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The religion of the Germanic peoples, from Tacitus's account to the Norse gods of the Viking Age: Odin, Thor, Loki, Yggdrasil, and Ragnarok, preserved by Snorri's Eddas...
The religion of the Germanic peoples, from Tacitus's account to the Norse gods of the Viking Age: Odin, Thor, Loki, Yggdrasil, and Ragnarok, preserved by Snorri's Eddas. Its shadow reaches us through four days of the week, Wagner, Tolkien, and the Nazi misuse of its runes.
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The Roman historian Tacitus writes Germania, the earliest account of Germanic religion, describing gods he equates with Mercury (Wodan), Hercules (Donar), and Mars (Tiwaz), and sacred groves without temples or idols. It is the first written window onto the faith that became Norse mythology.
Germanic peoples map the Roman planetary week onto their own gods: Tiw's day (Tuesday), Woden's day (Wednesday), Thunor's day (Thursday), and Frigg's day (Friday). Four days of the modern English week still carry the names of the Norse gods.
Pre-Christian Scandinavians worship the Aesir, led by Odin, Thor, and Frigg, and the Vanir of fertility, in a cosmos held together by the world-ash Yggdrasil and its nine worlds. Their myths would outlast their temples by a thousand years.
The continental Germanic peoples, the Saxons and their neighbors, worship at sacred pillars such as the Irminsul, a great column upholding the heavens, and in holy groves. Their gods were the southern cousins of the Norse Aesir.
Charlemagne cuts down the Irminsul and wages decades of war to convert the pagan Saxons by the sword, including the massacre of thousands at Verden in 782. The old Germanic religion was stamped out on the continent centuries before it fell in the Norse north.
Norse raiders sack the monastery of Lindisfarne off the English coast, the shock that opened the Viking Age. For nearly three centuries Norse seafarers raided, traded, and settled from Russia to North America.
Two short spells written in Old High German, the Merseburg Charms, are the only surviving record of continental Germanic pagan incantation, naming Wodan and other gods. Almost everything else of that religion was erased by conversion.
At the Althing assembly, Iceland peacefully adopts Christianity while quietly tolerating the old gods in private. The conversion of Scandinavia slowly ended open worship of the Norse gods, but the sagas preserved their stories.
Norse sailors led by Leif Erikson reach Vinland in North America, five centuries before Columbus, as later confirmed by the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. The reach of the pagan Norse world spanned two continents.
also in The old gods and their long shadow
The Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson compiled the Prose Edda as a handbook of Norse myth and poetry for Christian-era poets. Much of what we know of Norse mythology comes from his work.
The Codex Regius manuscript gathers the Poetic Edda, the old mythological and heroic poems, including the Voluspa that tells of creation and Ragnarok, the doom of the gods. It is the primary source for Norse mythology.
Richard Wagner completes and premieres The Ring of the Nibelung, a four-opera cycle drawn from Norse and Germanic myth. It turned the old gods into a symbol of German national culture, for better and, later, for worse.
also in Curriculum, programming, and propaganda, Nazi ideology was not unique: race myth, empire, and extermination
Nazi Germany adopts Norse and Germanic runes, such as the SS sig-runes and the sun-wheel, as symbols of a mythic Aryan past, and the Ahnenerbe institute mined the myths for propaganda. The theft still shadows Norse symbols, which modern white-nationalist groups continue to misuse. The symbols are ancient; this political use is a documented distortion.
J.R.R. Tolkien, a scholar of Old Norse, draws on the Eddas for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: the very name Middle-earth is the Norse Midgard, and Gandalf and the dwarves come straight from the Prose Edda. Modern fantasy is steeped in the Norse world.
Marvel Comics reinvents Thor as a superhero, and the later films make Odin, Loki, and Asgard household names for a global audience. The Norse gods reach more people today than at any time since the Viking Age.
Iceland formally recognizes Asatru, a modern revival of Norse paganism, as a religion. Heathenry now has followers worldwide, most honoring the old gods peacefully and rejecting the racist groups that also claim the symbols.