20/08/2022
Eir ("Mercy"), Norse goddess of healing whom Snorri Sturuson called "the best physician." She was a handmaiden and soldierly guard of the Great Mother F***g. She was also a companion of Vár the goddess of marriage, indicating Eir's medical practice extended to midwifery. She is modernly depicted with a small sickle for gathering healing herbs.
She also served as one of the nine attendants of Lady Menglöð or Mengloth ("Gem of Gladness") on Mt Lyfjaberg the Hill of Healing. Menglöð as Lady of the Mountains was Goddess of Healing Pools and Brooks, with Eir plausibly her instructress in acquiring medical skills.
Eir is simultaneously a Valkyrie, such as are spirits of woman warriors who fell in battle, and in their afterlife deliver the souls of fallen soldiers half to Odin's Vallhalla, half to F***g's Hall in paradise. Eir as a companion of F***g would deliver the heroic dead to the Great Hall within F***g's Meadow of Paradise. As both a physician and a warrior, Eir tended the wounded on the battlefield, saving some of their lives rather assuming they all needed to be taken into the afterlife.
With her college of nine women (students of the medicial arts) she performs health rituals and prepares curatives from a mystic flower called Eir's Blooms, a white flower, in a copper bowl. Some have speculated Eirflowers were mountain peonies (Paeonia officinalis) from which indeed can be extracted an anti-inflammatory medicine, but peonies are not naturally native to northern Europe, and the wild form is pink not white. Others suggest the Marguerite daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens) with known medicinal uses, but again, though it is common throughout the world today as an invasive, it did not formerly grow in northern Europe.
Vastly more likely would be Elderflowers (Sambucus nigra) used in Scandinavian countries for thousands of years for sundry medicinal purposes (treating viruses, fever, congestion, sinus troubles, pain; it is a proven to have diaphoretic, antipyretic, antibacterial, antiviral antidepressant, antitumor, hypoglycemic, and diuretic properties). The black berries are bad-tasting and mildly toxic raw but nourishing and tasty cooked, and traditionally fermented as a healing mash wine.
===
Art: Eir, Goddess of Medicine, small hand-carved wooden altar idol, with elderberry leaves.
