Boundaries are found throughout mythological sources. I have found some that are blatant and others that sit softly in the background, so quietly that I miss them if I’m only looking for the obvious moments. After working with these stories for as long as I have, I don’t really experience those boundaries as rigid rules anymore. They feel more like agreements people understood without needing them spelled out, the kind you only really notice when someone breaks them and the whole atmosphere shifts.

Hospitality is where I tend to feel this most clearly. I always come back to it because it’s so recognizable today. A host offers space, food, and protection for the duration of the visit. A guest accepts that space with a kind of awareness that good behavior is expected in return, even if it isn’t spoken aloud. There’s a balance there, and I don’t think it’s accidental that so many of the stories lean on it. Norse mythology is filled with instances of balancing powers, concepts, and entities. Take for example, Hrungnir (HROONG-neer) in Ásgarðr (AHS-garthr). In reading the story, I don’t just see a confrontation. I see that moment where Hrungnir crosses from being a guest into a jerk and how it changes the energy in the hall. I’ve felt that in real life, sitting at my own table, when the tone of a room changes and something has tipped the scales. By the time Þor steps in to correct the situation, it is too late to negotiate or deescalate. It the natural end of a boundary that’s already been pushed too far.

What’s harder, and more honest, is that it isn’t just the Jötnar who do this. The gods cross those same lines, and they do it knowingly. Oðinn (OH-din), especially, moves through boundaries that do not suite his agenda like ripping paper. He enters spaces in disguise, lies about who he is and what he wants, takes what isn’t freely given, and then turns around and speaks about the responsibilities of guest and host in Hávamál. I’ve spent a lot of time with that contradiction. It reads to me as hypocrisy as well as someone who understands the system well enough to bend it when he wants to. That doesn’t make it clean or honorable, but it is effective. The aftermath of his actions is a building reputation that he is not someone to be trusted, or believed.

Loki (LOH-kee) feels different, but not separate. In Lokasenna, he forces his way back into a space he’s been excluded from and then strips it apart from the inside. That’s not random chaos anymore. It’s what happens when something has been building for a while and finally breaks the surface. The boundary of acknowledged kinship didn’t fail in that moment. It had already been weakened by a multitude of actions by the other gods, and after reaching his breaking point – Loki just made it visible.

Even Þor, who I tend to think of as a mix of hero and chaotic good, crosses into spaces where he isn’t invited. He travels outward from Ásgarðr but we don’t know why. When he goes into Jötunheimr (YO-tun-hame), he carries all of that force with him. He is looking for a fight at every turn turning him more into a bully rather than the hero. I understand why he does it in a very abstract sense, but I also don’t think the stories ignore what that kind of crossing does. Entering someone else’s space like that always shifts the balance, whether the intention is protection or not. If he had stayed home and focused on defending rather than seeking trouble – would we have had the amount of conflict he stirred up? Would the events of Ragnarök come to pass at all?

And then there’s Týr (TEER), this one always sits a little heavier with me. When Loki’s children by Angrboða are brought to Asgard, Fenrir is the only one that stays among the gods. As he grew, Týr took on his care and training – thus entering a relationship of foster father to foster son. You may disagree if you like, and we don’t have the in-depth explanation of their connection, but it is telling that Týr is the only one that Fenrir trusts enough to play the final round of his binding. Fosterage isn’t just proximity. It’s trust and relationship. When Týr places his hand in Fenrir’s mouth, I feel the weight of that agreement being broken in real time. The words, however short, strike images in my head of how heart breaking this must have been for both of them. Týr violated trust and broke the bonds of honor, a trait he is renowned for. Fenrir learns that the words of the gods are hollow if you do not fit their mold. He must harm the man who raised him to complete the circle. I picture them locked in a gaze between them, sorrow in both of their eyes as they recognized what must happen. The loss of Týr’s hand is immediate, but it’s not the only consequence. Something deeper fractures there, and it doesn’t resolve neatly. It carries forward to the end.

When I pull back from the stories and look at the world they came from, those boundaries start to feel even more grounded. Norse society had very real layers of power. There were differences in status, in protection, in who had a voice and who didn’t. Law codes like Grágás weren’t abstract ideals. They laid out expectations around hospitality, compensation, and consequence in a way that people actually lived by. If a host failed, that mattered and should a guest cause harm, that mattered too. If those lines were crossed in a serious way, the consequences could be severe. Fines, loss of standing, loss of land and belongings, even outlawry, which meant being cut off from the protection of the community entirely.

I sit with that sometimes and think about how different that looks on the surface compared to now, and how similar it actually feels underneath. We still have layers of power, they just show up differently. I see it in institutions, in social spaces, in who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn’t. I see it in whose boundaries are respected without question and whose are negotiated or dismissed. And when those lines are crossed, the consequences still ripple. Maybe not in the same formal way, but they show up in trust, access, and the way relationships shift.

This is also where I’ve had to get very honest about how differently people understand boundaries to begin with. I don’t think we all read those unspoken agreements the same way. Neurotypical expectations around tone and space can feel invisible if you’re not wired to pick up on them, and I’ve seen how quickly that can create tension both in my personal life and professional. I’ve had moments where I thought something was clear, and it absolutely wasn’t to the other person. Or the other way around. That doesn’t erase the boundary, but it has started to alter how I approach it. I’m learning that if I want something respected, I have to be willing to name it, not just assume it’s understood. That isn’t an easy lesson when you are brought up never to veer from the established rules.

When I look at what’s happening more broadly right now, it’s hard not to see the same patterns playing out on a much larger scale – especially in the USA. Boundaries that were meant to hold structure, legal, social, even ethical, are being tested and, in some cases, openly pushed aside with no regard to their value. I see religion being used to justify that in ways that feel familiar in the worst way. Not because belief itself is the problem, but because it’s being used to reinforce power to a select few and to excuse crossings that would otherwise be questioned. History has done this before. That part isn’t new. But living through it, watching it unfold in real time, that’s a different experience. One I had hoped to never see.

What I keep coming back to, both in the stories and in my own life, is that crossing a boundary is never just a single moment. It doesn’t end where it happens, even when it looks like it does. There’s always something that carries forward from it, something that settles into the structure and changes it, even slightly, which alters the narrative in monumental ways. When I think about how all of this fits into practice, this is where it lands for me. Not in trying to avoid every misstep or hold every line perfectly, because that isn’t realistic, but in paying attention to what happens when those lines are crossed. In deciding how I’m going to respond to that shift. Sometimes that means reinforcing a boundary more clearly than I did before. It could mean stepping back from a space that no longer feels steady even if I miss the people who inhabited that space. Or just acknowledging that something has changed and letting that aid me in figuring out what I need to do next.

The stories don’t give me clean resolutions when the agreements are broken, they give me aftermath. They give me visible consequence that lingers. And honestly, that’s part of why I trust them. Because that feels a lot closer to how things actually should work today if only those abusing those agreements could recognize the pattern and correct their course before it’s too late.

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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 17^th 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.