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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
