Winifred Hodge Rose
“I know a fifteenth (spell-song) that the dwarf Thjodroerir (Folk-Stirrer) galdored before Delling’s door: potency to the Aesir, progress to the Alfar, hyggju (the action of Hugr) to Odin.” (Havamal vs. 160, in the Poetic Edda)
There is so much material – ancient poetry, lore, folklore, scholarly studies, and modern Heathen lore – concerning the fascinating Hugr soul that I am presenting several articles to cover different aspects of it. In this first Hugr article I will explore the mysterious roots of Hugr’s deepest past, using a technique that I liken to the creation of bind-runes. Bind-runes are created for esoteric purposes by combining several runes together into an artistic shape, to guide powerful meditations and insights, or as the foundation for a magical spell. They are meant to be highly evocative and to stimulate intuition and insight. Instead of runes, here I use the roots of words, their connections and implications, to stimulate deep thought and intuition, to explore the mysterious roots of this soul.
Modern Heathens often think of Hugr as a soul-part which provides the capacity for rational (left-brain) thought, or for ‘thought’ in general. Evidence from lore and folklore amply shows that Hugr also encompasses emotions, temperament, disposition, character, occult and magical abilities, and can leave the body as our double or in other forms and take action on its own. Our Hugr also serves us as an advisor and warder, and as a harbinger, bringing forebodings of things to come. Hugr has its own mind and thoughts, emotions and feelings, temperament and moods. It is not just a function or capacity within us, a soul-part. Hugr is a full-blown soul-being or spirit in its own right, a powerful entity within our overall ‘soular system’. In other articles I explore all of these aspects of Hugr (with references!). Here, I focus on the “daemon” nature of Hugr, its existence as an independent spirit, where this spirit might have come from, its relationship to our ancestors, and what happens to it after we die. As usual, I will base my exploration on ancient words and where their implications might lead.
I have not found any firmly attested word roots for Hugr; its origin seems to be something of a mystery – a Hug-runa! But there are a number of suggested roots and related words in other languages that lead in seemingly different directions, but converge on a very interesting and relevant set of meanings. For what it is worth, my own Hugr advises me that these word roots offer spiritually valid associations (whether or not these associations are proven linguistically) that lead toward greater understanding about the nature and source of Hugr.
Jan de Vries, in his Old Norse etymological dictionary, provided several suggested roots and related words for the word Hugr. I have taken each of these and followed them up using Mallory & Adams’ Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, taking us back to reconstructed proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots of the words and their cognates.
In the process of this exploration I have also followed intuitive branches and connections that expand each meaning, and all converge on a composite meaning that I call the Tale of Hugr. I’ve taken the scholarly approach as far as I can, but even though there is a great deal of material about Hugr generally, when it comes to understanding where the root and original concept of Hugr come from, it is more like following a scanty trail of linguistic breadcrumbs through the dark forests of the past, than like zooming along an information superhighway! This trail is complex and difficult to follow, formed of interweaving branches, but I hope you will find that the end result is inspiring and enlightening, as I do.
Each ‘root-complex’ shown below takes one of the suggested roots or cognates of Hugr from deVries’ dictionary and expands it. These root-complexes can be thought of as ‘verbal bind-runes,’ which I distinguish with italicized phrases. Please note that in the process of language evolution, the ‘k’ sound often transmutes into the ‘h’ sound, which is why these PIE words beginning with ‘k’ could be roots of ‘hug / hugr / hyge / hu’ words in the Germanic languages.
Root-complex #1: ‘Shining’
Old Indic ‘socati’ (de Vries) from PIE root *keuk = shine, burn. Socati = shines, glows, burns, and related words meaning light, flame, bright, white. Related Greek word ‘kyknos’ = swan. (Mallory p. 514.) An unrelated word meaning ‘white, bright’ is ‘albh’, which is the root of alf, elf, Elbe (Mallory p. 177) and is also, I believe, the root of “Alps”, the white mountains of Europe. Words coming from ‘albh’ include Old High German albiz = swan, and Hittite ‘alpa’ = cloud, shining one.
Implications and connections #1.
Hugr is a shining, shimmering being, which is how elves are described in Anglo-Saxon: elf-sheen is the word used for their unearthly beauty. Anglo-Saxon has the word ‘scinnhiw’ (sheen-hue) meaning ‘shining shape’, a ‘spectre, illusion, or phantom,’ and a word for sorcery or magic is ‘scinnlac’. ‘Lac’ means ‘play, sport, strife, battle, sacrifice, offering.’ An Anglo-Saxon sheen-laca (scinnlaeca) is a sorcerer or shaman who deals with specters, shining shapes, otherworldly spirits in any of the ways described by ‘lac’. The white swan is a shape taken on by swan-maidens in Germanic lore, who are shapeshifters and otherworldly beings. So this is the first clue on our path: Hugr is a shining, glowing, unearthly-white otherworldly being, and may be associated with other beings described in this way, such as the Alfar.
Root-complex #2: ‘Mounds and Wights’
Lithuanian ‘kaukas’ = kobold, ghost of an unbaptized child (de Vries). The PIE root is *keu-k meaning ‘curve’, and related to various Indo-European words for ‘hill, hump, female breast, high ground, boil’ (a swollen, infected lump under the skin) and the word ‘high’ in Germanic languages. The second set of related words includes Lithuanian kaukas = boil, goblin, gnome; Old Prussian cawx = devil; and Latvian kauks = hobgoblin. (Mallory p. 62.)
Implications and connections #2.
As noted in Mallory, the connection between a hill or mound and otherworldly beings is very common in European myth and folklore, especially associated with burial mounds. Hills and mountains with their caves and crannies are considered to be the abode of many kinds of wights. The fact that Baltic words for ghosts and goblins actually derives from the PIE word for curve makes a very tight connection. De Vries’ use of the word ‘kobold’ (a type of wight) to translate ‘kaukas’ (above) is further explained in his book on old Germanic religious history, where he suggests that ‘kobold’ relates to Anglo-Saxon ‘cofgodas’ or household-gods, both terms coming from the word for ‘room, chamber’. He relates these beings to (a) the hearth and home, and protection thereof, and (b) to the practice of honoring and relying on the family ancestral spirits (p. 176).
A name for the (still active) spirit of a dead person dwelling in a burial mound is ‘haugbui’, the ‘dweller in the mound or howe.’ De Vries’ dictionary gives the older form of the word ‘haug’ as ‘*hugila.’ I have not seen these words suggested as actual roots of ‘hugr’, yet certainly both the sound and the meaning-context are very close, especially when we look at forms of the word ‘hugr’ such as Middle Dutch ‘hoge, heuge’ and modern Swedish hag (with a circle over the ‘a’). The sound and meaning of ‘haug’ also seem to me to be very close to ‘kauks’ and other words listed above. Another, unrelated term for a mound-dweller is ‘odaldraugr’. Odal means ‘the original owner of the property’ and by extension the ancestral founder. Draugr is a ghost or a revenant.
In this root-complex we have meanings of ‘curve, hill, hump, the female breast’, which lead on by implication to the curve or hump of a pregnant belly, sometimes leading to the ghost of an unbaptized child (unable to rest in peace, according to Christian doctrine), then the burial mounds of the ancestors, and the ancestral spirits that are associated with all these things. All of these meanings point to the cycle of life and death, and to a soul that moves around within this cycle. As I shall develop further, I believe that both reincarnation, and service for a time as an ancestral spirit, are two of the choices or fates of the Hugr soul after death of the body.
The Kaunaz Rune
If we juxtapose the meaning of ‘light, burn’ from root-complex #1 (*keuk) with the meaning of ‘boil’, an abscess or infection under the skin, from #2 (kaukas), then we have the strange pairing of meanings for the Kaunaz / Kenaz rune. In the Old English rune-poem, it means ‘torch’, while in the Norse rune poems its meaning is ‘sore’. I see this juxtaposition as offering another clue to the ancient nature of Hugr.
The OE rune poem tells us: “Cen / Torch is, by every living being, known by its fire; pale and bright, it burns most often where aethelings rest within.” This imagery can apply not only to a feasting hall lit by torches, but to the noble child growing within the mound of the mother’s belly, lit by the bright aura of growing life, the fire that is ‘known by all living beings’. The word for ‘living being’ in this poem is actually ‘cwicera’, the ‘quick’ (compare the phrase: the quick and the dead). When an unborn child first is felt to move within the womb, this is called the ‘quickening’. (See root-complex #3 for more connection with the fetus.)
The Old Norwegian and the Old Icelandic rune poems both refer to the Kaun rune as a sore, the curse or bale of children, a scourge and source of grief, and a ‘house of rotten flesh’. All of this, along with kaukas = boil, ghost, goblin, adds up to the process of infection, sickness, death, decomposition, and haunting, and again, connects with children.
So we have here the paired image of the ‘quick and the dead’. On one side are aethelings in the feasting hall and the babe quickening in the mound of the womb, full of life and joy. On the other side are decomposition and the grave-mound, complete with deathly wights. The two are linked by fire and light (*keuk). The light of the feasting torches and the auric light of the growing babe are balanced by the flame of the funeral pyre, the burning pain of sore infections, the dim, strange corpse-light said to be seen on occasion around a burial mound, and the white, shimmering figures of ghosts and other wights.
Here is the second clue on our path, reinforcing the first: the Hugr spirit or daemon appears as a ghost or an otherworldly being such as a kobold or hobgoblin. It is associated with mounds and burial sites, and with the mounded belly of the pregnant mother. These associations again indicate its involvement with human cycles of life, death, and rebirth. I have a theory as to why ghosts of (unbaptized) children figure so prominently in Germanic folklore, and it is not only because Christian priests tried to terrify parents into baptizing their children. I think the Hugr soul is drawn toward reincarnation as one of its afterlife options, and this is particularly so for the Hugrs of children who did not have the chance to continue developing during their lifetime. The hauntings by a child-ghost are its Hugr’s attempt to reincarnate.
Root-complex #3: ‘The Unborn, Swelling’
In this branch I am not following any suggested word in de Vries; rather I am following up on Root-complex #2 with two additional connections: ‘curve / boil’ leading to ‘swelling’, and ‘ghost of an unbaptized child’ leading to ‘fetus’. As it turns out, these two words (swelling and fetus) have a single PIE root that sounds very much like the hu-root of hugr / hyge / hu, namely *keuh = ‘to swell (with power), grow great with child.’ Words derived from *keuh include Greek kuos = fetus, and engkuos = pregnant, as well as Germanic words hunn / hun meaning ‘young one’, Old Indic svayati = ‘swells, becomes powerful’, and Welsh cawr (intriguingly similar to OPrus. cawx, devil, above) = a giant, a being swollen with power. (Mallory p. 560.)
Implications and Connections #3
There is a bizarre instance in the Poetic Edda, relating the Hugr to the swelling of pregnancy and the birth of powerful ogre women / trollwives / witches (ON flagd): “Loki ate the heart, half-burned by linden wood, the hug-stone of a woman; then was Lopt (Loki) pregnant by an ill woman; thence come all the ‘flagd’ of the world.” (ON Voluspa hin skamma vs. 11; Hyndluljodh v. 41 in translation.) Here the burned heart of a woman (some think it was the heart of Gullveig, burned by the Aesir) is called her hug-stone. In my next article on the Hugr I will show how very closely Hugr is connected with the heart. But it is clear that the physical heart alone could not impregnate anyone. It is the spirit associated with the heart, the Hugr, that had this capability. After eating the hug-stone, Loki swelled with power and gave birth to powerful, otherworldly women skilled in evil magic.
There is another type of power associated with the fetus in Norwegian folklore. Bang’s compendium of ‘Hexeformularer’ or magical spells gives a number of spells intended to deal with ‘afterbirths’ or ‘bolen’ (crossed ‘o’), which are spirits associated with unborn children or with the placentas or cauls of newly-born children. These spirits are supposed to remain attached to the child as their soul, but they sometimes get loose, wander off, and cause harm to people and domestic animals (and harm to the abandoned fetus). Even worse, evil sorcerers can call these spirits from their proper places and send them out to enact the will of the sorcerer. As I progress with these Hugr articles we will see other examples of the Hugr’s ability to leave the body and roam around, often causing harm either intentionally or unintentionally. It appears that this is a powerful spirit, even before we are born.
‘Swollen with Power and Wind’
‘Being swollen with power’ (*keuh) leads us through its meaning (not linguistically) to the Sanskrit root ‘brh or brah’, the root of Brahma, the Hindu supreme god who dreams the world into being. ‘Brh’ means ‘to grow or increase, to fatten’, and Hindu deities are described as being ‘fattened, swollen, puffed up with power’ using words with the brh-root. The word also means ‘to roar’, which is sending out power on the breath and voice. The word ‘brahman’ also refers to the expansive power that emanates and sustains the cosmos.
Brhaspati, ‘lord of brh’, a brahmin priest-magician in Hindu lore, embodies “the very quintessence of the highly developed intellectual faculties of the Hindu genius” (showing the swelling of his Hugr-mind), and is able to wield enormous power (Zimmer p. 76). The use of this magical power is described as building up, swelling with power as the long, complex process of the magical spell progresses. Then the power bursts out and affects the world. (See Zimmer’s sections 4 ‘The Dying round the Holy Power’ and 5 ‘Brahman’, beginning p. 66.)
This swelling and bursting-out of power well describes actions of the Hugr: a kenning or synonym of Hugr is ‘wind of the troll-wife,’ a magical wind of power (Prose Edda p. 154). In German folklore witches, sometimes called ‘Windbraut’ or wind-bride, are known to fare about in a magical whirlwind. Wodan is sometimes considered to have been originally a god of storm, and the souls he leads on the Wild Hunt are sometimes called ‘wind-souls’ (Windseele). (Erich & Beitel p. 891, 896.) Wodan, witches and troll-wives are beings with powerful Hugrs, and the power they wield often takes the form of wind-bursts, or it rides upon the breath and voice in spell-songs. (See Lecouteaux pp. 161-164 for interesting connections between spirits and wind in Baltic traditions; many examples can be found in other cultures as well.)
Our word ‘bosom’, comprising our chest, heart and lung area as well as the breasts, comes from the PIE root *bhou / bhu, meaning ‘to swell, to grow’ (Berr, p. 63). Note that the root of ‘brahman’ that I described above, *brh, has the same meaning: to swell, to grow, expand, enlarge. I assume these words are related. Our bosom is the seat of our expansive, swelling emotions and our breath. It generates the power behind our voice and vocalizations, and it houses the Hugr.
If a human’s Hugr is strong, and especially if it is motivated by ill thoughts toward others, it can burst or flow out of the person as wave of power, even without the person’s conscious intention, as is described in Dag Stromback’s article on “The Concept of the Soul in Nordic Tradition.” As de Vries points out, the Hugr can move out of the body as breath or wind. The more dangerous a person’s Hugr is, the more powerful the wind (p. 220, Altgerm. Relig.)
The ancient Hindu sacro-magical tradition of building and using ‘bhr’ power is far more sophisticated and detailed than anything we find in Germanic lore, but I suggest that the actual mechanics of the process may correspond closely with the capabilities and nature of the Hugr, as I shall develop in further articles.
The Hugr is unique among the Heathen souls I’ve studied, in that it is associated with a specific physical sensation in the chest, where the Hugr is located when it is ‘in residence’ within the body. This is a wallowing, whelming, upwelling sensation when the person is moved by very strong emotion, as is shown in ancient poetry. I will go into this upwelling sensation, and the location of the Hugr within the chest, in more detail in a later article. But I suggest here that this feeling is caused by the process of power swelling within the Hugr and seeking a way out, whether it is simply a strong emotional power such as anger, love, or grief, or explicitly a magical power.
So, our third clue on our hunt for the wild Hugr is that the Hugr has the capacity to swell with power, and seeks a way to express it. This power to swell is analogous to the amazing power of life within an unborn child, which grows and differentiates from a single cell into a complex human being in only nine months. The swelling of one’s Hugr can be a gradual process, building up over time during a long, complex enterprise involving the Hugr, whether magical, intellectual, a life plan or strategy, a plot or a hidden activity, or simply the growth and training of Hugr’s power due to life experience and our cultivation of it as Heathen spiritual practitioners. Hugr can also swell up suddenly with powerful emotions and burst out in reaction, in appropriate or inappropriate ways, to powerfully release that emotion. This release can be an emotional or physical expression, an occult or magical act, or a burst of genius, depending on how we develop and use our Hugr.
Root-complex #4: ‘An Eldritch Cry’
PIE *kau(k) means to ‘cry out, cry out as a bird.’ Descendants of this word include Old High German huwo = owl and words for owl in other languages; Lithuanian kaukiu = howl, and a bird kaukys whose call foretold the harvest (Hugr is also a foreteller); Latvian kaukt = howl; Greek kukuo = cry, lament; Armenian k’uk = sighing, groaning; Middle English hulen = howl, and others (Mallory p. 66). These words are not specifically suggested by de Vries as Hugr-roots, but *kau(k) is so similar in sound to kaukas as discussed in root-complex #2, and so well-related in meaning, as I show below, that I include it in our explorations here.
Implications and connections #4
Owls in cultures around the world are considered to be associated with the dead, the otherworlds, the uncanny, and hidden knowledge. Their calls send a shiver of foreboding when we hear them. And of course, many owls give the typical “huu” cry, giving us the very sound-root of Hu-gr. One of the things Hugr does in Scandinavian lore is serve as a Hugbod, a harbinger or foreboding of something yet to come (Stromback p. 11). Ghostly beings of various kinds, associated with burial mounds and graveyards, are often reported to howl, groan, or cry out in eldritch voices, and sometimes give forebodings of ill news. The cry of a newborn baby can sound like the cry of a bird, as well.
An obvious connection between calling birds and Hugr is Odin’s raven, another bird of the dead, named Huginn. Odin’s wisdom is linked both to his Hugr soul and its embodiment in Huginn, and his ability to speak with the dead, who groan and protest about this disturbance, as we read in saga accounts of necromancy and in ‘Baldr’s Dreams’ (Poetic Edda) where the seeress has much objection to being awakened from the dead.
Odin himself let out a great cry after nine days hanging on the Tree, when he finally grasped the runes of wisdom and fell down. Perhaps this was the triumphant birth-cry of Odin’s own Hugr as it arose within or took root within his newly-expanded soular system and swelled with power and life. Perhaps, also, this was the moment when the raven Huginn came into being, or when it joined with Odin. (Not to get too far off the track here, but if Odin’s ravens did join him or come into being at specific points in time, then I suggest that Odin giving his eye to the Well was the act / time when Muninn joined him or arose from him.)
In this root-complex we have more associations of elements already discussed: eerie sounds associated with burial mounds and with the otherworlds, crying out of the newborn or the newly-empowered, expressions of deep emotion that can come from an upwelling of the Hugr. This root-complex deepens the aura of meaning around the ancient Hugr, and adds a sensory dimension of sound to our holistic perception of what Hugr is.
Root-complex #5: ‘Excitation, Stirring up the Soul’
De Vries suggests two other words possibly related to Hugr which add much to the picture of the ancient Hugr we see developing here. One is Greek kukao, meaning ‘to stir up, to excite.’
Implications and Connections #5
This connects closely in meaning (but not linguistically) with the PIE word *gheis = ‘to be excited’, which is the root of many Germanic words relating to ‘ghost, fear, terror, astonishment’, including in modern English. Of particular relevance here is the Gothic word ‘us-gaisjan or us-gaisnan’, ‘to terrify, to make aghast’. This word literally means ‘to out-ghost’: a person is so terrified or worked-up that their ghost exits from their body. (See ghost-related words in Old Saxon, Gothic, and Old Norse dictionaries. I write extensively about the ghost and its state of excitement in my articles “Ond, Ahma, Ghost and Breath: Their Basic Nature”, and in “Ghost Rider.”). A stirred-up Hugr, excited with strong emotion, leads to the wallowing, whelming sensation in the breast, and sometimes to a bursting-out of Hugr-power, as I described earlier.
At the beginning of this article I quoted the Havamal vs. 160: “I know a fifteenth (spell-song) that the dwarf ‘Folk-Stirrer’ (Thjodroerir) galdored before Delling’s door: potency to the Aesir, progress to the Alfar, hyggju (the action of the Hugr) to Odin.” Notice the name of the dwarf, ‘Folk-Stirrer’ in relation to this root-complex of being ‘stirred up.’ When I meditate on this verse I get the image of Thjodroerir standing on a mountain ledge at dawn, bursting out with a deep, roaring, vibrating song of power, calling to the folk to bestir themselves, to awaken. He stirs our Hugrs to swell and dwell within the mighty flows of power that run between us and the holy tribes of the Aesir, the Alfar, and the deep and broad Hugr of Odin himself.
Root-complex #6: ‘The Watcher; Magical Force’
The last related word that de Vries offers for Hugr is Czechoslovakian ‘cihati’ meaning ‘to lurk, to lie in wait, to watch for.’ I do not know if this is correct, but I link this word to the PIE root *keuh = ‘pay attention to’, which is discussed under Mallory & Adams’ entry on ‘Magic’. Other words from this root include Latin ‘caveo’ = be careful (be watchful, wary); Germanic words for ‘to hear’, and Old Indic ‘kavi’ = wise man. Even if the linguistic linkage is not correct, the meanings certainly hang together, and the root *keuh gives rise to words for ‘magical force, wonder, miracle’ in other languages (Mallory p. 361), tying it closely to Hugr’s abilities.
Implications and connections #6
The ‘magical force’ aspect of Hugr comes from its powerful rooting in manifestations of life, growth, death, decay, and rebirth—the deep soul-power of Nature and Earth-life. The watchfulness, the careful attention to these deep powers and their manifestations in both embodied and disembodied life-states, is the hallmark of Hugr’s potential wisdom and power.
The set of meanings – ‘to lurk, to watch, to pay attention to’—leads to many of the most prominent characteristics of the Hugr as we learn from early Germanic writings and from folklore and word usage continuing up to the present day. These will be covered in detail in forthcoming articles, but as a couple of examples, Stromback says that the verb ‘hugsa’ in Old Norse means ‘to think’ but also ‘observe.’ In Norwegian dialects it means ‘watch, observe, wish, have a strong desire for’ (p. 12).
I believe these meanings form the bridge which takes us across from the more ‘primitive’ associations of Hugr–lurking ghosts and wights, eerie cries and burial mounds–to the more developed and sophisticated meaning of Hugr as a being who expertly perceives, observes and thinks, who has access to hidden knowledge and serves as an advisor, warder, and harbinger within our own complex of soul-beings, our soular system.
De Vries tells us that another word for a Hugr that is outside of the body is the Old Norse ‘vordhr’ or ‘vard’. He uses the German word ‘Wachter’ to translate these terms (p. 221). ‘Wachter’ means both ‘warder, guardian, caretaker’ and also ‘watcher, watchman, lookout’. In my other articles about the Hugr, especially “The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Parts I and II” I give examples of how Hugr undertakes these duties.
De Vries describes the Greenlandic spåkona or oracle, Thorbjorg Litilvolva, who asked for the vårðlokkur to be sung for her during her oracular spaeworking session. The word lokkur is the same as the German word locken, which means ‘to bait, decoy, attract, allure, coax, tempt.’ De Vries writes that the vårðlokkur song is intended to coax or lure the vårð or vörðr, the Watcher spirit, which he interprets as being the Hugr-soul of Thorbjorg herself, disembodied from her, with whom she needs contact in order to perform her spaeworking (p. 221, Altgerm. Relig.). Modern Heathen practitioners of this skill interpret the vårð as spirits of the land, nature, and ancestors, who have knowledge of hidden matters and can answer the questions asked of the oracle. In my view, there is no contradiction between these interpretations; either way the vårð refers to Hugr-souls, whether embodied or disembodied, who are lured to attention by the singing of the vårðlokkr.
Afterlife and the Ancestral Connection
As we have seen so far, there are many clues linking the Hugr with ancestral spirits and with unborn children. Here are my thoughts about this connection. Hugr’s main focus, as I will show throughout my writings about the Hugr, is on human interaction and the challenges of human life in Midgard. (I am speaking of Hugrs associated with humans here, as opposed to those within deities or other beings.) Our Hugrs are much engaged with all our endeavors throughout our lives, and when we die, that engagement, that interest, usually continues within the Hugr. Thus, the disembodied Hugr after death usually wishes to attach itself to the lineage of people that it was attached to during life, to continue the story, the engagement, and to use the skills and wisdom it has accumulated during its embodied life in Midgard.
A Hugr after death has several options for doing this. It can become an ancestral spirit, a dis if it had been associated with a woman in life, or an alf if it had been associated with a man. I believe that all the disir and alfar spirits are the Hugr souls of the ancestors. (I am referring to ‘alfar as ancestors’, rather than necessarily to ‘Alfar as a divine tribe associated with the Aesir’, though there are likely overlaps between these categories.) The Germanic Matronae, in cases where they are ancestral figures rather than Goddesses or nature spirits, fit into this category too. Another option for the Hugr is to reincarnate, either within the family line (the traditional Germanic belief), or farther afield if the Hugr wishes to experience life in a different way, expand its horizons (modern scientific studies, and anecdotal accounts, of evidence for reincarnation).
Hugrs after death can also take the form of other spirits. A common one in folklore is an odal-spirit, the founding father of a homestead, who continues to watch over it in the form of a tomte, nisse, or other kind of helpful, protective wight (see de Vries p.235-6). Simek mentions ‘landdisir’, attested to by the landdisir-stones in Scandinavian lands (p. 186). These may have been nature spirits, or else the Hugrs of women much attached to the land and the folk that live there, the female version of the mound-alfar.
The Hugrs of folk after death are not necessarily all benevolent, however. During life, people’s Hugrs can be quite malevolent and cause a great deal of trouble. It’s only logical to suspect that many of the spirits (for example, the ‘hags’ that cause ‘hag-shot’) which haunt and afflict people with illness, bad luck, or damage of various kinds are the afterlife Hugrs of people of ill-will, who did exactly the same things during their lifetime. This kind of activity will be discussed in my article on magic and the Hugr. By the same token, if an ill-willed Hugr reincarnates into a new life in Midgard, this will give rise to a very difficult person in life, who may carry over feuds and grudges. This is the big opportunity provided by reincarnation, however: life in Midgard offers a reincarnated Hugr the opportunity to learn a new path of life and change its ways.
Afterlife Hugrs may also be the source of other spirits in our lore such as the ‘lesser norns’ or fairy godmothers (those who give good luck, and ill luck); the ‘anses’, revered and powerful ancestral spirits; vordhr, vard, and other ‘watcher, guardian’ spirits; kinfylgjur (womanly guardians attached to the head of the family or clan), and perhaps some of the fylgja spirits. In general, I would say that if a spirit is human-like, it could well be the Hugr soul of a departed human. Hugrs are very active and engaged with human life, whether they are embodied or disembodied!
Origins and Evolution of Hugr
In my understanding Hugr, like Mod, was not one of the souls originally given to us or shaped for us by the Gods and the Norns, as I described in earlier chapters about the Ferah, Ahma, Ghost, Hama, and Aldr. I believe that the human Hugr is an ancestral soul that, unlike Mod with its source in nature-energies, is at root based in human life in Midgard. Its role and purpose is to engage in human Midgard life, whether Hugr is embodied within a living human, or whether it is disembodied, serving as an ancestral spirit, an independent warding and guiding spirit, or awaiting rebirth.
I believe that Hugr has undergone a gradual, evolutionary process of development. Unlike some of our other souls which have more ‘timeless’ natures, the various paths or strands we’ve explored here hint that Hugr has changed over time. It has evolved from an eerie, otherworldly spirit lurking around the dead, to a soul within us that embodies a great deal of our sense of who we are, deeply involved in our thoughts, emotions, character, personality, temperament, and behavior.
I think that this evolution took place through the process of Hugr’s lives, afterlives and rebirths. Each time a Hugr is attached to a living human and experiences Midgard life, it grows in knowledge, experience, skill. Sometimes this growth is minimal, sometimes great leaps of growth are taken, depending on how that person lived his or her life. The Hugr can grow and expand through the pursuit of worthiness during life. Or it can grow in ill-will, envy, spite and anger, and develop the skill to express those urges in harmful ways. Likewise, the afterlife activities of the Hugr can be helpful and beneficial, or harmful. Through all of this, the Hugr grows and learns, and over time and generations becomes more powerful, more complex, more skilled.
So, how did Hugr originate? I’ve suggested that after death, Hugr can reincarnate, or serve as an ancestral spirit, or a guiding spirit to a living person, and it may do all of these things in turn. But how did the first Hugrs begin, and how do new Hugrs arise to meet the needs of a growing human population?
I think that the earliest proto-Hugrs arise from the spiritual wetlands of Hel as floating wisps of imagery and longings relating to that imagery (see “The Alchemy of Hel” series and “Hel-Dweller” for more about the Saiwalos and imagery, the transformational processes of Hel, and the arising of these proto-Hugrs). At this stage, the Hugr-ling has no power or knowledge of how to attain its desires; it is simply a wisp of longing. But the energy of its longing is enough to draw it up toward the Midgard-plane, the source of the imageries that the Hugr-ling is formed from.
When it reaches the spiritual-energy planes of Midgard, it encounters other, more developed Hugr-spirits, who have already lived human lives, once or many times. Through association with these disembodied but experienced Hugr-souls, the Hugr-ling is ‘apprenticed’, so to speak, and begins to develop its powers. Ancestral, experienced Hugrs guide the new ones into association with parents-to-be, spurring their desire and love for each other, and their desire for a child. Thus, a new home is created for the Hugr-ling: a child with its household of other souls, and Hugr begins its long journey toward experience, wisdom and power.
I think that this is how Hugr souls originally arise, but I think it is also possible that sometimes a disembodied, formerly-living Hugr will help to gestate a new Hugr developing within a young child, and that this can relate to memories of reincarnation. I have discussed here how gestation, and ‘swelling and growing with power’ are important aspects of Hugr’s nature. When we read academic studies about apparent cases of reincarnation, it’s clear that in the great majority of cases, the memories and influences of reincarnation appear in very young children, and slowly fade as the child grows toward young adulthood. This evidence would support the idea that a disembodied Hugr could join with a baby’s soul-household and stay for several years, gestating and supporting the growth of a new Hugr in the child, and while doing so, it may (or may not) share memories, experiences and influences from its former life (or lives). Then, as the new Hugr grows into its full powers, the reincarnated Hugr will move on. Some of the past-life memories and experiences may stay with the child and continue to exert their influences on this person’s life, though they may be far less intense once the reincarnated Hugr has left. Another way of expressing what I describe here, is to say that a Dis or an ancestral Alf involves herself / himself in establishing a new Hugr within a child.
In many cases, the Hugr simply chooses to reincarnate and remain with the person throughout their life, in order to experience Midgard life again. In this case, it would not gestate a new Hugr, but simply join with the baby’s ‘soular-system’ and remain there for life. Hugrs of other sentient beings such as the tribes of the Alfar may occasionally be inherited into a family line if matings have occurred between them and humans. Thus, there are a number of paths whereby new Hugrs can arise and join with living humans.
Wrapping Up: The Tale of the Hugr
There was a time far back in human history, not long after humans had received their souls given by the Holy Ones, when an eerie song arose. This song began within the souls of the strongest and wisest folk back then, the ones with the greatest desire for themselves and their kinfolk to thrive and prosper in the challenging environments they lived in. The song was strengthened and built up when all gathered around the fires at night to sing and worship and tell tales together. These songs of longing and of knowing, of dreaming and desiring, called to the Hugr-lings forming like wisps in the dreaming lands of Hel, and the wisps floated up to hover around the singing humans.
These wispy, infant Hugrs were primitive, undeveloped. They needed to be in contact with the living, even after death. They congregated around burial sites, crying and calling to attract attention, and clung to people who neared the graves with open, grieving hearts and prayers to the ancestors for help. The loose Hugrs attached themselves especially to fertile women and men, drawing them into desire and love for one another, and encouraged conception and gestation of infants as new homes for themselves.
If a person came to a gravesite to pray for a gift from their ancestor—a gift such as skill in singing and tales, skills for hunting, gathering, toolmaking, medicine, strength and wisdom for a child in the womb—the ancestral Hugr might well join the soul-complex of the petitioner or the newborn child, temporarily or permanently, and pass on the gifts that Hugr had accumulated during life. Hugrs from other races of beings: Alfar, Vanir, Æsir, Giants, Dwarves, drifted into the pool of human soul-complexes occasionally when matings took place between them and humans, and a clan of humans gained an otherworldly ancestral Hugr to empower them.
Over the generations Hugrs became more powerful, more diverse and complex, more skilled, wise and subtle. They became more embedded within the human soul complex and had less need of the ploys they used when they were weak and young. Working together with the other evolutionary daemon-soul, the Mod, the Hugr became greatly skilled and powerful in all the abilities needed to thrive and succeed in everyday Midgard life, and evolved new skills and powers as human society became more complex and challenging. Today, they are primary actors among our souls in all the domains of Midgard life.
Summary
Here we’ve explored some linguistic clues relating to the Hugr’s nature. It can appear as a pale, shining, ghostly being, hovering around burial mounds and graves. It can appear as a wight, often an ancestral homestead-wight or wights associated with caves and underground places, and can be heard calling like the cries of owls and other uncanny birds. Hugr has the power to swell, sometimes leading to magical and occult powers, sometimes fostering conception and pregnancy, sometimes bursting out with emotion and excitation. It serves as a watcher, a warder, a guardian spirit, both during life and after physical death. It is deeply involved in cycles of life, death, rebirth, and ancestral powers.
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First published in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition, #117, Spring 2018. Updated May 2021.