The apple appears in Norse mythology in connection with love and fertility.
The king Rerir longed for a son and heir and prayed to the goddess Frigga
who eventually sent her messenger, Gna, with a goddess's messenger and ran
miraculous apple which she dropped into his lap.
He recognised the home with the apple
to share it with his wife and so the hero Volsung was born.

This connection with love, marriage and fertility was preserved
in folk lore and folk magic.
The women of Kirghizstan rolled under a single apple tree to conceive.
In some parts of Europe an apple tree  was planted at the birth
of a male child, and if the tree grew well, so would the boy.
In England apples were often used in love divination.
To discover whom she would marry a girl would peel an apple and throw
the unbroken peel over her shoulder.
If it formed a letter it was the initial of her future husband.
In Austria it was believed that a girl could learn her future
by cutting open an apple and counting the seeds.
If there were an even number then she would marry shortly.
If she had been unfortunate enough to cut one of the seeds however,
she would have a difficult life and end up a widow.
If a girl had several suitors and could not choose between them
she might remove the pips from an apple and throw them onto the fire,
reciting the name of lover with each one.
If one of the seeds popped she would marry that man.

There is a strong connection between the fertility
of women and the fertility of the apple tree.
German lore says that if a fruitful  woman with several children eats
the first apple from a young tree, then it too will have many fruitful seasons.

The apple harvest begins at the beginning of August, which the Celts
referred to as Lughnasa, the time of strength and fruitfulness.
A drink of Lamb's wool or Lammas wool
( from the Gaelic La Mas Nbhal or "feast of the apple gathering" )
was prepared, a hot spiced drink of cider and ale,
with toast or pieces of apple floating in it.

At the beginning of November, the Romans celebrated
the festival of Pomona, goddess of fruit.
The expansion of the Roman empire meant that the customs associated
with her festival spread throughout Europe and the Celts adopted
some of them, which still survive to this day, such as bobbing
for apples at Halloween, which the Celts called Samhain,
the Festival of the Dead and the start of winter.
In Wales at Halloween apples were roasted in the chimney corner,
suspended on twine, and were added to ale and brandy in the wassail
bowl with raisins, spices and sugar.
Another custom was the suspended horizontal stick
with a lighted candle on one end and an apple on the other.
You had to catch the apple in your mouth with your hands
tied behind your back.
Cider has strong links with magic and may have been
used in the orgiastic rites of the goddess.
Strong cider was called "the Witches Brew".

As part of Yule festivities apple trees were, and in some places still are,
was sailed or honoured to encourage them to crop heavily in the coming year.
The trees are visited and cakes or bread soaked
in cider are placed in the branches, and cider poured over the roots.
Occasionally roasted apples floating in cider are offered.
Sometimes shots are fired to scare away evil spirits from the orchards.
Trees that are poor bearers of fruit are not honoured.
The pouring of cider on the roots may well have replaced the more
ancient practice of pouring blood on them as a ritual act of fertilisation.
Wassailing was also introduced into parts of America.

Not only apple trees were wassailed. Special wassail bowls,
made of wood and bound in iron bands, decorated with mistletoe,
evergreens and ribbons, were carried in procession and offered
to all people that were met with festive songs.
They were filled with Lamb's Wool
[hot ale or cider, roasted crab apples, toast, nutmeg, sugar and eggs].
In Wales the wassail making took place on Twelfth Night.
Cakes & baked apples were layered with sugar in a wassail bowl
with twelve handles, then warm, spiced beer was poured over them.
It was passed around the company then the wassail
[the cakes and apples] was shared out.
In Worcestershire, Herefordshire & Gloucestershire
Twelfth Night fires were lit, twelve smaller fires & a thirteenth larger one.
The farmers & servants gathered around it
in the winter dark to drink a toast in cider to the next harvest.

We can now see that the apple has five stations throughout
the year representing birth, marriage, maturity, death and rebirth.
Five itself is a significant number in connection with the apple tree,
more of which later.
The apple tree can be seen marking the passage
of the year itself and also the solar cycle: the frothy apple blossom
in the spring as the clouds of dawn; the budding and ripening apples
changing from yellow to red, as the sun does as it crosses the sky;
the mature red apple as the setting sun; the withering of the trees
in autumn, and their wassailing in the depths of dead winter
to encourage their rebirth in the spring.

According to Robert Graves [in "The Greek Myths"] the name
of the sun god Apollo may be derived from abol meaning "apple".
The Greek goddess Nemesis carried an apple bough
in one hand and a wheel in the other, symbolising
the passage of the year from birth to death to rebirth.
In Baltic lore the sun lived in a castle at the far end of the sea.
During the day she rode across the sky in her copper wheeled chariot.
At dusk she washed her horses in the sea,
then drove to her apple orchard in the west.
The setting sun was a red apple that fell from the orchard.

In Greek myth the Hesperides were three maidens who lived
on an island in the west where the golden apples of immortality grew.
They were Aegle which means "brightness",
Erythraea "the red one" and Hespera "evening light."
Their names refer to the sunset when the sky is the colour
of ripening apples, and when the sun itself, cut in half by the horizon,
appears like a cut apple as it sinks and dies in the west.

In European mythology legendary isles of apples are common,
and always lie in the west, the place of the dying sun,
proceeds to enter the Underworld, or Land of Youth,
travelling from which it through the realms of death
in preparation for its rebirth.
All Neolithic and Bronze Age paradises were orchards;
"paradise" means "orchard".