky and of the firm earth, and inherits from his mother the solidity and the physical strength that distinguish him from the rest of the Æsir.

Jörð is not Odin's wife (that place is Frigg's) but one of his lovers, and from that union Thor is born. The relationship summarizes the way in which the Norse pantheon is organized: Odin begets his strongest son outside of marriage and with giant blood potency, and no one in the sources presents it as a scandal. Jörð lacks her own narrative myths, organized cult and episodes in which she acts; her presence is constant but mute, that of that on which everything else occurs. In the Völuspá, when Thor falls after killing the serpent, he is called son of Fjörgyn: the earth naming her son for the last time at the moment when the world ends.