All I know about Asgard is what I saw in the Thor movie. And, except for the flyovers, almost everything was inside the palace (Valhalla?). Odin id king, and Loki wants to usurp him, and be the ruler of…who exactly? Do they ever show the common Asgardians? They’re supposedly an advanced alien race, so do the common Asgardians have powers, or are they just like Earthings, but living in a shiny spiky city?
Even the “baseline” Asgardians are superhuman - stronger and much longer-lived. But not particular funky powers like Thor or Loki have.
In the Cinematic Universe, at least, Thor doesn’t really have any special powers (beyond normal Asgardians, anyway). He is essentially immune to normal physical damage (although the films suggest that Asgardians can be killed) but will age slowly; this can be explained as just a really powerful healing factor, like the Kree or the Hulk. He does wield Mjölnir, or course, but it is a technological artifact which somehow determines the “worthiness” of the person attempting to wield it and denies access to those who don’t measure up. (Note that Steve Rogers is able to budge it, but not pickit up, which was played off in jest but may indicate some hidden darkness below his Pollyanna demeanor.) That Mjölnor is “like magic” to us is just an indication of its advanced state of maturity and capability, i.e. Clarke’s Third Law.
Loki of the MCU is not Asgardian, but rather adopted by Odin from the Frost Giants of Jötunheimr, although it is not clear that he of the same species since he does not have their form at any point and the Frost Giants do not demonstrate Loki’s metamorphic abilities or art of trickery. In Norse legend, Loki is a god and son of the god Fárbauti; as in the film portrayal he is a trickster but often aids Thor, especially in the recovery of thr lost Mjölnor, although he is ultimately responsible for the deaths of several gods including Heimdalr/Vindhlér during the Ragnarök. Marvel will presumably use some modification of the myth as the basis for Thor: Ragnarök.
An “ordinary” Asgardian was portrayed in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Peter MacNicol as having healing powers, longevity, and superhuman strength, so assuming the canonicity of the show it presumes that all Asgardians are superpowered (in comparison to unenhanced normal humans). It seems unlikely that they have the same kind of world-shaking conflicts as Thor and Loki because if they did Asgard and the other realms would be in constat turmoil.
Stranger
There are vague hints of decadence in the depiction: Asgard seems to be one big city, and there don’t seem to be farmlands surrounding it. They probably have some scientific/magical means of food synthesis. They’ve settled down to a neo-medieval social pattern, probably because that’s comforting to them.
(A hell of a lot of Americans would vote in favor of a social reversion to a neo-Colonial social pattern – so long as we can also keep our computers and advanced medical technology! And aircraft carriers.)
Note that (as per the original Norse tales) when Asgardians want a wall built, the hire Giants to build it for them. (And try to cheat them out of the payment by cunning clauses in the contract.)
I missed the Marvel comics cycle when Asgard was relocated to Oklahoma (?) and I’m sorry I did, as it looked like a fairly in-depth exploration of some of the questions of Asgard’s nature.
Loki of the Marvel cinematic universe doesn’t have his funky magical powers as a result of any racial traits: His magic is all learned, specifically from his adoptive mother, who has similar abilities.
Wait, they’re NOT deities? That’s…disappointing.
There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.
In the first Thor movie, Odin says that Loki is the son of Laufey, King of the Frost Giants:
“In the aftermath of the battle, I went into the Temple, and I found a baby. Small for a giant’s offspring – abandoned, suffering, left to die. Laufey’s son.”
It could be he’s only half Frost Giant, or is some kind of mutant (would mutant Frost Giants be OK in the MCU?). But his flesh did turn Frost Giant blue when another FG grabbed his arm during the first battle in Jotunheim, so I’d say he has to be at least partially FG.
I took it to mean that Cap could’ve lifted it, but chose not to–didn’t want to embarrass his buddy.
*I *took it mean that Cap is so good as to confound even Mjolinr’s DRM, which has a long list of requirements that pretty much boil down to “Thor except when dramatically appropriate.”
A Cap who can budge Mjolnir when the Avengers are just sitting around drinking is a Cap who could lift it in an extraordinary circumstance.
In Marvel? Thanks to Jack Kirby, there are lots of gods and pseudo-gods. The Asgardians are maybe mid-tier; how awesome and cosmic they seem depending on the story.
In the scene where Odin first picks Loki up, the infant is Frost Giant blue, with the lighter patterning clearly on his face. However, his appearance quickly shifts to match Odin’s skin tone. It’s unclear whether ODIN did that, or the infant did that.
If it was the infant Loki, that’s our first clue that he’s a magical adept. As for his adult height, it’s always possible that he was a runt: the Jotun version of a dwarf or a little person. If it was Odin who changed his appearance, well, Odin in the comics has enough magic that he could also prevent Loki from reaching Jotun height if he so choose.
Frost Giants are shown in the first film as magic adepts, so presumably Jotun ancestry would be all that’s necessary for Frigga to teach the young Loki his magic tricks.
As for Asgard, they’ve got some pretty impressive tech. They have some sort of nearly impermeable mesh-shaped force fields (seen in the jail cells, rising up around the city, and in a sphere around their shield-generator) they have technologically-mastered their “natural” environment, based on what we can see: a massively terraformed non-spherical asteroid/giant rock, with lots of rivers and lakes and oceans in implausible set-ups, not to mention a massive waterfall that falls out into the void. Since they’ve got ample water and air, in the absence of what usually makes those two things hang around, I think they’ve got the tech sorted. From what we see, Asgard is a single giant city surrounded by water-dominated “wilderness.”
We do know that they have a sort of guardianship or lordship over some other places. They’ve got the Jotun restricted to their own world, so they’re acting as guards or border control for them. Odin tells Loki that Thor is out “restoring peace” to many places where shit hit the fan while Bifrost (itself a stupendous piece of tech) was broken, and we see a scene set on Vanaheim (another planet?) the home of the “asian” warrior Hogun as an example. In another scene, Loki doesn’t question Thor’s assertion that Earth is under his guardianship, just comments that he’s doing a crappy job of it. So they’re at least powerful in the larger universe as security forces, or as “peacekeeping” troops.
As for them being deities, the implication is that they don’t claim to be gods when dealing with other interstellar peoples, but when they came down to Earth during the long fight with the Jotun way back in earth’s history, the primitive people there THOUGHT they were all gods, and the Asgardians didn’t bother to correct the peasantry, and enjoyed the perks of godhood. They’re all arrogant bastards, and think of humans like pathetic barely-sentient weaklings. So humans thinking of Asgardians in the sense of a more Greek or Roman god, rather than like the Abrahamic all-knowing, all-powerful God, isn’t too far off.
(in response to foolsguinea) So far there’s been a clear difference between comics Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the MCU specifically, the Asgardians themselves have categorically denied being gods.
Some would describe them as puny gods.
In our Norse tales based upon the* realities *as revealed by Marvel, Vanaheimr was a realm inhabited by the Vanir. Who were also gods. But I don’t know what Marvel calls them; the old human tales call the Asgardians the “Aesir”.
And the Norse pronounced Bifrost more like “beef roast” than “by frost.” But what did those barbarians know?
A line I rather liked from the comics was “(The Asgardians have technology) that is indistiguishable from magic… even to THEM.”
Jack Kirby, in the comics, once published a map of Asgard, which while not one entire building, is largely an arcology with some big parks and open plazas, surrounded by green spaces, where crops could be grown, I suppose. You walk far enough in the right direction, you get to Jotunheim. Getting there from Midgard was the trick.
All cultures and societies have technology that is indistinguishable from magic, even to them.
I think the MCU has a “no explicit supernatural stuff” rule.
That’s going to make the Dr. Strange movie kind of tricky.
Even if we go back to the original comics, the Asgardians (and the Olympians) were, as others have noted, very long-lived beings, whose “baseline” abilities were superhuman, but were not necessarily “deities” in the traditional sense. When they revealed themselves to Earth cultures, they were assumed to be gods, and worshiped as such.
In Marvel’s mythology, there are / were beings referred to as “Elder Gods”, one of which (Gaea) seems to have been responsible for creating the “New Gods”, such as the Asgardians.
So far. Doctor Strange will kick that to the curb post-haste. Then Guardians 3 can get freaky.