Ragna-Rock'n'Roll

Thor and Odin are well known today, but are these images faithful to the source material?

There's more to the Norse religious tradition than the bit of mythology that makes it into the movies. It's a complex system with a rich poetic tradition. Unfortunately, much is lost to time.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the comics that inspire it, have told wonderful stories about the figures of Thor, Odin, and Loki, and their many companions, but the family tree and the cosmology is far more complex than what we see in most popular fiction. 

The North Germanic pagan tradition is alive today, but things have gotten complicated. White Nationalism including groups like the Sons of Odin have taken up the names of these figures of faith and power, in the hopes of intimidating their "lesser" opponents.

Join us as we explore the Eddas, and the things that Marvel and the Nazis got wrong.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

[00:00:11] Preston Meyer: We've enjoyed a little bit of the wine religions in the last month.

[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: Sure have.

[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: Now we have to abandon the wine religions in favor of the beer religion.

[00:00:21] Katie Dooley: Ooh, I like beer.

[00:00:26] Preston Meyer: Not a fan of either.

[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: You wouldn't be. You wouldn't be.

[00:00:33] Preston Meyer: That's just the way it is. Yeah. I don't drink, no. As I take a sip of water.

[00:00:41] Katie Dooley: It's just water everyone. He has not turned it into wine successfully yet, so. 

[00:00:45] Preston Meyer: I don't have that kind of power.

[00:00:46] Katie Dooley: No. Yep. So we are on this episode. We are talking about Norse religion.

[00:00:54] Preston Meyer: On this week's episode of. 

[00:00:56] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast!

[00:01:01] Katie Dooley: So I, I mean, I know a little bit about Norse religion, but I did not know enough to know how accurate Marvel is.

[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: Uh, there's there's a couple of details they got right and.... 

[00:01:20] Katie Dooley: A lot of the names and things like, I literally thought Ragnarok was made up for the movies.

[00:01:26] Preston Meyer: Oh, okay, yeah. See, I had read the Prose Edda a few years ago before I started my degree, so I knew a little bit. But it's actually really frustrating how much Marvel screws up.

[00:01:42] Katie Dooley: Well, we'll have to dig into. You'll have to point it out as we go along.

[00:01:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, I think it's really interesting that the Norse didn't have a word for religion. Honestly, most cultures didn't have a word for religion before they got exposed to Christianity.

[00:01:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Before there was this big shift in religion from polytheism to monotheism.

[00:02:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's a weird thing. So what we call the Norse religion, they just called the old custom, in contrast to the new custom, which was Christianity. And so there was the old gods and the new gods. The New Gods being the Christian gods, because things are always complicated.

[00:02:34] Katie Dooley: So unlike the Romans and the Greeks. Norse, the Norse never achieved the same level of imperial power.

[00:02:43] Preston Meyer: No, they mostly just went around raiding camps when they were looking to expand.

[00:02:47] Katie Dooley: Raiding camps and stealing women.

[00:02:50] Preston Meyer: And not just women,

[00:02:51] Katie Dooley: Stealing everyone. 

[00:02:51] Preston Meyer: Men and children for slaves too.

[00:02:55] Katie Dooley: So they didn't collect gods the same way that the Greeks and Romans did.

[00:03:02] Preston Meyer: No, it's actually really, really frustrating trying to figure out how the religion, the old customs evolved because we don't have a lot of documentation for that time period. And frustratingly, we have even less from their neighbours. So we've just kind of mostly got what was written after they were exposed to Christians.

[00:03:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You know and then what Marvel did with it.

[00:03:36] Preston Meyer: Which muddied the waters. So instead of having a bunch of separate henolatric cults like we saw in Greece and Rome, the North Germanic people seem to have been truer polytheists than the others. But of course, they weren't monolithic either. Things were different from one area to the next. The people in North Norway were a little different from the people in south Sweden. That kind of deal.

[00:04:07] Katie Dooley: Nice use of alliteration. You didn't have to do that, I love that. And just like any of these old religions, the Norse religion didn't rely on a holy book or any sort of sacred texts. It was an entirely, I mean, entirely oral tradition. But just like Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, for the Greek mythology that Eddas are written records of the Norse mythology.

[00:04:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The elder Poetic Edda is estimated to date back about a thousand years. It was compiled more recently than that, but individual poems that build up the whole are older, and because it's poetic, way too much of it is way too ambiguous for outsiders. Which is, of course, everybody. Now that it's been a thousand years.

[00:05:01] Katie Dooley: It's interesting to me that's such an old religion was and I mean, when we talk about the Prose Edda is even newer, that was compiled so recently.

[00:05:12] Preston Meyer: Right. And there's a younger Edda called the Prose Edda because it's a lot less poetic, written by a fellow named Snorri. He wrote it in the early 1200s, and it's way easier to understand. But yeah, it's weird that it was only that recent that things started being written down when writing was actually a very powerful thing for them.

[00:05:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and I mean, the 1200s like that part of the world would have been fully Christian by then. So to even take it on at that time seems. Kind of odd, right?

[00:05:48] Preston Meyer: It is odd.

[00:05:49] Katie Dooley: It'd probably be seen as heretical. And again, it's probably another 2000 plus years older than than the time it was written.

[00:05:56] Preston Meyer: It could.

[00:05:56] Katie Dooley: Or compiled.

[00:05:57] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's it's really hard to say, really, how old these traditions are. Uh, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of old mystery schools or cults like we saw in in Greece. There doesn't seem to be any secret knowledge among the Norse peoples, or at least there isn't any evidence today. If there was any, it hasn't survived at all.

[00:06:20] Katie Dooley: The elves have it.

[00:06:22] Preston Meyer: Maybe.

[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: My dad was. I forget what book my dad was reading, but he was talking about how in Iceland, like, they still, like, genuinely believe in elves and that they have to get, like, elf permits for any sort of property development. And so he showed them that clip from, uh.

[00:06:39] Preston Meyer: From Eurovision.

[00:06:40] Katie Dooley: Eurovision where the the elf knifes the guy in the back.

[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: Ah, I love it. What a ridiculous way for that bit of the story to get tied up right.

[00:06:48] Katie Dooley: I oh, that made me so happy.

[00:06:50] Preston Meyer: It was great and yeah, there's kind of a lot going on culturally around this old custom. There are dwarves and elves and trolls and all kinds of figures that are just part of the story that never really interact religiously. It's just part of the custom.

[00:07:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No. Exactly. It's interesting that, yeah, there's no stories about trolls per se, but it was I guess it's. Yeah, kind of implied that they I mean, there are stories about giants and we'll get into that, but that they exist right alongside these gods in Asgard.

[00:07:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There were three basic classes among the Old Norse. You had the Jarls, uh, which are basically noble folk. You had the Karls. That's how we get the French named Charles, fairly common among our people today. And that name means free people. And then you had the thralls, the slaves, who were occasionally offered up as sacrifices. But that wasn't their most useful application. It was far better to keep them around for labour.

[00:08:07] Katie Dooley: Right?

[00:08:09] Preston Meyer: There were no priests, really. A handful of regions have different words that are usually treated like priests, but any person could offer sacrifices and group ceremonies were typically led by the head of the family or the village leader. So these words that we usually treat like priest seem more appropriate to apply to teachers or shamanic fortune tellers, things like that, rather than how you would see a priest today in the Christian tradition. 

[00:08:43] Katie Dooley: Now tell me about blood.

[00:08:47] Preston Meyer: Uh, so blöt, uh, is a word that means blessing, but the every way that it's used, it basically is a sacrifice. And the sacrifices, like we've seen in a lot of religions when you really boil down what's going on, these are big community barbecues or sometimes just small family meals. The sacrifices could be offered for literally any occasion. It could be to celebrate a wedding, to prepare for a voyage, to hope for the best at the time of a birth. Literally anything. If you wanted to make sure things were going to go well, a sacrifice just kind of made sense.

[00:09:30] Katie Dooley: A barbecue just helps everything.

[00:09:33] Preston Meyer: So the animal was killed and the party would eat the animal. Bigger events deserved bigger sacrifices, fed more people. Sacrifices were offered freely rather than required by the gods. Certain gods would prefer certain kinds of animals and these were offered with the hope of divine generosity that, hey, out of nowhere, I'm just going to offer this thing to Odin in the hopes that God's going to be generous to me and give me what I need. Kind of a deal. It was an offering for a trade instead of a "I owe you this thing and as a covenant deal, you're going to bless me with this thing"

[00:10:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I kind of like that better.

[00:10:14] Katie Dooley: Right? It also leaves a little bit of space for the gods to still be like, "nah, I don't want to help you with this thing."

[00:10:24] Katie Dooley: Right? You haven't done enough for me yet.

[00:10:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Human sacrifices are really actually still a matter of contention among scholars, but many agree that it was mostly done in connection with war during the Viking Age specifically, and not actually common in most communities. And there was no schedules for sacrifices, so the North Germanic peoples actually never had any use for the idea of a week like we're familiar with today. They didn't name the days because there was no necessary cycle.

[00:10:58] Katie Dooley: Time is a construct!

[00:11:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for most of them, the day was actually counted in the way we see it in the old Hebrew tradition of a new day starts when the current day dies, so at sunset. But other than that, they didn't worry about time so much apart from yearly cycles. Which makes sense. Take care of the seasons. Don't worry about weeks.

[00:11:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah. Makes sense a sense. How do you know when it's a birthday though?

[00:11:29] Preston Meyer: I don't think they really worried about birthdays.

[00:11:31] Katie Dooley: It's a very modern thing.

[00:11:33] Preston Meyer: From the impression that I've been getting, they didn't worry about it. You would count the days of the cycle, like for the season.

[00:11:41] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they would know the equinoxes and solstices. Most people did back then.

[00:11:46] Preston Meyer: But there was no Monday until the Romans made their social connections. And then Monday became a thing. So the names that we have for weekdays now are born from kind of a Norse butchering of the Roman system. They didn't even bother to come up with anything to replace Saturn for Saturday.

[00:12:09] Katie Dooley: Well, I like the sound of the Saturn.

[00:12:11] Preston Meyer: I think they just couldn't think of anything.

[00:12:15] Katie Dooley: I like the sound of the Saturn. Yeah.

[00:12:18] Preston Meyer: But Sunday, Monday, the sun and the moon. Super simple.

[00:12:22] Katie Dooley: And then we get with Thor. I don't know why they're Italian.

[00:12:30] Preston Meyer: And then we got Tyrs day. Uh, and some people pronounce it two. And so that's how we got Tuesday.

[00:12:37] Katie Dooley: And then we get the one with the....

[00:12:43] Preston Meyer: You're killing me. And then wooden and then Thur, and then Freya. And then that Saturday that they had no idea what to rename it.

[00:12:53] Katie Dooley: None of it sounded like...

[00:12:55] Preston Meyer: There were a handful of scholars that nobody really seems to be taking seriously on the matter. That think that Seder was a figure among the Norse, and there's a couple of people who are like, no, no, it was Seder, but no, no, it's it is Saturn. They just didn't rename the day. It's kind of weird.

[00:13:22] Katie Dooley: That like the sound of the Saturn.

[00:13:24] Preston Meyer: I guess.

[00:13:26] Katie Dooley: Like the Italian names.

[00:13:28] Preston Meyer: You know, we should do is start a movement to rename Saturday Borsday. Because Saturn is the father of Jupiter in the Roman mythology, um, and Bor is the father of Odin, so we can follow that scheme and just go ahead and replace Saturn with Bor.

[00:13:50] Katie Dooley: Right. Okay. We'll start a petition.

[00:13:52] Preston Meyer: We don't we don't have a day of the week that starts with B yet, and. 

[00:13:56] Katie Dooley: We have two that start with T and two that start with S, what?

[00:13:58] Preston Meyer: We can chop this confusion in half by having a weekday that starts with B. Borsday. It's the best day of the weekend.

[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: Our episodes are released two days after Borsday.

[00:14:10] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Another really important part of the old custom was Sade. Which means tether or bind or rope. It's a word that we're still figuring out what really is the precise translation of the word, but basically it it's the thing that ties everything together. It's magic.

[00:14:37] Katie Dooley: It's the force.

[00:14:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so it's basically used to find secrets, discern the future, but also predict the future. And so this divination was really important, like it was everywhere else. And when you look at all of these other old religions, but it seems like it was mostly women that were really involved in this practice of discerning the future. Odin is supposed to have learned it from Freya, rather than being the fount of this gift on his own, which is kind of a cool touch, I think. Sorry. I thought you were gonna say something. 

[00:15:16] Katie Dooley: I was like i thought you were gonna say something, so I stopped myself. I was just gonna say that the women in Norse mythology are pretty badass, but they are pretty badass in Greek and Roman, too.

[00:15:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:15:28] Katie Dooley: I think monotheism wrecked that all for us women.

[00:15:32] Preston Meyer: I don't think it's the monotheism so much as the people who are pushing it on others. Runes were also really important. They were thought to be very, very powerful. It is said in an old poem that the right rune could make a dead man walk again. So there's all kinds of study on, on these old forms of writing that had ritual value. And even though this writing was super important, we actually have really minimal ancient records about this tradition. We find rocks here and there with things inscribed on them. But it's not like big theological writings or anything. It's just Thor protect us kind of deal that we'll find written on a rock somewhere, which it's interesting to look back and see how long ago they've been talking about Thor, but it doesn't give us a whole lot more information than that.

[00:16:30] Katie Dooley: No, and I will get next segment we'll talk about specific gods, and there are some that I found that they're basically like, we don't know anything about this guy, but it was important to them.

[00:16:43] Preston Meyer: Yes.

[00:16:44] Katie Dooley: He's mentioned twice in the Edda and that's it. But based off of who he was in the pantheon. We think he was important. I read that a few times.

[00:16:55] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, we had the same problem with the Romans that even their scholars before the fall of the Republic, they're like, these are the gods that we have official, nationally paid priests offering to these gods, and we can't remember who two of them are. Yeah.

[00:17:16] Katie Dooley: Whoopsie daisy.

[00:17:18] Preston Meyer: Right. It's kind of weird. Like they lost track of who they were before the Empire took over the Republic's place. Yeah. Weird.

[00:17:28] Katie Dooley: Whoopsie poopsie.

[00:17:32] Preston Meyer: Another part of the old tradition. The old custom is their philosophy, which has actually not really died out. The philosophy still remains an important part of the culture in Scandinavia today. Um, basically it's. Well, completely free from theological dogma. The goal of life is to find happiness. This is best done through the virtues of independence, hospitality, loyalty, modesty, generosity, courage, and wisdom. Independence comes from wisdom. Wisdom comes from travel. Kind of nifty. I like it really encourages you to get out and see the world which more people should be doing and something else that was really important to them was the idea that there is no escaping fate. Fate was decided by the Norns and even the gods couldn't escape Ragnarok. They knew it was coming. They have all these details foretold. Ragnarok is still in the future, as far as we can tell, according to their writings.

[00:18:37] Katie Dooley: What about the hit movie from 2017?

[00:18:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's a couple of years ago, loosely based on the ideas of the prophecy, not a faithful representation of the story at all.

[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: No, because nobody's supposed to survive it.

[00:18:57] Preston Meyer: Oh, there are survivors.

[00:18:58] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's true. There are survivors. The Hulk's not involved in the Edda. He never shows up.

[00:19:04] Preston Meyer: Nope. There should have been a Beta Ray Bill, though. You'll know who that is soon enough.

[00:19:11] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear.

[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: But yeah, fate's super important. You just accept it. But it's interesting that this idea that there's no escaping the fates has actually really encouraged people to be bold and go out and do great things. So that's cool.

[00:19:29] Katie Dooley: I mean, that I mean, that just reminds me of. Have you seen Big Fish?

[00:19:34] Preston Meyer: No, I don't think I have.

[00:19:35] Katie Dooley: That's a great movie. Yeah. Anyway, it's not a huge plot point, but, uh, Ewan McGregor's character is asked if he wants to know how he's going to die. And on the surface, most people would be like, no, I don't want to. I want to hang and die. He's like, yeah, because if I know how I'm going to die, then I know I can survive anything else.

[00:19:53] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:19:54] Katie Dooley: Right? So it takes place in the past. So he does like the most dangerous World War II mission, so he can finish his service faster and get home to his wife because he knows how he dies. And it's not in World War II, so part of me is like, yeah, I can kind of see, like if you know how it's going to end, then. You probably enjoy it more.

[00:20:13] Preston Meyer: Would you rather know how or when?

[00:20:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, I think I'd rather. I think I'd rather know when. Because how, then I would try everything to avoid the how and be able to avoid the how. Right. You know what I mean?

[00:20:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:20:31] Katie Dooley: Whereas if you know when, then you can just, like, live your best life until then. Right? Because if it's like, oh, you're gonna die in a plane crash, well, then you'll never go on a plane again. 'Cause maybe it's the next one, or maybe it's one 30 years from now. Whereas if it's like you're gonna die 30 years from now, then it's like, cool. I can do whatever I want until for 30 years. Instead of trying to avoid chocolate or cars or, um, cigarettes, whatever it is anyway.

[00:20:58] Preston Meyer: But what if when was changeable, but also like...

[00:21:08] Katie Dooley: Um, well, I mean, it would be really upsetting, but again, I think it like. Then you know, right? Then you stop paying your mortgage, right?

[00:21:15] Preston Meyer: I guess so.

[00:21:17] Katie Dooley: The changeable changes, that's too many variables. 'Cause that's probably exactly...

[00:21:21] Preston Meyer: Fate is crazy. It's such a big mind issue.

[00:21:29] Katie Dooley: Drop in our Discord whether you want to know how or when you're going to die.

[00:21:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Terrible things, terrible thoughts.

[00:21:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Let's keep it positive, though. Put a GIF in there. How do you think you're going to die?

[00:21:45] Preston Meyer: I'm just reminded of this thing I've seen on Reddit a few times now over the last couple of years of this lady walks up to this box, it says, put your finger in here and it'll tell you how you're going to die. And she just hesitates a little bit, but she puts her finger in there and gets a little piece of paper out, and it just says, old age gets this big old smile on her face, starts skipping down the across the street, hit by a guy in a car. You see the guy - Old guy. Old age got her. Yeah, it was rough. Prophecy can often be very vague and entirely useless or self-fulfilling in the most irritating way.

[00:22:26] Katie Dooley: Yes. All right. So who the heck were these old gods?

[00:22:33] Preston Meyer: Well, there were two groups of gods. Well, I mean, it's more complicated than just saying there's two of them. There's an awful lot of groups of powerful beings, but the ones that are usually called gods. Are the AEsir, the Asgardians, or the Vanir. Which don't have a common name in Marvel yet, as far as I've heard.

[00:23:00] Katie Dooley: And the Vanir split off from the Aesir, is my understanding and then they fought each other.

[00:23:07] Preston Meyer: There are some thoughts that they were actually the gods of a rival nation. But because we have so little information from the earliest points of this developing history, we actually don't know when and it's mostly all guesswork.

[00:23:27] Katie Dooley: So again, none of these gods were repurposed for any sort of Christian use.

[00:23:32] Preston Meyer: No, none of them turned into saints like the old Roman gods did. A lot of Christian saints are actually just repurposed Roman gods. We'll take a look at that later this year.

[00:23:46] Katie Dooley: And again, as Preston mentioned, these two groups, they would fight and intermarry, but they were equally matched in all things. So eventually a truce had to happen because they realized no one was going to win.

[00:24:02] Preston Meyer: Nice. Perfect match. Yeah. Break down your walls and accomplish nothing else.

[00:24:09] Katie Dooley: Okay, so one of the theories I read is that this war that appears in the Edda is actually a retelling of something that actually happened in Scandinavia thousands of years ago.

[00:24:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, a lot of scholars are actually pretty convinced that Odin was a real person, just some ancestor of royal line. And it makes good sense to me, actually. Euhemerism can be really tricky trying to figure out how the gods are connected to real things. Like some of them are just the personification of the sun. Some of them are real people made divine by tradition. Odin. It seems really easy to say that he was a real person.

[00:24:57] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. So most of the popular, popular, well known Norse gods are part of the AEsir. That's Odin, Frigg, Hodr, Thor, Baldur, all fall in there, and very few of the Vanir are named. But the three that constantly come up are Njord, Frey, and Freyja. And they're a little family, which we'll talk about in a second.

[00:25:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:25:23] Katie Dooley: And just like Greek and Roman, the the gods have human emotions. They're anthropomorphic, and they are deeply flawed. There's no, um, like, you see in monotheism. All good benevolent, righteous knows, all omniscient. Role model here. In fact, there's some that I would say do not use as a role model, even a little bit.

[00:25:49] Preston Meyer: Uh, Zeus was the great example and a couple episodes ago, Loki is a great example in this one. And Loki, again, a great example of gods that there's no evidence of anybody ever worshiping them. A lot of these gods actually fit into that category where they're part of the story. They're counted as divine, but nobody actually offered them sacrifices or prayed to them or worship them in any way that looks like worship to us. I think that's kind of fascinating.

[00:26:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean and we don't really have a parallel in the monotheistic religion because like yeah, you could pick a random character from the Bible and be like, yeah, well we don't worship Zadok.

[00:26:36] Preston Meyer: But we also don't call him a god.

[00:26:38] Katie Dooley: Exactly. Yeah. I was just trying to pick my most favorite random name from the Bible.

[00:26:42] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:26:43] Katie Dooley: Uh, right. But yeah, exactly. He's not divine. So it is interesting to have a powerful being that is not being worshiped. That obviously could influence a mortal's life, so anyway.

[00:27:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well, earthquakes are thought to be connected to Loki, so he certainly is a figure of power in the world that influences us. Still didn't get worshiped.

[00:27:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then Preston mentioned earlier, but varying from region to region, town to town, smaller deities and ancestor worship were also common. So actually, that's where absolutely, Odin could be just someone's ancestor, Clans leader.

[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. In addition to the gods, there was also this phenomenon of land wights. Wights W-I-G-H-T-S the ghosts and spirits of the land, the forest, or sometimes even a whole region, or sometimes just the corner of a farm. They could have all kinds of different sizes of area of influence, which I thought was kind of interesting to to come across. But people would make offerings to these spirits just like they would to the gods.

[00:28:05] Katie Dooley: Nice. Now I think I have about a dozen of the gods summarized. You're gonna have to help me with some of the names. Sure. Mostly Thor's hammer.

[00:28:16] Preston Meyer: Mjolnir.

[00:28:16] Katie Dooley: Mjolnir.

[00:28:17] Preston Meyer: Not Mew Mew.

[00:28:19] Katie Dooley: Mew, Mew. Uh, I might still call that, uh, I'm gonna start with Thor, everybody's favourite brawny, hammer-wielding Hulk. Hunk. Hunk. That's what my notes are. Everybody's favorite brawny, hammer-wielding hunk. He is the god of thunder, storms, trees, protection and fertility. Yeah, he is. Literally. I'm picturing Chris Hemsworth.

[00:28:48] Preston Meyer: Of course, you're picturing Chris Hemsworth. He's played Thor. For more hours of screen time than anybody else has, as far as I'm aware. So it makes sense that he's the face that comes to mind. But traditionally, Thor was a chubby redhead, not an intensely fit blond hunk.

[00:29:12] Katie Dooley: So Thor is the son of Odin and Jörd, not Frigg like in the Marvel movies.

[00:29:18] Preston Meyer: Mhm.

[00:29:19] Katie Dooley: He is the most prominently mentioned God in the history of the Germanic peoples. So we actually have tons and tons of information on Thor, which is nice. It's a breath of fresh air than some of the one-paragraph things I found on some of these people. He swings around Mew Mew.

[00:29:38] Preston Meyer: Mjölnir. 

[00:29:39] Katie Dooley: Mjölnir. And he is the defender of Asgard from the Jötnar.

[00:29:44] Preston Meyer: Jötnar. 

[00:29:45] Katie Dooley: Jötnar. There are like there's tons and tons of stories about Thor, and we could probably do a whole episode on him or write a bunch of Marvel movies.

[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: Maybe they're clearly not done with him, right?

[00:29:59] Katie Dooley: One story I want to see is Thor: Cross-dresser.

[00:30:08] Preston Meyer: Tell me more.

[00:30:08] Katie Dooley: This was just so good I had to include it. So. Settle in for this, kiddies. Thor woke up one morning to find Mjolnir missing, which isn't good, because how the heck is he going to defend Asgard from the Giants? So the goddess Freya gives Thor and Loki some falcon feathers to help them find the hammer. Loki, being a shapeshifter, takes his feather and turns into a falcon and heads to Jotunheim. After he arrives, he quickly realizes that the Giants have stolen it. The chief of the Giants, Therm told Loki that he did indeed have the hammer, but he wasn't going to return it until he could marry Freyja.

[00:30:56] Preston Meyer: Rude.

[00:30:58] Katie Dooley: Right?

[00:30:58] Preston Meyer: Whatever happened to consent?

[00:31:00] Katie Dooley: Consent and like. Like there's I mean, even then there's like, got to be a transaction and you got to get Njor involved because it's her dad. You can't just steal a hammer that has no connection to Freya and then ask for her hand in marriage. So now, when Loki flies back to Asgard to tell everyone this, no one is happy about it. So Heimdall suggests that Thor, good ol' Heimdall, that Thor disguises himself as Freya and head to Jotunheim to take back his hammer. Thor wasn't really feeling too much into the crossdressing thing, but Loki being Loki and his pal so said he'll cross-dress with him and pretend to be his maidservant. So now we have Thor and Loki dressed as women heading to Jotunheim, so Therm is super excited that he gets to marry Freya, so he holds a big feast. Thor, being Thor, eats an entire ox and drinks many barrels of mead, which makes Therm rightfully suspicious about how much his future wife eats. Now Sneaky Loki, he smooths talks their way out of it, and hastens the ceremony on. So Mjölnir is called upon to hallow the union. Thor grabs it and kills Therm, all while dressed as a beautiful blushing bride. The end.

[00:32:34] Preston Meyer: That's great.

[00:32:36] Katie Dooley: Right? How come that has not made it into a movie or a one-shot?

[00:32:41] Preston Meyer: There would be a great time.

[00:32:47] Katie Dooley: So yes, there's lots of great stories about Thor. Highly enjoyable. God of Thunder, protector of Asgard. Mew mew.

[00:32:57] Preston Meyer: The name Thor is basically the word that means thunder as well. So not terribly inventive name, but nice and easy for people to remember.

[00:33:11] Katie Dooley: I mean we called people Mason and they were Masons, right? So. Thunder, my son. And we name our kids a lot dumber things now than...

[00:33:23] Preston Meyer: True story. It's a wonderful world we live in.

[00:33:30] Katie Dooley: That actually, that's probably something in your scope of words. But like, as you know, I don't know who it includes, but as you know, I'm reading Zealot and like, they didn't even have last names. So they just like described people based off their relationships to others or what they did. Jesus of Nazareth or James, brother of the one who says he is Messiah. Um, and so like everyone had the name, like everyone was fucking named Mary. How do we go from Mary to, like, Abcde? You know what I mean? We're like, everyone was named Mary, and then all of a sudden we just got way too creative. What happened?

[00:34:06] Preston Meyer: I don't know. I think people just got tired of having seven Chrises in one class.

[00:34:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but, like, people just, like, threw sounds together to make new names.

[00:34:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:34:22] Katie Dooley: Anyway if anyone's a name specialist. Let me know.

[00:34:26] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, Odin is next on our list. He's associated wisdom, death, healing, royalty and war. He's the husband of Frigg. He's portrayed as a fellow with one eye and a great beard. And he has lots of animal friends. He's got ravens, thought and memory, or Huginn and Muninn. He's also got two wolves, Geri and Freki. I can't remember what their names mean off the top of my head right now. They also accompany him most places, except for when he's really serious about being incognito. And these animals bring him information from Midgard. He's also often pictured riding Sleipnir an eight-legged horse, which sounds terrifying and spider-like. But let's fix that image by saying wherever you'd expect one leg, there's just two.

[00:35:23] Katie Dooley: Again, doesn't make it any less creepy.

[00:35:25] Preston Meyer: No. But easier than imagining a spider with a horse's head. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about this ridiculous horse later and who its mother is. Odin watches over Valhalla, a hall in Asgard where half of those who die in battle are summoned. And it seems kind of weird. We'll talk more about those details. Um, Odin is a shapeshifter. He likes wandering around and he is the one telling the story through much of the Edda. That he is just in disguise, just pretending to be this old wise fella, not letting you know until after you're done talking to him that it's the All-father. And as we mentioned before, an awful lot of scholars are pretty sure he was a real person.

[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: Next, we move on to Frigg, who is the Queen of Asgard and wife of Odin. She is associated with marriage, motherhood, and prophecy. She resides in the marshlands called Fensalir. So she has three children Baldur, Hodor, and Hermod. And Frigg was known for being very smart. And this is, you know, something that they do do in the movies. Uh, Odin often asks her advice, and she can see into the future, but rarely did she ever tell anyone what she actually saw.

[00:36:56] Preston Meyer: That sounds like she's got a little bit of a Cassandra complex where she can see the future and nobody believe her anyway.

[00:37:03] Katie Dooley: Right, mom?

[00:37:07] Preston Meyer: Uh, next on our list, we have good guy Baldur. Everyone likes Baldur. He's incredibly handsome, according to the Edda. So handsome that it's like his face shines. Kind of like, um, what we hear about Moses sometimes. Except nobody got confused and said they were horns on his forehead.

[00:37:26] Katie Dooley: It's just a mistranslation.

[00:37:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a weird tradition that people have gotten really committed to. Baldur is Odin's son with Frigg. Not the same relationship with Thor. It's weird that we haven't seen Baldur yet in the Marvel movies.

[00:37:46] Katie Dooley: Well, and and there isn't a lot written about Baldur in the Eddas, which is really interesting when you think that, you know, his dad was Odin and his mom was Frigg, and everyone liked him, but that's basically all the Eddas say about him. And then the next point, you'll. This is the next big point about his cameo.

[00:38:04] Preston Meyer: Right. So it was supposed to be his death that sets off the chain of events that lead to Ragnarok. Unfortunately, Marvel treated it differently and his father's death. Kind of triggered all of that bit of a bummer, leaving out what is historically an important character in the story.

[00:38:23] Katie Dooley: Well, and then they add Hela, which I couldn't find any record of her...

[00:38:26] Preston Meyer: In the story of Ragnarok.

[00:38:28] Katie Dooley: Well, in.. at all.. In the list of gods and goddesses I couldn't find Hela.

[00:38:33] Preston Meyer: Her relationship to the gods is kind of funky. I mean, Loki is barely a god, and well, let's look at Loki.

[00:38:43] Katie Dooley: Let's look at Loki. So Loki is a lot like Zeus in that he'll have sex with literally anything in the shape of literally anything.

[00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Uh huh. What a guy. Great for parties, I guess. I mean, the stories. Yeah. He's great for parties.

[00:39:01] Katie Dooley: He was friendly with the other gods until he masterminds the death of Baldur, which, as Preston mentioned, is the first event that leads to Ragnarok. And the MCU portrays his character qualities well in that he is self-serving, playful, and mischievous. He is a shapeshifter. Um, but it completely changes how he fits into his family. Loki is a Yoden cousin and adopted brother to Odin, and Loki is the father of Hel or Hela and her wolf Fenrir.

[00:39:34] Preston Meyer: Yep, Loki is the father of that wolf Fenrir.

[00:39:38] Katie Dooley: I was like, did I read that right?

[00:39:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a mess.

[00:39:42] Katie Dooley: He fathered a wolf. Really good. It gets even weirder though. Loki is the father of the chaos monster known as Jormungandor.

[00:39:52] Preston Meyer: Well done.

[00:39:53] Katie Dooley: Thank you.

[00:39:54] Katie Dooley: Who is a serpent. Oh, and this is the serpent. That was a big deal for Thor. This was Thor's arch nemesis.

[00:39:59] Preston Meyer: Yes, the world serpent.

[00:40:01] Katie Dooley: The world serpent.

[00:40:01] Preston Meyer: The snake big enough to wrap around the world, just chills out in the ocean and is kind of the source of a lot of chaos in the world.

[00:40:09] Katie Dooley: Yes and then it gets even weirder. He is also the. Mother of Sleipnir. That's right. Everyone. He mothered a horse.

[00:40:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good old Loki decided, hey, I need to have sex with this stallion, so I need to be appealing to this stallion. And then he remained a mare long enough to carry an eight-legged horse to term. Which sounds like hell.

[00:40:41] Katie Dooley: Can you imagine being that horny?

[00:40:44] Preston Meyer: To desperately need stallion wiener.

[00:40:47] Katie Dooley: To need stallion wiener so bad that you're willing to turn into a girl stallion and stay a girl stallion and give birth to an eight-legged horse?

[00:40:55] Preston Meyer: Catherine the Great is jealous.

[00:40:56] Katie Dooley: Catherine the Great is jealous. As is Mr. Hands. Um, because I'm pretty sure I don't know anything about farm animals. Preston, this is your world. But I'm pretty sure legs are like the dangerous part about giving birth. They get caught on things.

[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there is a risk.

[00:41:15] Katie Dooley: So having twice as many legs coming out of your horse vagina.

[00:41:20] Preston Meyer: Well, and interestingly enough, birth has always been thought of just without counting legs, as a very dangerous experience that sacrifices would be given before somebody gives birth. Loki choosing to go through this seems really weird.

[00:41:39] Katie Dooley: He really wanted that horse dick. Really wanted that horse dick. Oh, dear.

[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: Well, now that's in all of our heads.

[00:41:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So I'm going to try and move on, but I don't know if it's possible. So. Laufey is Loki's mother and she was never described as a Joden, but instead as a goddess. But his father, Farbauti was a Joden.

[00:42:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't know why Marvel has done this weird thing of making Laufey Loki's father. That's really weird.

[00:42:15] Katie Dooley: Is it when you turn into a mare and have sex with a horse dick? Is it? Is that the weirdest thing they could have done, Preston? I think you need to readjust your perspective.

[00:42:26] Preston Meyer: It's just weird. They've completely changed Loki's story and saved us from the more graphic parts of his story, I guess. But they've just destroyed everything about how he relates to the Asgardians. It's just kind of weird. Uh, next on our list, we have Njord. He was a Vanir god of the wind and the sea. He was also the god of wealth, bestowal, and prosperity. He married his sister and fathered, two kids, Freyja and Freyr. He then had a failed marriage with a giant goddess, Skadi. And we don't really know a lot more about him.

[00:43:07] Katie Dooley: That's kind of it. Then we have Freya, which we do know a little bit more about. She's one of the Vanir. She's associated with love, beauty, sex, war and gold. So kind of our Aphrodite, if you will.

[00:43:21] Preston Meyer: A little bit.

[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: But she's better than Aphrodite. You know why?

[00:43:25] Preston Meyer: Tell me?

[00:43:26] Katie Dooley: Because she rides a chariot pulled by cats.

[00:43:30] Preston Meyer: Now, are we talking house cats or are we talking..

[00:43:33] Katie Dooley: Meow meow meow. I don't actually know. I don't look it up. I always.

[00:43:36] Preston Meyer: I always imagine them being mountain lions.

[00:43:37] Katie Dooley: I literally always assume them to be house cats. Okay, do I need I'm googling it. I'm googling a picture, but I really if it's not house cats, I'm gonna be upset. It's house cats! It's house cats everyone! Meow meow meow!

[00:43:59] Preston Meyer: What we have here is a couple of. I mean, large tabbies. They're not mountain lions, that's for sure.

[00:44:13] Katie Dooley: These are old. Like, not these, I mean, not these aren't even just weird cat girl. Sorry. Weird cat girls. You know who you are. Uh, these aren't even just weird cat girls hoping it's cats. Even the older pictures show cats. And I am so happy right now.

[00:44:29] Preston Meyer: You know what? I guess I'm on board now.

[00:44:34] Katie Dooley: Slightly less exciting.

[00:44:36] Preston Meyer: But more adorable.

[00:44:38] Katie Dooley: No, I mean, I was gonna go into what, her other mode. Okay, go for it. Slightly less exciting than the cat chariot. She also rode a boar with golden bristles. So she's pimp my ride. She was cool. She was cool. Her twin brother is Freyr, as Preston mentioned. She has a husband, Odar, and two kids, Hnoss and Gersemi. She resides in the heavenly fields of Folkvangr, where she picks half the warriors that die in battle and then the others, leftovers go to Odin's Valhalla.

[00:45:18] Preston Meyer: See, I didn't when I was reading, it sounded like Odin's Valkyries picked the half they wanted and the rest went to.

[00:45:26] Katie Dooley: Oh, see, I read that this was an honor bestowed on her that she gets to pick.

[00:45:31] Preston Meyer: Well, I feel like this is a similar problem that we've had with other things where ancient sources also varied, right?

[00:45:42] Katie Dooley: And then, even just in a similarity of names, there are some theorists and scholars that suggest that Freya and Frigg stem from the same person or source.

[00:45:52] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. Their names are pretty similar. It's pretty easy to jump on that assumption, and it requires more work. But it could be true. Might not be.

[00:46:04] Katie Dooley: I mean we're in. We'll never know.

[00:46:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. At this point. 

[00:46:08] Katie Dooley: But Frigg never got a cat chariot. Just saying.

[00:46:11] Preston Meyer: Right. Uh, Freyr, as we mentioned before, uh, brother of Freya, he is associated with fertility, rain and sunshine and also associated with the boar as well. So those were sacrifices that he was happy to receive. Just like his sister.

[00:46:31] Katie Dooley: Then we have Tyr an Aesir seen by the Romans as the ethnic equivalent to Mars or the God of war. Hee defendd the Asgard from the great wolf Fenrir who bit off his hand.

[00:46:44] Preston Meyer: It seems like the most powerful gods get to lose bits of their body in Norse mythology.

[00:46:50] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. He's often overlooked by modern enthusiasts. He was often overlooked by modern enthusiasts, but was important enough to have a day named after him. Tyrsday.

[00:47:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's a weird way to pronounce that. But yeah, that's what we got.

[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: It's Tuesday. Yeah, and there's an R in it, so I'm just.

[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:47:14] Katie Dooley: Tyrsday.

[00:47:17] Preston Meyer: The Anglo-Saxons really dropped that R and it was more of a Tue. 

[00:47:21] Katie Dooley: Tuesday.

[00:47:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And next on our list actually kind of a nice way to wrap up our list of the important gods.

[00:47:30] Katie Dooley: Because there's loads more if you want.

[00:47:31] Preston Meyer: There are lots of minor gods. There's personifications of things we see in the sky. There was Sol and Mun who were the sun and the moon. But back on track. Last of our list that we really actually have some stories about is Heimdall, who in the Eddas is described as the whitest of the Asgardians. I love Idris Elba, I do, and he killed it as Heimdall.

[00:48:03] Katie Dooley: But he would not be described as white.

[00:48:06] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, he's the blackest Asgardian, which. I mean, he killed it. He was a great Heimdall, but it would have made more sense to have somebody really pale, like maybe Conan O'Brien as Heimdall.

[00:48:25] Katie Dooley: Poor Conan O'Brien.

[00:48:27] Preston Meyer: I don't know, it's just.

[00:48:31] Katie Dooley: But he's such a badass, so it doesn't even matter. I don't care.

[00:48:34] Preston Meyer: I enjoyed Heimdall so much.

[00:48:36] Katie Dooley: I enjoy Idris Elba so much.

[00:48:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he was great, but it's just that he was the exact opposite of the one defining detail of Heimdall as being the whitest of the Asgardians. But his job, like we saw in the very popular films, was to watch over Asgard, protecting it from invaders and to really just chill out where the Bifrost met the sky. And so of course, he was there for Ragnarok, and he has kind of a bad fate. Uh, he was born to nine mothers.

[00:49:16] Katie Dooley: Loki?!

[00:49:18] Preston Meyer: I mean, logistically, this sounds like a huge problem. It also makes perfect sense that he was just raised by nine sisters, that's easy enough to get on board with. Being born of nine mothers, I don't get it. But whatever. His mothers were the personification of waves of the sea, which is actually a really cool image. And old Norse poetry also indicates that Heimdall is the father of all mankind, which may be that's part of the inspiration for making him the darkest Asgardian. Was that pretty much all scholars agree that humanity came from Africa, and not all humans should be white, which is something we'll talk about later. All right, I do have a story. And it's a little bit more epic than the one we had about Thor.

[00:50:25] Katie Dooley: Wait, there's nothing more epic than Katie picturing Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston cross-dressing for a hammer?

[00:50:34] Preston Meyer: Uh, it is a great story, though. All right, so there's a pretty cool origin myth given to us in Norse mythology and it's it's kind of tricky. A lot of people are actually starting to think that this was composed from a bunch of loose and separate ideas by Christians so that they could then later explain to the Norse people that you believe this thing. And here's the Christian story that isn't wildly different. It's wildly different. Let's look at it. So Ymir was born from the hot primordial mists that formed in the void between the rivers of Niflheim and the fires of Muspel.

[00:51:22] Katie Dooley: Niflheim is a great name.

[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: So Niflheim is the home of the mists. Muspel is hot, fiery, nonsense. So Ymir is born from these mists, and he is the ancestor of the Jötnar, often translated as giants or trolls, but not necessarily large or ugly. Kind of a tricky thing. It's just these were, this people, that are actually also called gods, but they're not Vanir or AEsir.

[00:51:56] Katie Dooley: One thing I read is kind of like the Titans compared to the Olympians.

[00:52:02] Preston Meyer: Right? That's really kind of the deal here. The Jötnar just sprouted from Ymir's limbs while he was sleeping. Yeah, like part of one of the poems says that one of his legs made babies with the other. It was really weird that basically they just popped out of his body while he was sweating. It's weird that they mentioned that he was sweating. I don't know what's going on. I don't need more detail and I didn't need that.

[00:52:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:52:42] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, Ymir survived off of the milk of a cow. That is also never, never properly explained. There just is a cow. And he gets milk from the cow. And the cow is just licking a stone until a dude pops out of it.

[00:53:03] Katie Dooley: Okay, this is a wild ride.

[00:53:05] Preston Meyer: It is a wild ride. And so this cow's just licking this stone, and then there's a bunch of hair coming out of the stone, and the cow just keeps licking because when has hair stopped a cow from licking Exactly. So after a day, it was hair. Another day and the cow has licked the rock enough that a full head is exposed. And presumably Ymir is like, well, don't stop now.

[00:53:39] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah.

[00:53:40] Preston Meyer: And in one more day, it was one day to get hair. It was one day to get the head. One more day they got the rest of this dude's body.

[00:53:50] Katie Dooley: The cow got really excited after that.

[00:53:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, it was either a determination or a small body and a big head deal.

[00:53:57] Katie Dooley: Oh, no.

[00:54:00] Preston Meyer: I'm more inclined to think it was the motivation.

[00:54:02] Katie Dooley: Let's go with that, because everything else is creepy.

[00:54:05] Preston Meyer: This well, and this dude is described as incredibly handsome.

[00:54:09] Katie Dooley: Mhm.

[00:54:10] Preston Meyer: So not likely to be the case if he had an itty bitty body and a giant head. But his name was Buri. Buri has a son. Nobody remembers how for some reason. And his son is Bor. Bor marries a Jötan, named Bestla. They have three sons Odin, Vili and Vé. Things get a little bit Greek when Odin and his brothers kill Ymir, and the blood floods the land to kill all but two of the Jötnar, and they use several parts of his body to build the world.

[00:54:49] Katie Dooley: Ew

[00:54:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah! It's gross. His skull forms the firmament of the heavens. Uh, yeah. Nasty stuff. They weave his or not weave, but spin his brains into fluff that makes the clouds in the sky. It's super gross. uh, yeah, but also an oddly familiar thought, When you look back to the Marvel Universe, Nowhere is built in the head of a dead celestial.

[00:55:22] Katie Dooley: That's true.

[00:55:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But anyway, we're looking at a real mess here. The three brothers form Ask and Embla, the first humans from driftwood. Just stuff they find on the beach. So it's almost like humans are kind of an afterthought.

[00:55:43] Katie Dooley: I'm kind of offended, but that's fine.

[00:55:45] Preston Meyer: And that's just this one version of the story, because of course, I mentioned that a different story says that Heimdall is the father of humans. So we've got some diversity of thoughts here.

[00:55:55] Katie Dooley: I'll be the child of Idris Elba. Thanks very much if I have a choice

[00:55:59] Preston Meyer: Sure.Uh, and then in all of this cosmology, there is Ygdrasil, the world tree. Yggdrasil is an interesting name. It means Odin's horse. But it's a really weird turn of phrase meant to allude to how one rides the gallows at their death because that is the tree upon which Odin hanged himself so that he could learn all the secrets of the cosmos.

[00:56:31] Katie Dooley: Wow.

[00:56:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The mythology behind all of this stuff is intense.

[00:56:37] Katie Dooley: Yes and the cosmology too. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's kind of two pieces to this, which.

[00:56:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So this tree is a sacred ash tree at the center of the cosmos. It connects the nine realms. And the number is always nine in all the different sources, but not all of the sources. Well, no source actually lists out these are what the Nine Realms are, but it just will talk about them in various different stories. And so scholars have kind of settled on a list, but there are scholars that disagree on what that list.

[00:57:16] Katie Dooley: I didn't include it because I was like, I can't find all nine.

[00:57:18] Preston Meyer: So I found a list that was put together in the 1920s that people have just kind of accepted. Yeah, this is the list that we can work with. It's acceptable and it works. Uh, first we have Asgard, the home of the AEsir. It is above Midgard. Midgard is our home where humans live. Also sometimes called middle earth. Professor Tolkien was hugely influenced by Norse mythology.

[00:57:50] Katie Dooley: Absolutely, yeah.

[00:57:52] Preston Meyer: In fact, every single one of Bilbo's dwarf friends full on plagiarized from Norse mythology. Every single one of them is a dwarf with a mythological story around him. We also have Vanaheim, a separate world for gods who are the Vanir. Also, it seems like land wights are thought to have come from Vanir. It's a thing. Uh, we also have Alfheim, the traditional home of the elves. When they're not chilling out, messing around with our stuff and cutting people's throats instead of letting them interfere with Eurovision.

[00:58:37] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that was so they could play at Eurovision, Preston.

[00:58:40] Preston Meyer: Exactly. We also have Svartalfheim, home of the Dark elves, and there's a lot of racist thought that goes into how people look at Svartalfheim today. These are actually wildly different from what we saw in the Thor movie. The Dark elves weren't weird and pale and evil. They were darker than pitch like absolute black, which probably a little bit racist and a little tricky. But so were regular elves, so it's weird that there's even a distinction.

[00:59:23] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that's the more racist thing is that you're separating them. They're living segregated.

[00:59:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. They were fully segregated. That is a problem. Uh, then there's also Nidavellir a home of the dwarves. And this is where some things get a little bit tricky. A lot of scholars think that the dwarves and dark elves are actually the same people. And it's hard to say with any real certainty that they are fully separate. Its. It's tricky. The Poetic Edda is part of this confusion. You have Jotunheim, the home of the Jötnar, the giants, the trolls. Uh, this is where Odin traded his eye to drink the water of wisdom. And of course, more stories like that. And then the last two worlds realms are Muspelheim and Niflheim, the realm of primordial fire and the realm of primordial cold mists that I mentioned at the beginning of the origin story.

[01:00:29] Katie Dooley: Cool. Nine realms. So we would be remiss to not talk about the afterlife when we're talking about a religion. So we will, Yeah, we're gonna dive into that. And then we have a couple more things to get into.

[01:00:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[01:00:50] Katie Dooley: Ominous. Um, so. While the many virtues are worth persuing in life. They have no effect on your eternal reward. So this is how those who die in battle are taken to Valhalla.

[01:01:04] Preston Meyer: The Hall of the fallen is the literal translation of the name. 

[01:01:09] Katie Dooley: Valhalla. Yeah, yeah. They are led by the Valkyrie and are. And prepare to support Odin in Ragnarok. That's what they're doing in Valhalla is prepping for Ragnarok. Yeah.

[01:01:19] Preston Meyer: Getting ready to fight, but also lots of great feasts. Of course.

[01:01:24] Katie Dooley: They've earned it. And I. Preston's notes say that they were chosen by Odin. But I read that, uh, Freya got to choose first, so I just skip that part entirely.

[01:01:33] Preston Meyer: Fair enough. 

[01:01:36] Katie Dooley: The fields of Folkvangr so it translates to the folk fields is for those, the other half who fell in battle and were chosen by Freya or not chosen. We'll see. We don't know and they also get to arrest and enjoy food and mead.

[01:01:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's more restful than Valhalla, which I thought was kind of cool. And I tried finding any statement on where Folkvangr was, and I couldn't actually find any solid statement. But my suspicion as a very underqualified scholar in this particular corner of the field is that it was in Vanaheim rather than Asgard, mostly based on the fact that Freya is a Vanir instead of an AEsir. But prove me wrong, I dare you.

[01:02:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, prove him wrong, I love that.

[01:02:35] Preston Meyer: And for those who didn't fall in battle, there's more options. Hel is the queen and goddess of Niflheim, and like Hades, has a place named after its keeper. Hel is the realm of the shameful dead. Those who died of sickness or old age. Remember, there's no.

[01:02:57] Katie Dooley: There's no good or bad.

[01:02:58] Preston Meyer: There's no reward for virtue. It's either you died in battle or you didn't.

[01:03:02] Katie Dooley: I kinda want to die in battle now.

[01:03:04] Preston Meyer: Right?

[01:03:05] Katie Dooley: Yeah.

[01:03:07] Preston Meyer: Of course, ancestor worship was important to keep ghosts from haunting the family. This was probably more of a problem if you had family who didn't die in battle, 'cause the ones who died in battle would be off doing something fun. Whereas Hel and Niflheim are underneath the world and relatively close. So the hauntings are possible.

[01:03:29] Katie Dooley: Shameful dead.

[01:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah and so if you aren't doing something to help out your ancestors, the shameful dead will bring you shame and discomfort. It's a problem, I guess.

[01:03:46] Katie Dooley: I mean, they know where their priorities are. They wanted you to fight in battles.

[01:03:50] Preston Meyer: Yes. When all is said and done and Ragnarok is a distant memory, it survivors will live in bliss. In Gimli, a sacred hall in the heart of rebuilt Asgard. I thought it was interesting. I decided to look up more on Gimli, and I found this cute little entry that popped up on my Google search on on Wikipedia. There's a town or was a town called Gimli in Manitoba, but it was unincorporated about 20 years ago because shrinking population. But they still have a strong Icelandic tradition there.

[01:04:28] Katie Dooley: I like that.

[01:04:29] Katie Dooley: I, I don't think just knowing Manitoba. I don't think people lived in bliss there.

[01:04:40] Preston Meyer: Uh, yes. The long distant future world of Gimli has got to be a lot more fun than Gimli, Manitoba.

[01:04:51] Katie Dooley: So I wanted to touch on this next section, mostly to lead up to the section after. But there is a, just like Greek and Roman, there is Germanic Neopaganism or Norse revivalism, whatever you want to call it. Basically people who practice this religion today. I don't have a ton of notes on it because that's what it is. They practice the religion today. They believe in the gods. They do feasts and sacrifices. Again, much like Roman, they're not slaughtering cows, they're pouring beers and, uh, yeah, they it was rerecognized as a religion in Iceland in 1972.

[01:05:36] Preston Meyer: So fairly recently.

[01:05:38] Katie Dooley: Yes. There were some theories they read that said it never fully disappeared, even with the conversion to Christianity. And there's a name for it that I found called Asatru or Heathenry. So this is basically, again, that neopaganism practice, um, again, Asatru is specifically focused on the Norse gods. Obviously, neopaganism is a little more broad than that, which is really important to say that there's this group of people.

[01:06:11] Preston Meyer: And then there's a much worse group of people.

[01:06:14] Katie Dooley: And. And, I mean. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell them apart. Just by looking.

[01:06:24] Preston Meyer: Just by looking. If you talk to them, it'll become a lot more obvious real quick.

[01:06:28] Katie Dooley: So unfortunately, and this goes back to the night, as you know, it goes back to the early 1900s. Norse mythology, symbolism, has been co-opted by white supremacists. And I think we would be remiss not to mention it in this episode as much as it's gross. So these people don't practice the revival faith, but are using the symbols for their own racist purposes. It stems from the false belief that Vikings somehow had racial purity, which makes no sense because they were Vikings and pillagers and they absolutely transported humans. Um, bought and sold slaves, had concubines, were merchants, got married. Did they travel as much as we did now? No, but they definitely traveled.

[01:07:19] Preston Meyer: Racial purity was never important to them as a as a seafaring people. That's that was not the reality at all.

[01:07:27] Katie Dooley: Yes. Um, so again, I want to be super clear that if you're not, not every neopagan is a racist. Um, and that if you're actually practicing the faith.

[01:07:39] Preston Meyer: That it's different.

[01:07:40] Katie Dooley: That it's different. You wouldn't... Thank you, Preston, like, I don't understand my notes. Yes, it's different than being a dick.

[01:07:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. The swastika pretty famously became the symbol of the Third Reich. And there's there are a lot of different peoples throughout the world who have used very similar symbols. A lot of people like to point to how the swastika was used among the Indian people. But the Nazis found their power in the swastika specifically, as it's related to Thor.

[01:08:14] Katie Dooley: Yes and then, I mean, there's two other symbols that can obviously or sorry that get used a lot. So Thor's hammer Mjölnir is a really popular hate symbol.

[01:08:28] Preston Meyer: But it's also a popular symbol for people who just believe in individual personal power.

[01:08:34] Katie Dooley: Yes. And if you're a follower of Asatru, then absolutely. And so I also want to be clear that this is like the stylized Mjölnir, not like literally Thor's hammer from the MCU. So that that one's fine. If you see someone with an MCU Thor hammer, it's fine. Um, so on its own, again, it's not necessarily racist. Often if you are white supremacist, you'll incorporate things like swastikas and other hate symbols into the hammer. The valknut is another symbol. It's kind of I don't want to say it's pretty, because now it's a hate symbol, but it's this like Celtic knot symbol and it means the knot of the slain. So we have Valhalla, we have the valknut. And it's the meaning behind it is that the that the person who bears it or wears it is willing to give up their life for Odin. So again, it's not like inherently racist. So context is key, but it is, you know. Uh, like a red flag for sure. And then on that point, we have the Soldiers of Odin here in Canada, which are, um, uh.

[01:09:43] Preston Meyer: Hate groups are a problem.

[01:09:46] Katie Dooley: They're a problem. And they use a lot of this imagery.

[01:09:48] Preston Meyer: If you're making. Hate groups feel comfortable in your space. Maybe you need to change something that you're doing.

[01:09:59] Katie Dooley: Yes. And I think it's also important that we. You know, even in our podcast, right, that we educate that these symbols are out there and that that they do unfortunately have multiple meanings because some of these gross people fly under the radar because it just looks like a Celtic knot and nobody knows. And except for other white supremacists. So take back the valknut, take back Mjolnir. Mew-mew.

[01:10:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this world is a wonderful, diverse place, but some of this diversity is kind of gross.

[01:10:33] Katie Dooley: Let's punch nazis.

[01:10:36] Preston Meyer: Uh. Yeah, fewer Nazis would be great.

[01:10:43] Katie Dooley: I, uh, I read a post today. Yeah. And, uh, it basically said if you have 11 people at the table and one of them's a Nazi, then you have a table of 11 Nazis.

[01:10:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I've seen that going around.

[01:10:58] Katie Dooley: I like that one. So, yeah. Punch Nazis.

[01:11:01] Preston Meyer: Right? All right, well.

[01:11:05] Katie Dooley: Can you put a nice bow on this, Preston? And I made it sad. I didn't mean to.

[01:11:10] Preston Meyer: It seems like as I look at what's going on in this religion, it's the old custom, as it was called, that really. It's not really hyper-focused on worship of gods for any long-term goals though. There is thoughts of the future and there is acts of worship. It's mostly about making your place in the world comfortable for you. Which some people's standards is a little unpleasant, but for others it's about being happy, which is ultimately the goal of life. And if your joy is to enjoy great times with friends and die in battle, then there's a place prepared for you according to this tradition. And that's pretty cool, I guess.

[01:12:07] Katie Dooley: I like it.

[01:12:09] Preston Meyer: The philosophy is something I can get behind, that independence is important, and wisdom comes from getting to know what's around you.

[01:12:21] Katie Dooley: I like that too.

[01:12:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah and that's part of our mission. Get to know what's around you.

[01:12:28] Katie Dooley: Get to know what's around you.

[01:12:29] Preston Meyer: Your life actually can improve because of that.

[01:12:36] Katie Dooley: You know what else can improve your life, Preston?

[01:12:38] Preston Meyer: Some merch from the Holy Watermelon Store. 

[01:12:41] On Spreadshirt? Why, yes. That's exactly what I was thinking.

[01:12:45] Preston Meyer: I'm glad I'm reading your mind.

[01:12:47] Katie Dooley: What if merch isn't for you though? How else could you pursue happiness?

[01:12:52] Preston Meyer: By supporting our mission on Patreon, or connecting with our community on Discord, or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. So many options!

[01:13:05] Katie Dooley: And all of these are at different price points for every budget.

[01:13:08] Preston Meyer: Exactly. If you don't like something, we say Discord is a great place to let us know we can talk about it.

[01:13:18] Katie Dooley: Yes. I agree. All right. Yeah. So do some of those things. Share our podcast and.

[01:13:28] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.