by Oliver Laine
Norse Mythology
The Heroes, Gods, Sagas, Beliefs, and Rituals of Nordic Mythology
Copyright 2016 by Oliver Laine
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Norse Culture and the Importance of Mythology
Chapter 2: Sources
Chapter 3: The Gods of Norse Mythology
Chapter 4: Inhabitants of the Universe
Chapter 5: Heroes and Heroines
Chapter 6: The Nine Worlds
Chapter 7: Norse Paganism
Chapter 8: The Norse Rituals
Chapter 9: Norse Mythology in Popular Culture
Conclusion
Introduction
I want to thank you and congratulate you for grabbing a copy of my book, Norse Mythology: The Heroes, Gods, Sagas, Beliefs, and Rituals of Nordic Mythology.
In this book, you will find a brief but comprehensive overview of the myths and religious beliefs underlying the gods, monsters, heroes, and heroines of Norse mythology.
You may already be familiar with names and personalities such as Odin, Thor, Loki, and the Valkyries – and in this book you will learn about the many roles that they play within the various legends and sagas that have been passed down from generation to generation. You will learn about the impact that they have made on both the ancient Scandinavian cultures from where the stories arose, and on modern culture in northern Europe.
You will also learn how Norse mythology has become a leading source of storytelling ideas, and how the concepts and characters have found their way into works as diverse as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Gaiman’s American Gods; the operas that make up Wagner’s acclaimed The Ring of the Nibelung; the musical genres of heavy metal and, specifically, Viking metal; and many others.
Finally, I hope that reading about Norse mythology will help you gain a better understanding of the ancient cultures of Scandinavia: specifically, how these people saw the world and how they perceived themselves as they fit into that world.
Thanks again for getting this book, I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 1
Norse Culture and the Importance of Mythology
From perhaps the very dawn of time, human beings have found themselves compelled to perform different actions in order to survive. We have hunted animals for their meat and for the rest of the resources that we could scavenge from their dead bodies. We have foraged for fruits and vegetables and the many other products from trees, shrubs, and grass. We have fought off predators, whether they were of our own species or of others. And, we have gathered in groups partly because of the idea of safety in numbers and partly because larger numbers meant a greater chance of survival for a longer time.
So what happened within those groups when the sun had set, taking away the light that was needed for successful hunting and foraging? What happened when the cold seasons came, or the storms? What did we do? We have made tools. We have looked after our young ones and our elders. We sang and danced. And we have told stories.
It might look useless on the surface, but think about it: if we didn’t know how to tell tales, if we didn’t naturally turn to making them up in order to better understand the world, then we wouldn’t be able to pass on our skills and our knowledge to succeeding generations. These stories could capture the interest of the group; they could impart important skills and necessary warnings, and could even explain how the world works. Stories had their uses – sure, many of them were little more than amusing little yarns, told just to pass the time. But some of them were epic world-spanning narratives that were used to transmit the lessons of history and the ideals that a member of the group should aspire to.
This would have been especially true during the winters in northern Europe. These elaborate accounts would have provided not just a means of passing the time, but also needed diversions for the family and for the community. The stories told in the night would serve many functions. For children, stories taught them about their history and culture, and could teach them the skills that they would need to learn in order to contribute to the community – including the very necessary skill of learning their letters. For adults, the stories affirmed their shared struggles and shared heritage. Everyone would benefit from telling and retelling these same stories, and not just to forget the long dark hours before the short period of daylight could begin again.
For many people, the word “mythology” refers to a specific group of stories: stories of gods and monsters and heroes and war. Why are those stories referred to as myths? Because the gods and monsters and heroes and wars act out history. They explain the world as the storytellers understand it and they pass on customs and beliefs.
Most people think of the Greco-Roman gods and their follies when they hear the word “mythology” because those stories have been spread through various methods: travel, conquest, and – especially in the modern day – the sharing of Western culture through mass media.
It might be possible to say that for a long time Norse mythology was somewhat overlooked, lurking under the radar of popular culture, thanks to Christianity and its unhappy tendency to lump all other religious belief systems under the derogatory term “pagan”. But the names have persisted – and in the case of the days of the week, we use them over and over again, thoughtlessly, just as a means of marking the passage of time. Nowadays, it is pretty easy to have a conversation about the modern versions of characters such as Thor and Loki – and, again, we have Western culture and the mass media to thank for that.
But if we take away the comic books, the musical references, and the modern reinterpretations, who are these characters, really? Who are they in their original contexts and in their original stories?
Let’s take Thor as an example. Featured in many a tale for his godly martial prowess, he has come down through the ages and sagas as the one member of the pantheon who seemed to feel true compassion for mortal men and women. Though his father, Odin, bestowed great gifts on humanity, the older god was greatly preoccupied by the looming specter of defeat and the end of all worlds, leaving Thor to take special care of the mortal world. How did he do it? By fighting and defeating the marauding giants who were a perpetual threat not just to humans, but to the gods themselves as well.
And, that is actually Norse mythology in a nutshell. When the stories were new, northern Europe was a world of long days at work, fierce battles between rival families, missionaries who were dogged and ruthless in spreading their religion, and the dark winter nights. The Vikings believed that they lived in a somber world, even though they could bring back great riches from their sea raids and even though they could earn great amounts of gold from trading their goods.
As a form of respecting those beliefs, the storytellers did their attentive audiences the favor of never sugar-coating the stories. They could throw in a few riddles or create the hope that someone might stumble over some storied treasure, or embellish the action in battles that were already exciting in and of themselves – but they never shied away from the idea that life outside the four walls of home or the makeshift enclosures surrounding their villages would always be full of dangers both known and unknown.
We must give some credit to the countless men and women who told and retold the legends that soon became codified into the corpus of Norse mythology, however, because they still tried their best to include some kind of hope, some thread of redemption, into the stories of fallen heroes and gods who could be killed. Here, at the very beginning of this book, are the lines that talk about the morning after the end of the world, where new men and new gods wake up to a new heaven and a new earth:
In wondrous beauty once again
The dwellings roofed with gold
The fields unsowed bear ripened fruit
In happiness forevermore.
These lines are taken from Edith Hamilton’s brief look into Norse mythology, in her classic work Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes.
However, before we plunge full-tilt into the tales of Norse mythology, we must first take a look at the sources of the stories.
Chapter 2
Sources
The stories and verses that make up the great majority of Norse mythology started out as part of a purely oral tradition, passed on from one generation to another by storytellers. Some of these stories were told and retold by family members, and some were composed and made popular by court poets.
These poets, or skalds, plied their trade at the courts of the various settlements scattered throughout northern Europe and reached great heights of influence and popularity in the Viking Age and during the Middle Ages. In keeping with the oral transmission of culture that was common in those settlements, their main task was to retell the old stories in ways that would arouse the interest of their audiences; later on, they also became the chroniclers and repositories of history.
Poetry was the skald’s stock in trade; some became quite skilled at telling stories of the gods, while others told stories of the mythic heroes and their far-ranging quests. Later on, the skalds would also learn how to create poetry that would praise their respective patrons or liege lords, often giving those rulers some of the attributes of the gods or of the legendary heroes themselves.
As poetry in and of itself can be wide-ranging, the skalds could similarly create stories on many other subjects. After all, a ruler might soon get tired of the same old verses on the same old subjects. To rise higher in the esteem of the court, a skald might come up with stories about various encounters with the supernatural – not the gods themselves, but the other spirits and strange beings that were believed to inhabit the same world that humans did. The Viking courts were just as fond of romantic poetry as they were of sagas, and they were even known to pay close attention to verses written about familial and marital life and discord.
Though the skalds’ primary task was to speak – or recite – and impart their stories and poetry to the crowds at court, they also became the first to compile the various tales and commit them to more permanent forms, such as on paper, and then in books.
Both men and women could be initiated into the art of the skald, and because the art of the skald was seen as one of high merit and renown, some of its practitioners branched out by writing down their advice and the standards of the profession, creating what could be referred to as technical manuals. Today, much of our knowledge about the craft of the skalds – as well as the stories themselves – survive in one such manual, known as the Prose Edda. Snorri Sturluson is credited as the book’s author and compiler; it was published in the early 13th century and was explicitly supposed to serve as a textbook for skalds.
The Prose Edda is actually half a textbook and half a compilation of the legends and tales that were already being told by the skalds. The prologue concerns itself with a somewhat sanitized account of the origins of Norse mythology; he presents the gods – from Odin on down – as soldiers who, after surviving the Trojan War, made their way to northern Europe, where they became the leaders of various tribes and family groups. After they died, elaborate religious rituals were held at their burial sites every year – and those rituals turned into the basis of a pagan cult. On the other hand, the section called Gylfaginning concerns itself with an account of the creation and eventual destruction of the universe.
The second and third sections, known as Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal respectively, deal with the art of the skald. They feature in-depth discussions of poetic language and the verse forms that make up the corpus of Old Norse poetry. It is also in the Skáldskaparmál that a formal discussion of the kenning appears.
Kennings are a critical part of the telling and retellings of the stories of Norse mythology. They are figures of speech that refer to a specific place, person, thing, or idea in an ambiguous or roundabout way. Instead of saying “the sea” in a given verse, for example, a skald might say, “whale-road” or “whale’s way”. Instead of saying “fire”, he might use “bane of wood”. When these descriptive phrases are applied to the gods and other beings, some of their primary attributes emerge in short and vivid phrases: Odin is the “hanged god” and the “lord of the gallows”, while Thor is the “slayer of the giants of Jotunheim”.
Together with the Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda stands as one of the other primary sources for the stories that have become part of the Norse mythology. This second Edda is a collection of ballads, sayings, and other verses in Old Norse. A majority of the material in this Edda is attested to in an ancient book known as the Codex Regius, which scholars currently believe to have been written in the 1270s.
As with the Prose Edda, stories that had been previously passed by word of mouth make up the majority of the entries in the Poetic Edda. Among the best-known of the mythological tales preserved in this Edda are the Völuspá and the Lokasenna.
In contrast with the prose version of the story that is presented in the first section of the Prose Edda, Völuspá’s account of the creation and destruction of the worlds – and what happens afterward – is presented in poetic form, and specifically as a recitation by a female seer to an audience that includes both ordinary human beings and Odin himself. The narrative also speaks of various races such as giants, the Aesir (the group that Odin leads and belongs to), the Vanir (originally a separate group of gods until they were subsumed into the Aesir), dwarfs, and of human beings. The story winds through what seems like an inexorable, inevitable chain of events that leads to the doom of the worlds and of the gods alike – which is also known by the famous name of Ragnarök.
A section known as the Dvergatal is included in this account; these verses consist almost entirely of a listing of names of dwarfs.
The sense of impending doom in Völuspá is almost entirely at odds with the vitriol and thoroughgoing rudeness in Lokasenna. This poem helps to establish the strange relationship that the god Loki has with the other members of the pantheon: sometimes he is their ally, sometimes they can just barely tolerate his presence, and sometimes, he is their sworn enemy – as is the result here. The Aesir gather at the hall of the sea god Aegir, and proceed to make merry – but the party is cut short when they hear that Loki has killed one of their host’s servants. They drive him from the party, but he barges back in, and as the verses proceed, Loki systematically insults the beings within the hall.
A short prose section at the end of the poem details the punishment that the gods impose on Loki for his tirades – and while some modern commentators might find that punishment to be an excessive one, the poem also shows us what Loki did wrong: namely, he killed one of his host’s servants and threatened to do the same to the other. He also accuses every single one of the female members of the Aesir present at the hall of sexual impropriety, to the point that the verses almost begin to repeat themselves.
A series of poems included in the Codex Regius is known as the Niflung Cycle – but while Western audiences might be more familiar with these verses in their German form, the Nibelungenlied, the Norse version tells a thrilling story in its own right.
Known as the Völsunga saga, these stories talk about the trials and tribulations that befall the descendants of a ruler named Volsung: from the incestuous relationship that comes about between his children Sigmund and Signy, and the eventual fate of his grandson Sigurd, who encounters both Odin and the Valkyrie Brynhild.
The stories that make up Norse mythology also make up the first ten books of the historical text known as the Gesta Danorum. However, because the text was written in Latin, the names for various groups of characters have been changed to suit, so that the Valkyries are referred to as the Amazons, for example. This source is also notable for changing the relationship between Odin
and Thor: whereas in Norse mythology, they are always referred to as father and son, in Gesta Danorum Odin becomes Zeus whose son is Mercury and Thor becomes a different deity entirely.
The stories and sagas that make up the corpus of Norse mythology are not limited to ancient texts or books, and are definitely no longer confined to the oral tradition. Many places that were visited by Vikings, or that hosted their settlements, retain traces of that culture in the form of runestones. As might be easily guessed from the name, these are usually upright stones into which inscriptions using the runic alphabet of the Norsemen have been carved. They were often used as memorials to the dead.
Many of these runestones also include images of men and warriors – and a number of these images have been identified as representations of the characters that populate Norse mythology. For example, Thor appears on the Altuna Runestone in Uppsala, Sweden, where he is shown struggling with the great serpent Jörmungandr; while the Stenkvista runestone in the Södermanland County, which is also located in Sweden, features a carving of Thor’s famous hammer Mjölnir.
Although runestones were used as construction material by those cultures that supplanted the Norsemen, many have survived to the present day, and have been preserved both as a part of the historical record and as reminders of the religious beliefs of the culture that raised them.
Chapter 3
The Gods of Norse Mythology
People today are familiar with the names of gods such as Thor, Odin, Frigga, and many others, thanks to the popular culture and the ongoing phenomena of the Viking revival and of neopaganism. These tend to be modern interpretations of these various deities, however, and are in many ways removed from their original versions.