NorsePlay.

In Neil Gaiman 's American Gods the operating premise for the divine is that the Gods are regionally bound and that their existence & power depends upon those who believe & worship them. In Starz' TV adaptation, Season 3's opening addresses Viking Metal 's celebration & reclamation of Heathen Nordic contexts by kicking off with this scene of faux band Blood Death lead by Johan Wengren (Marilyn Manson!?!): As the story of the ancient Old Gods versus the emergent New Gods of Technology unfolds, we see the Old Gods adapting some of that technology in order to garner digital followers, and Odin (the venerable Ian McShane) connecting with metalheads, bikers, and aggro  fans , which seems appropriate for Mr Wednesday who banks on & rewards those of the warrior ethos. The teleplays expands in notable degrees upon the book, backgrounding & filling out minor characters into fan favourites, and giving us such clever lines as Wednesday's:  "Ask and y...

Somewhere within a long & very, very speculative post I found, there was a supposition about Ask & Embla being made from Ash & Elm . Given the prehistorical scale of mythic time the NorsePlay was that they're the two types of wood that get paired up as the two Mesolithic hunter choices to make a bow & arrow. Ash grows straight and so is ideal for arrows. Elm is flexible and is used for bows. While I haven't seen this association repeated anywhere else, it does address the why behind the choices of those specific trees, why they compliment each other, and why the specific gender assignations are applied to types of trees via their uses. This attractive speculation aside it could just  more simply   be a verbally alliterative reason, or a localized growth factor of those trees being complimentarily  found together in a certain area, but perhaps it could be all three of the above. [the Hedeby/Haithabu (825~850 CE) bow illustration above and actual...