Norse Mythology

At a glance

The theme on the map

21 events in this theme

1. UndatedGinnungagap and Ymir — The Beginning of the WorldLegend

   The Norse creation myth, told in the Völuspá (Prophecy of the Seeress) of the Poetic Edda and in Gylfaginning (The Deluding of Gylfi) of Snorri’s Prose Edda. In Ginnungagap, the empty gap between icy Niflheim and fiery Muspelheim, the giant Ymir came into being; Odin and his brothers killed him and made the world from his body.

2. UndatedYggdrasil and the Nine WorldsLegend

   The Norse picture of the cosmos, told in Völuspá, Grímnismál and the Prose Edda. The giant ash tree Yggdrasil stands at the centre of the world, linking Asgard of the gods, Midgard of men, Jotunheim of the giants and other worlds.

3. UndatedOdin’s Sacrifice, the Runes and Mímir’s WellLegend

   A Norse myth told in the Eddic poems Hávamál (Sayings of the High One) and Völuspá and in the Prose Edda. Odin hung nine nights on a windy tree, wounded by a spear, sacrificing himself to himself to win the runes, and gave up an eye to drink from Mímir’s well of wisdom.

4. 1075The Temple at Gamla Uppsala — Adam of Bremen’s Account

   Around 1075 the German cleric Adam of Bremen wrote that there was a pagan temple adorned with gold at Uppsala in Sweden, housing statues of Thor, Odin and Freyr. It is the most famous account of Norse pagan worship, but Adam never visited Uppsala and wrote from hearsay.

5. 1075The Nine-Yearly Sacrifice at UppsalaLegend

   The sacrifice at Uppsala as told from hearsay by Adam of Bremen. Every nine years people from all over Sweden gathered at Uppsala for a nine-day feast, offering nine males of every kind of creature — humans included — and hanging their bodies in the trees of a sacred grove.

6. AD 834The Oseberg Ship Burial

   In the autumn of 834 two women were buried in a Viking ship some 21.5 m long beneath a great mound at Oseberg in southern Norway. Excavated in 1904, the ship and its grave goods — a cart, sledges, textiles and more — are the richest witness to Viking Age burial and beliefs about the afterlife.

7. AD 793 – 1066The Norse (Viking) Expansion

   From the late 8th century the Norse (Vikings) of Scandinavia sailed across Europe raiding and settling, founding the Duchy of Normandy, Kievan Rus’ and the Kingdom of Sicily, among others.

8. UndatedThe Children of Loki and the Binding of FenrirLegend

   A Norse myth told most fully in Gylfaginning of Snorri’s Prose Edda. The gods cast out or confined Loki’s children by a giantess — the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr and Hel — and bound Fenrir with the magic fetter Gleipnir, at the cost of Týr’s right hand.

9. UndatedThor at the Castle of Útgarða-LokiLegend

   A Norse myth told in Gylfaginning of Snorri’s Prose Edda. Thor and Loki travel to the giants’ stronghold of Útgarðr and lose every contest — eating, running, drinking, lifting a cat and wrestling — only to learn they had been pitted against fire, thought, the sea, the Midgard Serpent and old age.

10. 1050Thor Fishing for JörmungandrLegend

    A Norse myth told in the Eddic poem Hymiskviða and Snorri’s Prose Edda, and carved on stones such as the 11th-century Altuna Runestone in Sweden. Thor goes fishing with the giant Hymir and, using an ox head as bait, hauls up Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent — until the terrified Hymir cuts the line.

11. 1050The Altuna Runestone

    In the 11th century a runestone (U 1161) was raised at Altuna in Uppland, Sweden, in memory of a father and brother. One side shows Thor in a boat fishing for Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, with an ox head as bait — evidence that the myth was known in the Viking Age.

12. 1030Sigurd and FáfnirLegend

    A Norse heroic legend told in the 13th-century Icelandic Völsunga saga and the Eddic poems Reginsmál and Fáfnismál. Urged on by the smith Regin, the hero Sigurd kills Fáfnir, who has become a dragon; tasting the blood of its heart, he understands the speech of birds and kills the treacherous Regin.

13. 1030The Ramsund Carving — Sigurd on the Rock

    Around 1030 a runic inscription commemorating the building of a bridge was carved on a flat rock at Ramsund in Södermanland, Sweden. Around and inside the runic band are pictures of Sigurd stabbing the dragon Fáfnir and what followed — the best-known Viking Age image of the Sigurd legend.

14. UndatedThe Death of BaldrLegend

    A Norse myth told most fully in Gylfaginning of Snorri’s Prose Edda and briefly in Völuspá and Baldrs draumar. His mother Frigg made everything in the world swear not to harm Baldr, but Loki put the unsworn mistletoe into the hands of blind Höðr, and Baldr was killed.

15. UndatedThe Punishment of LokiLegend

    A Norse myth told in the prose ending of the Eddic poem Lokasenna (Loki’s Flyting) and in Snorri’s Prose Edda. Loki, who caused Baldr’s death, hid as a salmon, was caught and bound to rocks with his son’s entrails, while his wife Sigyn catches in a bowl the venom dripping from a serpent above him.

16. AD 930The Gosforth Cross

    In the first half of the 10th century a stone cross 4.4 m tall was raised at Gosforth in Cumbria, north-west England. Alongside the Crucifixion it bears scenes read as Ragnarök — Loki bound, Víðarr tearing the wolf’s jaws, Heimdall with his horn — showing where pagan myth and Christianity met among Viking settlers.

17. UndatedRagnarök — The Fate of the GodsLegend

    The Norse myth of the end of the world, told in Völuspá (Prophecy of the Seeress) in the Poetic Edda and in Snorri’s Prose Edda. After three winters without summer, the bound Fenrir and Loki break free; gods and giants fight their last battle, Odin, Thor and Freyr die, and Surtr’s fire engulfs the world.

18. UndatedThe Rebirth of the WorldLegend

    A Norse myth told at the end of Völuspá, in Vafþrúðnismál and in Snorri’s Prose Edda. After Ragnarök a green earth rises again from the sea, surviving gods and Baldr, returned from the dead, gather in the new world, and Líf and Lífþrasir, who hid in a wood, become ancestors of a new humankind.

19. 1220Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Younger Edda)

    Around 1220 the Icelandic chieftain and poet Snorri Sturluson composed the Prose Edda at Reykholt. Written as a handbook explaining the language and metres of old poetry, its question-and-answer section on the gods, Gylfaginning, became the most important book telling Norse mythology as a continuous story.

20. 1270The Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (Poetic Edda)

    Around the 1270s a manuscript collecting old poems of gods and heroes, the Codex Regius, was written in Iceland. It is almost the only source of the Poetic Edda — Völuspá, Hávamál and the rest. Bishop Brynjólfur of Skálholt acquired it in 1643 and sent it to the Danish king; it returned to Iceland in 1971.

21. 1876Premiere of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at Bayreuth

    On 13–17 August 1876 Richard Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung was first performed complete in the new Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, Germany. Weaving together Norse myth, the Völsunga saga and the German Nibelungenlied, it reshaped how modern Europe imagined Norse mythology.

Key people

• Adam of Bremen

  11th-century scholar of Bremen Cathedral whose history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (c. 1075) describes the lands and customs of the North in its fourth book, including the temple at Uppsala

• Snorri Sturluson1179 – 1241

  Icelandic chieftain, poet and historian, credited with the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, the history of the kings of Norway; killed at Reykholt by men acting for the Norwegian king

• Brynjólfur Sveinsson1605 – 1675

  Lutheran bishop of Skálholt, Iceland, and scholar, who acquired the Codex Regius in 1643 and sent it to King Frederick III of Denmark in 1662

• Richard Wagner1813 – 1883

  German composer who drew on Norse myth and Germanic legend for the four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung, and built the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, where the complete cycle was first performed in 1876