This is Norse Mythology through the mind of Neil Gaiman – the stories are not necessarily how they went down, but that didn’t stop me from really enjoying how they’re told here. You can tell this was a passion project of his, by the amount of research and characterization put into all of the Norse Gods.
I was reading this one alongside finishing the show Vikings Valhalla, so I was getting a double-dose of Norse/Viking lore, and it was a pretty good pairing!
If you’re a fan of mythology, folklore, or just great storytelling in general, Norse Mythology is definitely worth checking out.
Highlights
Odin has many names. He is the all-father, the lord of the slain, the gallows god. He is the god of cargoes and of prisoners. He is called Grimnir and Third.
<Norse Mythology>(Gaiman, Neil) Highlight on page 15 | Location 102-103 2024-03-31 23:23:29
Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god.
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To the north was Niflheim, the dark world.
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It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station. He will go forth from Muspell with his flaming sword and burn the world with fire, and one by one the gods will fall before him.
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Odin and his brothers made the soil from Ymir’s flesh. Ymir’s bones they piled up into mountains and cliffs. Our rocks and pebbles, the sand and gravel you see: these were Ymir’s teeth, and the fragments of bones that were broken and crushed by Odin and Vili and Ve in their battle with Ymir.
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Ask and Embla were the father and the mother of all of us: every human being owes its life to its parents and their parents and their parents before them.
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He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.
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Odin’s eye remains in Mimir’s well, preserved by the waters that feed the world ash, seeing nothing, seeing everything.
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On the day the Gjallerhorn is blown, it will wake the gods, no matter where they are, no matter how deeply they sleep. Heimdall will blow the Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, at Ragnarok.
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“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”
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From beneath the cloth Brokk produced a hammer, and placed it in front of Thor. Thor looked at it and sniffed. “The handle is rather short,” he said. Brokk nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s my fault. I was working the bellows. But before you dismiss it, let me tell you about what makes this hammer unique. It’s called Mjollnir, the lightning-maker.
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“If this builder is actually a giant,” said Freya, with ice in her voice, “then I will marry him and follow him back to Jotunheim, and it will be interesting to see whom I hate more, him for taking me away or all of you for giving me to him.”
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Loki stayed away for the best part of a year, and when he showed up again, he was accompanied by a gray foal. It was a beautiful foal, although it had eight legs instead of the usual four, and it followed Loki wherever he went, and nuzzled him, and treated Loki as if he were its mother. Which, of course, was the case.
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Many people would admire Odin’s horse, but only a brave man would ever mention its parentage in Loki’s presence, and nobody ever dared to allude to it twice.
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Loki was handsome, and he knew it. People wanted to like him, they wanted to believe him, but he was undependable and self-centered at best, mischievous or evil at worst.
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Folk would call Jormungundr the Midgard serpent.
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“I am only myself, Hel, daughter of Angrboda and of Loki,” she said. “And I like the dead best of all. They are simple things, and they talk to me with respect. The living look at me with revulsion.”
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“This child will be the ruler of the deepest of the dark places, and ruler of the dead of all the nine worlds. She will be the queen of those poor souls who die in unworthy ways—of disease or of old age, of accidents or in childbirth. Warriors who die in battle will always come to us here in Valhalla. But the dead who die in other ways will be her folk, to attend her in her darkness.”
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Fenrir looked at Tyr. Tyr looked at him bravely. Then Tyr closed his eyes and nodded. “Do it,” he whispered.
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There were things Thor did when something went wrong. The first thing he did was ask himself if what had happened was Loki’s fault.
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In the end only one god had not spoken: Heimdall, the far-seeing, who watches over the world. Not one thing happens that Heimdall does not see, and sometimes he sees events that have yet to occur in the world.
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“What I say,” said Thor, in a voice like thunder, “is that you should not have taken my hammer.” He hit Thrym with his hammer, only once, but once was all it took. The ogre fell to the straw-covered floor, and did not rise again. All the giants and ogres fell beneath Thor’s hammer: the guests at the wedding that was never to be.
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“There, that wasn’t as bad as I had feared,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got my hammer back. And I had a good dinner. Let’s go home.”
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Kvasir, made of the joining of the Aesir and the Vanir, was the wisest of the gods: he combined head and heart.
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No one, then or now, wanted to drink the mead that came out of Odin’s ass. But whenever you hear bad poets declaiming their bad poetry, filled with foolish similes and ugly rhymes, you will know which of the meads they have tasted.
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“Good lord,” he said. “It’s an invasion of tiny toddlers. No, my mistake. You must be the famous Thor of the Aesir, which means you must be Loki, Laufey’s son. I knew your mother a little. Hello, small relation. I am Utgardaloki, the Loki of Utgard. And you are?”
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Can any of you do anything special? What about you, little relative? What can you do that’s unique?” “I can eat faster than anybody,” said Loki, without boasting.
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“You did the impossible. You could not perceive it, but the end of the drinking horn was in the deepest part of the sea. You drank enough to take the ocean level down, to make tides. Because of you, Thor, the seawater will rise and ebb forevermore. I was relieved that you did not take a fourth drink: you might have drunk the ocean dry.
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No one can beat old age, because in the end she takes each of us, makes us weaker and weaker until she closes our eyes for good. All of us except you, Thor.
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“It is I, Loki, here to rescue you!” Idunn glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. “It is you who are the source of my troubles,” she said. “Well, perhaps. But that was so long ago. That was yesterday’s Loki. Today’s Loki is here to save you and to take you home.”
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The mortals of Midgard revered Frey. He made the seasons, they said. Frey made the fields fertile and brought forth life from the dead ground.
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Their wedding was blessed, and some say that their son, Fjolnir, went on to become the first king of Sweden. (He would drown in a vat of mead late one night, hunting in the darkness for a place to piss.)
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Aegir was the greatest of the sea giants. His wife was Ran, into whose net those who drown at sea are gathered. His nine daughters are the waves of the sea.
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“I am grim of mind and wrathful of spirit and I have no desire to be nice to anyone,” said a huge rumbling giant’s voice.
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Lit, one of the dwarfs, walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the pyre, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse.
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In Hel’s world, the sun never rises and the day can never begin.
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This is your task, Hermod. Go and ask them. All the gods and the giants, all the rocks and the plants. Ask everything. If all things in the world weep for him and want him to return, I will give Balder back to the Aesir and the day. But if one creature will not cry or speaks against him, then he stays with me forever.”
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Loki sobered up the next morning and thought about what he had done the night before. He felt no shame, for shame was not Loki’s way, but he knew that he had pushed the gods too far.
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Salmon are slippery fish, and Loki was the slipperiest of salmon; he wriggled and tried to slip through Thor’s fingers, but Thor simply gripped the fish harder and squeezed it tightly, down by the tail. They say that salmon have been narrower near the tail ever since.
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She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls onto Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes. When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake.
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All who see the brothers Fenrir the wolf and the Midgard serpent, the children of Loki, will know death.
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Mimir’s head will whisper its knowledge of the future to Odin, just as I am telling it to you now. What Mimir whispers to Odin will give the all-father hope, even when all looks dark.
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Thor will finally kill the Midgard serpent, as he has wanted to do for so long. Thor smashes the great serpent’s brains in with his hammer.
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Thor is a good nine feet away from it when its head crashes to the ground, but that is not far enough. Even as it dies, the serpent will empty its venom sacs over the thunder god, in a thick black spray. Thor grunts in pain and then falls lifeless to the earth, poisoned by the creature he slew.
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Odin thrusts into its mouth with his spear, but one snap of Fenrir’s jaws, and the spear is gone. Another bite and a crunch and a swallow and Odin, the all-father, greatest and wisest of all the gods, is gone as well, never to be seen again.
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Of Loki’s legions, only Loki himself will still be standing, bloodied and wild-eyed, with a satisfied smile on his scarred lips.
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The woman is called Life, the man is called Life’s Yearning. Their descendants will populate the earth. It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death.
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Loki would say something, something cutting and clever and hurtful, but his life will have gone, and all his brilliance, and all his cruelty, and he will say nothing, not ever again.
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