Religion, even I kind of have one.

                You know what’s cool? Paganism! You probably know about the Greco-Roman Religion and Egyptian Religion, you probably don’t know much about the Celtic Religion, but you may only know a little bit about my favorite, the Norse Religion. If I had to pick an existing religion to be (as opposed to just making one up from scratch), it would totally be Norse, so let’s talk about it (And yes, I realize that polytheism is still common in East and Central Asia and parts of Africa, which is excellent, I just wonder what happened to Western Polytheism).

                So why Norse? Well, it has a few things going for it. You get all the wacky hijinks and drama that you get with the Greco-Romans, but instead of being mostly about sex(/rape /incest) and crazy man-beasts (which are often still part of the sex category), Norse drama is generally about getting loot, and beating people up. The driving force of Greco-Roman mythology seems to be Zeus being really horny, meanwhile the Norse myths are usually fuelled by Loki being a huge prick, but where Zeus is never punished (that’s usually left to his victims) Loki is typically held responsible for his schemes (not that they have any lasting effects though). Norse also has my favorite afterlife and apocalypse, which I will talk about next. I am also of mostly Scandinavian and German ancestry, so Norse kind of appeals to me for that reason too.

A map of the Norse universe

                First, the Norse afterlife is pretty sweet. Proper funerals are important because if you don’t do it right the spirit will totally come back to haunt you, draugr style (basically zombies that can increase their size at will, aka super zombies). Proper funerals typically entail either burial or cremation. Various grave goods are often left with the body for use in the afterlife, which is handy for archeologists, and is totally stupendous when you rank high enough to get a boat sent with you. The spirit can go to a few different places after death. If you don’t die a noble death (noble deaths include dying in battle or at sea), you will probably end up in Hel. Pre-Christian Hel was probably just sort of a bland place were spirits default to, and wasn’t really connected to punishment. If you manage to avoid a lame death (like old age or disease) you get to go to either Valhalla, or Fólkvangr, the realms of Odin or Freya respectively. Details on Fólkvangr are pretty scarce, but Valhalla is what I am talking about when I say my favorite afterlife. The main activities are battling all day, getting your wounds healed, and then feasting all night (lather, rinse, repeat). The purpose is to train to accompany Odin into the epic battle that is Ragnarök (more on this in the apocalypse section). It is just so very Norse to base your ideal afterlife on warring and feasting, but only if you prove yourself a pro at warring and feasting in life (I assume feasting yourself to death would count as noble).  Death also has erotic aspects, since death is described as an embrace from one of the goddesses of the afterlife, and I use embrace in the fullest sense of that phrase (I’m not sure if this works for both genders, but the ladies deserve some sexy death times too).

                Ragnarök, more than just the best word ever (Norse names are excellent, and also their sweet epithets). Basically Ragnarök is the Norse apocalypse, even though the world will continue to exist afterward. All the events have been pretty well laid out with prophesies, and Odin’s favorite pastime is gathering knowledge about Ragnarök. It all starts with the Fimbulwinter, which is three winters in a row with no summers in between. During this triple intense winter there will be a whole bunch of wars, brothers will kill brothers, sons will turn against fathers, and even some incest, so basically some pretty sucky behavior all round. Then Loki and all his evil children (the ones he fathered at least, since being a shape shifter, he has also been a mother) escape from their bonds, plus the giants and the dead from Hel all march on the gods. Highlights of the battle include Fenrir the wolf swallowing the sun and the moon, then going on to eat Odin, before Odin’s son Vidar, using his super shoe powers, rips his jaw apart. Thor battles the World Serpent, is able to kill it, but dies from its poison after taking nine steps. Surt, one of the elder Giants, kills Frey who doesn’t have his good sword at the time, then burns the earth. Loki and Heimdall kill each other in battle as do Tyr and Garm. The survivors of the battle are Odin’s son Vidar (the shoe guy) and Vali (who matured to an adult in one day so he could kill Hodur), Thor’s son Modi and Magni (names meaning Angry and Strong, so I guess they are just made of pure distilled Thorness), plus Baldur and Hodur (Yep, the guy who killed Baldur and was then killed by Vali) bust out of Hel, and the two humans named Lif and Lifthrasir survive by hiding in some special forest. I’m not sure if any goddesses survive, but I guess the guys will have the whole Baldur killing shenanigans to talk about.

BEST APOCALYPSE EVER

                Now you could be wondering, “Hey Cob, who is your favorite Norse God?” (probably not but let’s pretend shall we) so here goes. You may know him for Tuesdays (Tyrsdays) and being totally hardcore (but likely you’ve never heard of him), it’s Tyr, the one handed god of law, justice, single combat, and heroic glory. Tyr doesn’t really have as much face time in mythology as Odin, Loki, or Thor do, but I guess those three nailed down the archetypes of being super wise, super douchy, or super strong respectively, so they are easy to write about. It is also believed that Tyr either used to be the primary god of the Norse pantheon or he and Odin used to be the same god, so Odin may have stolen many of the good Tyr myths. His only major appearances are in Ragnarök when he and Garm kill each other (Garm is basically the Norse Cerberus, and is the hound who guards Hel. He is also quite undermythed), and the story of how he lost his hand. That story goes as such. So Loki shows up at Asgard (home of the gods) with his new son one day. It turns out that his son is Fenrir, an evil wolf who will be mostly responsible for the end of the world. Instead of just killing it now, they decide to raise it, since you can’t break prophesy or something. Being the most courageous dude around, Tyr gets the job of feeding this beast. Alarmingly, Fenrir just keeps getting bigger and bigger, until he is just a massive slobbering death machine. The gods decide that they need to contain this cursed creature for their own safety, so they use their mightiest of weapons, reverse psychology. They get a big chain and then they say to Fenrir “Hey, I bet you can’t break out of this chain”. Turns out he totally can, plus he can also break out of their next chain that is twice is strong, with little to no effort. So the gods decide that they are going to need the best chain ever (the whole best of its kind concept is a bit of a recurring theme in Norse mythology), and when you need something amazing and magical like that, you go to the dwarves. In what must have been the most epic scavenger hunt of all time the dwarves gather the sound of a cats footfall, the beard of a women, the roots of a mountain, the sensibility of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird to make this chain. Instead of a chain though, they take this stuff and make it into a thin ribbon (like carbon nanotubes on steroids). Now the gods take this innocent looking ribbon and bet Fenrir double or nothing that he can’t break out this time. Fenrir gets suspicious at this point because he can probably smell dwarf magic all over that ribbon (literally, because wolves have a good sense of smell, and dwarves are smelly), so he only agrees to let them tie him up is somebody puts their hand in his mouth. Being the brave sort that he is, Tyr volunteers for the job, and then they tie Fenrir up with the ribbon. As the wolf struggles to break out Tyr is standing with his fingers crossed and hoping that the saying never bite the hand that feeds holds true. It doesn’t, and as soon as he realizes that he was tricked, Fenrir bites of Tyr’s right hand at the wrist (or the wolf-joint in Old Norse). So that is how Fenrir was bound until Ragnarök, and why Tyr is “not considered to be a promoter of settlements between people”, since I guess he can’t shake hands anymore or something.

One hand, too bad-ass

                Those are just some of the reasons why I like Norse Paganism, and I hope you learned something. In the end, calling myself Norse only means that I don’t mind if you refer to me as a heathen, and I prefer Yule to Christmas.