A vivid dream once came to me, years ago now- but has stayed bright in my mind ever since. In the dream I have a sudden and extraordinary love-at-first-sight encounter. We both feel it, we both know it. But it’s complicated: we are at a conference or gathering at a town hall, this beloved already has a partner, the unlooked for happening is witnessed by a mutual friend of all three of us; and intriguingly there are a group of elders or ancestors on the edge of things who are urgently asking to speak with me.
The elders speak. They wish to sit down with all four of us: the beloved, the partner, the friend and myself. They want us to sit as if we were seated in the centre of a crossroads with the spokes leading out in all directions. They want to be invited to hold, to listen, to grieve and to rejoice as the truth is told. They want to stand with strength behind each person as they look in the direction of choices, possibilities and new trajectories.
This dream has since taken me down many paths of exploration. In listening deep in to the question, about what it might be like to have a procession of my ancestors travel from wherever realms they inhabit to visit, prepare and advise me, this poem poured itself onto the page.
Sitting round the Ancestral fire
is good.
But tonight
tuck us roundly into feather beds.
Let us sleep deep
amongst the flying feathers,
soft holdings
around our bones.
For we have much to talk about
in the coming days,
so feast and rest now
And when we wake
speak with us of Raspberries-
ruby spheres of becoming:
from frost to flower to fruit
the rightful thorns accompanying
like the sworded guardians
of the secret glade.
Speak with us of all the days,
all the days
that brought us to this wide-narrow
shining vignette
of warm and delicious fruition
of being and becoming
and tenuously heavy stems.
Speak with us
of the hugely small
unaccountable, undefinable
becomings,
and we will tell you the Story
of Violets.
We will show you
The door-frames and thresholds
-both sacred and mundane-
to cross
into your awakening ‘Deep’.
My great grandmother’s kitchen garden had a sturdy raspberry patch. Some of my strongest memories of her are blended with those raspberry patch visits as well as the happy permission of being allowed to dig beside the snowdrops with a little spoon. For reasons known best to my intuition, berries and flowers like violets and snowdrops have deep meaning in my Germanic family’s roots. I have long loved the Russian fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful that includes Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ telling of intuition and the tasks of initiation. In my own imaginings of the tale I began to be intrigued by the idea of snowdrops guarding the edge of the field where Vasilisa enters the wood in search of Baba Yaga to ask for fire to relight the family hearth. Perhaps they offered her a blessing for the safe completion of her journey as she brushed past them. Perhaps they too asked to speak with her as they stood on the edge of things and witnessed her step onto her initiatory path.
Snowdrops have a long and deep genealogy and have been listed in taxonomic history as early as the Greek philosopher and Naturalist Theophrastus 370-285 BCE. They range in all directions from Sicily, Iran, The Pyrenes, Europe and are fabled to have been brought to the UK by monks. They have been known by many names: The Fair Maids of February, Candlemas bells, Timely flowering Bulbous Violet, Purification Flower (Italy), Violette de la Chandaleur (France). They were first published as ‘snowdrops’ by Boyle in the book Colours in 1664. Their folkloric track runs alongside the fairy tale Snow White collected by the Grimm Brothers, also known as Schneewitten, Sneewitten, Schneeweisschen in various translations meaning: Little White. In some versions Snow White has been synonymously written as Snow Drop. Snowdrops like all plant beings have an unbroken line of wisdom spanning centuries and therefore an accessible mythos and pathos is inherent in them. They have intelligence and symbolic associations braided into their stories. In many heritages white is an initiatory colour. In the folktale of Vasilisa 3 emblematic horseman cross her path: one white, one red and one black. These precious colours hold realms of meaning including the alchemy of the life-death-life cycle. Snowdrops stand in front of this vast understory as the very embodiment of this cycle: rising up out of the chthonic and through the Winter landscape to offer the first glimpse of Spring. Perhaps it is why the Victorians planted it around the beds of graves as the Language of Flowers suggests offering “consolation and hope”.
One of its Norse associations is with the kennings of Baldur and meanings of warrior, prince, light and white. Flowers themselves were the symbol of keys: primroses on Freya’s crown in Spring were seen as the keys to Spring. Spring itself is a deep well of myth and symbols described in every culture; personified in the Greek myths by the story of Demeter and Persephone to the associative (credit Daniel Deardorff for this distinction) myths of the goddesses of Idun, Freya, and Eostre to name a few.
On approximately March 10 of the Nordic Calendar for this year (named Thor Month) is named the “Primstaff of the Disa Moon” the approximate flowering time of these gala anthos (The Greek for milk flower) depending on the region they are found in. These plants can tolerate the tilting back and forth between spring and winter as they stretch their sword like leaves and their pendant drop flower over the last of the ice and snow. A vast spectrum of associations arise here from the German Schneetropfen (after the tear shaped earrings and pendants worn by ladies in the 16th century and also brings to mind the famous Dutch painting by Johannes Vermeer in 1665 “Girl with a Pearl Earring/Meisje met de parel”) that can take us all the way back to a beginning.
The Norse creation myth of Audumbla the great primeval Cow licks the ice and also feeds the primordial frost jotunn Ymir from her milk. She is the creator of the milky way, long may she be honoured and remembered in the emergence of the snowdrops.
This past March I travelled to Scotland, partly on an ancestral journey. The snowdrops still had a few persistent flowers that met me on my route.
On the ancient Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides I visited the landscape and eventually the Abbey of St Columba. In the inner courtyard one set of pillars were carved with flowers local or special to early creators of this place. As you can see the snowdrop is one that has been recently replaced from it’s original.
Upon reflection, the snowdrop when drawn in sigil form offers the spark of Kenaz, the fertility of Ingwaz, the foundational support of Odal, the stillness of Iss, the gift of growth at the earliest of moments-Gifu, the strength of Algiz as well as the shapes of chevrons and sanctuary arches. To me this speaks to an ancestry of sanctuary and how present it is in all things.
And so we are brought back to reflections of ancestry, unbroken lines of wisdom and how that wisdom is sanctuary. My maternal grandmother was someone who taught me through her actions that she did not care about the things that separate us, she was friends with everybody. Our days were spent walking to friends’ homes to visit, perhaps bringing them something baked. On the other end of the diaphysis, my paternal grandmother was shall we say- overly discerning in her acquaintances. She taught me how to sew, knit, garden, pick berries, make jam, and bake cookies when it was storming. She had a small circle of people with whom she had deep reciprocal relationships. Both had their own way of offering sanctuary.
A second reason for travelling to Scotland was a symbolic one. Years before I had been married there on the grounds of Arduiane Garden. I returned this time on the strength of my own two feet to have a look in all directions, to say farewell and to begin again; and while metaphorically sitting at the crossroads (cream tea included) the synchronistical song Come in From the Cold by Joni Mitchell played.
Karin Vanhinsberg is a student of Norse mythology, and a Registered Nurse living and working in her local emergency department on the unceded traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg, specifically the Chippewas of Rama First Nation of Ontario, Canada. She has a passion for poetry and therapeutic healing modalities such as somatic psychotherapy work with horses. She is currently involved in coordinating a health care retreat “Thriving in Healthcare- a well being retreat on the Isle of Iona” for March 2025 details can be found here: Poetry in the Direction of Unity | Karin Vanhinsberg | Substack
May we all be ‘beloved of our Ancestors’ as we grow our gifts and our capacity to send them out for the wellbeing of the lands we live on and the communities we live in.
Resources
The Nordic Animist Year by Rune Hjarno Rasmussen, 2019- 2021 revised edition www.nordicanimism.com - Rune has a newsletter, youtube channel, online and in-person classes
Women Who Run With the Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ballantine Books New York, 1992 Specifically the story of “Vasalisa”.
The Other Within, The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, and Psyche by Daniel Deardhorff, Inner Traditions. Rochester, Vermont 2004- edition 2022
The Runes of Elfland by Ari Berk and Illustrated by Brian Froud. Harry N Abrams, New York 2003
The Complete First Edition The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and edited by Jack Zipes. Princeton University Press, 2014
The flower references:
Wikipedia for Snow White, Snow Drop references, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Arches, and Chevrons
The Language of Flowers, by Kate Greenaway 1846-1901 New York Public Library; accessed on
archive.org
The genus Galanthus, by Aaron P. Davis; accessed on archive.org
For mythologic and runic references I refer to my notes from classes with Andreas Kornevall, The Poetic Edda (translation by Jackson Crawford), The Edda -translation by Snorri Sturlson, The Poetic Edda a Dual Language Edition by Edward Pettit; accessed on archive.org. Mythos- The Greek Myths Retold (with humour) by Stephen Fry. And always there is a nod in the background for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and the many ways we have all heard and read our lives in stories and fairytales.