The great northern tales: creation, the treasures of the gods, heroic sagas and the voices of the skalds.
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Once a year the gods brewed not mischief but beer. The sea-giant Ægir welcomed them into his hall on the sea-floor, where the ale poured itself into …
Read more →Few stories in Norse tradition trail so much ruin behind them as this one: a careless throw, a dead otter, an impossible ransom - and a curse laid by …
Read more →It is the moment when laughter vanishes from Asgard. The death of the shining Balder is the most moving legend of the North – and the turning point …
Read more →Warriors who fought in bear pelts and wolf-skins, bit their shields and feared neither fire nor iron. The berserker is one of the most powerful …
Read more →Valhalla was only one of many realms of the dead. The ideas of the afterlife were as varied as the burial customs themselves.
Read more →The most beautiful piece of jewellery in the world belongs to the most beautiful of the goddesses: Brísingamen, the golden necklace of Freyja. No …
Read more →We like to imagine valkyries as noble riders escorting the fallen to Valhalla. The Darraðarljóð shows them quite otherwise: as cruel weavers of death.
Read more →Some sayings are older than you would guess. What may be the finest words of consolation in the Germanic world sit inside a poem more than a thousand …
Read more →A ring from which ever new rings arise: Draupnir is Odin’s golden treasure and one of the most striking images of Norse mythology. „The Dripper“ …
Read more →A tree carries the world – but what waters the tree? Beneath the roots of Yggdrasil lie three springs, and each tells a different story: one of fate …
Read more →Almost everything we know about the Norse gods we owe to two books from medieval Iceland. A look at the sources – and their limits.
Read more →He was warrior and poet, killer and grave-robber, farmer and man skilled in magic – and probably the greatest skald of the North: Egill …
Read more →They are the chosen of the fallen: warriors who died in battle and were carried by the Valkyries to Valhalla. The Einherjar fight every day, fall …
Read more →His byname sounds like a reproach: Eyvindr skáldaspillir, „the plagiarist“ (or „spoiler of poets"). It probably means he imitated older models – yet …
Read more →No being do the gods of the North fear like Fenrir, the wolf. They rear him themselves, they bind him by cunning – and one of them pays for it with …
Read more →What does the strongest god do when he has been stripped of his hammer, his belt of strength and his iron gloves? He sets out anyway. The tale of …
Read more →In the beginning there was no word and no bang, but a void: Ginnungagap, the ‘yawning gap’. Between the fire in the south and the ice in the north …
Read more →Neither iron nor chains tamed the mightiest monster of the North, but a ribbon thin and soft as a silken thread: Gleipnir, the magic fetter that …
Read more →A king has gold and peace ground for him – and grants the maids who turn the mill no rest. Grottasöngr is one of the North’s sharpest stories about …
Read more →A boar whose bristles are gold and glow in the dark, running over sky and water faster than any horse: Gullinbursti („golden-bristle"), the mount of …
Read more →Thor has his hammer, Freyr his ship – and Odin has the spear. Gungnir is the weapon of the All-Father: forged by dwarves, marked with sacred runes …
Read more →The mead of poetry turns anyone who drinks it into a poet or sage. It lies deep in the mountain, guarded by the giant's daughter Gunnlod. But before …
Read more →The valkyries are seen as cold directors of battle. The story of Helgi and Sigrún shows the other side: love, loyalty and a grief that reaches beyond …
Read more →When Baldr is dead, one dares the most perilous ride of all the myths: Hermod, a son of Odin, rides into the underworld to bring the dead god back.
Read more →There are scenes in Norse poetry that take your breath away. Hervör’s night walk to the grave-mound of her dead father is one of them.
Read more →When the shining god Baldr dies, the Æsir give him the most splendid funeral of the North – upon Hringhorni, the greatest of all ships.
Read more →It begins with a drunken braggart and ends with a splinter in the thunder god's skull. The tale of Thor and Hrungnir is one of the oldest and most …
Read more →In their grief for the shining god Baldr, even the gods reach their limits. His funeral ship stands fast in the sand, and for all their divine …
Read more →Idun keeps the gods’ greatest secret in a simple box: the apples that keep them young. Without them even Odin and Thor would age, grey and die – all …
Read more →She is so vast that she encircles the whole world and bites her own tail: Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent. Between her and the thunder god Thor …
Read more →No god of the North is without his treasure: Thor without his hammer would be only an angry giant, Odin without spear and ring only a one-eyed …
Read more →Where does poetry come from? The North had an uncannily beautiful answer to this: from the blood of a wise being, brewed into mead. The story of …
Read more →A feast of the gods, ale in plenty – and a guest who exposes every single one of them. The Lokasenna („Loki’s flyting") is the most famous …
Read more →Every misdeed has its price, and Loki’s bill is settled all at once. After the death of Baldr and his merciless mockery at the gods’ feast, the Æsir …
Read more →A stranger offers the gods an unbreachable wall around their stronghold - in a single winter. His price is outrageous. How the gods almost …
Read more →Most people know Ragnarök only as a world-fire: gods die, the sun goes out, the earth sinks. Yet the great world-poem of the seeress does not stop …
Read more →Norse cosmology knows not heaven and earth but nine worlds – strung along the world tree Yggdrasil, which runs through them all like an axis. Gods …
Read more →Above the gods stands something to which even Odin bows: fate. And fate has three shapes – the Norns, who sit at the foot of the world-tree and, in …
Read more →It is perhaps the most famous bargain in all of mythology: the highest of the gods gives up an eye – willingly – for a single draught from a well …
Read more →Can a poem save a life? In the North, yes. The skald Óttarr svarti („the Black") had drawn the wrath of King Óláfr the Holy – and saved his head with …
Read more →Norse religion has no distant, all-powerful deity on a throne. It has a family – quarrelsome, cunning, loving, mortal. And it has not one but two …
Read more →Few names sound as thoroughly Viking as Ragnar Lodbrok. Television has made him the face of the entire North – the cunning king, the defiant old man …
Read more →Norse mythology is the only great tradition in which the gods themselves are doomed – and in which they know it. Ragnarök, the ‘fate of the powers’ …
Read more →Ragnar Lodbrok, so the saga goes, died in a pit of snakes – laughing, we are told, and with a threat on his lips. His sons made that threat come …
Read more →A dwarf's curse, a re-forged sword and a thrust from below: how young Sigurd slew the gold-greedy dragon Fafnir, learned the language of birds from …
Read more →It is the most famous smithing scene of the North: two dwarf brothers, a wager on Loki’s head, and a fly that stings at the bellows. Out of this …
Read more →Some heroes set out with a sword. Svipdagr sets out with the protective charms of his dead mother – and with a task he did not choose.
Read more →Among all the gods, giants and dwarves there are two who are different: Thjálfi and Röskva, a pair of farmer's children – the only humans who travel …
Read more →This is the tale in which the immortal gods turn grey for the first and only time. An eagle on an ox, an extorted oath, a goddess turned into a nut …
Read more →Before Thor is humbled in the stronghold of Utgard, he meets on the road a giant so vast that the gods spend the night in his glove. Thor and Skrymir …
Read more →Her name is Þrúðr („strength, power") and she is the daughter of Thor and Sif. Around her turns one of the craftiest poems of the Edda – the …
Read more →The funniest and at the same time most profound Thor story is a string of defeats – that are none at all. On his journey to Utgard the strongest of …
Read more →A poet who fears for his reward, and a lord who lets himself be celebrated: the Vellekla („gold-lack“) by the skald Einarr skálaglamm is one of the …
Read more →Valhalla is no resting-place for weary souls. It is a barracks of the fallen: a vast hall where the bravest dead fight, die and rise again every day …
Read more →They are far more than the winged warrior-maidens of the opera: the valkyries decide who falls in battle – and who is taken up into Odin’s hall after …
Read more →Before the gods of the North were one family, they waged the first war of the world – against each other. The War of the Æsir and Vanir explains why …
Read more →When in deepest winter the storm howls, so people believed, a spectral host rides through the night: the Wild Hunt. At its head rides a one-eyed …
Read more →At the centre of the Norse picture of the world stands a tree. At its roots fate is decided, in its crown an eagle keeps watch – and everything is …
Read more →The world of the Vikings is, quite literally, built from a corpse. From the slain primal giant Ymir the first gods shaped heaven and earth, mountains …
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