Ysmir's Sphere!

Who is Ysmir? The answer has always been vague at best. In this post, I'm not going to give you an awesome origin story as did /u/Sakazwal in this thread. Rather, I'm going to attempt conjecture as to what the point of Ysmir is. I treat Ysmir as a divine being instead of a title, since that's how the ancient Nords saw him.

The big dichotomy that I find relevant is whether Ysmir is the hero of Man, or the Hero of men. The former possibility is based on the Shezzarite tradition of championing the cause of Men, while the latter is based on the idea that Ysmir is the Nordic aspect of the Hero. There may be some overlap, but the hero of Man is faction oriented while the Hero of men is fate oriented.

We all know that Ysmir is related to both Shor and Aka, right? Many Ysmir incarnations have been Shezzarines, and many have been dragonborns. Pelinal was even a Shezzarine with a weird relationship to Aka. Tiber and Wulfharth were a dragonborn and a shezzarine who fused to become a second Shor. We can't say that Ysmir is 100% Shor OR Aka because he clearly incorporates both. He's either composed of both, inherits from both, draws from both, or some other such possibility, because his incarnations prove that he is in some way related to both.

Therefore we know two things about Ysmir: one, that he is related to both Shor and Aka, and two that he has been incarnated as a Hero. If Ysmir is the Nordic aspect of the Hero, then that means either that dragonborns and Shezzarines are capable of being heroes-by-choice like the Nerevarine, or that the Hero can send himself down as a dragonborn or Shezzarine (similar to the Hoonding). Hardly surprising given the Hero's relationship with Stasis and Change, the enantiomorph, the fact that he begins as a limited being (Shor applies limitation as part of his sphere) and often transcends to cosmic heights (Auriel ascends as Time is about infinity).

If Ysmir is not the Nordic aspect of the Hero, then he's this weird admixture of Shor and Aka. The thing all of his incarnations have in common is their championing of the cause of Man. Then we get into the title "Dovahsebrom" ("Dragon of the North"), given to many of the greatest Ysmir incarnations. A Time spirit (ordinarily hostile to Man) fighting on behalf of Man? Oh, wait. Yeah. That's what he is. The Greybeards use "Ysmir" and "Dragon of the North" interchangeably because there's an akaspect working for Shor. Ysmir can produce dragonborn incarnations since Ysmir is himself the Dragon of the North, and can send down Shezzarines with the help of Shor. That, or he's part Space in addition to being part Time. Either way, he's part Time, and he's working for Shor.

TL;DR: Ysmir, the Nordic Fox god of heroes, is either the Nordic aspect of the Hero or an aspect of Time who works for the king-champion of Man, Shor.

In 4E 201, one of Ysmir's incarnations pulls up a divine level of creatia into the Ysmir oversoul. My take is that in order to become a TES deity, you need a sphere of influence. The resulting deity, Ysmir the (wo)man/(bet)mer who became Ysmir the god, would be defined as the living embodiment of one of the two spheres above. This could have very interesting implications on Miraak or Shor depending which sphere we're talking about. More on that later.