The Norse Myths

by Carolyne Larrington

  Legends change as they migrate across territorial and language boundaries. If we compare the version of the Sigurðr/Siegfried story preserved in the Austrian–German Nibelungenlied from around 1200, and the Norse poetic and prose versions, retold in Chapter 4, we find that the relationships between the main characters are completely reoriented. In the southern version, the main focus is on a sister’s revenge on her brothers for slaying her husband. In the northern versions, the sister forgives her brothers and takes terrible vengeance on her second husband for murdering them. These variations tell us something about changing cultural norms; the stories explore where a sister’s true loyalty might lie once she has become a wife. Myths and legends are mutable, labile; if they have a cultural role they are remembered, reshaped and, usually through writing or other forms of fixing, preserved. If they no longer hold meaning, they vanish. There must have been a huge number of stories of gods and heroes that did not make it into the Norse ‘myth-kitty’, tales of local or culture-wide currency that are now lost for ever.

  PLACES AND OBJECTS

  Some clues about the lost treasure of the ‘myth-kitty’ are offered by early references to pre-Christian religion, by archaeological finds or – particularly important in the Old Norse cultural area – by stone sculpture. Although much Old Norse religious ritual seems to have taken place outdoors, temples were built. There’s an account dating from the 1070s, written by a scholar named Adam of Bremen, of the great temple at Uppsala in central Sweden. Sweden converted to Christianity rather later than Norway and Iceland, and Uppsala was a centre for all kinds of activities: political, administrative, religious and legal. Statues of Thor, Wotan and Frikko (Þórr, Óðinn and Freyr) were enthroned in the Uppsala temple, Adam tells us. Þórr occupied the central position while the other two gods sat on either side. Near the temple was a huge evergreen tree, with a well beneath it in which men were drowned as offerings. Both humans and animals were sacrificed by hanging on the tree, dogs, horses and men all dangling together. As mentioned above, myths associated with Óðinn emphasize the importance of hanging as the primary form of sacrificial death.

  Depiction of the great temple at Uppsala, with a sacrificed man visible in the well, from A Description of the Northern Peoples by Olaus Magnus (1555).

  The Oseberg Ship-Burial

  In 1903 a farmer in Vestfold, southern Norway, discovered part of a ship when digging into a mound in his fields. Archaeologists from the University of Oslo excavated the site the following summer and uncovered a huge, richly carved ship, 21.5 metres (70 feet 6 inches) long and 5 metres (16 feet 5 inches) wide. The ship had been manufactured from oak timber around 820 CE, and it was capable of being rowed by thirty oarsmen. The ship had been dragged up onto the land in 834 CE and used for the tomb of two obviously high-status women. One was aged between seventy and eighty, the other probably around fifty, and they lay together on a bed in a splendidly decorated hut erected behind the ship’s mast. The burial chamber was hung with ornate tapestries, and contained lots of possessions: furniture, clothing, shoes, combs, sledges and an elaborately decorated bucket were all arranged around the women. The skeletons of fifteen horses, six dogs and two small cows were also present. The mound was broken into during the medieval past and all the precious metal objects which must have been buried there were stolen, but the high quality of the larger and heavier items that remained suggest that the older woman might well have been a queen. You can see the Oseberg ship, and two others like it, at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

  Archaeological finds also buttress our understanding of the Norse mythic world, giving us a sense of what the weapons, shields, houses and boats mentioned in the stories might have looked like. Such material objects expand our imaginative recreation of the worlds of gods and heroes. Some items found in graves suggest that certain men and women were magic-practitioners who used mysterious objects in their rituals. Descriptions of ship-burials in mythic texts indicate that funeral vessels were set ablaze or sent out to sea;. This kind of ceremony would not leave any archaeological traces; nevertheless, the Oseberg ship-burial proves that ships were indeed thought appropriate for entombing the bodies of high-born men and women.

  The ninth-century Oseberg ship, on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.

  An Early Gotlandic Picture-Stone

  One striking picture-stone image comes from Austers in the parish of Hangvar on Gotland and dates from between 400 and 600 CE. It shows a multi-legged monster with a human figure perhaps placing its hand in the beast’s mouth, or at least seizing its lower jaw. This scene has been compared with the story of Týr who lost his hand to the cosmic wolf Fenrir, but it takes some imagination to see this strange millipede-like creature as a representation of the beast that will swallow up Óðinn at the end of the world.

  The picture-stone from Austers in Hangvar, Gotland.

  Most important for confirming and elaborating the myths and legends of the north are the Viking-Age stone sculptures – incised picture-stones or carved three-dimensional representations of supernatural or heroic figures. These are chiefly preserved in island outposts of the Viking diaspora, such as the Isle of Man or the island of Gotland, lying in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, which has long been a crossroads for trade and travel in the northern seas. Gotland has 475 surviving picture-stones with carved representations of complex scenes. The idiosyncratic details have made it possible to identify Óðinn on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir (see Chapter 1), scenes from the legend of Völundr the smith (see Chapter 2), and parts of the Sigurðr legend (Chapter 4).

  Sometimes, as with Óðinn’s eight-legged horse or the representations of the god Þórr fishing for the Miðgarðs-serpent with his ox-head bait, there’s a detail so particular that it can only be explained as belonging to a particular Norse myth. Thus we can connect surviving myths and legends with stone sculptures across the Viking world. In each community, local tradition fused with inherited story, nowhere more strikingly than in the Isle of Man where Norse legendary images were carved onto Christian crosses, setting up dialogues with Christian belief. Motifs from the story of Sigurðr the Dragon-Slayer could recall the battle of St Michael and the Dragon in the Book of Revelation. Óðinn’s death, swallowed by the wolf Fenrir at ragnarök, is depicted on a cross-shaft known as Thorwald’s Cross (after its carver who signs his name in runes) from Kirk Andreas in Man (see frontispiece). The image offers a powerful contrast to Christ who, unlike the All-father, will rise again after his death. Sigurðr’s story is depicted also on stones and objects from as far afield as the Volga region of Russia and the famous Ramsund stone in Sweden (see page 140). We’ll see in later chapters how these images mesh with the textual sources.

  Þórr and the giant Hymir fishing with an ox-head for bait (Chapter 3), on the (probably) tenth-century Gosforth fishing-stone from Cumbria, northern England.

  Increasingly, new metalwork finds, often of very tiny figures, are being identified as images of the Norse gods. These include a recently unearthed representation of Óðinn from Lejre in Denmark, enthroned with his two ravens perched on his chair-back, and a stunning example of an armed female figure (a valkyrie) excavated at Hårby in Denmark. These take their places besides the well-known image of Þórr from Eyrarland in Iceland (see page 103) and the little statue with the huge phallus from Rällinge, Sweden, usually identified as Freyr. The interplay between archaeology, myth and legend is a dynamic one; new discoveries continue to inflect and reconfigure our imaginative understanding.

  ‘Óðinn’ from Lejre in Denmark. The figure is flanked by two ravens, and wears female costume.

  Left: A female figure with sword and shield, possibly a valkyrie, c. 800. Recently excavated at Hårby, Denmark. Right: A small metal figure thought to be Freyr, from Rällinge, Sweden.

  OTHER GERMANIC TRADITIONS

  Finally, in interpreting Norse myths we can make use of comparative traditions from the early medieval Germanic-speaking world. The Anglo-Saxons w
orshipped gods with similar names to those of the Old Norse gods – Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Fricg, who give their names to the days of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday), as do Týr, Óðinn, Þórr and Frigg in the Scandinavian languages. There are very few references to the gods in Old English literature; one occurs in wisdom poetry, where Christ’s saving powers are contrasted with the contention that Woden worhte weos (Woden made idols). Another is found in the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’ which invokes Woden as striking a serpent with nine wuldortanas (glory-twigs). Among the slim number of texts surviving in Old High German are some charms, mentioning gods with recognizably similar names to those of the Old Norse pantheon.

  In comparison with the rich explanations of Snorri’s Prose Edda or even the logic of the tales in eddic poetry, these fragments from neighbouring cultures are provokingly mysterious. The Anglo-Saxon Church had no interest in preserving pre-Christian beliefs and its long monopoly over writing meant a wholesale loss of the story-hoard of the pagan past. Nor was mythic material saved from oblivion in the continental German homelands of the Anglo-Saxons, where English missionaries were in the business of saving souls and destroying pagan sanctuaries. Heroic legend survived a little better in both languages, and we’ll have recourse to the Old English epic Beowulf, and the poem Deor, along with the German Nibelungenlied, to illuminate the heroic legends of Scandinavia along our way.

  THE NORSE DIVINITIES

  There are two distinct groups of Norse gods, the majority Æsir and the altogether more mysterious Vanir. Both tribes have male and female members, but although the female Æsir are known as Ásynjur (goddesses), the Vanir don’t seem to have a separate term for their females, perhaps because Freyja is the only one we know about. Æsir is the plural of the noun Áss, meaning ‘god’; when the term is used by itself as ‘the Áss’, it usually refers to Þórr.

  THE ÆSIR

  Óðinn, whose name means something like ‘the Furious One’, is the leader of the gods; he is sometimes called the ‘All-father’, but it is not a name that crops up often. He’s a war-god, but unlike Freyr, he’s more of a strategist than a fighter, teaching his chosen heroes effective battle-formations, including one shaped like a pig’s snout, the svínfylking. Óðinn stirs up conflict, so that he may see who is worthy to enter his great hall Valhöll (Valhalla), to join the Einherjar, the warriors who will fight with the gods at ragnarök. He decrees defeat or victory in battle, and he is able to confer immunity to wounds with his spear, although he sometimes sends his valkyries to determine who will win or lose.

  Óðinn

  • Leader of the Æsir. One-eyed, bearded, old.

  • God of wisdom, magic, battle, kingship; worshipped by the elite; chooser of the slain.

  • Attribute: spear called Gungnir.

  • Halls: chiefly Valhöll (Valhalla, Hall of the Slain), but a number of others, including Glaðheimr (Glad-home) and Valaskjálf (Shelf of the Slain) where Hliðskjálf (Opening-shelf), the high seat which lets him look out over the worlds, is situated.

  • Transport: by eight-legged horse Sleipnir, but often travels on foot and in disguise.

  • Animal associations: ravens (Huginn and Muninn, ‘Thought’ and ‘Memory’); wolves (Geri and Freki, ‘Ravener’ and ‘Devourer’).

  • Married to Frigg; numerous liaisons with giantesses and human women. Sons are Þórr, Baldr, Víðarr, Váli, Höðr.

  • Particularly important in Denmark.

  One-eyed Óðinn with his ravens and his spear Gungnir, in an eighteenth-century Icelandic manuscript.

  Óðinn is also the god of wisdom, and he seeks it out wherever it may be found. He has sacrificed one of his eyes in Mímir’s Well to gain arcane knowledge, and he hanged himself on the World-Tree Yggdrasill in order to win knowledge of the runes, the Germanic writing system which enabled gods and men to record their knowledge for posterity.

  Valkyries

  Valkyries are supernatural women who dwell in Valhöll. They serve wine and mead to the warriors who live there. Another of their tasks is to ride out to battle, where they bestow victory or defeat, and their name means ‘Choosers of the Slain’. Sometimes Óðinn instructs them as to who is to win, and sometimes they take the initiative in choosing who will accompany them back to Valhöll. Not all kings are thrilled to be invited to join the elite (but dead) warriors, rather than continuing to rule on earth. A memorial poem for the Norwegian King Hákon depicts him as distinctly sulky, even when the greatest heroes of the past welcome him to the hall. The valkyrie Brynhildr is punished by Óðinn for disobeying orders and giving victory to a younger and handsomer man. Some human girls also take up the valkyrie life as shield-maidens. This allows them to choose a heroic husband who can save them from marriage to an unwanted suitor, as we’ll see in Chapter 4.

  A valkyrie in full flight, sculpted by Stephan Sinding (1910).

  Óðinn hanging himself on Yggdrasill. Illustration by W. G. Collingwood for Olive Bray’s 1908 translation of the Poetic Edda.

  I know that I hung on a windswept tree

  nine long nights,

  wounded with a spear, dedicated to Óðinn,

  myself to myself

  on that tree of which no man knows

  from where its roots run.

  With no bread did they refresh me nor a drink from a horn,

  downwards I peered;

  I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

  then I fell back from there.

  SAYINGS OF THE HIGH ONE, VV. 138–39

  Óðinn also knows spells to achieve various things: animating the dead, quenching fires, calling up winds. He lists eighteen of them in Hávamál (Sayings of the High One), but declines either to give details or to reveal the last one, which he won’t tell any woman, unless it’s his lover or his sister – and since there’s no evidence for him having a sister, and he doesn’t necessarily part on good terms with his lovers, that secret may be kept for a very long time indeed.

  One of Óðinn’s chief concerns is to find out as much as he can about ragnarök, the end of the world. To this end he visits various people in the divine and human worlds (see Chapters 5 and 6). He knows that the death of his son Baldr is one of the most significant portents of the end, but he hopes that – somehow – he can find a way of falsifying the prophecies about the catastrophe to come. He is also an accomplished practitioner of magic of a particularly disreputable kind called seiðr (see Chapter 2, page 84). We don’t know much about what this entails, but it seems mainly to be the province of women. When men perform it, it involves cross-dressing: something that is inherently shameful in Norse culture. In fact, Óðinn and Loki have an exchange of words about it in the poem Lokasenna (Loki’s Quarrel). When Óðinn accuses Loki of spending eight winters under the earth in the form of a milch-cow and a woman, bearing children there, Loki retorts that his blood-brother practised seiðr on the island of Sámsey (modern Samsø, lying between Sweden and Denmark) ‘and beat on the drum as seeresses do’. Frigg quickly intervenes to tell the two gods not to discuss such mysterious, ancient matters in public.

  Óðinn is also the patron of kings. We’ll see in Chapter 4 how he takes an interest in human kings and heroes. He’s keen to get his favourites onto the throne, and he also wants them to rule effectively. Yet, in line with his task of choosing the best heroes for Valhöll, he also oversees the death of kings and heroes, a role which they often regard as a betrayal. In some poems they reproach Óðinn when they arrive in Valhöll, claiming, correctly, that he is not to be trusted.

  Runes

  The runes are the Germanic writing system, which pre-dated the introduction of the Roman alphabet to the north with the coming of Christianity. The runes evolved at the very beginning of the first century CE, probably out of a version of the Roman alphabet, and perhaps in the Rhine area. The letters were adapted to be easy to carve on hard surfaces such as wood or stone. The older futhark (as the alphabet is called, after its first six letters) comprised twenty-four or twenty-fi
ve letters. Later the alphabet was simplified as the younger futhark in the late eighth century in Scandinavia. This contained only sixteen characters and the majority of surviving runic inscriptions use it. The runes represented a sound, such as ‘b’ or ‘th’, but each rune also had a name: ‘f’ was fé (money, property) for example. In Old Norse myth the runes have magical properties – Óðinn uses them to bewitch the princess Rindr (see Chapter 6). In the sagas there are cases of sick people getting worse because wrongly cut runes have been used to try to heal them.

  The older futhark.

  Þórr as thunder god, riding out in his goat-drawn chariot to smite giants with his hammer. Painting by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872).

  Þórr’s chief role is to defend the gods’ realm against the depredations of giants. He spends much of his time journeying in the east, where he wages war with his mighty hammer Mjöllnir on giants and giantesses alike. He is the one god who forges a close relationship with humans; he has two servants, a boy and a girl, called Þjálfi and Röskva. Although Loki’s giant affiliations should make Þórr highly suspicious of him, the two gods often adventure together. Þórr’s opponent at ragnarök is the Miðgarðs-serpent, a child of Loki, who will rise out of the sea. Just as Óðinn is interested in discovering whether ragnarök is inevitable, Þórr too has an early face-off with the Miðgarðs-serpent (see Chapter 3 for the full story).