The Art of Manliness - #499： A Fascinating Primer on Norse Mythology

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the world of

00:00:12.160 norse mythology and legend is a thoroughly fascinating one my guest has captured it in

00:00:16.560 all its compelling mystery in his book which retells these stories called tales of valhalla

00:00:20.960 his name is martin wittek and today he takes us on a gripping tour of norse culture and myth we

00:00:25.180 begin the show discussing who the norse people were and the misconceptions people commonly have

00:00:29.200 about them including associating them exclusively with vikings we also talk about misconceptions

00:00:33.560 about the vikings themselves what it really meant to be a viking we then get into why it's hard to

00:00:38.100 completely recapture norse myths and rituals as they were originally known martin then unfolds the

00:00:42.480 norse creation story offers interesting snapshots of the major norse gods including odin thor and loki

00:00:47.660 and explains what ragnarok was all about we end up conversation discussing norse sagas and how norse

00:00:52.400 culture continues to influence our modern culture today after the show's over check out our show

00:00:56.460 notes at aom.is slash norse myths martin joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:01.900 all right martin wittek welcome to the show good to speak with you so you co-authored a book with

00:01:15.440 your daughter hannah wittek called tales of valhalla norse myths and legends so before we get into some of

00:01:22.280 the specific norse myths let's talk about the norse themselves i think this is a people that

00:01:26.140 we we hear a lot about it's they have an influence on our culture even today but we don't know much

00:01:30.940 about so who who were the norse good question uh basically misunderstandings about the north who are

00:01:38.080 they where do they come from i think basically one of one of the problems is often when we look at the

00:01:42.600 past we forget how complicated sophisticated and subtle the past can be and we can have a very

00:01:49.160 simplistic view of the past and i think that almost applies to anybody when they look at the past at

00:01:54.740 any point in history the past is always a bit kind of you know primitive and a bit out there and a bit

00:01:58.860 over there and i think that the norse suffer from that misconception more so than many others because

00:02:06.020 of the vikings and we'll probably talk about vikings a little bit later on but because people have this

00:02:11.040 incredible image of violence and destruction and i'm not for a moment going to pretend that some of that

00:02:16.800 did not happen if that significant amount of that clearly happened we can tend to have a rather very

00:02:21.660 rough and ready view of the norse and and other scandinavians of the viking age whereas in fact when

00:02:28.080 we actually study them we see people of of remarkable sophistication great artistic skills uh cultural skills

00:02:35.220 poetic skills and so on and so these people are people just like you and me the fact they live within

00:02:41.660 a different technological period of time doesn't stop them having the same level of sophistication

00:02:46.920 and questions and issues and problems and so on and so forth and i think we have to remember that when

00:02:51.420 we're looking at them and we have to look sometimes through some of the the very popular views of them

00:02:57.360 particularly you know the viking axe in hand type person and realize that behind there there are men

00:03:03.020 and women young and old of all sorts of different classes who have very very interesting and

00:03:08.980 complicated lives and we're looking at people who lived in scandinavia so the modern countries of

00:03:16.260 denmark norway and sweden though they didn't exist as such in the viking age they were they were forming

00:03:24.280 they were coming together kingdom forming was was going on but we tend to say denmark norway and sweden

00:03:29.760 for well simplicity really we need to have some kind of fix on this and the amazing diaspora the amazing

00:03:37.960 spread of these people's culture from about you know 750 onwards for the next 200 years we've got

00:03:45.920 this incredible explosion of settlement out of scandinavia which stretches all the way from kiev rus

00:03:52.860 and the caspian sea unbelievably to north america where we now have pretty solid evidence for viking

00:04:00.080 settlement and newfound land and probably we'll find more eventually down the eastern seaboard

00:04:05.180 northeastern seaboard of of the modern usa as well they raid into the mediterranean and you basically

00:04:12.680 have got this amazing east west north south spread of norse culture along the english channel

00:04:18.120 into ireland and northern scotland taking over parts of england frizzier raiding into frankia which

00:04:25.620 is now sort of modern france they are they are a remarkably dynamic and energetic people who have a huge

00:04:32.360 impact on their neighbors and you can see why people sometimes remember the shock and awe of the

00:04:38.660 viking age without necessarily remembering the sophistication and the culture and it's kind of

00:04:43.100 getting through one to reach the other is the challenge so yeah i mean i guess the biggest

00:04:48.020 misunderstanding about the norse is that they were just they were all vikings they all wore the helmets

00:04:51.840 with the horns right that that's probably that that wasn't like that no no what if i interested at the

00:04:59.260 most simplistic not a single viking age helmet has been found with horns on or with wings so in fact

00:05:07.040 our most powerful image of the vikings you know if you go to a fancy dress party in a horned helmet

00:05:12.460 everybody knows who you are you're a viking no vikings as far as we can tell did not wear horned helmets

00:05:19.220 they did not wing have winged helmets what's interesting is that's probably how gods were represented

00:05:26.320 that we do in fact see carvings on runestones and and other other major monuments uh of people with

00:05:34.580 you know winged head helmets and and horned helmets but it's probably gods that were represented in that

00:05:40.240 way not not ordinary people and and viking was something that something rather more of what you did

00:05:47.400 rather than what you were it means something like adventurer there's various debates about where the word

00:05:54.260 comes from there's an icelandic word that means to to go out to turn around to go places there is an

00:06:02.340 area of southern norway called vik it may well in fact refer to a a creek or an inlet of the sea from

00:06:10.200 which these people you know went forth on their adventures but basically to go viking was to go

00:06:16.180 adventuring it was kind of how should one put it a muscular free enterprise which probably meant that

00:06:22.600 if the people you met were ready for you you did a bit of trading if they weren't ready for you you

00:06:29.200 did a bit of smash and grab so it was it was a very kind of flexible free enterprise expansion out into

00:06:37.880 neighboring areas and you can see if you were obviously the object of the smash and grab you had

00:06:41.640 a pretty negative view of of these norse otherwise they'd be quite interesting people trading walrus ivory

00:06:47.500 and amber and all sorts of stuff it's also probable that people had different phases of their lives

00:06:52.860 particularly elite young men in which they did a bit of viking got a bit of money came back got married

00:06:58.460 settled down and turned into a farmer in denmark or norway and put their viking days behind them so as

00:07:04.340 i say viking was probably more of something that you did rather than something that you were but it's now

00:07:11.060 very much entered into the popular culture and i use it we all use it we talk about the viking age we talk

00:07:16.460 about vikings but technically we should be talking about norse and norse culture and vikings are one

00:07:23.440 aspect of that so that also obscures things a bit so i mean are there any misconceptions about vikings

00:07:28.900 besides that you know viking was just sort of a period of your life that you might have taken part in

00:07:33.140 any other big misconceptions about about that i think the other big misconception was that one assumes

00:07:41.180 that vikings were all the same for the whole period of the viking age so basically between let's say

00:07:47.900 750 and you know 1050 big big expansion of people outside scandinavia what people weren't the same

00:07:55.700 throughout that time there were there were different levels of sophistication of different people

00:07:59.320 they changed over time one of the things that's often forgotten is that although the we'll come on to

00:08:06.480 perhaps a little bit later on that although the scandinavian homelands were some of the last

00:08:11.760 places to convert to christianity where vikings settled they tended to convert to christianity

00:08:17.800 within one or two generations so actually the vikings were cultural chameleons they did change where

00:08:23.520 they landed where they arrived at but also they fitted in with what was going on already and that's the

00:08:28.220 kind of image of the christian vikings if you see what i mean away from the homelands that we've

00:08:33.540 totally forgotten about entirely and i think that's something to be borne in mind that they are very

00:08:38.740 very flexible they are very accommodating where they come against across something that they want

00:08:44.240 to accommodate to people that cultural chameleons in many ways so let's let's get more into the norse

00:08:50.760 culture because as you said it's it's uh it's very sophisticated and they have a very somewhat complex

00:08:55.580 mythology which influences their culture because as i was reading the the the legends and the myths

00:09:00.900 like it's sort of they all was like it's like a spider web almost they're all built upon each other

00:09:05.880 and you had to remember what happened you know in this story to understand what happened in this story

00:09:10.140 so how how do we know about norse mythology was there were they you know prolific writers like how do

00:09:17.400 we know about that stuff this is a really really important question it goes to the heart of a lot of

00:09:23.540 what we know or don't know about norse mythology the simple matter is to put it very very simply

00:09:29.560 virtually nobody that believed in norse mythology at any time sat down and wrote about it we see

00:09:39.200 almost all of it through the lens of later writers because for large parts of the viking age the norse

00:09:46.960 that we're talking about were literate or semi-literate they used runes in order to make inscriptions

00:09:52.140 but not to actually create literature so almost everything we know about the norse myths comes

00:09:57.760 from two much later medieval sources the first one is the 13th century prose edda and the 13th century

00:10:06.900 poetic edda and the the prose edda sometimes also called the younger edda is believed to have been

00:10:13.380 written by a man called snorri stirlason that's a great icelandic name isn't it an icelandic chieftain

00:10:19.080 in the early 13th century now snorri himself was a christian and what he basically was doing was he

00:10:26.720 was gathering together a whole bunch of old traditions that were no longer as potent as they

00:10:33.200 once had been because iceland had been christian since about the year 1000 and he was very interested

00:10:38.220 in norse culture and norse poetry and a lot of what he was doing was trying to explain where a lot of

00:10:45.500 complicated imagery in norse poetry came from things like you know calling some calling gold

00:10:53.720 fafnir's bane or something and he goes into the mythology in order to explain what that's about

00:11:00.220 the other big source is something called the poetic edda and that's a collection of anonymous old norse

00:11:06.000 poems brought together probably about 1270s in iceland again written by or brought together by people

00:11:14.320 who actually were christian but who were seeking to bring together explain something about their

00:11:20.540 shared past and explain something about where they were coming from and the kind of language and

00:11:27.320 culture they now use trying to trace its roots really but because of that we see it very much from

00:11:34.020 the lens of much later people and that actually makes it quite difficult because a lot of those sources

00:11:40.620 are not ultimately trying to give you the a to z of norse mythology it's kind of like well you know

00:11:49.080 we do this well let me explain to you a little bit about where that's coming from and you know that's

00:11:53.400 an expression you come across in poetry well let me tell you something about that and so one of the

00:11:58.320 things one of the challenges that we found when we were writing the book was we felt we were a little

00:12:03.580 bit like paleontologists and and you you pick up that great big slab of rock and somewhere buried in

00:12:10.360 it is this is this is skeleton of a dinosaur if you like and it's covered by all this matrix of

00:12:17.240 complexity and explanation and as it is you're looking at it thinking i don't quite get this i can't quite

00:12:22.500 see the shape of it because snorri stillerson wasn't trying to write a comprehensive analysis of

00:12:27.940 norse myths and legends and what we've done is and what you know obviously other people have done as

00:12:31.440 well is we've we've pulled out the various different legends we've teased them out we've made them more

00:12:36.900 discreet and we've written about them and so as a consequence you can then find this particular story

00:12:42.120 or that particular story or this particular tale or tradition but if you actually go back into the

00:12:47.940 prose editor or poetic editor what you'll find is all these things mixed in together

00:12:53.160 mished in together and kind of buried under this there's this quite complicated layer i'm not saying

00:12:58.760 it's not saying it can't be accessed but it does make it quite difficult to actually get your head

00:13:03.560 around it and we've tried to pull it out and say there's a discrete story here a discrete story there

00:13:08.100 there's a tradition here and then of course the stories are amazing they're remarkable they're dramatic

00:13:12.720 they're bloody they're intriguing sometimes they're funny um but you can then examine them as stories in

00:13:19.800 their own right but snorri sterleson wasn't actually storytelling he was pulling on the past in order to

00:13:26.520 make points in 13th century iceland so it's not like ancient greek mythology where we you know there's

00:13:32.320 written stories or even like roman mythology like ovid you know talked about all the different stories

00:13:37.140 very discreetly like you yeah you had to do the work to suss this out to kind of get an idea of what

00:13:42.820 their myth is that's right that's right so it's not like also for example opening up the old

00:13:47.620 testament and it starts at the beginning and it works through and it works through and it works

00:13:51.020 through this this person's story that person's story then this happens and that happens that

00:13:54.780 that's just not how it is you find yourself in the middle of one story and then you're off into

00:13:58.700 another one then you're off into another one and then you double back and then you get as we'll see

00:14:02.780 a bit later on you get a different story about the origins of the world and you're thinking wait a

00:14:07.500 minute i thought i had one story in my head already because clearly there's a lot going on here

00:14:12.320 so it is quite it is quite challenging to read it in the original translation i mean um because

00:14:19.140 as i say it's kind of buried within this matrix of a different kind of agenda but we also find

00:14:25.440 information about the mythology in some other areas as well which is perhaps a little bit more clear cut

00:14:31.520 we can find it in some of the later sagas we might talk about that a bit later on some of the stories

00:14:36.000 that refer to the gods and goddesses we can find it in place names uh and we realize obviously these

00:14:42.140 gods and goddesses were significant to the norse so today a big hiking area in iceland is called

00:14:47.640 thor's morgue thor's forest well obviously that's recording thor you can find places like thundersfield

00:14:54.280 in england thor's open countryside you can find various different place names named after the norse

00:15:00.560 gods and goddesses and that's another source archaeology gives you some information as well

00:15:05.440 we find thor's hammers family archaeologists across scandinavia and in britain and so we can see

00:15:11.700 something about the associated literature culture that went with being a follower of thor we can see

00:15:18.640 on some helmets from sweden we can see mounted warriors with birds on their shoulders probably

00:15:25.600 odin and his ravens we can see a woman carrying a drinking horn from oland in in sweden she's probably

00:15:32.820 a valkyrie a warrior struggles with two bears on a bronze plaque from torslunda also in sweden seems to

00:15:40.920 show you animal hybrids you can go to somewhere in gotland and stare at a picture stone and see odin

00:15:47.720 it doesn't say it's odin but it obviously is from elsewhere riding his eight-legged horse sleep near

00:15:53.620 so all sorts of clues are left in other areas that kind of join the dots to help us make sense of the

00:16:02.440 written sources in snorri for example in north of england and on the isle of man you can find some

00:16:09.380 amazing christian crosses which have pictures of of all things thor fishing for the midgard serpent

00:16:15.680 in cumbria what's going on there you can see odin being eaten by the wolf at ragnarok from kirk

00:16:22.040 andreas on the isle of man you can see regin forging sigurd's sword and sigurd roasting a dragon's heart

00:16:28.620 on a stone cross from halton in lancashire so these show you how as the norse went into other areas

00:16:35.640 they used their existing imagery their powerful mythological imagery to declare themselves to

00:16:43.100 record their stories and sometimes even when they became christians to use the old imagery

00:16:48.700 to carry new messages so we've got the eddas we've got the archaeology it's not complete but from it we

00:16:55.460 can get a picture of some of these dramatic stories and mythologies do we have any idea if there were

00:17:01.300 rituals associated with their mythology like do they make sacrifices to these gods that's yeah good

00:17:06.560 point a lot a lot of what happened within norse mythology we think and within the practice of

00:17:12.660 norse mythology seems to be quite home-based that there were big cult centers for example we know at

00:17:19.060 upsala in sweden was a big cult center where there were big sacrifices people came together in large

00:17:26.340 numbers at upsala when well into the 11th century for example which is pretty late but the evidence

00:17:33.400 seems to suggest that quite a lot of what happened in terms of devotion to a particular god or goddess

00:17:41.380 happened very much within the local community within the home community so for example in iceland we see

00:17:49.480 local chieftains called gothi who seem to be responsible for the local carrying out of devotion

00:17:56.520 to thor or devotion to odin or devotion to freya so quite a lot of it seems to be quite quite quite

00:18:05.260 quite local quite quite small scale in that sense quite community based and without the kind of

00:18:13.480 accompanying literature that you would find within islam or christianity or hinduism so that a lot of

00:18:20.900 it will be orally transmitted from place to place and as a consequence we can't always be sure whether

00:18:27.840 a norse settler in normandy has exactly the same set of ideas and beliefs as a norse settler in

00:18:36.700 dublin let's say or back in the homelands but what we do find the same gods and goddesses cropping up

00:18:43.200 so there is clearly this common pantheon if you like of gods and goddesses but clearly people pick

00:18:49.420 on the ones that they feel most associated with so we have for example somebody in iceland who's called

00:18:55.440 freyas govi because he was so associated with freya that that was the particular devotion that he had

00:19:01.040 we hear in the vindan sagas somebody talking particularly about his devotion to thor so i think

00:19:06.800 in some ways it could be a little bit pick and mix in terms of where you want to delay your emphasis as

00:19:12.500 an individual within norse society but overall you made up this kind of complicated mosaic and there

00:19:18.460 would there would have been sacrifices there would have been rituals that were carried out but we

00:19:23.760 struggle to find what you might call a very clear example of a priesthood or organization across the

00:19:32.580 whole of the norse world just doesn't seem to work quite that way and i imagine that contributed to

00:19:38.500 the the chameleon aspect that you mentioned of norse mythology there wasn't a set like dogma

00:19:43.400 they followed so they were able to incorporate that into their own personal beliefs i think that is very

00:19:49.320 very true i also think it meant that when they moved away from the homelands

00:19:53.340 it actually made it in some ways harder to maintain the old mythologies because on one hand

00:20:00.400 obviously it didn't need a trained priesthood it didn't need literate people to write books as it were

00:20:08.020 but on the other hand it's very low key localized version i think allowed it to dilute and break up

00:20:16.480 more readily and and become more more more more compromised i suppose so we hear for example of

00:20:22.460 an icelandic warrior who was a christian but he prayed to thor before sea journeys and when facing

00:20:28.360 particularly difficult decisions so you think um okay i don't think that's quite how it's meant to

00:20:33.440 work from either side but clearly it allowed him for a generation at least to kind of mix and match

00:20:39.500 between the two and i think it kind of encouraged this this breakup in the long term so strangely enough

00:20:45.380 what was quite a flexible religion in the end probably doomed it to disintegration

00:20:51.180 well let's get into the specifics here of some of the norse mythology so every human culture has

00:20:57.040 a genesis story of some sort creation story what did the norse mythology say about the creation of

00:21:02.020 the world or the universe very very dramatic we have a collection of norse myths known as the

00:21:08.500 prose ed as i said particularly in it there's a section called the tricking of gylfi and in there

00:21:12.700 we find stories brought together telling tales of the adventures of norse gods and giants from the

00:21:17.340 beginning of life to the big building of the bridge bifrost between asgard and the earth and what we have

00:21:23.340 is this image that before time or anything else existed there was simply a great void and no life

00:21:30.040 then there came into existence a place called niflheim with a great spring at its center and from it

00:21:36.720 flowed ten rivers near here was hell gates a flaming region called muspel appeared and from this place

00:21:45.020 at the very end of the world as it were would come cert who would defeat the gods and burn up all things

00:21:51.080 with fire and to begin with out of this frozen scandinavian wasteland you can kind of see the the the

00:21:59.240 geographical background speaking into this out of this frozen wasteland great poison rivers flowed encrusted

00:22:04.540 with ice there we go and from which vapors rose and the northern part of this was covered in thick

00:22:09.600 ice the southern part melted with the heat from muspel at the point where the ice and the heat met

00:22:16.820 and i suspect icelanders would have understood very much about where you know where heat and ice meet

00:22:21.780 the melting drops took on the form of a man and this his this man was actually a giant his name was

00:22:28.180 emir he was a frost giant and from emir we descended all the frost giants he sweated while he slept and

00:22:36.600 from the sweat under his left arm there was formed a male and a female and a sun grew from the sweat of

00:22:42.180 his legs and all the race of frost giants came from him the ice continued to melt and it dripped and it

00:22:49.520 formed a great cow or humla and from its udder there flowed four great rivers of milk which fled this

00:22:57.700 giant then then the cow licked the salty rocks and from these melting rocks appeared somebody called

00:23:04.740 buri and from him came three sons odin who we'll hear a lot more about later villi and vi they killed

00:23:12.680 the giant emir and from his body there flowed so much blood that it drowned all the other frost giants

00:23:19.000 except for one they then took his body broke it apart and created from that body

00:23:26.220 the cosmos as we know it from his body they made the earth from his blood this is odin and his

00:23:32.520 brothers from from from the blood of the giant they made the sea and all the lakes from his bones they

00:23:37.860 made the rocks they took his teeth and created the tumbled broken pieces of rock scree that lie on

00:23:44.680 mountainsides the sea surrounded all the earth and confined the earth in the middle of the great sea

00:23:50.920 then they took his skull and with it they made the sky which had four corners and under each corner

00:23:57.840 there sat a dwarf they took sparks of fire from that place of fire must spell threw it into the air

00:24:06.400 and made the stars they took his brain and made the cloud and then they structured the earth and this

00:24:14.500 is where it'll start to sound familiar to anybody who's read tolkien for example because middle earth's about

00:24:19.080 to appear they said well the earth is a great circle and beyond it lies a great sea and the giants live on

00:24:26.280 the shore of that great sea but they're prevented from entering the other places of the earth because

00:24:31.620 a great hedge has been established there which they've made from the eyelashes odin and the other gods

00:24:37.100 from the eyelashes of emir that mighty hedge is called midgard or middle earth so tolkien you know

00:24:44.320 tolkien fans will recognize middle earth and that's a place where people live and the principle seems to

00:24:49.520 be that the gods are put within within the fence of civilization it's called asgard the fence of the

00:24:55.460 gods the giants are put outside of the fence in utangard outside and in between there is a middle earth

00:25:04.400 if you like midgard where human beings live so you've got this kind of tripartite breakup of different

00:25:11.460 beings you've got the gods in the most civilized place as it were you've got the giants and their

00:25:16.140 forces of destruction and of raw energy and of violence and of lust and they're kind of they're

00:25:23.180 kind of literally literally beyond the pale they're outside the fence and in between kind of a bit of

00:25:28.520 one and a bit of the other you can see human nature here there are human beings and human beings are

00:25:33.680 made from pieces of wood found on the sheets the sea shore and odin and his brothers form these beings

00:25:41.360 and they give one one of the brothers gives them the gift of life the second brother gives beings the

00:25:48.440 gift of consciousness the third gives human beings the gift of speech hearing and sight so you can see

00:25:54.540 how there is this mythological story about how the world as we know it but also the world as we imagine

00:26:01.500 it and as it might be exists and it's all united by this great ash tree so you have to kind of imagine

00:26:09.360 this huge tree yggdrasil and its branches stretch right across the whole world and they unite all these

00:26:17.840 different realms of being it grows up into the god into the realm of the gods its roots go into the land

00:26:24.660 of the giants odin for example goes down to a well there and gives up one of his eyes as payment for

00:26:31.060 wisdom at the very bottom there's a dragon called a nidhogg gnawing at the roots of the tree

00:26:36.500 and the gods hold court at one level and the giants are kind of being touched by the roots of the tree

00:26:43.700 at the other level at the other level and within that that strange kind of view of this kind of tree

00:26:52.160 like connection of the world uh in the middle they're living beneath the ash tree are the norns

00:26:58.000 n-o-r-n-s and they decide the fate of human beings so you have this quite dramatic cosmology of different

00:27:07.080 worlds and levels of being united by this great ash tree and i'm giving you a very simplified version

00:27:14.420 of it because there's there's there's there's stags in the branches and there's a dragon at the bottom

00:27:20.700 called a nidhogg and there's a squirrel called ratatosk who spends all his time running up and down

00:27:26.820 the tree taking messages of ill will and trouble between an eagle on the top and the dragon at the

00:27:32.940 bottom so this this strange mysterious dynamic world as i say trying to explain the world in which

00:27:38.740 we live but also the imaginary world as we think it might be beyond us the world of dragons the world

00:27:44.900 of giants the world of dwarves the world of the gods united by this great this great ash tree

00:27:51.120 no it's it's very complex and really rich i mean it's like you're describing that i was like boy you

00:27:56.500 know the adam and eve story it's pretty pretty simple you know god created the earth in seven days

00:28:01.440 all right adam and eve created that's it it's much more straightforward exactly the the north myths and

00:28:06.080 legends are very very complicated as we assume we come on to look at the gods how the gods came into

00:28:11.060 existence there are sometimes different stories feeding into as well so part of the complexity

00:28:16.600 is due to the fact that there is no one simple canon of what is it we all sign up to and i think what we

00:28:25.960 have to imagine is that when people like snorri stirlersen brought it all together they actually

00:28:31.160 pulled on a tradition that was probably never completely coherent or never completely agreed

00:28:38.380 so if in fact as you're reading it you end up thinking oh wait a minute i'm i'm not following

00:28:42.660 this quite um i thought that was there how's that there it's probably because you're spotting the joins

00:28:47.960 in a story that people like snorri bolted together and you're you're kind of you're kind of spotting

00:28:54.200 the construction evidence and thinking hmm how does that tie together then uh so some some of the

00:28:59.580 the complexities certainly comes from the fact that that people like snorri were bringing together

00:29:04.880 a whole bunch of stories that nobody had actually sat down before that as far as we know and put it

00:29:10.720 all together in one place and that makes a complexity it makes for it being quite intriguing it also means

00:29:15.400 sometimes you get stories that seem to contradict other stories too we're gonna take a quick break for

00:29:19.560 your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so we we talked about how odin came into

00:29:25.560 existence how did the other gods come into existence well this is a very very good question

00:29:29.760 if i could just pause on odin just for one moment because actually snorri has two completely different

00:29:35.600 stories for how odin came into existence indeed how the gods came into existence so this kind of

00:29:40.900 leads into a second question the first one was you know the cow the ice the melting the formation of

00:29:46.740 the gods okay uh but also in in an account called inglinga saga snorri stillerson also has a very very

00:29:55.840 different account dramatically different and he says well actually the gods were once heroes they were

00:30:02.860 they were actually human beings just like you and me and actually they lived to the east of the

00:30:08.720 tanarkvistl river which it sounds like he's talking about the river don now that's in southern

00:30:15.860 russia east of the ukraine and bordering the caucasus so we have one story which is very very

00:30:22.160 mythological and then we have another story by story that says actually there is an account that

00:30:27.560 once the gods lived in the northern caucasus they lived in effectively southern russia and there they

00:30:36.700 were heroic uh they were people they were human beings like you and me but they were so dramatic

00:30:42.660 they were so successful in war that later people decided they were gods in fact he says the land

00:30:49.740 that they lived in was as a land literally land of the asia or asia land so we end up with these two

00:30:56.880 very very different stories and then snorri says well how did that how did they get to be in scandinavia

00:31:02.620 well there were two different families of gods there are the asia and that's odin the one we all know

00:31:09.420 about odin thor frig tyr loki balder heimdal and so on and then there was a different family of gods

00:31:17.060 called the vanir and those are people like niord and his children freya and freya and as as the gods

00:31:25.060 the asia the isia migrated out of asia land they crashed into the vanir and there was a war between

00:31:33.420 the asia and the vanir and in the end they decided they'd make peace by giving each other hostages

00:31:38.840 which said snorri is why you now find some of the gods of the vanir living amongst the asia isia and

00:31:45.920 why you find some of the gods of the isia living among the vanir uh and then they came to scandinavia

00:31:52.080 and they set themselves up there and they founded the kingdoms and then they died and then died and then

00:31:59.160 later people thought they were gods and worshipped them as such and you're thinking what is going on

00:32:06.180 here and i think what's going on here is two things one snorri as a christian is uncomfortable

00:32:16.640 with the idea of the norse gods and goddesses being real gods and goddesses so he puts forward a

00:32:24.420 construction where he says actually they were heroes later people thought they were gods and

00:32:29.360 goddesses and told all these remarkable stories about them that i'm i'm about to tell you now and

00:32:33.960 that's all the stuff that you know we know about norse myths and stuff but actually between you and me

00:32:38.500 they weren't real gods they were just heroes and other people got it wrong so i think partly that's

00:32:44.140 going on it's snorri working with earlier myths and feeling uncomfortable with what he's got

00:32:49.580 secondly i think probably that in this relationship between the isia and the vanir you've probably got

00:32:58.640 two earlier traditions of religion within the norse so probably at some point people in scandinavia

00:33:07.540 believed in a different set of gods and goddesses and one group became more dominant than the other

00:33:13.680 one ideology became more successful than the other and that left people with it with a puzzle because

00:33:20.100 they ended up with gods they knew pretty well who were warrior out there gods you know fighting gods

00:33:25.320 people like odin and thor and so on but they also were left with people that were primarily fertility

00:33:31.860 gods a freya for example and her brother freya and it's possible this is all a bit speculative but

00:33:38.980 it's possible the fertility gods actually belonged to a different layer of norse mythology and at some

00:33:44.760 point in prehistory that will never ever untangle these two ideologies these two different religions

00:33:51.180 clashed came together and were kind of fused and what came out of it was this strange kind of

00:33:58.120 construct where there's two different families of the gods they live in different places they do marry

00:34:03.980 each other they do have relationships they do sort of work together but they're kind of different

00:34:08.160 amazing isn't it no it is amazing and the way the the the gods are described like they're they're

00:34:14.380 very human right it's not like the christian god like they're very human like it's almost like

00:34:19.480 they're humans with superpowers right like they're like the marvel comic thor um yes so like were they i

00:34:25.380 guess imagine they weren't omnipotent or omniscient correct it is quite curious because i say when you

00:34:30.460 have this one with this one thread of snorri they are they're magical figures but odin actually is a mortal

00:34:36.660 who dies and is cremated and and so on but when you get onto the more fully formed myths when you

00:34:42.180 actually are describing them as being gods as it were on one level they appear immortal they appear

00:34:48.720 all-seeing they appear all-knowing they reveal themselves to people they can disguise themselves

00:34:54.340 they take sides in quarrels people pray to them and so on but as you look at them they actually are much

00:35:01.080 more like empowered divine human beings so they've got a lot more in common with the inhabitants of

00:35:10.900 greek olympus than they have with with with any christian or islamic for example view of god so for

00:35:19.520 example they're very flawed they fall out with each other they squabble with each other they fight with

00:35:24.460 each other they betray with each other they commit adultery you know odin for example has to sacrifice

00:35:28.940 his eye to get wise thor ends up with a fight with a giant and a giant's whetstone you know embedded in

00:35:35.220 his skull we see them having affairs with giantesses yeah so giants aren't always bad you see we see we

00:35:42.700 see them causing trouble as well when we look at loki in a little while we see that we see mischief

00:35:48.900 going on and of course eventually hanging over all of this is the day of ragnarok which which no doubt

00:35:56.260 we'll look we'll look at a little bit later on that effectively these gods apparently immortal

00:36:01.240 apparently all-powerful apparently dramatic have hanging over them utter and complete destruction

00:36:08.940 the day of ragnarok is always coming the monsters will break out the giants will crash into asgard

00:36:18.560 the home of the gods they will destroy the bridge by frost they will bring down the created order

00:36:25.760 in fire it will be the twilight of the gods that's that's intense and we'll talk about ragnarok here

00:36:33.480 in a bit but let's talk about each of the individual gods because like like the greek gods they all seem

00:36:37.760 to take on a particular attribute or virtue or they represented something larger so like odin he's often

00:36:44.580 called the all-father he's like the like sort of zeus in the the olympic gods but he what did he

00:36:51.180 represent to the to the norse odin's very odin's interesting actually very interesting because on one

00:36:57.240 level he he he is a warrior god we hear stories of odin throwing his spear over the assembled host and

00:37:04.340 that would decide who would live and who would die we hear about valkyries these extraordinary women

00:37:10.100 who ride out and and and choose the best of the dead the best of the slain to come back and and

00:37:17.320 live in odin's hall in in valhalla i mean it's one of those places that lots of people have heard of

00:37:22.540 and they they fight all day and kill each other all day and then they feast all night and they're all

00:37:28.000 ready to come to odin's aid on the day of ragnarok so on one hand he is he he is a warrior god and it's

00:37:35.800 interesting that for example the anglo-saxons when they were pagans in england they believed in a

00:37:42.340 similar god called woden woden is odin for example and every single one of the anglo-saxon royal

00:37:47.940 families except for the royal family of the kingdom of essex all claim descent from woden that is odin

00:37:54.440 so odin in on one hand is is is a warrior god he's he's a god of aristocrats he's a god of rulers

00:38:01.160 he's a god of kings he's a god who's going to sort of you know grant you victory in battle but on the

00:38:07.640 other hand he's also mysterious because he can also sometimes choose to travel in the company of men

00:38:14.880 in the guise of grima the masked one and and when he's in his masked form you don't know it's odin at

00:38:21.660 all and then he's mysterious then he's challenging then he's troubling so for example he he come he

00:38:28.620 comes across thor in a myth called the conflict at the ferry and they end up in a battle of insults

00:38:34.860 they're very very very rude to each other and thor comes off worst and you're thinking but he never

00:38:41.360 know he never knows it's odin doing this to him we see for example the sons of a king king hrodon

00:38:48.980 frig odin's wife looks after one odin looks after the other and they both compete as to which ones of

00:38:58.080 these little boys who are there who are their clients are going to win and and odin basically

00:39:03.820 encourages one to betray the other to undermine the other to to just destroy the other we we see in the

00:39:11.140 saga of king hrolf kraki that on his way to battle he stays at the house of a farmer strange mysterious

00:39:18.520 old man you know the classic stuff you know gray beard hood up one-eyed perhaps and he makes a mistake

00:39:25.500 there he doesn't accept gifts given him by the man and later on we discover ah it was odin if only he'd

00:39:32.440 accepted them and as a result of that odin's angry and odin curses him and and hrolf kraki dies in

00:39:39.500 battle so on one hand we have this we have this odin all-father as he's described this kind of zeus

00:39:45.460 type figure on the other hand we have this rather strange mysterious sometimes appears in disguise god

00:39:52.240 you don't quite know it's him or not um he sits beneath the scaffold because he's the god of the slain

00:39:59.220 what's what you know what's that all about you know is valkyries choose who will live and who will die

00:40:04.720 there is something quite there was something quite grim in the way which we normally use that word

00:40:08.880 about odin as well as grand and it's also interesting that at some point it looks like he might have

00:40:16.020 surpassed or replaced thor as the chief god because some very early records talk about three major norse

00:40:25.880 gods being worshipped in scandinavia and they seem to suggest that it's thor who's first so we'll come

00:40:34.020 on to thor perhaps in a moment but it looks like there might have been a time when odin and thor

00:40:38.740 well it wasn't necessarily clear who was the dominant force between the two and at some point

00:40:45.100 this looks like there may have been a shift in the mythology and odin became the dominant god with thor

00:40:50.860 then becoming as we see in a moment much more the god of farmers the god of weather and so on and so

00:40:58.460 forth but but we can't trace exactly when that happened or why that happened because we haven't got

00:41:02.520 written records for it well yeah yeah odin's a very complex guy so he's not only he's like he's a warrior

00:41:07.120 god he's mysterious because he can go around disguise but he's also the god of like wisdom you

00:41:11.220 know he sacrificed his eye for wisdom then he like hung himself on a tree you know a sacrifice to

00:41:17.700 myself for myself so he could uncover the power of the rune yeah to get to get the power of rune magic

00:41:23.000 yeah yeah that's right what was rune magic that was just like the the power of like knowing what the

00:41:27.000 symbols meant or did they actually yes yeah i mean basically runes were scandinavian letter forms

00:41:35.740 deliberately made angular because they are very easy to carve on wood or engrave on stone or put

00:41:44.980 into metal and it just reminds us that the pre-christian scandinavia was not entirely illiterate

00:41:51.860 runes were used and they were used to do very mundane things i mean i've seen a comb for example from

00:41:58.880 um eastern england and it just says hot roth made this comb in rooms that's not terribly magical

00:42:05.220 but then you find other use of runes were thought to in right in certain combinations they become

00:42:11.000 spells so runes are an interestingly ambiguous thing on one hand they are mundane things you can

00:42:19.300 find rune stones in scandinavia that will simply sell you tell you this guy went on an adventure to

00:42:25.520 the east he died fighting the saracens he never came back oh that was a bit of a disaster wasn't it

00:42:31.140 but by the way um he's left his land to his brothers and his sons straightforward memorial

00:42:35.960 stuff but you could also find things engraved with runes in which the runes in their combinations

00:42:42.040 seem to be magical and it's quite clear that some people in norse the norse period believe that runes

00:42:50.200 in combination had magical significance and they believed that the the power to use runes and to work

00:42:57.040 magic went back to this original odin hanging himself on the tree sacrificing himself to himself

00:43:02.880 reaching out screaming grabbing the runes and having this magical knowledge in his grasp so he is you're

00:43:10.820 absolutely right he's he's also a god of magic and it was said that he gained this magic from his

00:43:17.020 relationship with the vanir those um those rather more fertility gods and goddesses that we mentioned

00:43:25.280 earlier on that he had a special kind of magic that he could use to to to take over people's minds to

00:43:31.340 control people's minds and of course some people who are adherents of odin believe that if they

00:43:36.340 listened to him and they did these things that they could gain this magic for themselves so he is a

00:43:40.580 complex character thor is interesting too of course yeah let's talk about thor because he's famous because

00:43:46.100 of marvel comics and the movies absolutely but tell us about him well as i say it's possible that thor

00:43:52.640 may represent earlier strata of norse belief before the warrior god of the vikings you know odin as it

00:43:58.300 were he's a weather god that's why we have thunder for example the word thunder comes from thor thor's

00:44:04.100 voice thursday appropriately today we're speaking about today thursday is thor's day as a matter of

00:44:10.160 interest so the days of the week often record the names of norse gods and goddesses he's very popular

00:44:16.500 amongst ordinary farming folk and he's he's also the traditional enemies of giants and defenders of

00:44:23.360 the homes of the gods so for example we see him going off to to get a giant cauldron in a poem called

00:44:30.020 hymia's poem he gets caught up in all sorts of adventures he he's often comic we have him cross

00:44:36.260 dressing as a woman to fool giants in thrym's poem for example he sometimes is presented as being

00:44:43.200 strong but not very bright he's bested by odin at the insult which takes place at the ferry

00:44:49.940 in the tricking of gilfi he doesn't know he's hiding in a giant's glove so in the morning he says

00:44:55.780 oh that that strange place we're hiding in it was a giant's glove he he gets beaten at a series of

00:45:01.280 challenges in the hall of king utgada loki but he's clearly popular he's clearly popular he's popular

00:45:10.340 amongst ordinary people he's regarded as as a weather god perhaps a god of of crops he's famous

00:45:17.420 for his magical hammer mjolnir depicted as a fearsome weapon to crush skulls and level mountains

00:45:23.880 he battles with the midgard serpent which is this this this strange mythological creature who's a sea

00:45:32.080 serpent fathered by loki with a giant s so large encircles the entire world and according to norse

00:45:39.280 mythology thor will encounter the midgard serpent three times three times he'll battle it he'll go

00:45:45.380 on a fishing trip and he'll almost get it into the boat and and then it'll break three and the third

00:45:50.560 time he comes across it will be at ragnarok the end of the world when they will destroy each other so

00:45:58.260 he is he's a guardian of the gods he's a protector of the gods he's the one that goes off on adventures

00:46:04.120 into giant land he crushes giant skulls but on the other hand sometimes he's strong but he's not

00:46:10.060 very quick he's he can he could be a bit poked fun at basically in the mythology no one pokes fun

00:46:18.240 odin but they sometimes do at thor what another god that's pretty famous that a lot of people think

00:46:23.840 about when they think about the the the norse gods is tier is another one what was what did he

00:46:28.940 represent what was his role in the mythology tier is interesting because tier is a war god who you

00:46:35.020 would think would have a higher profile than he does in norse mythology when he appears he's clearly

00:46:42.260 a war god he also presides over matters of justice and of law he's remembered in tuesday for example

00:46:48.360 two or tier are related names of the of this god and he gave his name to the t rune in norse

00:46:55.700 runic alphabet he's has quite a dramatic character when he does appear in one of the poems in the

00:47:03.600 poetic edda the valkyries go out and they instruct the human hero sigurd to invoke tier for victory in

00:47:10.460 battle pray to him and he'll give you battle victory in another edic poem loki loki insults him by saying

00:47:17.920 you're good at stirring up people into strife but you're no good at reconciling them are you

00:47:22.320 he is given the job for example of holding the jaws of fenrir the wolf who is this great

00:47:30.680 terrible destructive wolf character who the gods decide they want to chain up to stop him destroying

00:47:36.980 them and the wolf basically says no i'm not having any of that and they say well look what we'll do is

00:47:42.620 we we promise you that tier will put his hand in your mouth and we'll therefore put this silken cord

00:47:50.160 around you and you know that we won't obviously do anything against you because you could why would

00:47:54.540 we do that because obviously tier has put his hand into your mouth as as a hostage and anyway they then

00:47:59.200 put this silken cord around the wolf it then turns into an incredibly strong chain that the wolf cannot

00:48:05.100 break free of and he bites off tier's arm so tier's a very important character in here because by

00:48:10.600 sacrificing his hand or his arm he allows the gods to chain up this terrible wolf fenrir the wolf

00:48:18.480 this great wolf of destruction so he's important but for such an important god he doesn't appear as

00:48:26.800 much as you think he would or should in norse mythology and one of the theories is that like thor

00:48:35.600 he's been overshadowed by odin and that at some point in the formation of norse mythology

00:48:42.480 tier was a more dominant war god than he later was and as the cult of odin increased in its popularity

00:48:50.440 that he rather overshadowed tier so tier was left with this role of hero warrior god the one who

00:48:59.200 who helps control the wolf he'll be there on ragnarok fighting but he's no longer as dominant as he

00:49:06.720 should be you would have thought because odin seems to have displaced him somewhat well one god that

00:49:12.960 gets a lot of play in the mythology you've mentioned his name throughout this is loki yes what did his

00:49:18.440 what was his role in in the norse mythology loki is a very very interesting god it's it's very easy

00:49:28.180 to simply see loki or loki as the norse equivalent of the devil but loki is is more complicated

00:49:40.940 than that in as much as there's an ambiguity about about him there's a whole collection in the prose

00:49:48.700 editor a section called the tricking of gilfi in which we're introduced to the trickster god

00:49:54.180 loki and his terrible children and his character is absolutely central to norse mythology and to the

00:50:00.360 group dynamics of the gods what's interesting is loki is described as the half brother of odin

00:50:06.280 they share the same mother but whereas odin's father was one of the gods loki's father was a giant

00:50:14.540 so immediately we have this kind of ah there's giant dna in loki this is not going to end well

00:50:21.500 because as i say the god the gods look at the giants as being the forces of destruction primordial

00:50:27.800 chaos for example so that means that but it means that loki enjoys a peculiar distinction he belongs

00:50:34.640 to two worlds at the same time the gods and the giants natural enemies he's a cause of conflict but

00:50:41.360 other times he's a trick he's a trickster god he's not always portrayed as evil for example he is

00:50:47.280 described for example in the cirrus's prophecy as that evil loving loki and snorri describes him as

00:50:55.720 loki has a handsome and pleasing appearance but he is evil in character and he behaves capriciously

00:51:01.920 and we can certainly see that he insults the gods and goddesses in loki's quarrel and causes no end of

00:51:08.020 trouble he contrives the death of balder by the blind god hod because he twigs that the mistletoe

00:51:14.800 had never promised it wouldn't hurt balder so ah he can fashion an arrow out of that get hod to throw

00:51:21.620 it or fire it and kill balder now this is just sheer nastiness this is this is evil mischief making

00:51:28.520 no question about that but on the other hand on the other hand he's also seen as being a trickster god

00:51:36.880 he is seen as sometimes being on adventures with uh thor for example he's not always presented as

00:51:45.000 being ultimately evil but the evil is always there bubbling below the character below the surface and

00:51:52.140 it's not surprising for example that he he fathers a whole bunch of destructive forces he's the father

00:51:59.960 of fenrir the wolf who will eventually destroy odin um he's he he's the father of the midgard serpent

00:52:07.080 that will eventually kill thor he's the father of hell who will prevent who will eventually create a

00:52:12.720 boat that will allow the force of destruction to sail right up to asgard and destroy it so loki is a

00:52:19.380 curious character he clearly is presented in a lot of stories as evil as destructive in other ones

00:52:26.700 he is a trickster god a god of who uses his wits as it were who's always out for number one

00:52:34.160 but it's curiously ambiguous it's as if the norse could not finally come down on one side or the other

00:52:40.560 as to who they who they see him as but ultimately he will make his own decision and he will decide

00:52:47.140 against the gods at ragnarok and he will be a primary force in their ultimate destruction so i suppose

00:52:53.540 that's the ultimate that's the ultimate ending yeah he will destroy the gods eventually whatever

00:52:58.140 he's done in the past now my favorite story of loki was the one where he was he was an asgard and he

00:53:03.740 was just stirring the pot like he was going around each of the gods and saying and sort of bringing up

00:53:08.160 their own like the stuff you don't talk about and they're like no don't talk about that very

00:53:13.400 sexual right yeah very sexual i mean it reminded me of like the person like in your you know that one

00:53:17.080 person in your family they just when there's a family reunion they're always like they're trying to

00:53:21.680 create conflict that's what loki was doing yeah i mean he's really rude as well he goes in and says

00:53:27.720 freya yeah yeah do you remember the time you're having sex with your brother and yeah and everybody

00:53:32.440 came in and found you yeah yeah and while you were doing it you were so embarrassed you suddenly

00:53:36.360 you you suddenly passed wind very very loudly you're thinking what what loki says that now not

00:53:44.060 surprisingly people are shocked and horrified yes he's a stirring up god if anybody's got an uncle like

00:53:49.080 that their family's got a problem right well let's talk about ragnarok this is all leading up there so

00:53:53.780 the gods are they're they're powerful they're omniscient and like but they know that they're

00:53:59.720 going to be destroyed at some point at ragnarok so what happens at ragnarok ragnarok hangs over the

00:54:05.540 gods throughout it is this kind of dark shadow it is this this cloud that's always on the horizon

00:54:12.720 and we we are told that ragnarok will come at a point in the future that is signaled by certain

00:54:20.520 cosmic events there will be three terrible winters in which the world will be torn by conflict

00:54:28.140 son against father daughter against mother terrible destructions then as if that isn't enough it'll be

00:54:34.840 followed by three strange and cold winters deep snow will cover the land the sun will let the heat

00:54:40.740 to thaw that deep snow and after those six winters the forces of chaos that have been held

00:54:47.540 throughout the centuries will finally break free the wolf named skull will pursue the sun

00:54:54.880 catch up with her and will swallow her bringing disaster on all people the wolf called hati

00:55:01.960 hodrit nitsun will pursue the moon and will swallow the moon the stars will disappear from the sky

00:55:09.080 the earth will be shaken mountains will fall and trees will be uprooted fenrir the wolf the greatest

00:55:15.660 force of destruction will break his bonds and be free the midgard serpent that circles the world in

00:55:22.440 its rage will fling itself against the shore and the sea will flow across the land the ship nagald far

00:55:29.280 constructed from the fingernails and toenails of dead men will break forth from its moorings the midgard

00:55:36.180 serpent will spit its poison across sky and sea and side by side with fenrir the wolf and with that

00:55:44.080 great and terrible ship will drive towards asgard the sky will tear apart the sons of muspel will ride

00:55:52.260 from the place of fire they will break the bridge bifrost that connects heaven and earth freya the

00:55:58.160 vanir god will fall tear too will fall in battle before the great evil dog called garm odin himself

00:56:05.860 will at last die swallowed by the jaws of fenrir the wolf loki and heimdall will kill each other in battle

00:56:14.180 and fire will consume the whole world thor will at last kill the midgard serpent but as he walks away

00:56:22.820 from it he will succumb to its poison and the world of the gods will crumble in fire destruction

00:56:30.780 terror and blood that's frightening no it's really scary like but it's it's not the end because the

00:56:39.340 strange thing is that we are told that somehow the earth will once more rise from the sea green will

00:56:48.360 come back crops will grow two or three gods will have survived the slaughter a couple of people

00:56:55.840 will have survived the slaughter and it will start to grow again it's as if they will rebuild from the

00:57:04.180 ashes of the destruction but they will find golden playing police pieces lying in the long grass and

00:57:12.400 pick them up and think these are remnants of a world now gone of games once played by gods no longer

00:57:19.780 here so there is a strange suggestion that after ragnarok comes something else intriguing it is

00:57:28.440 intriguing so we've talked about norse mythology but another part of norse literature that we have

00:57:34.460 thanks to these these 13th century writers are the sagas yes what were the sagas and how did they

00:57:40.900 incorporate norse mythology into them many people will will know norse culture from the sagas basically

00:57:50.660 mostly in iceland in the 13th century a little bit later we get a series of dramatic stories being told

00:57:57.060 about the doings of heroes and they tend to fit into a number of broad categories some of them are what

00:58:04.140 we call family sagas they tell the doings of great characters from the icelandic past who've sailed the

00:58:11.280 seas and founded settlements and and carved our home in the wilderness i mean it's very much american west

00:58:17.660 type stuff you know go west young man and create your destiny type stuff and it's those sort of pioneering

00:58:23.200 people that appear in the family sagas every now and then we get we get we get little snippets of gods and

00:58:28.540 goddesses and mythology but mostly they are larger than life possibly possibly real people from the

00:58:36.040 past but they have a kind of um a robin hood king arthur type feel about them you have a feeling maybe

00:58:42.400 they did exist but maybe they've been added to and developed over time those are the family sagas and

00:58:47.840 some of them are not mythological at all they basically are the everyday violent doings of icelandic folk

00:58:53.700 but then we have other ones which we call the funalda sagas sagas the ancient times and those

00:59:00.860 are ones that kind of form a bridge between the straightforward myths that we've been talking

00:59:05.360 about and the non-supernatural world of politics family quarrels ambitions burning your neighbor's

00:59:11.420 farm that we find in the family sagas and they tend to have strange mixtures of real life people

00:59:19.880 and some pretty mythological events so for example in one called the saga of the volsungs we see the

00:59:25.760 human world but we also see echoes of real perhaps fourth and fifth century events but intermingled

00:59:32.560 with mythological features we see a broken sword being reformed again very lords of the rings this

00:59:38.960 and therefore being invincible we see the doings of the gods and the goddesses appearing alongside

00:59:45.120 events that maybe echoes of real historical events we see fafnir the dragon that the serpent dragon

00:59:52.840 being killed by sigurds by sigurd the warrior but these kind of strange clearly mythological events

00:59:59.940 are often set in a half remembered world of of early germanic tribes battles with the huns folk movements

01:00:09.360 that happened at the end of the roman empire so the the the sagas of the ancient times are the ones

01:00:15.820 that give us our best mix of mythological elements mixed in with echoes of perhaps real events

01:00:24.340 and that's quite intriguing because it just goes to show how people do mix the mythological and the

01:00:32.320 half remembered history together in one go but but some of the sagas aren't like that at all they are

01:00:36.800 they are as i say the everyday story of fairly violent icelandic folk and as you talk about in

01:00:43.000 the book like the sagas there was like this period where it was just they were just pumping these

01:00:46.720 things out um why what was going on there why was there just like and this was before there was a lot

01:00:52.660 of written records in europe but in iceland for whatever reason they were just putting stuff out

01:00:58.840 with these sagas what was going on there yeah that's a good point because there clearly is a huge

01:01:03.460 formative period towards the end of the the 12th into the 13th century a story sturluson for example

01:01:08.040 you know he's writing about the 1220s you know that that sort of period of time and there's a huge

01:01:13.020 creative activity there in which these these things are being put together and retold and told and retold

01:01:18.340 again and so on there's a big debate what's going on here one way of viewing is that by the 13th

01:01:25.000 century christianity is is is dominant in iceland the battle's been won the cross of christ has has

01:01:31.360 beaten the hammer of four and that allows christian icelandic writers to if you like draw upon their

01:01:39.640 current cultural heritage because it's no longer spiritually threatening they can talk about it

01:01:46.320 because most people don't believe in that kind of thing anymore so it's almost like now we don't

01:01:51.580 believe that anymore now we don't think those gods really were real let's talk about it there also

01:01:59.060 seems to have been a kind of a a self-conscious antiquarianism as well a kind of a let's celebrate

01:02:05.460 our historic roots let's define ourselves as who we are as icelanders for example and some of that

01:02:12.020 may have been because of politics there was a big tussle going on at the time between the dominant

01:02:18.520 forces in iceland and the king of norway as to whether iceland was to remain an independent

01:02:24.100 republic or whether it was to be brought back under the control of the norwegian kings in the end the

01:02:29.900 norwegian kings won out sad to say snorri sterleson who we've heard an awful lot about today was murdered

01:02:37.440 by agents of the norwegian king in fact you can go to his farmstead on iceland and you can sit next door

01:02:44.600 to the natural hot water pool where snorri went of an evening with his friends and gathered all these

01:02:50.780 legends and you can step back from it and just down the hill there'll be the remains of the barn

01:02:55.180 where snorri ran into there to try to escape his assassins was tracked down into a corner and was was

01:03:01.640 a hack to death so not a happy ending for snorri i'm afraid but it may well be that some of the

01:03:07.660 politics of the time encouraged people like snorri to try to create an icelandic culture which was

01:03:15.640 independent of norway vibrant culturally confident as part almost if you like of kind of like a nascent

01:03:23.320 icelandic nationalism but because of that we suddenly get this explosion of literary accounts

01:03:31.300 of traditions which otherwise would have been totally lost and this one man snorri sterleson is

01:03:37.340 actually responsible for a considerable amount of it he's not the only one but he's responsible for

01:03:41.840 a considerable amount of it and it does remind us how certain people in history can pay a major part in

01:03:48.040 preserving and communicating the traditions of their people so throughout this you've been talking about

01:03:54.660 how we still see the influence of norse mythology in our culture today there we have days of the week

01:03:59.840 named after gods tolkien used norse mythology a lot in his work where else do we still see it today

01:04:05.960 in the 21st century well clearly it's spoken to quite a lot of our view of the northern world

01:04:11.300 richard wagner for example the ring of the neuberlung twilight of the gods a lot of people will know about

01:04:17.680 ragnarok and this these incredible stories they'll know about gold hidden in the rhine they'll know

01:04:24.120 about some of these norse heroes because of the big input into particularly 19th century

01:04:29.260 classical music for example particularly german music and wagner played a very big part of that

01:04:34.380 the ring cycle for example the operatic ring cycle a big part of popularizing that in the 19th century

01:04:40.720 yep we've got tolkien when you read the hobbit when you look at the lords of the rings and you look at

01:04:47.040 the world of middle earth it's that word again midgard when you see these giants and you see you know

01:04:54.320 effectively trolls when you see elves and dwarfs you are looking into a world which is very much

01:05:02.260 indebted to the mythology of the northern world of the norse and also of the pre-christian anglo-saxons

01:05:09.940 and it's not surprising for example that tolkien was an old english scholar and he was an academic

01:05:16.300 uh he he knew his stuff so that's that's entered into our mythology in a very big way in different

01:05:22.900 ways of course marvel have picked up the whole concept of thor and these dramatic larger-than-life

01:05:29.920 characters and so in many ways many people now know about thor not because of the myths themselves

01:05:36.500 not because of these echoes in in other mythologies but they know about him because of his place within

01:05:42.900 you know the avengers films within marvel's comics and in many ways we're seeing a quite interesting

01:05:48.680 take on thor there where he is clearly regarded as a superhero and yet he seems straight to human as

01:05:54.960 well so that's an interesting take on him and an interesting retake recreation of him we could also

01:06:01.860 see a very dark side as well it's not it's it's not surprising for example that the nazis in the 1930s

01:06:09.040 became absolutely obsessed with nordic mythology it's not surprising for example that the ss runes

01:06:16.240 that we see on the helmets of you know hitler's black-shirted black uniformed nazi army you know

01:06:24.400 the ss waffen ss are in fact taken from from norse mythology so the nazis sadly took this north

01:06:32.340 norse mythology and gave it a terrible dark spin as a way of trying to create a different kind of

01:06:38.460 religious mythology to christianity which they were very very against but perhaps it perhaps in a

01:06:44.400 more positive sense because always that's a very dark use and a very dark manipulation of norse

01:06:49.640 mythology i think one of the reasons why they are of enduring interest to people is because rather like

01:06:58.140 the greek deities for all their mythological character they do rather look like larger than life

01:07:06.220 humans and looking at the norse myths you can see themes of love betrayal lust greed conflict and

01:07:15.820 interaction you can see conflict between forces of construction you can see forces of of chaos and i think

01:07:23.320 people find that quite approachable and quite an interesting illustrative way to talk about you know

01:07:28.640 some of some of the both light and dark aspects of of human nature if you see what i mean and also i guess

01:07:35.600 ragnarok may sometimes appeal to a rather nihilistic element of human nature living in a nuclear age

01:07:43.400 so the norse myths remain with us and still intrigue us well martin i've really enjoyed our conversation

01:07:51.000 is there some place people can go to learn more about the book in your work for those wishing to

01:07:54.900 explore this topic further our recently published book tales of valhalla norse myths and legends by

01:08:01.140 martin and hannah wittock and published by pegasus books of new york offers a retelling of the stories

01:08:06.520 and because this is a retelling rather than a new translation we have had the freedom to focus on the

01:08:12.920 particular stories explain aspects otherwise may be confusing or obscure and introduce each story

01:08:18.860 with background information but we have kept close to the content of the original old norse myths and

01:08:24.740 legends to read these stories in their original context a number of modern academic translations

01:08:31.320 are available and listeners could find these by looking for prose edda poetic edda and the various sagas

01:08:39.400 either through local booksellers or online searches well martin thanks so much time it's been a pleasure

01:08:45.160 thank you for having me it's been good to be with you my guest today was martin wittock he is the

01:08:48.740 co-author of the book tales of valhalla it's available on amazon.com also check out our show notes at

01:08:53.720 aom.is slash norse myths where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

01:08:58.720 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com where

01:09:10.760 you can find all the podcast archives there are coming up on 500 also we've got thousands of

01:09:14.900 articles up there including a whole series about norse mythology so check that out and if you haven't

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01:09:30.400 continued support until next time this is brett mckay reminding you to not only listen to the

01:09:33.820 aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - April 15, 2019

#499： A Fascinating Primer on Norse Mythology

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