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NORSE MYTHOLOGY FOR SMART PEOPLE

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Primary Menu Skip to content
 * Home
 * My Books
 * Gods and Creatures
   * The Aesir Gods and Goddesses
     * Odin
     * Thor
     * Loki
     * Frigg
     * Baldur
     * Heimdall
     * Tyr
     * Idun
     * Bragi
     * Vili and Ve
     * Forseti
     * Gefjun
     * Sif
     * Fjorgynn and Fjorgyn
     * Jord
     * Sol and Mani
     * Ullr
     * Hoenir
     * Vidar
     * Hodr
     * Vali
     * Sigyn
     * Hermod
     * Lodurr
   * The Vanir Gods and Goddesses
     * Freya
     * Freyr
     * Njord
     * Nerthus
     * Gullveig
     * Odr (god)
   * Giants
     * Fenrir
     * Skadi
     * Ymir
     * Hel (Goddess)
     * Jormungand
     * Surt
     * Nidhogg
     * Skoll and Hati
     * Aegir and Ran
     * Garm
   * Elves
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   * Land Spirits
   * Ancestors
   * Valkyries
   * Others
     * The Norns
     * Disir
     * Ask and Embla
     * Sleipnir
     * Hugin and Munin
     * Berserkers and Other Shamanic Warriors
     * Mimir
     * The Einherjar
     * Kvasir
 * Cosmology
   * Yggdrasil
   * The Nine Worlds
     * Midgard
     * Asgard
     * Vanaheim
     * Jotunheim
     * Niflheim
     * Muspelheim
     * Alfheim
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     * Hel (The Underworld)
   * Valhalla
   * Bifrost
   * Ginnungagap
   * Folkvang
   * Hliðskjálf
 * Tales
   * The Creation of the Cosmos
   * Ragnarok
   * The Death of Baldur
   * The Mead of Poetry
   * The Aesir-Vanir War
   * The Fortification of Asgard
   * Odin’s Discovery of the Runes
   * Why Odin is One-Eyed
   * Loki Bound
   * The Binding of Fenrir
   * The Kidnapping of Idun
   * The Marriage of Njord and Skadi
   * The Creation of Thor’s Hammer
   * Thor Fishing for Jormungand
   * Thor the Transvestite
   * Thor’s Duel with Hrungnir
   * The Tale of Utgarda-Loki
 * The Vikings
   * The 10 Best Books on the Vikings
   * Viking Raids and Warfare
   * The Vikings as Explorers and Settlers
   * Daily Life in the Viking Age
   * Viking Trade and Commerce
   * Viking Ships
   * Viking Political Institutions
   * The Viking Social Structure
   * Viking Gender Roles
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   * Viking Weapons and Armor
   * Outlawry in the Viking Age
   * The Vikings’ Selfish Individualism
   * The Vikings’ Conversion to Christianity
 * Runes
   * The Origins of the Runes
   * Runic Philosophy and Magic
   * The Meanings of the Runes
   * The 10 Best Books on the Runes
 * Concepts
   * The Enchanted World
   * Norse Theology
   * Fate – Wyrd/Urd
   * Magic
   * Shamanism
   * Totemism
   * The Self and Its Parts
   * Death and the Afterlife
   * Seidr
   * Innangard and Utangard
   * Óðr (concept)
   * Dreams
 * Other
   * The 10 Best Advanced Norse Mythology Books
   * The Old Norse Language and How to Learn It
   * Symbols
     * Thor’s Hammer
     * The Swastika – Its Ancient Origins and Modern (Mis)use
     * The Valknut
     * The Helm of Awe
     * The Svefnthorn
     * The Vegvisir
   * The Wild Hunt
   * Sources
   * The 10 Best Celtic Mythology Books
   * The 10 Best Greek Mythology Books
   * The 10 Best Egyptian Mythology Books
   * Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Do They Matter?
   * What is a Kenning?
   * The Gjallarhorn
   * Gungnir
   * An Introduction to Mircea Eliade
   * An Introduction to Georges Dumézil
   * Book Reviews
     * Book Review: Neil Price’s The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age
       Scandinavia
 * News/Updates
 * The 10 Best Norse Mythology Books
 * About Me
 * Contact

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VELKOMIN. WELCOME.

“Odin the Wanderer” by Georg von Rosen (1886)

Norse Mythology for Smart People provides reliable, well-documented information
on the enthralling mythology and religion of the Norse and other Germanic
peoples. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.

What Is Norse mythology?

Before the Norse (a.k.a. the Vikings) converted to Christianity during the
Middle Ages, they had their own vibrant native pagan religion that was as
harshly beautiful as the Nordic landscape to which it was intimately connected.
The centerpiece of that religion was what we today call “Norse mythology:” the
set of religious stories that gave meaning to the Vikings’ lives. These myths
revolved around gods and goddesses with fascinating and highly complex
characters, such as Odin, Thor, Freya, and Loki.

The Norse religion that contained these myths never had a true name – those who
practiced it just called it “tradition.” However, people who continued to follow
the old ways after the arrival of Christianity were sometimes called “heathens,”
which originally meant simply “people who live on the heaths” or elsewhere in
the countryside, and the name has stuck.

Religions are attempts by mankind to reach the numinous, and the Norse religion
was of course no exception. It provided a means of doing this that was fitting
for the Vikings’ time and place. Even though some aspects of it may strike the
modern reader as bizarre, if we approach it with the open mind it deserves, we
can recognize within it the common human quest to live life in the presence of
the transcendent majesty and joy of the sacred. And even though it’s been a
thousand years since the last Vikings laid down their swords, people today
continue to be inspired by the vitality and wonder of the Norse myths and the
gods who inhabit them.

For the Vikings, the world as they found it was enchanted – that is, they didn’t
feel the need to seek salvation from the world, but instead delighted in, and
marveled at, “the way things are,” including what we today would call both
“nature” and “culture.” Their religion and myths didn’t sugarcoat the
sordidness, strife, and unfairness of earthly life, but instead acknowledged it
and praised the attempt to master it through the accomplishment of great deeds
for the benefit of oneself and one’s people. A life full of such deeds was what
“the good life” was for the Vikings.

“Guests from Overseas” by Nicholas Roerich (1899)

Who Were the Vikings?

The Vikings were seafaring raiders, conquerors, explorers, settlers, and traders
from modern-day Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland who ventured throughout
much of the world during the Viking Age (roughly 793-1066 CE). They traveled as
far east as Baghdad and as far west as North America, which they discovered some
five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. They spoke the Old Norse
language, wrote in runes, and practiced their ancestral religion.

The Vikings were motivated to sail from their homelands by timeless, universal
human desires: wealth, prestige, and power. As in most human societies, those
aims were intertwined for the Vikings; those who had more wealth typically had
more prestige and power, and vice versa. The Vikings sought wealth in both its
portable form – gold, silver, gemstones, and the like – and in the form of land.

We have the Vikings to thank for our present understanding not only of their own
pre-Christian religion and mythology, but of that of the other Germanic peoples
as well. Thanks to the Old Norse poems, treatises, and sagas that were written
during or relatively soon after the Viking Age, we have a much, much fuller
picture of what the Vikings’ religion was like (despite the many unfortunate
holes that nevertheless remain in that picture) than we do for the religions of
any of the other pre-Christian Germanic peoples. But from the little that we do
know about those religions directly, they seem to have been variations on common
themes that were also shared by the Norse, so we can use the Norse sources to
help us reconstruct those hoary religions, too.

Who Are the Germanic peoples?

The Germanic peoples are one of the indigenous peoples of northern Europe, along
with the Celts, Sami, Finns, and others. Historically, they’ve occupied much of
Scandinavia, Iceland, the British Isles, and continental Europe north of the
Alps. Their best-known representatives are the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and
the continental Germanic tribes, but they included many other groups as well. In
the modern era, they – we – are spread out across the world.

While there were certainly regional and temporal variations in the pre-Christian
religion of the Germanic peoples, there was nevertheless a common core
worldview, cosmology, and, to a large extent, a common pantheon as well.

If you’re a person of northern European descent (including English, Scottish,
German, and northern French descent), it’s a safe bet that you’ve got some
Germanic blood in you. That means, in turn, that it’s a safe bet that some of
your ancestors practiced something very close to the religion represented by
Norse mythology.

Of course, you very well may still find Norse/Germanic mythology to be
fascinating and illuminating if you don’t have any Germanic in your ancestry.
Mythologies are certainly expressions of a particular person or people, but
they’re far from only that; there tends to be a spark of something more timeless
and universal in them as well.

Til árs ok friðar,
Daniel McCoy


THE ULTIMATE ONLINE GUIDE TO NORSE MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION

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