Introduction to Norse Mythology

This is one of my first hubs that will introduce you to world mythologies. I'll write series of others starting from Norse. I'll introduce you to their mythology and beliefs and tell you some interesting facts about them.

Norse or Scandinavian mythology was a pre-Christian age which originally consisted of beliefs and legends of the Scandinavian people, including the Iceland. Norse mythology was the best preserved by the old version of Germanic mythology combined with others.

The most famous text which talked about Norse mythology was ''Prose'' or ''earlier Eddu'' . It was written in the early 13. Century. By writing prose, poets made different stories about the Norse gods, all of them are systematic and consistent.

Second text is called ''Poetic Edda'' it was written 50 years after Edda in prose. It contains 29 long poems, of which 11 dealt with the Germanic deities and the rest dealt with legendary hero Sigurd Volsung.

In Norse mythology, Earth was presented as a disk. Disk was the world tree with branches called Yggdrasil (picture below). In the center of Disc was Asgard - place where gods lived and The Jötunheim (land of giants) where obviously giants lived. In this mythology, there was also cold and dark place called Niflheim, which was ruled by Hel (God of Fire). The other notable places are: Alfheim ( home of the elves of light ) Svartálfaheim (the land of dark elves ), Nidavellir ( country dwarfs ). ands Midgard ( country people )

Norse had three "clans" of deities, Aesir, Vanir and Jötnari (referred to as the Giants). Problems between Aesir and Vanir were big, so they started a war in which the Aesir eventually won. People who study Mythology believe that the Aesir / Vanir relationship was a general expression of Nordic Indo-European division of divinities.The main God was Odin, he was famous because he had a horse faster than anyone called ''Sleipnir''. God called Thor was famous because of his giant hammer and Loki was the ''negative'' God of fire.