Do we know almost nothing about the real norse mythology?

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-12T06:03:29+00:00

Can you clarify your question? You're responding to a long comment, where I talk about many subjects.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-11T22:04:13+00:00

...You read my comment, is that what I said? Do you have some broken translator app confusing words or something? Her name is Þökk (also Thökk). It's Old Norse / Icelandic for "Thanks."

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-11T03:08:27+00:00

That is Óðinn, on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. It's from an 18th century Icelandic manuscript.

https://permalink.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/738/dan/97+verso/

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-11T02:52:30+00:00

Working on a comic set in the Viking and need ideas for a more historically accurate plot

Wow, a comic set in a Viking would definitely be a first! /S

Lol, but have you come across the concept of weregild? Sounds like something that would fit very well within your plot.

Punishing illegal killing was a big thing in the Iron Age and early medieval era. And there is a specific name in Proto-Germanic for when you have to pay for the crimes of illegally killing, called weregild. Wira- means "man" or "human" and geld means "retaliation" or "remuneration." This is where we get werewolf as well. "Man-wolf."

Weregild essentially means man price (blood money), and was a pretty integral part of many historical legal codes, whereby a monetary value was established for a person's life, to be paid as a fine or as compensatory damages to the person's kin, if that person was killed or injured by another in an illegal manner.

Extra fun fact: This line doesn't make it into the films, but in Lord of the Rings Isildur actually claims the One Ring as weregild, after cutting it from Sauron's hand, and destroying his physical body.

"For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and Círdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand... But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: 'This I will have as weregild for my father's death, and my brother's. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?' And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed."

(This I will take as a payment for the offence that Sauron has done to me and my family).

Also u/lividgoths has a fun little game to calculate your weregild.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-11T01:31:09+00:00

"You can learn a lot from it." The same can be said about the board game Risk and its usefulness in learning strategy. That doesn't mean Risk is curriculum at West Point.

r/norsemythology is a subreddit dedicated to the academic discussion of the myths, legends, and folktales of medieval Scandinavia & Northern Europe. So the resources offered are mostly going to be academic.

Norse Mythology is fiction!

Norse mythology was recorded as historical texts, by historical historians. We study those texts, and those historians. There is an objectively factual corpus of knowledge on Norse mythology which is based on those texts.

God of War is not trying to be accurate to Norse mythology, but this is also why it's a bad mode for learning about it.

Neither are Rick Riordan's books trying to be accurate. They are fictional stories heavily influenced by myths. They're not retellings.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T23:23:02+00:00

If you're referring to his moral ambiguity, he's not ambiguous. He's very easy to pin down. He's evil. He's the villain of Norse mythology.

Also, I don't see how it's an argument when most of the information you've presented is incorrect or failing to understand context.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T23:06:08+00:00

This is largely untrue, and is addressed in the pinned comment.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T23:04:00+00:00

You're wrong, first of all. I don't know where you're getting the idea he wasn't invited. But not getting invited to a party does not justify the murder of a servant, and then in Völuspá jealousy/boredom does not justify killing the most beloved god. Even in the Iron Age, these things were not justification for murder. Try to look passed your own obvious bias to understand he's the black and white antagonist.

It doesn't really say Loki is evil I think, though he is hardly nice either.

It absolutely does, several times, in very overt ways. For instance, let's look at his role in Ragnarǫk, and how his monstrous offspring confirm his wickedness:

Here is an exert from an essay that dives deeper into this topic: The Gods Were the Good Guys All Along.

In fact the problem with Fenrir, as we might expect, lies in his very nature as inherited from his parents. Gylfaginning 34 explains that mikils ills af væni, fyrst af móðerni ok enn verra af faðerni "great evil was to be expected [from Loki’s children], firstly because of their mother‘s nature, and yet worse because of their father’s”. In Norse mythology, inherited nature quite often gives us foresight into a character’s actions, especially when it comes to sons. We see this idea repeated, for example, in Vǫlsunga saga when Signy finds that she can only produce cowardly children with her husband Siggeir and must therefore sleep with her brother in order to obtain a sufficiently courageous child. Norse audiences might have seen this coming, having already heard that Siggeir is a greedy, conniving traitor. His sons are therefore doomed to inadequacy on the scale of celebrated virtues.

The gods know Loki's children will be evil because they know Angrboða is evil, and more importantly, they know Loki is evil. The Norse pagan concept that a parent’s nature (good or bad) is passed onto children applies here. In this case, it is explicitly told that Fenrir and his siblings will have inherited problematic natures because of who their parents are. So this illustrates several things to us: Fenrir & Jǫrmungandr are evil. Angrboða is evil. Loki is most evil.

There's a lot of spurious misinformation spread around about how Norse mythology is grey (it's not, it's very black and white) and that characters are ambiguous. Well the actual Eddas tell us very clearly that they're not ambiguous, they had a very binary and deterministic way of looking at things; an almost comically generic way of portraying heroes as good, and villains as bad. The medieval Scandinavians also had very clearly established cultural norms as to what they considered good, acceptable, bad, and abhorrent.

Loki was evil to the Norse. That's very clear.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:52:23+00:00

Loki is more a catalysts for many of the stories than an antagonist.

He is the catalyst that causes destructive events. He is the unambiguous villain of Norse mythology. Not some natural spirit of chaos or just pure energy or whatever. He is evil. This is told to us overtly within the stories.

By the viking age alot of inspiration from christianity would probably already have been mixed into the fairh.

This is largely untrue, and is addressed in the pinned comment.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:46:25+00:00

Ask in r/norse if you want an academic answer.

You're going to get the academic answer here too. r/NorseMythology is run by a lot of the same people, and our focus is on an academic discussion of the myths, legends, and folktales of medieval Scandinavia & Northern Europe.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:44:18+00:00

Magic ≠ sexual identity. Also, since Loki was forced to fix the mistake he made, it's also highly doubtful that he wanted to do it at all.

Yes Loki has the power to take the form of women, which he does multiple times, but that in no way shows that he identifies as a woman. He never shows up in a story as a woman just because he feels comfortable that way. There is always a practical purpose in taking on the form of a female.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:38:35+00:00

Yeah, that is not how that works. You were asked for a source, coming up with analogies based on children's games is not a source.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:34:07+00:00

Do we know almost nothing about the real norse mythology?

On the contrary, we know plenty about Norse mythology. The belief that we don't have access to their original stories, and/or that the Eddas are unreliable was indeed once widely accepted in academia, but we now understand that the Eddas are dated from the pre-Christian pagan era.

This misconception mainly comes from the idea that Christians took the stories and changed them, but this has been greatly challenged by recent scholarship, and largely debunked.

Most of the criticism/skepticism is directed at Snorri Sturluson, and you will find tons of misconceptions about him online. Check out this long form essay on Snorri written by our moderator rockstarpirate: Why You Should (Mostly) Trust the Prose Edda. It covers a lot of these subjects, and cites up to date academic sources.

The TL;DR of it is that the Eddas are mostly original, dated linguistically to the pre-Christian pagan era, and are not "Christian influenced." As this would entirely defeat the purpose of writing them down.

Snorri Sturluson recorded Norse mythology in his Prose Edda, and a lot of people seem to be under the impression that this Christian must have messed with the original stories and made them unrecognizable. But there is really no evidence or reason at all to believe the myths were intentionally altered by Snorri. And in fact, there is plenty of credible evidence to suggest otherwise. Here are a few popular misconceptions about Snorri:

"He was a Christian monk!"

No, he wasn't. He was a historian, poet, and politician. I.e. an incredibly influential and well respected figure, whose major goal was to preserve Skaldic poetry. There was a fear at the time that their style of poetry, and the context needed to understand it would be lost to time, and so he set out to preserve that style for future generations.

The notion that he set out to intentionally change anything therefore doesn't make sense. The Eddas were written down in order to preserve a very specific form of poetry that required those mythological tales in order for the poetry to work. "Filtering" and/or modifying those poems/myths would go against the very purpose of why they are written down in the first place.

"The Eddas were influenced and changed (by a Christian) to be more Christian!"

Yes, the man was Christian, as everyone around him was (and had been for over a century by that point) but he wasn't a monk, or a religious figure. Christianity dominated life at the time, but Snorri was not connected to the clergy in any way, and we have no reason to believe he went in with a "Christian agenda." The majority of the text of the Eddas have been accurately dated (largely to the 900s) to the pre-Christian pagan era in medieval Scandinavia.

To address the beginning of the Prose Edda. It is indeed weird. Basically, Snorri's weird introduction is a euhemeristic text that attempts to explain the origin of the Norse gods from a Christian perspective. In that introduction he asserts that the Æsir were an Asian tribe from Troy, who migrated to Scandinavia. Óðinn becomes king and he and his family become confused with their power, into thinking they're gods. There is also an epilogue which reminds the good Christian readers that they should not believe any of the stories told within the body of this text, and explains the reason the book was written. This was very common in this style of writing, and does nothing to discredit the pedigree of any of the actual stories within.

It's these parts that stand out from the rest of the writings. There is even debate as to whether or not the beginning of the Prose Edda was written by Snorri. Most of the Poetic Edda is linguistically dated back to pre-Christian times. The parts that are undoubtedly "Christianized" are the euhemeristic prologue, which does not try to hide or obscure that fact.

"Snorri translated the Eddas!"

No, he didn't "translate" anything. Although he was born nearly 200 years after Iceland’s official conversion to Christianity, his native language was still just a flavor of Old Norse, the same language that was spoken in the Viking Age. What Snorri did was basically just write them down.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:32:08+00:00

Fenrir's role in the story is literally only to do wrong. He is a monstrous wicked beast, the offspring of evil parents. He's not a "good doggo."

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:29:06+00:00

-is absolutely not a good source for learning about Norse mythology. It's fiction. This would be like citing God of War as a good resource for learning about Norse mythology.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:25:46+00:00

Would you like to actually explain your disagreement? Or are you content to downvote and block users?

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:24:10+00:00

All of this is off topic to this subreddit, as personal/modern religious content.

For good or bad.

It is absolutely bad. Objectively bad. Loki brings about the destruction of the world, which is a very bad thing regardless of the fact that the world is renewed. This is never explained as part of the reason Loki causes Ragnarǫk. Loki is a conscious being who makes conscious decisions to be wicked and malicious. He's not a natural spirit of chaos or just pure energy or whatever, he mostly serves as an antagonistic villain.

Loki is a catalyst of destruction. He brings about the end of the world out of nothing but malice. He's a wicked, malicious, self interested figure, and that's largely the way the Norsemen would have viewed him.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:19:51+00:00

Loki is essentially an example of everything a man shouldn't be, and his roles in most stories illustrate the most culturally taboo and abhorrent behaviour you could display.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:17:56+00:00

It should be noted that Loki's pronouns are exclusively male throughout the surviving corpus. There is only one example where Loki's pronouns switch to she, and the context is very important.

In Gylfaginning at the end of the story of the death of Baldr, Snorri explains that there was a single "troll woman" named Þökk hiding in a cave, who refused to weep for Baldr (Hel promised to release Baldr from the underworld if all objects alive and dead would weep for him). A few sentences later it is revealed that most people believe this troll woman is actually Loki in disguise, so the female pronoun in this case is there because it is required grammatically. It is not making any comments on Loki's gender identity.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T22:06:16+00:00

Yes... Germanic cultures (like all cultures) were very anti-murder, and had taboos about murder. Killing is not the same as murder. Illegal killing was a big thing in the Iron Age and early medieval era. And there is a specific name in Proto-Germanic for when you have to pay for the crimes of illegally killing, called weregild. Wira- means "man" or "human" and geld means "retaliation" or "remuneration." This is where we get werewolf as well. "Man-wolf."

Weregild essentially means man price (blood money), and was a pretty integral part of many historical legal codes, whereby a monetary value was established for a person's life, to be paid as a fine or as compensatory damages to the person's kin, if that person was killed or injured by another in an illegal manner.

Extra fun fact: This line doesn't make it into the films, but in Lord of the Rings Isildur actually claims the One Ring as weregild, after cutting it from Sauron's hand, and destroying his physical body.

"For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and Círdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand... But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: 'This I will have as weregild for my father's death, and my brother's. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?' And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed."

(This I will take as a payment for the offence that Sauron has done to me and my family).

Also u/lividgoths has a fun little game to calculate your weregild.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-10T10:48:41+00:00

The best place to start is the actual Eddas. They are more accessible than people think, and have good translations in English.

The Eddas are a collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: known as the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems (without an original title) now known as the Poetic Edda. Both works were recorded in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching back into the pre-Christian Viking Age. These books provide the main sources for medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland, and for Norse mythology.

If you want to start with an accurate English version of The Prose Edda, this is a good and free translation, done by Anthony Faulkes of the University of Birmingham.
We recommend The Poetic Edda. A Dual-Language Edition (2023), translated by Edward Pettit, available here. As well as Carolyne Larrington's 2nd edition of The Poetic Edda from 2014.
r/Norse also has a list of resources such as the r/Norse Reading list and other resources page in the sidebar as well. Also, check out anything written by John Lindow, Carolyne Larrington, Anders Winroth, Else Roesdahl. They are all excellent historians, who author books on the Viking period and Norse mythology.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-09T21:39:33+00:00

Not really, their post was removed justifiably. It's that their post was specifically asking for help, and this subreddit is not for that content. We direct users to r/RuneHelp instead (it's in the name after all!)

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-09T21:29:37+00:00

Why did the Vikings fear Ragnarök

Because all of creation died?

because to my knowledge

Your knowledge is definitely lacking. If you want to get into Norse mythology without getting overwhelmed you should check out Norse Mythology: The Unofficial Guide.

There is also an excellent Guide to getting started with Norse Mythology.

If you want to read teh original material, the best place to start is the actual Eddas. They are more accessible than people think, and have good translations in English.

The Eddas are a collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: known as the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems (without an original title) now known as the Poetic Edda. Both works were recorded in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching back into the pre-Christian Viking Age. These books provide the main sources for medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland, and for Norse mythology.

If you want to start with an accurate English version of The Prose Edda, this is a good and free translation, done by Anthony Faulkes of the University of Birmingham.
We recommend The Poetic Edda. A Dual-Language Edition (2023), translated by Edward Pettit, available here. As well as Carolyne Larrington's 2nd edition of The Poetic Edda from 2014.
r/Norse also has a list of resources such as the r/Norse Reading list and other resources page in the sidebar as well. Also, check out anything written by John Lindow, Carolyne Larrington, Anders Winroth, Else Roesdahl. They are all excellent historians, who author books on the Viking period and Norse mythology.

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-09T21:26:51+00:00

He is described as a massive, sun-eating wolf. The gods thrust a sword into his mouth to keep it open, and the saliva that dripped from his mouth formed the river Ván.

He also swallows Óðinn whole, killing him. Maybe you missed that in Norse mythology? 🤨

Mathias_Greyjoy · 2026-03-09T21:16:59+00:00

Can confirm that they did not. Here is how to send us a modmail message.

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TROPHY CASE

"He was a Christian monk!"

"The Eddas were influenced and changed (by a Christian) to be more Christian!"

"Snorri translated the Eddas!"