Norse Mythology

Norse mythology is the belief-world of Viking Age Scandinavia. It survived for centuries in the mouths of poets and was only written down in the 13th century, in Christian Iceland. Both core texts are Icelandic: the anonymous Poetic Edda preserves ancient lays such as the Voluspa and the Havamal, while Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda retells the whole cycle, from the making of the world to its end, in systematic form. Around them stand the heroic sagas, above all the Volsunga saga, and the Latin Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus.

The cosmos hangs on the great ash Yggdrasil, with nine worlds among its branches and roots: Asgard of the gods, Midgard of humankind, Jotunheim of the giants, and the misty realm of the dead below. Two divine tribes, the Aesir and the Vanir, merged after a primeval war; the gods marry giants and kill them in roughly equal measure, dwarfs forge treasures underground, and the trickster Loki moves between all camps, sowing the seeds of the end.

What sets this mythology apart is its temper: the gods are mortal, and their doom is already written. Odin spends his wisdom learning the prophecy of his own death in the wolf's jaws, then feasts and arms his warriors anyway, fighting a battle he knows is lost. That cold fatalism, paired with the promise that the earth will rise green from the sea a second time, has been retold ever since, from Wagner's Ring cycle to Tolkien's Middle-earth to the films and games of the present day.