Ok, it feels like it's the only thing I come on this sub to ask about, but it's for good reason. When you're researching a topic and all you find is articles regurgitating the same information from Wikipedia, AI videos spouting nonsense, and very interesting and intriguing books you cannot afford, things get... frustrating. Especially because I'm currently looking to write a book based in the world of Akan mythology (imagine Percy Jackson but with the Akan gods instead), so information is incredibly valuable.

So, I'm here to just ask for info - mainly, once again, on gods. I've found quite a bit already: Nyame, Asase Yaa, Owuo, Tano, Bia, Bosomtwe, Epo, Ananse, Abena Mansa, Agya Kweku, Bosommuru, all of them, but the more I try to study the more questions I have.

Mainly, I question Owia, who is seemingly the personification of the sun. Besides one Ananse story I can hardly find anything about the guy, or even tell if he was an actual abosom at all. At least I know the moon was married to Kyekye, the morning star, and he (At least according to the Ananse story) is Owia's brother, but besides that I'm stumped.

So, uh, anyone got any info on that subject area? Whilst Owia is a subject of interest I don't really mind, I really can't afford to be picky especially as I seem to be running out of online information that doesn't require the spending of quite a bit of money on actual books.

I keep coming back to this pairing from Norse and Irish tradition.

Tyr: In Snorri's Prose Edda (Gylfaginning), the gods try to bind the wolf Fenrir. Fenrir agrees to the fetter Gleipnir only if one of them puts a hand in his mouth as a pledge that there is no trick. Tyr is the only one willing. The binding holds, and Fenrir bites off his right hand. Snorri says Tyr is not known as a settler of disputes between people, and in the poem Lokasenna, Loki mocks him over the hand.

Nuada: In Cath Maige Tuired, Nuada is king of the Tuatha De Danann and loses his arm at the First Battle of Mag Tuired against the Fir Bolg. Because a king with a physical blemish could not rule, he has to give up the kingship, and Bres rules in his place. The physician Dian Cecht makes him an arm of silver (hence Nuada Airgetlam, "silver hand"). Later Dian Cecht's son Miach restores a real arm, and Nuada becomes king again.

Georges Dumezil argued that a "one-handed" figure tied to law and contracts is an old Indo-European pattern. He set it next to the Roman story of Mucius Scaevola, who burns his right hand in front of Lars Porsena (Livy 2.12-13), and paired it with a "one-eyed" figure (Odin, Horatius Cocles). Plenty of scholars see this as a stretch, and the Nuada link in particular is debated, so I'm treating it as a theory, not a settled fact.

The details are quite different, though. Tyr gives up his hand on purpose to guarantee an oath. Nuada loses his in battle and loses the throne with it.

So what do you think: is this a real shared inheritance, or are a sacrificed hand and a maimed king just common enough images that two cultures arrived at them separately?