The Roman author Tacitus, discussing the beliefs of the Germanic tribes in the 1st century, writes that they “do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance.” We do know of artistic representations of the gods from various periods, but it’s interesting that Tacitus records a belief that lines up with the conception of the gods as immaterial forces. Odin disguised as an old wanderer – Art by Willy Pogany (1920) Even Thor is able to change his appearance and size. They take different shapes as the situation calls for. The gods are referred to as powers, as forces beyond materiality. He travels the world, disguised as a gray-bearded old wanderer. The two foundational aspects of Odin’s godhood in the myths are his quest for wisdom and his relationship to human heroes. Scholars have argued that Odin’s role grew over time, to the detriment of the god Tyr – who may have originally stood next to him on the top level of godhood, but who barely appears in the myths that have survived. His domains include death, inspiration, language, magic, poetry, war and wisdom. He’s also the most complicated, and it seems that centuries of greatly varied beliefs have coalesced into an incredibly dense figure. In the Icelandic myths, Odin is arguably the most prominent of the gods. Interestingly enough, Adam of Bremen also tells us that “the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber Wotan and Frikko have places on either side.” In the particular time and place Adam is describing, Thor is the main god of the people, and Odin is off to the side. The movie version of Thor seems to have hammer troubles. In this version, Thor’s hammer is clearly described as the treasure most valued by the gods, since it is the weapon that “provided the greatest defense against frost-giants.” The emphasis is placed squarely on his role as defender of gods and humans from the giants, who themselves represent the threatening forces of nature – flood, avalanche, wildfire and so on. In the Icelandic version of the mythology – written down in the 13th century – Thor’s fertility function has become obscured. The hammer itself can be seen as a phallic symbol with which the god of the skies impregnates the goddess of the earth, as lightning crashes down from on high. In the 11th century, the German chronicler Adam of Bremen described Swedish religious ritual and belief: “Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather andĬrops.” In this view, thunder is an audible sign of Thor’s fertility function. In Thor’s case, it is a manifestation of his function – a sign of his presence. If we are going to take this material seriously, we need to ask: what is the function of the god? If we say Thor is “god of thunder,” then the question becomes: what function does thunder perform for a society of worshipers? I would argue that thunder itself performs no function. Reducing each of them to a single epithet (“god of thunder,” for example) really oversimplifies things. Norse mythology, as it survives in the written record, presents the gods as very complicated individuals. ![]() What did Thor, Loki and Odin represent to the Vikings in terms of their masculinity and godliness? There’s an awful lot of “what it means to be a leader,” lots of humanism and very humble, ungodly affection in this version of Thor. I’m curious about how the dude Asgardians (Thor, Loki, Odin) perform their “godliness” (well, they’re not gods in the Marvel version of the myth) as opposed to how Norse myth portrays them. Thor, Odin, and Loki – as portrayed in the first Thor movie ![]() I hope this article will help put the Marvel films in perspective for readers who may not be familiar with the original mythology. Maloney’s permission, I am posting her questions (in bold) and my answers. I was fairly skeptical from the beginning about the likelihood of my comments on ancient heathen worldview appearing in a magazine about “the future of business, culture, innovation and science.” Such is life in the modern world. Unfortunately, the Wired editors decided to kill the feature a week after I submitted my answers. Maloney asked me several questions via email, and I wrote detailed replies. ![]() She wrote that “one of big things at Wired is writing about the sociocultural causes and effects of entertainment” and that she was interested in interviewing me about “how the myth has been updated to this most recent iteration.” Ms. Almost.ĭevon Maloney of Wired Magazine contacted me in early November about Marvel’s new movie, Thor: The Dark World. Wired Magazine almost ran a feature on heathen theology.
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