As you begin to spend enough time with the old material, you start to get comfortable with it in an unusual sort of way. It’s slippery, like when you think you’ve finally figured out how a system works, only to realize the system has been side-eyeing you the entire time. Welcome to Norse Mythology.
It starts with the source material. You move through the tales in the Poetic Edda, then into the Prose Edda, and somewhere along the line your eyes start to cross. We want things to follow a pre-established timeline that is easily followed. Start at point A and by the time you get to point Z everything fits neatly into order, but that’s not how it really works. Myths compress timelines, and sometimes the roles and names of characters shift in a way that leaving you feeling like you’re standing on quicksand. You try to do your due diligence and learn early languages, declensions, cases, and figure out whether the person mentioned is a distinct figure or just another title-like descriptor -it’s frustrating, especially when people don’t agree. Then you hit the moments where someone is mentioned, a story is hinted at, a place is quietly assumed in the background and you can’t for the life of you figure out where the hell it came from or why it was worth mentioning at all. This is where we will find names that exist almost on the edge of the cosmos. Liminal beings, outdwellers, edge beings whose presence was worth noting but not explaining.
You’ll catch it if you’re paying attention. A name slips in without ceremony, attached to a moment that feels like it should carry more weight than it’s given. There’s no pause to introduce them, no helpful aside to ground you, no tidy explanation waiting a few lines later to make it all make sense. The text simply keeps moving, completely unbothered, while you’re left sitting there thinking, “Wait… who was that, and why did that feel important?” The authors had to have included them for a reason, right? You’re left with the feeling that something important has been lost with no way to give it its assigned place. The text almost suggests there’s a mystery to solve but then shifts gears midstream and becomes quieter. Rather than an impetus to follow the clues it ends up more like brushing up against something just outside your line of sight—close enough to notice, but not something you’re invited to fully turn and face.
Take Fjölsviðr in Fjölsvinnsmál. He’s not just standing around looking decorative—he’s guarding a threshold, answering questions, holding knowledge like it actually matters, which, let’s be honest, usually means we should pay attention. The sources have several instances where knowledge-seeking drives a narrative and fills out the cosmology itself. The entire exchange has weight, and you can feel that you’re brushing up against something important. When the poem ends Fjölsviðr apparently clocks out for the rest of eternity. No follow-up or extended lore. No “Fjölsviðr: The Sequel.” Just that one moment, forwarding a narrative, and then he’s gone, like being part of your neatly organized notes was beneath him.
How about Hrimgrímnir in Skírnismál? His name shows up in a threat used against a woman who refused the suit of a fertility god. We get the name, the implication, and a polite cosmic shrug. Do we get a story explaining why? Of course not. But based on the reaction of the woman threatened we get a sense that whatever is being invoked is not something you want to casually run into on a bad day.
Then there’s Sökkmímir, who shows up near Mímir’s well. A place already recognized as a big deal considering that well is tied to wisdom, sacrifice, and Óðinn doing things that probably should have come with a warning label. He matters enough to mention in the first place but then…nothing. Instead, Sökkmímir just exists there. Close enough to matter in a lost context and elusive enough that you’re not invited any further in.
Moving further through the lore, even Vafþrúðnir—who really should come with a full series and a companion guide—ends up doing something similar. He steps into the narrative with his own small book of the Poetic Edda, trades knowledge with Óðinn on a level that makes it very clear he is not just some passing figure, and then disappears neatly once his role is fulfilled. The beginning of the interaction starts with Frigga warning Óðinn that Vafþrúðnir is not someone to be played with. It is set up from the beginning that he is someone to be feared. But after the exchange there is no lingering, no extended arc, no continuation of the tale. Just a perfectly executed moment, and then off he goes.
These figures tend to show up right where things get a little strange—where a story leans into uncertainty, where a boundary is being approached, where the tone shifts just enough to make you sit up a little straighter and pay attention. And while it looks random at first glance, it isn’t.
Fjölsviðr isn’t just a character; he stands at a threshold, deciding what crosses and what doesn’t. Hrímgrímnir isn’t just a name; he defines consequence, something waiting beyond a line you probably shouldn’t step over lightly. Sökkmímir lingers near a place of deep knowledge, close enough to suggest something more but distant enough to keep it out of reach, while Vafþrúðnir speaks from somewhere older and wider, just outside the comfortable boundaries of the story.
They don’t anchor the world the way the more familiar figures do. They don’t build out into long narratives or come back around for character development. They show up where the edges are and hold them.
I’ll admit, my first instinct was to try and wrangle all of this into something tidy. Track the names, build connections, smooth it out into a system that made sense from start to finish. Honestly? A lot of heathens try this at some point in their journey. There’s a certain satisfaction in that kind of work, especially if you’re used to dealing with material that rewards organization and persistence. The problem is, the more you try to force these figures into that structure, the more they resist it. The ends don’t meet, and the puzzle pieces refuse to form a complete picture. They don’t expand the way you expect them to. They don’t behave like missing pieces waiting to be slotted into place. If anything, they start to feel flatter the harder you push them toward the center. The lines blur in a way that makes your eyes cross and has you reaching for ibuprofen.
Then, you let go of the boundaries. The blurred lines begin to feel like wide areas of possibilities rather than frustrating contradictions. Instead of feeling like unfinished notes, they settle into intentional placements—markers that tell you where the story is brushing up against something larger than it has time to explore, or maybe permission to. And yes, there is the very real possibility that there were more tales and detail that Snorri chose to deliberately ignore. The gods know we lost a LOT of texts in the 17th century to a sunken ship in the Atlantic Ocean, then followed by the fires of Copenhagen. The trunks on that ship could have contained more law books or land grants – or may have held tales long forgotten and now lost forever. Thus creating its own liminal plane of what might have been.
Not everything needs to be named, defined, categorized, and filed away to be meaningful. Some presences are felt in passing, in the slight shift of attention, in the sense that you’ve stepped just outside of what you can comfortably explain. Nothing dramatic, nothing that demands a grand declaration. This is where the beauty of “what-ifs” and UPG begin to gain value. They keep the material alive rather than stagnant. Those brief mentions stop looking like gaps to fix and start behaving more like edges you’re allowed to approach but not cross completely. You can circle them, sit with them, let them exist without immediately turning them into something else. There’s absolutely a place for structure. Especially in modern pagan spaces where we’re all trying to piece together something workable from fragments that may not have been meant to survive this long in the first place. But still, not everything in these sources feels like it’s asking to be rebuilt. Some of it feels like it was always meant to remain just slightly out of reach—not as a flaw, but as part of how the world was understood. Not everything was centered. Not everything was explained. Some things existed at the edges because that’s exactly where they belonged. So maybe these figures aren’t forgotten. They are there to inspire wonder, a little consternation, and maybe a healthy dose of caution. There is no need to force your way through to see them. Allow your gaze to drift out of focus and be present with the space. Just… don’t be surprised if something is looking back.