 Some surviving stories regarding Iðunn focus on her youth @-@ maintaining apples . English scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson links apples to religious practices in Germanic paganism . She points out that buckets of apples were found in the 9th @-@ century Oseberg ship burial site in Norway and that fruit and nuts ( Iðunn having been described as being transformed into a nut in Skáldskaparmál ) have been found in the early graves of the Germanic peoples in England and elsewhere on the continent of Europe which may have had a symbolic meaning and also that nuts are still a recognized symbol of fertility in Southwest England . 
