On the Word "Growth"...
"Growth" is a word borrowed from the Norse groði, the process of vegetation becoming green and becoming larger. In the later 800s, you see, England was invaded by an army of Danes. This Great Heathen Army's leaders wanted to avenge the execution by being thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes of their father Ragnar Lothbrok—Ragnar "Furry Pants", supposedly because he had successfully fought a giant snake while wearing furry pants that the snake could not bite through. The sons of Ragnar were: Ivar the Boneless (or Legless?), Björn Ironside, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, Halfdan Ragnarsson King of Dublin, Hvitserk, and Ubba. (Halfdan and Hvitserk may have been the same person—Hvitserk means "white shirt" and would thus be much more appropriate as a nickname like "Boneless", "Ironside" or "Snake-in-the-Eye".
No, I do not know why Ubba does not have a colorful nickname.
At least some of these sons of Ragnar were also the sons of Aslaug the witch-woman, Ragnar's third wife.
Aslaug was supposedly the daughter of Siegfried (or Sigurd) the Volsung, called Fafnir's-bane because he killed the genuine dragon Fafnir. Fafnir had become a genuine dragon because he was excessively greedy for the cursed gold—especially the cursed gold ring—of the Rhine. Loki had tricked the dwarf Andvari into giving him the gold, which Loki had then had to give to Fafnir's family in order to repay them and thus free himself, Hoenir, and Odin from the obligation incurred by Loki's thoughtlessly killing Fafnir's brother Otter with a thrown stone while Otter was in his shape-changed shifter form of, well, an otter.
Aslaug was supposedly also the daughter of Brunhilda, who was either (a) the favored valkyrie of Odin, one of those who carried the souls of the brave warrior dead to Valhalla in Asgard, where they feasted and trained for their task as Odin's army when Armageddon should come; (b) queen-regent of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia and the Burgundian kingdom of Burgundy from 575-613; and/or (c) the favorite sister of Attila the Hun (406-53), who brought the wrath of the Huns down on the Burgundians after their leaders had treacherously murdered her husband Siegfried (or Sigurd), who could understand the speech of the birds because he had eaten Fafnir's heart.
History... myth... mythestery
We do know that in 436-7 the Roman General Flavius Aetius used imperial silver and his personal contacts with the Huns among whom he had lived as a hostage when young to induce the Huns to destroy the Burgundian kingdom then located near Wurzburg, after which he resettled the survivors around Lyons. We do know that Alfred the Great the Anglo-Saxon King of Wessex and Guthrum the Danish King of East Anglia agreed that the line Liverpool-Windsor-Margate would separate their kingdoms and that Anglo-Saxon law would prevail to the southwest and Danish law to the northeast. We do know that Late Old English emerged in the 800s and 900s as a creole of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse.
And so "growth" became a word we use...
Cf.: Vikings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_(2013_TV_series), The Last Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Kingdom_(TV_series), Tale of Ragnar's Sons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tale_of_Ragnar%27s_Sons, Tale of Ragnar Lodbrok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tale_of_Ragnar_Lodbrok, Völsunga Saga, Nibelungenlied https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied, Kingdom of the Burgundians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Burgundians, Brunhilda of Austrasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhilda_of_Austrasia.
#highlighted #history #mythology #2019-10-18
