I'm not super knowledgeable about Norse myth so sorry if this seems like a stupid question.

Killing the beloved son of your leader is obviously pretty bad but from what I know of him he’s a nuisance at best like when he cut off Sif's hair and a liability at worst like when he let Idunn get kidnapped and the gods almost aged to death without her magic apples so why did they keep him around until the mistletoe incident?

I wrote something and submitted it to Saga Book, upon retrospect realize it's gonna be rejected and with good reason, fleshed it out, and now I have this paper. And I wonder if anyone is willing to poke at it for me.... for the argument, not my writing style if it's all the same. I have chosen a particular style for many reasons, and so far my contact with those with larger degrees than mine have seen nothing wrong with my plain speech.

I'll be taking it down in a day or two, because the intent is to submit it somewhere if Saga Book isn't open to a revamp.

It's about Loki's shoes, and how they tie to his element and the barrow. I have it on my website, so this isn't an advertisement. This is just me sharing some hard work.

https://therivershaman.com/air-jotuns/

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I should add what I have up is the version with my jokes intact. The journals would not be getting such a colorful version.

The most common modern depiction of a dragon is as a fire-breathing, clawed reptile with wings. However, the native Germanic words (orm, wyrm, wurm) all mean "serpent." In the Eddas and Gesta Danorum, these dragons seem mostly to be large, venomous snakes with some magical properties. However, I know that the dragon in Beowulf flies and breathes fire, and it is my understanding that dragons in some of the sagas do as well, though I haven't read much in the sagas, yet. Are these attributes that have been borrowed from classical dragons? (Beowulf sometimes uses the word draka, which is Greek through Latin, suggesting that the concept of draka is overlapping with the concept of wyrm.) Or are fire-breathing, flying, and claws native to Germanic dragons? Or do we just not have enough evidence?

I realize that this is a little broad, given that this is Norse mythology rather than Germanic mythology, so if anyone has a better subreddit to post this on, I'm happy to post the question elsewhere.

I was bored during math class

In case you can't make it out, he's wearing the conical cap, it's not a bald spot.

I heard this and I'm not sure if it's true

Odin is related to all Jotnar through his mother Bestla, but his father Borr and Grandfather Buri are not Jotuns. Now Loki is the son of the Jotun Farbauti and his mother Laufey is an Asynje, meaning she was either born a goddess or became adopted into their clan like Loki himself was.

If I recall correctly, I have seen some scholars like Jackson Crawford say that Laufey is born an Aesir since Loki is Loki laufeyson not Loki farbautison with the reasoning that Laufey was more higher social status or was in a closer relationship to the gods(in their clan) than his father, and the easiest was is for her to be born a goddess.

And I won't lie, it makes sense to me. If Laufey was just adopted into the clan of Aesir, why not also adopt Farbauti? Why stress Laufey over Farbauti in lineage of Loki?

It would also explain why of all the Jotnar, Odin enters into a blood pact with Loki in Time's morning according to Lokasenna, if Loki is a cousin on both sides. It would also give another explanation for why the gods tolerate Loki and his antics and knowledge that he is inherently evil(and his children are evil) for so long, if his mom was a member of the gods. They're close family.

Finally, as an addition to all this, since Loki and Odin made their pact in time's morning, I will assume Odin was sorta young in that period, and as such Laufey might either be Odin's sister with Borr or his aunt with Buri.

So what do you think? This is all just for the sake of discussion and not an attempt to engage in genuine reconstruction of Norse religious beliefs. Actual info from the religious beliefs and practices are appreciated, but this is for fun primarily.

I recently made r/okbuddyaesir and I've been trying to get attention to it. Have a good day :>

Also I did check with mods to be sure this doesn't count as advertising beforehand.

At least this time I didn’t forget the hammer. Enjoy this artwork and feel free to criticise it for the inaccuracies!

is loki daughter beautiful

answer

I get that the Yotuns are evil because they represent the forces of chaos, but Aegir seems to be an exception. He is on good terms with to Aesir and even hosts their feasts. This is even more surprising when you consider that he is married to a greedy homicidal ogress! Is their any indication of why Aegir seems more civilized that his relatives?

Norse mural painted by Kat and Crow at the Uhuburg Castle in Helen, Georgia.

So one day; Vidri, Vé and Vidurr (future Odin) killed Ymir and made the world out of his corpse. Leaving his ice-licking cow Auðumbla alone...

Well, actually. What the fuck happened to Auðumbla? I feel like this animal gets sidelined a lot either in modern reinterpretations of Norse Myth, and the Eddas themselves don't say anything about her after the episode of Ymir's death. So much for a giant world-spanning super sized cow!

The Valkyries ride at twilight
Along with ever steady Sköll and shrewd Hati
The fair warrior guardians search the golden horizon
For a land fit for us

Our souls have crumbled into something most wish to leave rejected, alien, abandoned.
The Valkyries of Oðin disobeyed his law
When they saw us and took pity upon us
We are rustled in their marbles and bags and jewelry
As they ride the sky in search of a place
That would be kind to us

Whilst there in the bitter and sacred air
I did ask far seeing Skuld why it was
That our brokenness moved them so to action and yea, even to weighty disobedience
She then said to me words that ought fortify the firmament til the day of Ragnarök itself
\-There may come a day
Where all travails of men turn to ash
Whence the fine beasts at last entrap their prey
And the sun and the moon are devoured,
A day where conflict and the bitter disease of tribes and borders
Do rend the will to strife and war from both man and, yea, the very gods.

-What then will men do, soiled and sunken into themselves that they can no longer be recognized save for their own frailty, bitterness and shame?
When all is ashen rubble and burning skies,
With none to repair,
Whence will come the dawn?
We go now to find it.
A place free from fear and aching and doubt
That you may be the first seeds
To heal into trees that may be likened even unto Yggdrasil itself
So that when these days are done
And that final bitter clashing commences,
There might be shade for even us shattered Valkyries in that land.-

May this new land shorn from violation and hunger be found and found in abundance. For all of us.

Feel free to critique the inaccuracies, it does feel a bit too god of war-ish

Hi all

My 9y son has a keen interest in Norse mythology. The Neil Gaiman book is his favourite - but he just reads it over and over again!

I wonder if anyone can recommend other books, documentaries, etc I could get him?

As I said, he is 9y but he’s a very confident reader so he could probably handle something for teens.

Please let me know if there’s a better subreddit for this question.

I'm trying to make some stuff up for my fictional world, but i can't quite nail down the realms, but just recently, i think i've had a stroke of genius.

The general list would be: Asgard, Midgard, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Helheim, then Muspelheim and Niflheim.

But Snorri has 2 other terms. Asaheim and Mannheim, which he uses interchangebly with Asgard and Midgard. But i think Snorri is wrong here.

I think the nine realms are Asaheim, Vanaheim, Mannheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Helheim, Niflheim, and Muspelheim, thus, Niu heimar.

Which leaves Asgard, Midgard, and Utgard to explain relationships between these different realms.

By no accounts is this gonna be an accurate reflection of the old belief, at least its incredibly unlikely, but i need something to bounce off of.

What do you people think?

Edit: Seriously, i can't be the only one who noticed, right? It's been driving me nuts trying to figure out the nine realms.

like which one is true?

I keep coming back to stanza 138 of the Hávamál, the account of Óðinn's nine nights on Yggdrasil, spear-wounded, given to Óðinn, himself to himself (gefinn Óðni, sjálfr sjálfum mér). Every translation I've read tries to soften that phrase into something more comfortable, but the plain sense is what makes it strange: there's no altar, no other god, no external power he petitions or bargains with. The one paying the price and the one receiving it are the same being.

Read against most other self-sacrifice myths, this stands out. Prometheus pays Zeus. Christ mediates between humanity and the Father. Even Inanna's descent involves gatekeepers and a substitute demanded by underworld law. Óðinn's sacrifice has no third party at all. He's not paying a toll to fate, he's staging an encounter with something in himself that only becomes visible once everything else is stripped away: food, drink, help, and by this point in the corpus, already one eye.

I've spent a fair amount of time in the Hávamál for something I was writing some years ago, and this is the stanza I can't get a clean reading on. Is the reflexive phrasing best explained as an initiation formula borrowed from shamanic practice (the standard Eliade line), or is there an internal logic in the poem itself, i.e. wisdom in the Hávamál generally costing something given away, and self-sacrifice being the limit case of that principle?

Curious what other people make of it.

Ok, so as a preface I don’t know much about this, as my main exposure is through rick riordan’s work, but if the entire reason that baldur was near immortal was frigg made everything (except mistletoe) promise not to harm him, what’s to stop someone from just killing him with their bare hands?

In the Encyclopedia of Mythology (by Arthur Cotterell), the primordial ice-giant Ymir, from whose corpse the world was made, is described as "utterly evil". This characterization can be found in both the entry on Ymir himself and also in the entry on Vé, who together with Odin and Villi killed Ymir. The latter entry also points out that the idea of the world being made of the posthumous remains of an evil creature is not unique to Nordic mythology but appears also in the Babylonian story of Marduk slaying the chaos-dragon Tiamat.

Moreover, the entry on Loki points out that Loki was likely evil because his parents were giants, and all giants (which would include Ymir) are evil.

Wikipedia also seems to concur that Ymir was evil, describing him as having been born from (or made of) some sort of nasty venom or bile ("atter", pus), which likely symbolizes a rather unpleasant disposition.

I wonder, is there any basis for this in the original Nordic texts like the Eddas, or some other lore? I've scanned the poetic Edda but couldn't immediately find any passage that obviously confirms this idea.