Germanic mythology

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Germanic mythology includes a war god named Týr who lost his hand to a wolf called Fenrir. Some scholars, working from linguistic evidence, have argued that Týr may once have ranked as a central deity in the Germanic pantheon. Germanic mythology is the body of myths native to the Germanic peoples. It spans Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, and Continental Germanic mythology, and formed a key element of Germanic paganism. Where does a mythology this old actually come from? Which gods mattered most, and to whom? And what does it say is waiting at the end of the world?

• 2. Roots in Stone

  ›

  Petroglyphs carved across Scandinavia suggest that Germanic mythology, in some form, reaches back to at least the Nordic Bronze Age. Germanic languages themselves developed out of Proto-Indo-European language, and Germanic mythology follows that same line of descent, growing out of an older Proto-Indo-European mythology. None of this early history was written down by the Germanic peoples themselves. The first surviving accounts would come from outsiders instead.

• 3. Written Testimony

  ›

  Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War ranks among the earliest written references to Germanic mythology. Strabo's Geographica and Tacitus's Germania, both by Roman writers, add to that early record. Later Latin-language works filled in more detail across the centuries. Jordanes wrote Getica, Paul the Deacon wrote History of the Lombards, and Bede wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Rimbert's Vita Ansgari, Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, and Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum round out this later Latin tradition.

  The Merseburg Charms, the Nibelungenlied, and pieces of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, offer traces of the mythology in the Germanic peoples' own languages, not just in Latin.

  Most Old Norse literature was written down in the Icelandic Commonwealth during the Middle Ages, and among it the Poetic Edda stands as the single most important source. Physical evidence outside these manuscripts also survives, including archaeological evidence, runic inscriptions, and place-names.

  Names such as Odin, Thor, and Loki turn up across these very sources, still waiting to be placed into a fuller picture of the gods.

• 4. Beginnings and Endings

  ›

  The poem Völuspá, the first and best known text in the Poetic Edda, tells of how the world itself began. A seeress narrates the account, describing a great magical emptiness called Ginnungagap that existed before anything else. Odin and his two brothers raised the Earth from the sea, according to the seeress. Later, they came across two tree trunks, Ask and Embla, and shaped them into the first human couple.

  A different account appears in Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál. These poems say Odin created the world from the body of the giant Ymir instead. Odin and his brothers, in this telling, descended from Búri, who was created by a primeval cow named Auðumbla. Parallels to Auðumbla turn up in Indo-Iranian religion, evidence of this mythology's ancient Indo-European roots.

  Yggdrasil stands at the center of this cosmos, a tree that Germanic mythology treats as the world's structural core. The mythology also prophesies an end, a coming destruction known as Ragnarök. The gods who inhabit this world, and who must eventually face that reckoning, have their own distinct ranks and rivalries.

• 5. Gods of War and Wealth

  ›

  Old Norse literature names a wide range of Germanic gods, split into two groups, the Æsir and the Vanir. The Æsir are gods of war and dominate the Vanir, who preside over fertility and wealth instead.

  Odin leads the Æsir, a god tied to war, seiðr, a form of witchcraft, and wisdom. He appears to have been worshipped mainly by kings and noblemen rather than by ordinary people. Odin rules Asgard, the home of the gods, which contains the great hall Valhalla. There, warriors who died a heroic death in battle, known as Einherjar, were gathered to prepare for the final struggle still awaiting the gods.

  Odin's wife was Frigg. His son by the jötunn Jörð was Thor, the thunder god. Thor wielded the hammer Mjölnir, locked in constant conflict with the jötnar and the serpent Jörmungandr. Thor has many parallels across Indo-European mythology, and he appears to have been worshipped widely, especially among warriors and the common people. A notable brother of theirs was Baldr.

  Other significant Æsir include the trickster god Loki and Heimdallr, who is said in Rígsþula to have fathered the three classes of men.

  The Æsir and Vanir are described in Old Norse literature as former enemies. Through that conflict, certain Vanir gods, including Njörðr, Freyja, and Freyr, ended up joining the Æsir. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Njörðr and Nerthus, a Germanic fertility god that Tacitus names in Germania, written in the 1st century AD.

  Other beings appear too, among them Hel, who presides over an underworld location that shares her name. Germanic mythology is also crowded with other kinds of beings that never rise to godhood at all.

• 6. A Crowded Otherworld

  ›

  Dísir, fylgjur, and draugar populate Germanic mythology alongside dwarfs and elves. Goblins, trolls, and dragons round out this wider cast of legendary creatures. None of these figures vanished quickly, even as the wider mythology itself was about to face its biggest test.

• 7. Surviving Conversion

  ›

  Germanic peoples converted to Christianity during the Middle Ages, a shift that might have erased this mythology entirely. Instead, the study of Germanic mythology became an important part of Germanic philology once that field of study had developed.

  The subject remains an integral part of Heathenry today, the modern revival of Germanic paganism. Elements of Germanic mythology have also survived directly into modern Germanic folklore. Somewhere in a Heathen ritual today, or in a folk tale that never mentions Odin by name, some fragment of this mythology is probably still very much alive.