Curated playlist
Æsir
- OdinOdin has more than 170 recorded names, more than any other god among the Germanic peoples. The names describe his attributes, point to myths involving him, or recall religious practices tied to his cult. Many of them trace back to a single…
- FreyjaFreyja weeps tears of red gold. Her husband, the god Óðr, travels for long stretches, and in his absence she searches for him under assumed names, crying over his absence. In Norse mythology she is a goddess bound up with love, beauty,…
- ThorThor, the hammer-wielding deity of Germanic paganism, is not simply a god of storms. He is a protector of farmers, a champion of fertility, a father, a husband, a fisherman who once hooked a world-serpent from a boat, and a disguised bride…
- FreyrFreyr, whose name in Old Norse simply means "the Lord", once stood at the center of a golden temple in Uppsala, his statue carved with an enormous phallus, flanked by Odin and Thor. Worshippers came to him for peace, good harvests, and…
- LokiLoki is a god in Norse mythology whose identity has been debated by scholars more than any other figure in the Norse pantheon. A völva prophecies in the Poetic Edda poem Baldrs draumar that no one will visit until "Loki is loose, escaped…
- BragiBragi is the god of poetry in Norse mythology, a figure whose existence raises a question that scholars have debated for generations: was he ever a god at all? In the halls of Valhalla, he greets fallen kings and speaks with the authority…
- DagrIn stanza 25 of Vafþrúðnismál, the jötunn Vafþrúðnir answers Odin's question about the origin of day. He states that Delling is the father of day while night was born from Nörvi. This exchange establishes a genealogical framework for the…
- MániMáni is the Moon personified in Germanic mythology. One of the oldest surviving poems about him admits something startling: "the moon knew not what might was his." That line comes from Völuspá, part of the Poetic Edda, a collection…
- BaldrBaldr, the Norse god whose name may mean "brave," "lord," or "the shining one," is remembered above all for a death that shook the cosmos. He was loved by every creature on earth, every object in every realm, and yet he was killed. The…
- TýrTýr is a god in Germanic mythology whose name, in its oldest recoverable form, simply meant "God." That single fact contains a puzzle: how does a deity so primordial that his very name was the word for divinity end up as a minor figure in…
- ÆsirThe Æsir are the gods of Germanic paganism, and their name has been spoken in one form or another for well over a thousand years. An inscription found on a buckle from Vimose, dated to around 200 CE, reads a(n)sau wīja, meaning "I dedicate…
- ÓðrÓðr is one of Norse mythology's most elusive figures. His name means "soul," "mind," "wit," or "sense" in Old Norse, and also carries the weight of "song" and "poetry." Scholar Andy Orchard translates an additional epithet as "the frenzied…
- RígsþulaA single sheet of parchment from the fourteenth century holds the only surviving copy of Rígsþula. This fragment rests within Codex Wormianus, cataloged as AM 242 fol. The poem appears incomplete on this final page, following Snorri…