About The Name

The birch tree is a pioneer species as it was one of the first to repopulate the land after the ice retreated from the last ice age and is able to recolonize land after natural disasters. I chose the birch tree due to the mythology surrounding it that ties it to birth, fertility and motherhood.The idea came to me because of the rune Berkano which represents the birch tree but also birth, rebirth and mothers. The rune itself reminds Thorsson of the shape of a pregnant mothers body and the rune is tied the Disir who are the female spirits or ancestors and the goddesses Freyja, Frigga, Hella, and Nerthus all for their aspects of fertility, birth, death and rebirth. 

As I continued to look into the connection in mythology I discovered the Celtic people used birch for purification and fertility. At Samhain, their new year, they would use birch branches to drive out the spirits of the past year and still often use them to purify their gardens. At Beltane, their half year point in the spring, birch trees are used for their maypoles to be decorated and danced around for their fertility rituals and burned in their fires that evening. The highlanders even believed you could make a barren cow fertile by herding it with a birch stick or ensure a healthy calf from a pregnant cow. Even after birth birch is tied to children as toys and cradles were and are made of birch and supposedly would protect that child from bad spirits. This idea of birch protecting children has held on so well that some hospitals will plant birch near their pediatric wards.