V is for Vidopnir and the View from Up Here

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"]![Caption reads "The Ash Yggdrasil". T...](images/300px-The_Ash_Yggdrasil_by_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Heine.jpg "Caption reads "The Ash Yggdrasil". T...") Caption reads "The Ash Yggdrasil". The world tree Yggdrasil and some of its inhabitants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

Is it fair to break out so much original research/UPG for a Pagan Blog Project post? I don't know but I'm leaning towards yes. Besides, how many people are still reading and blogging it this late in the year? We are the few, the proud, the obsessively dedicated...

Anyway.

The eagle that lives atop Yggdrasil is never named in the lore.

And yet there's a similar story about Mimameid, a tree named for Mimir (in the same way Yggdrasil is named for Odin), with a rooster at the top named Vidopnir. There are some academics who've suggested that Mimameid and Yggdrasil are both names for the same World Tree.

Why, you may ask, is this tagged 'firebird'? To start with, the eagle is one of the species of bird associated with various firebird legends. The rooster is too, though admittedly through a more circuitous route. Through both my own and other peoples' UPG, eagles in the Northern lore are linked to lightning, and thence to the thunderbird/firebird. (I don't think the two concepts are identical, but I feel they're close enough for vague theorizing.)

I set out to work with Vidopnir because I was curious. I like finding firebirds and seeing what they are willing to teach me.

At it turned out, working with Vidopnir also meant working with Yggdrasil. As you might imagine, being the Guy At the Top of the Tree, Vidopnir's pretty into the big picture. He and I talked about goals, and what's important, and where I've been wasting my energy.

I think of Vidopnir as the firebird of the controlled burn, with the perspective to see what's really going on behind the scenes.

If anyone else has experience with him, I'd love to hear about it.