Norse goddess of wisdom
Snotra
Snotra is a goddess of the Norse pantheon, listed among the Ásynjur and associated with wisdom. Almost everything we know about her comes from a single source, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, which makes her one of the most enigmatic figures in Norse mythology.
The myth
According to Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Snotra is one of the Ásynjur, the goddesses of the Norse pantheon. She holds the thirteenth place in the list Snorri gives in the Gylfaginning section, where she receives a single line: she is wise and courteous. Snorri adds that her name gave rise to the adjective snotr, applied to any wise man or woman. Almost everything the sources tell us about her ends there.
Snotra appears again in the Skáldskaparmál, in a list of twenty-seven goddess names, but with no episode attached. She is absent from the Poetic Edda, from skaldic poetry and from other early North Germanic sources. For this reason scholars debate her origin. Rudolf Simek has suggested that Snorri may have invented her from the word snotr, while Andy Orchard considers that he may have drawn on a lost source. Another proposal is that Snotra was originally an alternative name for Frigg, which Snorri later took as a separate goddess.
Legacy
Snotra barely appears outside mythology, but she does turn up in the Saga of Gautrek, a medieval tale with a darkly comic tone that opens with a human Snotra: the youngest daughter of a family of foolish farmers, whose parents are called Skafnörtungr ('Skinflint') and Tötra ('Tatters'). King Gauti of West Gotaland, ancestor of the Geats and Goths, makes her pregnant with Gautrek. She is a very different character from the goddess.
Ancient sources: Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, written in the 13th century, in the Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál sections, is practically the only source that names her.