Whatâs up with all the leeks in Norse imagery? Iâve been reading the Poetic Edda and itâs a kenning for a sword at a couple points. Why leeks specifically?
I couldn't begin to tell you. It also appears in relation to the rune Laguz (á).
That'd be a very interesting thing to find out more about though.
Leek was a very valuable vegetable for the old Norse! It's a hardy plant, growing quickly, strongly, and healthily, and it can be grown through many more seasons than most plants and often harvested well into winter, unlike other vegetables which had to be harvested and processed before or during the fall. Leeks can be viewed, in that way, not only as a source of life, but also as a plant that displays immense strength and endurance, and perhaps even fertility. Further, leeks are in the allium family, which they share with garlic and onions, among others. They are anti-microbial and anti-bacterial, full of vitamins that may be hard to get from other food sources, and they have a lot of water and fibre in them. Often with foods that are so nutritionally dense, spiritual associations with health arise, for obvious reasons. It is also worth noting that unlike in the modern day, many foods in the Middle Ages and before were seen as medicine as much as they were sustenance. In later medical texts we see medieval physicians recommend leeks as all kinds of medicine - as would have been common with loads of other foods. We privileged moderners are wont to underestimate the severe significance of good food sources and their healing properties! Leeks have also been consumed since further back in antiquity than the Old Norse themselves, even, and it could be that such a primordial-feeling food, something that feels like it has always been part of society and human engagements, just naturally found a place in the zeitgeist. The leek riddle that we find in ON texts has parallels in Hebrew, and leeks were an important cultural emblem in Wales. Alliums in general also have a very important position in other cosmologies, such as Hellenism, where alliums and their strong scent could attract the ancillaries of Hekate, or alternatively offend other gods and spirits. Later, into the proper middle ages, when the doctrine of signatures became commonplace and visual symbolism took a far more important role in the determination of the properties of plants, the visual cues from the leek also came into their own. The obvious one is that anything long and more or less cylindrical can be viewed as phallic, but more subversively, cutting a leek in half will reveal a pattern within the stem that can strongly resemble a vulva. It is said that prior to this doctrine the association with fertility and childbirth already existed, and indeed we see it prescribed in Wales (?) as childbirth medicine, and in Greece there was even a minor leek goddess who was meant to protect against breeched births. So it would stand to reason that the various Germanic peoples would also have had similar associations. It has also been suggested that *Laukaz, assuming that is even what that rune refers to (but it might!) doesn't even actually specifically refer to leeks, but rather all alliums - and a lot of these speculations do indeed apply to leeks, garlic, and chives. That's a bit of an aside, but something worth considering. There's tons more out there to be discovered, but that's the end of my yap about leeks since it's about my bedtime. I quite like this article that I found while fact checking myself, and I think the Compendium of Ritual and Symbolic Plants in Europe by Cleene might have an entry on leeks - it's available on archive.org!
Ooo thanks for all this!
