hypatia42

I don't know if this will help you understand the Norse (and for what little sense of them I have, I do much better to separate the Vanir and the Aesir rather than lumping them together as "the Norse)... think about Who They are now, not just Who They were, then.

What do I mean by that? Well, here's some of what I meant by that, when I was trying to figure it out in regards to the Celtic deities:

We look to original source material, when it exists, to get a sense of
the different deities and how They liked to be worshipped. The Greeks
kept the stories alive until they could write things down – I can read
the Illiad and get a sense of what people thought of Zeus, Hera,
Athene, Apollo, and the rest of the Olympians over two thousand years
ago. And that's a good thing.

The Celts didn't write down much about their religion and their
beliefs, but I can look to manuscripts written by Christian priests
trying to reconcile the local legends to the Bible and, yes, the
Illiad and get a more confused sense about the Tuatha de Danaan.

But that was then. We know, from the historical record, that worship
of the Olympians changed over time. We're pretty damn sure that the
worship of the Celtic Gods changed with time and place. Is Brid the
same as Briget? The same as Brigantia? And when the English came to
this place, and references started appearing to Columbia… well, who is
She?

"Now" is a funny thing, in myth and story. Brid tends the forge in
Tara, and sits with the laboring women, and writes her own poems and
inspires them in others – all in the present tense. If I look across
the Atlantic, and think of her, that's Who I see. But if I look
across the plains, clear to the other side of this continent, there's
land where the trees are tall and the land is lush and green and it
rains more days than not. The weather doesn't seem to get too hot or
too cold there, either. And somewhere, between the Pacific and the
Starbucks shops in Seattle and the forests of Vancouver Island and the
mountains of the Cascades, there's a proudly-built, red-headed
songwriter. She has quite the collection of stringed instruments in
her home: guitar, harp – nothing so big that she can't wrap her arms
around it, and all well-tuned, well-loved, and well-used. Maybe she's
a veterinarian; maybe she's a midwife; maybe she does Reiki. But at
nights and on weekends, she goes over to the studio space she shares
with some other friends and works on her glass, putting the sand into
the fire and drawing forth amazing forms and shapes. With fire and
her breath she shapes things of beauty…. And that's in the present
tense, too.

Hope this helps....