#The Madness of Suibhne

[mask131]

A fantasy read-list: A-2

Fantasy read-list

Part A: Ancient fantasy

2) Mythological fantasy (other mythologies)

Beyond the Greco-Roman mythology, which remained the main source and main influence over European literature for millenia, two other main groups of myths had a huge influence over the later “fantasy” genres.

# On one side, the mythology of Northern Europe (Nordic/Scandinavian, Germanic, but also other ones such as Finnish). When it comes to Norse mythology, two works are the first names that pop-up: the Eddas. Compilations of old legends and mythical poems, they form the main sources of Norse myths. The oldest of the two is the Poetic Edda, or Elder Edda, an ancient compilation of Norse myths and legends in verse. The second Edda is the Prose Edda, so called because it was written in prose by the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson (alternate names being Snorri’s Edda or the Younger Edda). Sorri Sturluson also wrote numerous other works of great importance, such as Heimskringla (a historical saga depicting the dynasties of Norse kings, starting with tales intermingled with Norse mythology, before growing increasingly “historically-accurate”) or the Ynglinga saga - some also attributed to him the Egil’s Saga.

Other “tales of the North” include, of course, Beowulf, one of the oldest English poems of history, and the most famous version of the old Germanic legend of the hero Beowulf ; the Germanic Völsunga saga and Nibelungenlied ; as well as the Kalevala - which is a bit late, I’ll admit, it was compiled in the 19th century, so it is from a very different time than the other works listed here, but it is the most complete and influential attempt at recreating the old Finnish mythology. 

# On the other side, the Celtic mythologies. The two most famous are, of course, the Welsh and the Irish mythologies (the third main branch of Celtic religion, the Gaul mythology, was not recorded in texts). 

For Welsh mythology, there is one work to go: the Mabinogion. It is one of the most complete collections of Welsh folktales and legends, and the earliest surviving Welsh prose stories - though a late record feeling the influence of Christianization over the late. It is also one of the earliest appearances of the figure of King Arthur, making it part of the “Matter of Britain”, we’ll talk about later.

For Irish mythology, we have much, MUCH more texts, but hopefully they were already sorted in “series” forming the various “cycles” of Irish mythologies. In order we have: The Mythological Cycle, or Cycle of the Gods. The Book of Invasions, the Battle of Moytura, the Children of Lir and the Wooing of Etain. The Ulster Cycle, mostly told through the epic The Cattle-Raid of Cooley. The Fianna Cycle, or Fenian Cycle, whose most important work would be Tales of the Elders of Ireland. And finally the Kings’ Cycle, with the famous trilogy of The Madness of Suibhne, The Feast of Dun na nGed, and The Battle of Mag Rath. 

Another famous Irish tale not part of these old mythological cycles, but still defining the early/medieval Irish literature is The Voyage of Bran. 

# While the trio of Greco-Roman, Nordic (Norse/Germanic) and Celtic mythologies were the most influential over the “fantasy literature” as a we know it today, other mythologies should be talked about - due to them either having temporary influences over the history of “supernatural literature” (such as through specific “fashions”), having smaller influences over fantasy works, or being used today to renew the fantasy genre.

The Vedas form the oldest religious texts of Hinduism, and the oldest texts of Sanskrit literature. They are the four sacred books of the early Hinduist religion: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda. What is very interesting is that the Vedas are tied to what is called the “Vedic Hinduism”, an ancient, old form of Hinduism, which was centered around a pantheon of deities not too dissimilar to the pantheons of the Greeks, Norse or Celts - the Vedas reflect the form of Hinduist religion and mythology that was still close to its “Indo-European” mythology roots, a “cousin religion” to those of European Antiquity. Afterward, there was a big change in Hinduism, leading to the rise of a new form of the religion (usually called Puranic if my memory serves me well), this time focused on the famous trinity of deities we know today: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The classic epics and supernatural novels of China have been a source of inspiration for more Asian-influenced fantasy genres. Heavily influenced and shaped by the various mythologies and religions co-existing in China, they include: the Epic of Darkness, the Investiture of the Gods, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, or What the Master does not Speak of - as well as the most famous of them all, THE great epic of China, Journey to the West. If you want less fictionized, more ancient sources, of course the “Five Classics” of Confucianism should be talked about: Classic of Poetry, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, Book of Changes, as well as Spring and Autumn Annals (though the Classic of Poetry and Book of Documents would be the more interesting one, as they contain more mythological texts and subtones - the Book of Changes is about a divination system, the Book of Rites about religious rites and courtly customs, and the Annals is a historical record). And, of course, let’s not forget to mention the “Four Great Folktales” of China: the Legend of the White Snake, the Butterfly Lovers, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, as well as Lady Meng Jiang.

# As for Japanese mythology, there are three main sources of information that form the main corpus of legends and stories of Japan. The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), a chronicle in which numerous myths, legends and folktales are collected, and which is considered the oldest literary work of Japan ; the Nihon Shoki, which is one of the oldest chronicles of the history of Japan, and thus a mostly historical document, but which begins with the Japanese creation myths and several Japanese legends found or modified from the Kojiki ; and finally the Fudoki, which are a series of reports of the 8th century that collected the various oral traditions and local legends of each of the Japanese provinces.

# The Mesopotamian mythologies are another group not to be ignored, as they form the oldest piece of literature of history! The legends of Sumer, Akkadia and Babylon can be summed up in a handful of epics and sacred texts - the first of all epics!. You have the three “rival” creation myths: the Atra-Hasis epic for the Akkadians, the Eridu Genesis for the Sumerians and the Enuma Elish story for the Babylonians. And to these three creation myths you should had the two hero-epics of Mesopotamian literature: on one side the story of Adapa and the South Wind, on the other the one and only, most famous of all tales, the Epic of Gilgamesh. 

# And of course, this read-list must include... The Bible. Beyond the numerous mythologies of Antiquity with their polytheistic pantheons and complex set of legends, there is one book that is at the root of the European imagination and has influenced so deeply European culture it is intertwined with it... The Bible. European literary works are imbued with Judeo-Christianity, and as such fantasy works are also deeply reflective of Judeo-Christian themes, legends, motifs and characters. So you have on one side the Ancient Testament, the part of the Bible that the Christians have in common with the Jews (though in Judaism the Ancient Testament is called the “Torah”) - the most famous and influential parts of the Ancient Testament/Torah being the first two books, Genesis (the creation myth) and Exodus (the legend of Moses). And on the other side you have the exclusively Christian part of the Bible, the New Testament - with its two most influential parts being the Gospels (the four canonical records of the life of Jesus, the Christ) and The Book of Revelation (the one people tend to know by its flashier name... The Apocalypse). 

[gendermeh]

As of Silt Veres s2 finale, my mood is “none of them should have a good end (except maybe Carpenter) (affectionate)”. Like. I love them all dearly. HOWEVER. They are Doing Things. (More spoiler-heavy elaboration below the cut)

Like. Paige and Hayward have come up with (uncovered? Shaped?) this hugely destructive new god which eats other gods’ sacrifices. That’s gonna fuck up the ecosystem. Paige is going wild (which, like, good for her but also sooooo many more people r gonna die) and Hayward is following her. On the other hand, Faulkner did fucking that. …Both in the sense of what he did to Carpenter after what he did to Mason, and also in the sense of, that just feels like where his character is headed? To me personally I mean.

I could also really go into, like, my thoughts on Carpenter and Faulkner and Siblings (and maybe how that relates to some stuff brought up in the post-s1 QnA, abt Carpenter and Faulkner and religion) but that is, hypothetically, Another Post

Also this is written at some ungodly hour of the morning and was preceded by a light(?) deep dive(?) that uncovered the fact that Mad Sweeney Americangods IS apparently (maybe? According to Wikipedia) Suibhne/Sweeney from the Irish poem Buile Suibhne of which a notable translation is Sweeney Astray and according to Wikipedia has/had an opera adaptation and I learned about the poem some years ago from a murder mystery trilogy written by a musician <3

Anyway listen to this

[adamshallperish]

hiii ♡ opal ring + lace dress + land of wolves + medusa

opal ring: are you sentimental?

yes. fairly unabashedly. i have a lot of items with great personal meaning and value that i keep with me and cherish and i get sad quite often thinking about what was and what can never be.

lace dress: some of your favorite fashion concepts?

i'm actually really really passionate about like historical dress and costuming, and i love seeing old methods for making and wearing clothes get reimagined in the modern day. i especially think it's cool if it's from different cultures that aren't necessarily western european in origin. i also am far more interested in the clothes of working class people and that's where i tend to take most of my current style hints from.

land of wolves: do you have a close friend group?

i have my two besties who i met over discord three years ago and they are my greatest friends and the only two people who really know everything about me. i feel so so lucky to have them in my life.

medusa: what’s your favorite myth?

ohhhhh man. this is rough. i quite like the tale of mad sweeney (or suibhne or shivna) from irish mythology. it's about an irish king who kills a monk with a spear, and is subsequently cursed to wander ireland for seven years until he meets his end by the same means. during his wanderings, he is driven to a state of madness and transforms into a bird-like creature, where he views the world with equal torment and joy. it's fun! it's a good time.

[lafseanchai]

Was tagged by @shadowen  to name 10 songs I like with names in the title, so we'll see how fun or sad my music tastes might be lol.

1) The Wreck Of The Edmond Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot - quintessential for those by Lake Superior, and I got exposed to it at a young age between my aunt living on the North Shore and my Dad being a Gordan Lightfoot fan. We had the vinyl.

2) Anne Bonny by Karliene - a speed run of Anne Bonny's life, a bop.

3) Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac - I love it, you love it. Loved the feel of it since I was a kid and thought the name was Brianna

4) Flora's Secret by Enya - this was on the first Enya album I heard and got after experiencing Enya in LOTR FOTR. I do love the fantasy and childhood mood it invoked and still does of hours spent outside reading and playing in the grass.

5) Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles - loved the haunting, spooky sound when I was a kid and love it now.

6) Shivna by Bill Whelan, from Riverdance - an Anglicized spelling of Suibhne, or Mad Sweeny. Started my interest in Irish Gaelic.

7) Maire Mhilis Bhrae by Solas - another Irish Gaelic song, Fine Sweet Mary. It is a song about someone bemoaning the fact that Maire does not love them. Seamus Eagan's arrangement makes it a bit more of a bop than the description would make it seem. I love the feel of the sounds in my mouth when I sing along, there is no other way to describe it.

8) Annabelle Lee by Sarah Jarosz - I liked this song way back when I ran fairly consistently, cuz it was a fun beat to move to - and then I read

9) Mordred's Lullaby by Heather Dale - my intro to Heather Dale, again the vibe of this song, spooky, unsettling makes me happy. Also Arthurian legends.

10) Tom Dula by the 97th Regimental String Band - a peppy cover of the murder ballad Tom Dooley / Tom Dula. This little group was at one of the first Civil War Days in Pipestone, MN that I ever went to, and they put on a very good show, so their redition of the song is one of my favorites.

Tagging anyone who thinks it would be fun!

[thomastherhymer]

Suibhne, Wild Man In The Forest

Little antlered one, little belling one, melodious little bleater, sweet I think the lowing you make in the glen. Home sickness for my little dwelling has come upon my mind, the calves in the plain, the deer on the moor. Oak, bushy, leafy, you are high above trees; Hazel, little branchy one, wisdom of hazel nuts. Alder, you are not spiteful, lovely is your colour, you are not prickly where you are in the gap. Blackthorn, little thorny one, black little sloe bush, Apple tree, little apple tree, violently everyone shakes you. Bramble, little humped vine, you do not grant fair terms; tearing me till you are sated with blood. Yew, you are conspicuous among tombs; Rowan, little berried one, sacred is your lovely white blooms. Holly, little protector, door against storms; Ash tree weapon in the hand of the warrior, baneful are you. Birch, smooth, blessed, proud, melodious, how lovely is each entangled branch at the top of your crest. Aspen, as it trembles from time to time I hear its leaves rustle and think it is the foray; Ivy, you are familiar in the dark woods.

Anonymous, twelfth century, from here

[shellsnroses]

“I was a king once. I was, then they made me a bird. Then mother church came along and made us all into saints and trolls and fairies. General Mills did the rest.”

[lilmisslunar]

“I wish we could be together, in order that feathers might come over our bodies and that I might roam through light and dark with you every day and every night.”

- Eorann, The Madness of Suibhne

[calamity-bean]

Hi !! In your post about "Mad Sweeney through the ages" you noted in the tags that you restrained yourself from going into tangents... I'm super interested about what you mentionned though ! Would you mind wiritng a little bit on the relationship between the Tuatha de and the fairies and the dead ?? Sorry, i'm very curious and I love history and mythology a lot !! (Also sorry for any mistakes, I'm not a native speaker !!) Thank you ! :)

Hello! Sorry it took me all day to answer this; it’s just that, well… this got a bit long, even though I tried to be brief. XD 

Basically, what I was referring to is the same thing Sweeney talks about in the show: the way his identity has changed SIGNIFICANTLY over the centuries because the stories about him have mutated over time. People gradually conflated stories about certain types of beings (such as the Tuatha De Danann) with stories about other types of beings (such as fairies), or allowed elements of certain stories to influence others, and as a result, the very essence of what Sweeney IS evolved along with the folklore.

The cool thing, though — and I guess this is really the crux of what I was getting at in my tags — is that Sweeney’s particular evolutionary path isn’t a concept that’s unique to American Gods. I mean, to SOME extent, it’s AG’s invention; after all, the traditional figure of Mad Sweeney as portrayed in the Buile Suibhne is not a leprechaun or Lugh. He’s cursed, but he’s still just a mortal dude. But I think AG’s decision to MAKE him into those other things makes perfect sense in light of the fact that in certain areas that historically retained a strong Celtic influence (including much of the British Isles as well as Brittany), there really are a lot of intriguing similarities, overlaps, and parallels between the way folklore portrays fairies and the way it portrays the spirits of dead mortals. In Irish mythology specifically, the Tuatha De Danann get wrapped up in the relationship as well. These similarities have inspired a theory that elements of Celtic folklore about fairies might have evolved out of ancient superstitions about the dead and the places the dead were believed to inhabit. Which isn’t to say that it’s a direct evolution, nor that these three types of being are all exactly the same thing — simply that they seem to be related and to have influenced one another over time.

Unnecessarily detailed discussion under the cut, along with more of my thoughts on why I think this whole concept works out really well with regard to Mad Sweeney and lends a lot of weight to his backstory’s arc.

The People of the Mounds

One of the most familiar narratives in a classic fairy story is the human traveler who accidentally wanders into the fairy realm. It’s a story with innumerable variations. Perhaps the traveler simply follows the wrong path, or perhaps they enter a doorway in the side of a hill — either way, they end up in Faerie. It is a liminal space inhabited by beings that, because they are immortal or non-mortal, are not DEAD, exactly, but aren’t quite ALIVE, either, not in the way that mortal human beings are alive. And in many stories, it is also inhabited by dead humans. There are many versions of this story in which the traveler in Faerie is shocked to encounter a neighbor or loved one whom they know for a fact died years ago — like, actually physically DIED. And yet here their spirit is, trapped in this other world! The realm of Faerie is thus a place of great wonder, yes, but also great peril. It’s a place into which a person’s soul might be tragically stolen, though also a place from which they can sometimes be rescued. One such tale of rescue is the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, which is straight-up a Breton/English reimagining of Orpheus and Eurydice — except it’s set in Faerie instead of in the realm of the dead.

In short, Celtic stories often handle fairies and Faerie in a way that strongly evokes death, the realm of the dead, and the spirits of the dead. But for me, perhaps the most interesting aspect goes back to what I mentioned about WHERE these stories often take place. Where do the aos si dwell? Underground, of course — specifically, in hollow hills. It’s right there in the name: “aos si” means “people of the mounds.” Hence the stories in which a traveler enters Faerie through a door in the side of a hill. Coincidentally, where do the Tuatha de Danann dwell? Also underground — not originally, but they were driven underground by the Milesians, who took the above-ground world as their half of the earth in their truce.

But what kind of hill would be hollow? What kind of hill might have a doorway set into the side…?

Well… A hill like Newgrange, perhaps. Or like other hills within the Bru na Boinne complex. Or a hill like Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales, or Maes Howe in Orkney, or the Mound of the Hostages at Tara, or any number of other ancient barrows/tumuli: burial mounds built in prehistoric times as tombs for the human dead. Because the answer to “What other kind of creature dwells underground?” is, of course, dead people, at least in cultures which have tended to bury them.

Thus, the familiar trope of entering Faerie through a door in a hill very much evokes the idea of entering a tomb. This concept is reinforced by the fact that some specific fairy legends are anchored to specific tumuli. Newgrange is said to be the home of the Dagda and other Tuatha De; Cnoc Maedha is home to the fairy king Finvarra. Glastonbury Tor is associated with Gwyn ap Nudd of the Tylwyth Teg, ruler of the underworld of Annwn. Willy Howe is proposed to be the location of a specific version of one of those tales about a traveler wandering into a hill.

Not every fairy legend is associated with a specific hill, not every tumulus is associated with a fairy legend, and not every hill associated with a fairy legend has been confirmed to actually be a tomb. It’s more of a general association based on the tumulus shape. Also, some of these associations seem to have originated much later than others; they might be fairly recent inventions rather than old, traditional myths. But that’s kind of the point in AG, isn’t it: traditions evolve. Over time, they gather new associations and take on new meaning as the stories change. Did the idea that the aos si live in hollow hills evolve directly out of a superstition that specific hills — specific burial mounds — were home to the spirits of the dead? Perhaps! Perhaps not! Perhaps it’s more a case of stories mutually influencing each other, or maybe it’s convergent evolution, or maybe it’s sheer coincidence. But I think that the amount of similarity and overlap in these legends is enough to suggest roots in a common tradition, or at least to suggest that beliefs about these three categories of being have, over time, become intimately associated with each other.

Suibhne, the Dead King?

Which FINALLY brings us back to Sweeney.

I think the idea that the aos si evolved out of the Tuatha De Danann is pretty well known; I don’t think it’s entirely clear-cut from a historical standpoint, but it’s a theory I see mentioned quite often, and I feel like it intuitively makes sense. A transition from one supernatural, subterranean creature to another feels natural; it’s easy to grasp how those legends could be related. So it’s no surprise that American Gods would have a character who starts out as one of them and evolves into the other, especially since it’s been theorized that the concept of leprechauns in general might have evolved specifically out of Lugh. (The names share a possible etymology, and the characters share an association with luck.)

But the primary inspiration for Mad Sweeney — Suibhne, son of Colman Cuar, of the Buile Suibhne — feels, at first, like more of an outlier. Sure, Suibhne was under a curse, but he wasn’t, like, any type of supernatural creature… He was just a mortal human. The whole legend at least purports to be based on a real-life historical man. How does a mortal human get turned into a god or a fairy? How does that stage of Sweeney’s evolution fit in with leprechauns and Lugh?

To me, the key lies in the Annals of Tigernach. As I mentioned in my Mad Sweeney Through the Ages post, these annals record that Suibhne didn’t FLEE from the battle of Magh Rath… he DIED in it. And I don’t know whether AG is doing this on purpose, but in my opinion, this death really fits with the way AG has chosen to tell Suibhne’s story? In the Buile Suibhne, Suibhne flees the battlefield simply because the frenzy and St. Ronan’s curse overwhelm him. The idea that he fled because he foresaw his own death is AG’s own particular twist on the legend. AG’s Sweeney is a character who is haunted, throughout the different versions of himself, by near-deaths and foreseen-deaths and deaths that may or may not have actually happened. By choosing to reference the fact that Sweeney should have died at Magh Rath — possibly even did die at Magh Rath, heck, he supposedly died that night with the seer, too! — American Gods makes the critical decision to recast Suibhne mac Colmain as not merely the story of a king, but of a dead king.

And if you view the Buile Suibhne as the story of someone whose life, historically, ended at Magh Rath, but who through the power of mythology has been given an existence beyond Magh Rath, it becomes a story of undeath: of a mortal who becomes trapped in a strange, supernatural form of existence that is not exactly death but not really life as he knew it, either — sort of like a spirit trapped in Faerie. For me, AG’s decision to connect Suibhne’s legend with leprechauns and Lugh makes the most sense when I view Suibhne as a figure who kind of escaped death, but also kind of didn’t escape death, and always has this specter of death hanging over him for the rest of his cursed “life” after Magh Rath. If Suibhne is, essentially, a spirit persisting in a type of pseudo-life beyond death, then I can contextualize his role in Sweeney’s evolution within this whole theory of how the dead, the fae, and the Tuatha De Danann are intimately entwined.

Conclusion???

…WOW, this got long! Thanks for listening to me ramble. I hope it was interesting to you and that I’ve explained myself in a way that makes sense.

Obviously, I don’t know whether Gaiman / the showrunners of American Gods had any of these same concepts in mind when they were creating the book or the show. And I want to reiterate that the proposed relationship between these types of folklore is more of a theory than a concrete historical fact. It’s a theory that I find very compelling and very inspiring, but it’s difficult to really prove that traditional beliefs evolved in this way. Also, much of the actual scholarship I’ve found on this subject is older than I’d like, and I’m not sure whether different interpretations have since gained more traction in the field. Still, the work of Katharine Mary Briggs is a good place to start if you’re interested in reading more on this subject, especially her article “The Fairies and the Realms of the Dead.”

Regardless of whether it’s provable, though, I think it’s a theory that works beautifully with what we see in “Treasure of the Sun” and that fits really well with the mechanics of American Gods. And when it comes to AG, it doesn’t really matter, anyway, whether the dead and the fae and the gods were originally related or not — all that matters is that we humans believe that they are.

[mysticpenguincreation]

That moment when you’re watching a show and you realize that you get crazy about two type of men, but they couldn’t be more different and now you’re fucking

T O R N

[utakanalight]

gods die. and when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end

american gods ↳ old gods

[eos-tre]

@fandomaestheticnet​ | Halloween Event | Mad Sweeney, American Gods

⤷  “I was a king once. Then they made me a bird. Then mother church came along and turned us all into saints and trolls and fairies. General Mills did the rest.”

[the-agony-of-obsession]

“I’m not evil! I’m not!”

[giadin-a]

American Gods - ☘ Mad Sweeney ☘ I really enjoyed the TV series "American Gods". And Mad Sweeney is one of my favourite character. Hope you like it!!

[moonlit-grove]

EngVie vs Mhonde

Or

Suibhne vs Mad

(@uselessidiotsquad )

Don't make Mhonde fight EngVie, she still has a grudge against asura

Suibhne probably won't raise a weapon against Mad unless he threatens Maddy, so assuming he did... Mad, run. You're gonna die. He's going to chase you down to the ends of Tyria to kill you, make you swallow his sword and choke on your sap. He feels no kinship with Sylvari, so it doesn't matter to him. You will die. Arrows won't stop him, now matter how many you fire into him and where. Adrenaline will keep him going to kill you.

[noccalula-writes]

An aside for the Sweeney fandom:

I have now finished reading the Gaelic to English translation of the legend and I regret to inform you that our man is felled while drinking milk out of a pile of cow shit. 

I’m not kidding.

[scmildanach]

Grimnir / Sweeney’s relationship + history

I realised that I’ve never fully explained this and only just referenced it briefly in a few threads, so here we go. Buckle up, it’s one hell of a ride. I’ve pretty much written an essay. Also i just want to add, this is completely in reference to the show/book. And I’m really happy to work around any discrepancies, but please just come chat to me about it first so i know what’s happening .

Grimnir and Sweeney’s relationship first began during Sweeney’s life as Lugh. When talking to Mr. Ibis, Sweeney comments:

Sweeney: What are you writing now? Mr. Ibis: Your earliest story. Sweeney: You mean the one of me fighting off all the gods coming into Ireland ...

While this comment applies to various pantheons, including the ones from Gaul and Spain ( as Sweeney mentions ), it also applies to those coming from the far north. Grimnir had always wanted his influence to spread far, ( we see this in the invasions as well as his actions in the present ), and Ireland was no exception to this. I’ve always had it personally headcanoned that the only reason it took until roughly CE 800 for the Danes to reach Ireland was because Lugh had always been there to fight them off whenever they tried. The war between them went on for centuries, and in that time Grimnir tried various ways to overthrow the Tuath Dé. One such way was turning to the Fomorians. The relationship between the Tuatha Dé and the Fomorians is complex, because while they were enemies there are also cases of intermarriage. Lugh himself is a product of this. However, alliances between them have never been stable and it rarely took much to turn one against the other. This is why no one suspected Grimnir of influencing Balor when the latter accepted Bres’ call to wage war. Balor, being the grandfather of Lugh, had little interest in fighting the Tuath Dé before Grimnir started whispering words of madness to him and eventually corrupting his mind ( think similar to what happen to king Theoden ) .  Despite popular belief, Balor did not try to drown his grandchildren. This was a later invention in the mythos. In truth, Lugh had been his only grandchild and he did care a great deal for him ( remember lugh is half fomorian himself, and if Bres is anything to go by, it would not be unreasonable to believe that the fomorians could have considered Lugh as one of their own. ) However, Grimnir knowing that Lugh was the key to the Tuath Dé’s success came to realise that his greatest weakness was his family. So having corrupted the Fomorian leader, Grimnir hoped that it would be a means to an end. This wasn’t the case, as Lugh reluctantly killed Balor at the second battle of Mag Tuired and went on to become king of the Tuath Dé Danann. Grimnir continued his pursuit of Ireland after that, but was never able take some semblance of control until after Lugh’s death.  But Grimnir’s fixation didn’t end there. He knew all too well that Lugh would be incarnated once more and so saw an opportunity to bring a powerful rival to his side. When King Suibhne ( the incarnation of Lugh ) was cursed with madness and a deformed figure ( eventually turning him into a bird ), it was Grimnir who sought him out in the moorlands. Grimnir approached the mad king, and promised to break the curse but at a cost. Because he’d known that Suibhne had abandoned the battlefield, Grimnir more or less conscripted him to his cause against the new gods - a war which he knew would one day come. And so Grimnir left him there, waiting for the day he would come to collect his debt. This is what Sweeney means when he says he owes Grimnir a battle. The name Mad Sweeney also comes from his time as king Suibhne, and so now that he was no longer cursed he took to a life of living in the moors. But irish folklore and the belief in faeries kept what semblance of divinity he had left in check and eventually that belief took him over to America. Sweeney never physically met Grimnir again until some time in the 20th century, but he would always spy Muninn flying over head from time to time, knowing full well who was watching.  Where their relationship really went south was when Grimnir ordered him to kill Laura Moon, so that Grimnir could get to Shadow. Sweeney feels a great deal of guilt towards this, especially when his coin brings her back to life. Being incredibly driven by his own set of morals, killing an “innocent” or someone who has personally done nothing wrong to him is a thing which he takes incredibly to heart. It’s also the fact that Grimnir used him, only to then discard of him afterwards without releasing him from their compact. Essentially, Grimnir has Sweeney trapped between a rock and a hard place. 

And that’s pretty much all i’ve got so far. I’ll probably update this as my portrayal progresses but i’ve put some answers to a few questions i realised might need to be answered in detail down below. If you have any questions about anything from the above, or just something general about these two, I’d be happy to answer them! 

(1): Sweeney does remember Grimnir from his time as Lugh when approached as Suibhne. But Sweeney doesn’t know of Grimnir’s involvement in Balor’s madness. Its only when he’s talking to Mr. Ibis at the end of season 2 of the show that he starts putting two and two together and figures it out. He remembers Grimnir from his days as Lugh, but to him, Grimnir was just another God trying to invade his land. It’s not something that he takes all too personally. also, remember that when Grimnir approached him as Suibhne, he wasn’t in his right mind nor capable of making a rational decision. So he was quite brash to accept Grimnir’s deal.

(2) In regard to what I mean about Grimnir inflicting madness on Balor - In the scene where Sweeney remembers his past, he makes a comment about Balor saying that ‘ the madness came from him ‘, insinuating the possibility that the formorians had been corrupted somehow or under the influence of something. I just chose to take some creative liberties with this comment. Also, Sweeney constantly warns Shadow against Grimnir being extremely manipulative. So it wouldn’t be out of the question that Grimnir could somehow influence the fomorians . 

(3) The reason Sweeney stays/respects the compact with Grimnir, despite hating his guts, is because of Sweeney’s previous position as a god of law and truth. So morality is a big thing to him.