Read this if you…
- are interested in Norse Mythology
- aRe okay with it being super confusing and impossible to follow
Skip this if you…
- want something easily comprehensible
- would rather just wikipedia the mythology than wrestle with the original
- want a single narrative
The 
Take
Too much work to find out what’s actually going on but the choice of diction and setting of witches and waves and rings and warriors and mead felt uniquely Norse
Depicted in Art
The world-tree Yggdrasil rises with its three roots, the wells beneath, and figures of gods and beasts arrayed among its branches.
W. G. Collingwood, 1908
Sigurd plunges his sword into Fafnir from beneath; the wounded dragon writhes above the hero in the pit.
Arthur Rackham, 1901
Loki stands with his monstrous offspring — Fenrir the wolf, Jörmungandr the serpent, and Hel — born of Angrboða.
Lorenz Frølich, 1895
Brynhild and Gudrun confront one another by a flowing river, the quarrel that triggers Sigurd's murder in the Edda.
Anders Zorn
Odin on Sleipnir gallops down to the gates of Hel to wake the dead seeress and ask her about Baldr's dreams.
W. G. Collingwood, 1908
Blind Hod looses the mistletoe shaft and Baldr falls among the assembled gods on the plain of Ida.
W. G. Collingwood, 1908
Recommended Editions
Carolyne Larrington
Oxford University Press · 2014
Larrington's revised Oxford is the clean modern Edda. Her prose stays out of pseudo-Norse mode, and her notes unpack the mythology without smothering the verse. This is the Tolkien source material in English.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Notable Quotes
Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself must also die; but the word about you will never die, if you win a good name.
Screen & Stage
looseDer Ring des Nibelungen
Opera · 1876
Richard Wagner
looseValhalla
Film · 1986
Peter Madsen
looseRagnarok
TV · 2020
Adam Price
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Neil Gaiman, British-American novelist, b. 1960: "But if I had to declare a favorite, it would probably be for the Norse myths."
- William Morris, English poet & designer, 1834–1896: "The Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks."
- Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer, 1899–1986: "Without question the most complex and richest of the ancient Germanic literatures."
- Richard Wagner, German composer, 1813–1883: "I must study these Old Norse eddic poems of yours; they are far more profound than our medieval poems."
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