Thanks to the success of the Marvel franchise [and the famous song by Kiss] most of us are now familiar with Thor, the Viking god of thunder [and rock’ n’ roll according to the Kiss song]. But how true is the modern pop culture portrayal to the Thor of Norse mythology? While Marvel certainly have…
It seems like every mythology has a goddess of love and beauty, but the Norse goddess Freya was so much more than that. Associated with love, sex, lust, beauty, sorcery, fertility, gold, war and death, Freya was clearly among one of the most potent Norse deities. This accounts for why there is evidence that the…
The world of Norse mythology is full of terrifying monsters, but perhaps none more so than Jormungandr, also known as the Midgard Serpent. Maybe it is his proximity to the world of men, dwelling in the ocean that surrounds Midgard (home of human), or maybe it is our innate fear of serpents, but no other…
Loki is often called the trickster god of Norse mythology. But in actual fact Loki was not one of the Aesir gods, and while his tricks often put the Norse gods in difficult situations, there are no surviving Norse stories of him playing havoc in the lives of men. So where do modern, Marvel inspired…
Norse accounts of death and the Viking afterlife are quite difficult to unravel. As death is the ultimate unknown, inconsistency is expected, and all written accounts come from the post-Christian era, and seem to have been influenced by Christian ideas of death. Vikings did believe in an afterlife, as Norse burial practices were clearly designed…
The word giant brings to mind human-like creatures of great stature, that may or may not live at the top of beanstalks. This term has been applied to the Jotun of Norse Mythology, but while the Jotun were ‘supermen’ with powers that rivalled those of the Aesir gods, they bear little resemblance to the giants…
If you imagine the dwarves of Norse Mythology as something out of a Tolkien novel, you would not be far off the mark. Tolkien was inspired by the Norse mythology, which describes dwarves as master blacksmiths that dwelled underground in great cavernous mines that fuelled their work. Read on to find out more about Norse…
According to Norse mythology, men live in Midgard, the world of mortal beings, and the gods live in Asgard, the world of the divine. But these are only two of the many worlds that make up Norse cosmology. According to Norse mythology, there are nine realms, all of which are nestled in the Tree of…
The vast majority of stories about the gods in Norse mythology focus on the likes of king Odin, invincible Thor and trickster Loki. There are also stories about Balder, Freyr and Heimdall. But just like the world of men, the realm of the gods was populated by both men and women. While the Norse goddesses…
At the centre of Norse mythology is Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life. This mighty tree held together the nine worlds of Norse mythology and connected the Vikings living in the world of men with the fantastic worlds of the gods and giants. But what exactly was Yggdrasil, where did it sit in the Norse cosmos,…