UPG, and your mileage may vary.
I asked Idunna about her parentage. She replied:
"We aren't corporeal, so we don't have to hold concern about our corpses--where they came from, who made them, and so on. Our genealogies are not like your genealogies. But you have to understand that we didn't come out of nowhere, so that's why we say that so-and-so is descended from whomever. Not that there isn't some truth in it, mind, but it's not a corporeal truth because we don't have corpses. For example, saying that Sleipnir is the child of Loki and Svadilfari, is a truth, but not a corporeal truth.
"We have talked about our lineage and where we came from because ancestors are important. We here in the North seem to recognize that more than some others, and sometimes we get a little carried away with the primacy of ancestry, and that has been tragic on both large and small scales.
"But remember this: When the Lore of which you speak mentions that so-and-so is mother to so-and-so, it's so that you can understand something of how we relate. And, it's a lesson on the importance of ancestry."
Happy Samhain, too.
"We aren't corporeal, so we don't have to hold concern about our corpses--where they came from, who made them, and so on. Our genealogies are not like your genealogies. But you have to understand that we didn't come out of nowhere, so that's why we say that so-and-so is descended from whomever. Not that there isn't some truth in it, mind, but it's not a corporeal truth because we don't have corpses. For example, saying that Sleipnir is the child of Loki and Svadilfari, is a truth, but not a corporeal truth.
"We have talked about our lineage and where we came from because ancestors are important. We here in the North seem to recognize that more than some others, and sometimes we get a little carried away with the primacy of ancestry, and that has been tragic on both large and small scales.
"But remember this: When the Lore of which you speak mentions that so-and-so is mother to so-and-so, it's so that you can understand something of how we relate. And, it's a lesson on the importance of ancestry."
Happy Samhain, too.