The provenance file on Fulla
Provenance record 126 · Fulla · one temple, fully accounted for.
Provenance
1. The attestation. ᚠᚢᛚᛚᛅ, from the tradition's own record. On record: Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning 35 (Fulla's portrait: virgin, golden band, eski, shoes, secret counsels) and 49 (Nanna's finger-ring); Skáldskaparmál, þulur of the ásynjur, Poetic Edda: Grímnismál, prose introduction (Fulla sent to warn Geirröðr), trans. Carolyne Larrington, The Second Merseburg Charm (Friia and Volla her sister), in Braune–Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, Cleasby–Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, s.v. Fulla, fullr; Zoëga, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, s.v. Fulla.
2. The narrative record. The Keeper of the Casket — Snorri's catalogue of the ásynjur gives Fulla her entire portrait in one sentence, and the tradition never varies it: 'Fulla is a virgin and goes with her hair loose and a golden band about her head; she carries Frigg's eski, looks after her footwear, and shares her secret counsels with her. ' The three duties descend in rank and rise in intimacy — the box is treasure, the shoes are service, the counsels are trust itself. The Warning to Geirröðr — Fulla's one errand in the Poetic Edda is given in prose, at the head of Grímnismál. Óðinn and Frigg had quarrelled over their foster-sons: Frigg accused King Geirröðr, Óðinn's favourite, of being so stingy he tortured his guests for lack of food, and Óðinn laid a wager on his man and set off disguised to test him.
3. The physical record. Fulla is an entirely textual goddess: no cult site, toponym, votive deposit, or inscription names her, and the runic corpus is silent — unsurprising for a figure the sources place inside the queen's household rather than in the public cult. Her witnesses are manuscripts. The Grímnismál prose, which preserves her one errand, survives in the Codex Regius (c. 1270); her portrait in Gylfaginning 35 and her ring in Gylfaginning 49 come with the Prose Edda codices of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and her name recurs in the þulur, the metrical name-lists appended to Skáldskaparmál. The one continental witness is the Second Merseburg Charm, copied into a theological manuscript at Fulda in the tenth century and now in the Merseburg cathedral library: its Volla, sister of Friia, is the only attestation of the figure outside Iceland and, if the identification holds, the oldest by centuries.
4. The current holding. The temple at /sites/fulla/, classified Tier 2. The restoration keeps one feature the ASCII form drops. One is enough to matter, and the label says so plainly: Tier-2.
5. The documented resonances. Leadership, Governance & Public Administration, Faith & Spiritual Organizations, Gems, Jewelry & Luxury Materials — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
6. The primary sources. Poetic Edda, Prose Edda — the library this file answers to, open at the Sacred Texts collection.
7. The continuing record. Fulla's afterlife is scholarly and liturgical rather than popular. Grimm devoted a chapter of Teutonic Mythology to her and Volla, and every handbook since — Simek, Orchard, Lindow — keeps her as the standing example of the abstract-noun ásynja, the goddess whose name tells you exactly what she is.
At a Glance
- Restored name: Fulla
- ASCII form: fulla
- Meaning: "Bountiful"
- Domain of influence: Abundance, Secrets
- Pantheon: Norse
- Classification: Tier 2
- Original script: ᚠᚢᛚᛚᛅ
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 126 of 397
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Fūjin (read it here) · next file: Fúxī (read it here).
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