Norse

Myth
 Sources
Norse myths existed only in oral form while they were central to
religious belief. They were only written down after Northern
Europe had become Christian.
So we have new problems with our primary sources:
•no coherent body of literature showing the myths and legends
•possible alteration due to the influence of Christianity
•“fictionalization” of stories which originally had religious
importance.
Plus:
•a wide time span, wide geographical range and many different sub-
cultures
Sources
Snorri Sturlesson: The
Prose Edda. A narrative of
many different adventures of
the Norse gods, but presented
as a fictional account,
sometimes almost humorous.
The closest we have to an
overview/ collection of Norse
myth, but often untraditional,
and very engaged with
intellectual & Christian
traditions (e.g., he connects
Thor with Troy).
 Sources

Poetic Eddas: Traditional

songs, which often refer to
mythic incidents, usually just
individual adventures.
Skaaldic songs: poems in
honor of human
accomplishments, with
occasional references to myth,
sometimes very cryptic.
 The Gods

The Norse gods are divided

into two races: Aesir and
Vanir.
Aesir are dominant; they are
the gods most associated
with heroic tales, conflict
with giants, warfare, and the
beginning and end of the
world.
Vanir tend to be fertility
deities; there are fewer of
them.
 The Gods

The Vanir:
Njord, a god of the sea and seafaring
Freyr, a god of crop fertility, who may
have features in common with “dying
gods” like Dumuzi and Adonis;
Freyja, “the most renowned of the
goddesses, who alone of the gods still
lives” (Sturlesson). Goddess of love
and sexuality, also associated with crop
fertility; goddess of a realm of death;
associated with shamanic experience.
 The Gods

Sturlesson refers to the gods as a family, and says there are 12 of

them, but this may be influence from the Classical world.
The Norse gods do not have simple family relationships.
Odin is the chief of the gods; more later. His wife is Frigg, whose
name means fate.
Thor is a god of thunder, with the muscle, violence, and brute
strength laced with intelligence, that we see in Heracles.
Loki is a trickster figure, often on the side of mischief or even evil;
his father was a giant.
Tyr is a war god, who bound the wolf Fenrir (more later).
Balder (the beautiful) is the beloved god who dies . . .)
 Odin
Odin is a multifaceted,
mysterious, often deceptive
god. A list of some of his
names hints at his complex
nature:

The Hooded one, the Warrior,

Helmet-god, the High one, the
Blind one, Capricious,
Inflamer, Weak-eyes, Fiery-
eyed, Evil-doer, Father of
Victory, The One with the
Magic Staff, the Gelding,
Feeder, Destroyer, Terror,
Wind, God of Men.
 Odin

God of Wisdom:
Odin has only one eye. He
gave up the other to drink
from the fountain of Mimir
(memory/knowledge) in
Utgard. So he has one eye on
this world, one eye in another
realm of knowledge.
Odin has two ravens, Hugin
and Munin. “Thought” and
“Memory,” who bring him
news from all over the world.
His wisdom can be trickiness
or betrayal.
Odin
Odin won the wisdom of runes:

I remember I hung on the

windswept tree nine whole
nights, Stabbed by the spear,
given to Odin, myself to myself.
Of that tree no man knows what
roots it springs from.
No bread they gave me, no drink
from the horn,
down I peered. I took up runes,
howling I took them up, And
back again I fell.
 Odin
Odin and Shamanism:
Hanging on a tree & suffering
is a way to access other worlds,
other experiences.
Odin is the only male figure to
use the shamanic trance known
as seidr usually associated with
Freyja.
Odin also has the ability ot
change his shape.
All of these are shamanic skills,
ecstatic ways of gaining
wisdom and experience.
 Odin
Odin as trickster:
Odin’s Germanic predecessor,
Wotan, was associated with
Mercury (Hermes) by the
Romans.
Odin often deceives and
tricks, sometimes in the
interest of justice, sometimes
for his own arcane purposes:
Odin and Geirrod: Geirrod
mistreats Odin in disguise;
when Geirrod realizes his
mistake, he rushes to help but
falls on his sword.
Odin stole the mead of poetic
inspiration from the giants.
First he tricks the giants servants
into killing each other so he can
take their place.
Then he seduces the giant’s
daughter, using his shape-changing
powers to get to her.
Successful, he flies away as a raven.
Odin Odin as a war god:
He is god of the kings in battle.
He can inspire battle-terror (magical
binding of the will,) as well as the
battle frenzy of the berserker.
He can bestow and withdraw favor
easily (e.g. king Harald, p. 50).

You (Odin) have never been able to

order the course of war; often you
have given victory to cowards . . .
Odin has broken faith – it is not
safe to trust him.
 Odin
Odin rides and 8-legged horse,
Sleipnir, which represents the bier
of the dead man, and the passage
between worlds.
He presides over the “wild ride.”
As a god of death:
He presides over Valhalla, where
the heroic dead killed in battle
go to spend eternity fighting and
partying.
The Valkyries, goddesses who
come down to the battlefield to
bring up the souls of the dead,
are Odin’s assistants.
Odin’s wandering, one-eyed
“double vision,” and shamanic
connections, also associate him
with the permeable border
between living and dead.
 Thor
To turn from the sinister,
deceitful and complex Odin to
Thor is the foremost of the
the simple-minded and
gods. He is called Aesir-Thor
straightforward Thor is
or Charioteer-Thor. He is the
something of a relief. Thor is
strongest of all gods and men.
a battler; his enemies are the
He has three valuable
gods’ enemies: giants,
properties:
monsters and primeval forces.
The first is the hammer R. I Page
Mjollnir, which the frost-
giants recognize the moment Thor’s hammer
it is raised on high! was a popular
good luck
{The second is his belt of talisman in
strength, the third is his iron Northern Europe,
gloves.} even in Christian
times.
Sturlesson, Prose Edda
 Thor
Thor is a storm god, a thunder god.
Thunder was caused either by his
hammer, or by the wheels of his
chariot, which was pulled by goats.
(The goats had a magical property:
they could be roasted and eaten, and
would reconstitute themselves
overnight.)
Images of Thor were used as “flint
and steel” to kindle fires.
Pillars representing Thor were flung
out of sailing ships to mark the
currents toward land.
Thor God of the People
Thor had a lasting
popularity among ordinary
people.
He was a straightforward
savior, and his hammer was
a protective talisman.
His temples proliferated in
pre-Christian times, and he
was the most-frequently
worshipped Norse god.
His ring (an arm ring?)
represented fidelity to
oaths.
 Thor

Thor’s chief enemies:

Frost-giants. He is frequently in
conflict with them.
Iormungand, the World serpent,
which Thor fights several times:
•Thor fishes it up one time and almost
capsizes the boat; his companion cuts
the line.
•In Utgard, Thor tries to lift it,
deceived into thinking it’s a kitten
•Thor fights it at Ragnarok.
 Thor
Typical Thor:
•Delight in eating and drinking;
humorous stories about these
capacities
•Not always very bright; often
tricked and finding himself in
humiliating circumstances (e.g. when
he visits Utgard; when he
impersonates Freya to get his stolen
hammer back.)
•Can always be counted on to exert
his strength and take care of knotty,
difficult problems by brute force.
 Thor:
ancient
&
modern
ideas . . .
Creation
In the south was a land of fire; in
the north was a land of ice. They
met in the great emptiness of
Ginnungagap, and the ice began to
melt.
From the melting ice came a huge
giant, Ymir.
The first man and woman grew
from under his arms. The frost-
giants grew from his feet.
Ymir fed on the milk of a cow,
which licked another creature, an
man named Bur, from the ice.
 Creation
Bur’s grandsons, Odin and 2
others, killed Ymir and
made the world from his
parts:
•his skull became the sky
•his eyebrows formed a
barrier between the world of
men and the world of giants
•his blood became sea and
lakes
•his bones became the
mountains
The world was divided into several
parts:
•Utgard, the home of the giants
•Midgard, the land of humans
•Asgard, the home of the gods
•Hel, home of the dead
The world tree, Yggdrasill,
extended between all of these
lands.
At its foot in Asgard was the well
od Urd, where the Norns lived,
three women who oversee fate.
 World in the Balance
Yggdrasill, the world tree,
spans the different realms of
Norse myth.
These realms (Utgard, Midgard,
Asgard) are joined by the three
roots of the great tree
Yggdrasill. (Each seems to
have the whole tree …)
At its roots in Asgard is the
well of Urd, where the Norns
live; at its roots in Utgard is the
well of Ymir.
It represents a world equilibrium
that is more like entropy:
•Around its roots is a serpent;
•At its top is an eagle;
•A squirrel runs up and down
between them;
•Deer are constantly eating at its
branches;
•and the Norns continually try to
shore up the damage.
 Lands of Death
•Hel, the shadowy underworld overseen by Loki’s daughter of the same
name. It is dark, gated, and much like Hades/Sheol/Kurnugi
•Valholl (a.k.a. Valhalla, where the souls of dead warriors are taken after
death by the Valkyries. There they dink and fight until Ragnarok, when
they will fight on the side of the gods.
•Freyja’s realm: there are references to Freyja’s taking half of the dead,
while Odin takes the other half.
•afterlife in the barrows: High-
status people were somtimes buried
under a mound, called a barrow;
burials of an entire ship have been
found.
 Loki To a reader of Snorri, Loki is
perhaps the most outstanding
Intelligent, astute to the highest character among the Northern
degree, but amoral, loving to gods, the chief actor in the most
make mischief great or small, as amusing stories, and the
much to amuse himself as to do motivating force in a large
harm, he represents among the number of plots. (Davidson)
Aesir a truly demonic element.
Some of the assailants of the
future Ragnarok, the wolf Fenrir
and the great Serpent, are his
sons, and his daughter is Hel.
(Georges Dumezil)

Loki is a classic trickster figure.

 Loki
Loki is a chief instigator in many
tales:
•Loki found a way to keep the
giant from building the wall of
Asgard on time. He impersonated
a mare to distract the giant’s work
horse. (He became pregnant and
gave birth to Sleipnir.) Shape
changing and trans-gender
problems are typical of tricksters.
•He gave up the golden apples of
immortality (and got them back)
•He helped Thor get back his
hammer, and went with him to
Utgard
•Loki was caught by a giant
and betrayed Thor to him
•Loki aroused the dragons to
hatred of the gods because of a
wanton act of cruelty (Otter’s
revenge) and used trickery to
get out of it
•Loki cut off Sif’s golden hair,
causing the creation of the
greatest treasures of the gods.
 Loki & Balder
The most important tale of Loki
is how he arranged the
destruction of Balder.
There is nothing but good to be
said about Balder. He is the
best of the gods and everyone
sings his praises. He is so fair
of face and bright that a
splendor radiates from him . . .
He is the wisest of the gods,
and the sweetest-spoken, and
the most merciful, but none of
his judgments come true.
Balder dreamed he would be
killed, so Frigg (his mother)
made all living creatures swear
not to harm him.
The gods then enjoyed throwing
things at him, since all fell away
harmlessly.
Loki was jealous.
In disguise, Loki found out from
Frigg that the mistletoe had not
sworn. Then he tricked the blind
god Hod into throwing it at
Balder, and Balder was killed.
 Loki & Balder

Hel agreed to return Balder to

the world of the living if every
living creature mourned him.
All complied – except for one
old giant woman – who was
Loki in disguise.
When the other gods found out
Loki’s treachery, they
condemned him to be bound to a
rock, with serpent’s poison
dripping onto him (a fate similar
to that of the benevolent
trickster Prometheus . . .)
 Tyr and Fenrir
Tyr is a minor god in Norse myth,
featuring in few stories, but was possibly
more important in earlier times.
His Germanic predecessor, Tiwaz, was a
sky-god similar to Zeus.
The one story in which Tyr features is the
binding of the wolf Fenrir. Tyr put his
hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a pledge of
faith, and when the gods bound the wolf,
he bit off the hand.
Fenrir is one of three terrible children of
Loki: the others are Hel and Iormungand.
 Ragnarok
Norse myth, unlike Greek and
Near Eastern, does not portray a
world in which the gods have
conquered discord and
established order, but a world in
which the gods are constantly
battling their adversaries.
This battle comes to a head at
Ragnarok.
The death of Balder is one
element in the final episode of
Norse myth, Ragnarok, “The
Twilight of the Gods.”
 Ragnarok
An age of axes, an age of
Loki remains suffering under the
swords, shattered shields, an
poison of the serpent, and Balder
Age of tempests, an age of
remains in Hel (rather than in
wolves, before the age of men
Valholl!) until the conflicts of
crashes down.
Ragnarok.
The end of the world is preceded
by an increase of wars and Led by the giant Surt, with Loki
conflicts among men; then there as the helmsman, the giants arrive
is a three-year winter. in their ship, Naglfar, made from
the uncut fingernails of the dead.
Monsters break loose,
Iormungand emerges from the A huge battle between gods and
sea and floods the earth. A wolf giants takes place at the gates of
swallows the sun and her brother Asgard.
the moon; stars fall from the sky.
 Ragnarok
Odin is swallowed by Fenrir;
Odin’s son Vidar kills the
wolf in revenge.
Five hundred doors and forty
more in Valholl I think there are.
Eight hundred warriors at a time
will pass each door to fight the
wolf. . . Fenrir rushes forward,
his jaws agape, so that the upper
one touches the heavens, the
lower one touches the earth.
(Sturlesson/Page)
Thor once again fights
Iormungand; he kills it, but dies
from the venom.
Tyr fights the hound Garm, and
they kill each other.
Ragnarok
Loki and Heimdall, the watchman of
the gods, kill each other.
Freyr is killed by the giant Surt, who
scatters fire over the earth.
But from this destruction comes a
new world:

A second earth [the shaman-

woman] sees arise from out of the
sea, green once more; the cataracts
tumble, the eagle flies over them,
hunting fish in the mountain
stream. The Aesir meet again . . .
(Voluspa)
 Ragnarok
Balder returns from Hel to
rule over this new world, in
peace and plenty.
A golden age arises; fields
flourish without work.
Does this renewal of the world
Two humans survived to begin show influence from
the race again . . . Christianity? Some say yes –
given other Christian ideas –
The Aesir meet again and speak others say that the idea of a
of the mighty Iormungand, and final conflict and new age is
call to mind the mighty also present in Indo-European
judgments and the ancient mythology.
mysteries of the Great God
himself. (Voluspa) In any case, the brutal
conclusion leads to new life.
finis