Curated playlist
Æsir
- OdinOdin hung himself from a tree for nine nights to win secret knowledge. The Norse god also gave up an eye for wisdom.
- FreyjaLoki turned into a flea and bit the goddess Freyja to steal her necklace. Odin had sent him after Brísingamen.
- ThorIn one poem, the thunder god Thor dresses as a bride to win back his stolen hammer.
- FreyrThe Norse god Freyr gave away the one sword that could have saved him. He traded it to win a giantess as his wife.
- LokiIn Norse myth, Loki lies bound while a serpent drips venom on him. His wife Sigyn catches it in a basin.
- BragiScholars lean toward Bragi, the Norse god of poetry, having begun as a 9th-century court poet.
- DagrDagr is the Old Norse word for day, and in Norse mythology it is also the name of a god who gives daylight a face and a family. In the Poetic Edda, Odin travels in disguise under the name Gagnráðr and puts a question to the jötunn…
- MániMáni, the Moon personified in Germanic myth, is followed across the sky by two children taken from a well.
- BaldrThe Norse god Baldr, loved by everything, was killed by a mistletoe weapon. His blind brother threw it, guided by Loki.
- TýrEvery Tuesday, English speakers honor the Germanic god Týr. Tuesday comes from Old English tīwesdæg, "day of Tīw."
- ÆsirThe modern Swedish word for thunderstorm comes from the Æsir, the Germanic gods.
- ÓðrFreyja weeps tears of red gold for Óðr, a Norse god almost no text describes. He is her husband, yet he barely appears.
- RígsþulaRígsþula, the Lay of Ríg, breaks off while a young man is out hunting. He is riding through a forest, snaring birds, when a crow speaks to him. That is the last event the poem records. The poem survives incomplete, written on the last…