Have to go with Raganarok, just because I love the idea that for once, in the big final end/battle with a religion, the gods themselves are going to fight and die, too. Gives a sense of camaraderie, I guess. 
The thing I love about Norse mythology is the dry dry bleak humor. Take the binding of Fenris. They convince Fenris to try on the last chain, but he demands that one of the Aesir place their hand in his mouth. Tyr steps up and volunteers. Fenris tries and tries to break the chain, but can’t. The Prose Edda says: “All the gods laughed. Except Tyr, he lost his hand”. Yep, that’ll do it.
Okay, suggestions thus far seem to favor Thor. Point taken, as he is the poster child for Vikings.
I even have a pattern to make a little Thor Popsicle stick puppet. Lame, I know, but these are children.
I did like the Tyr and Fenris story, too.
By Ymir’s bones! You must share this pattern with us!
But an import, not a Norse creation (not that any of the others are either, but Thor is more recent, so there).
Is there no love for the story where the giant Thrym steals Mjolnir and agrees to return it if he gets to marry Freya, so Thor dresses up as Freya to fool him? I think that’s a lovely story with many classic elements - comedy, bloodshed, trickery, revenge, transvestitism.
[sub]It feels strange writing Thor, Thrym, Mjolnir and Freya rather than Tor, Trym, Mjölner and Freja. Just had to get it out.[/sub]
I mentioned it, but slipped up and said Sif instead of Freya.
The one about Thor and the tavern wench:
“*You’re * thore? I’m tho thore I can’t pith!”
I’ll be happy to do so! It will take a couple of days, though. I modified a pattern I found online, so I will get my husband to hopefully scan in my version. The online pattern had Thor wearing a helm with horns on it, and if you’ve ever been around any Norse persona SCA folks you’ll understand that I’d likely be banished if I had kids put horns on a Viking’s helm.
Ooh! Ooh! Tell them the story about how Thor and the rest of the Avengers outmaneuvered Kang the Conqueror to make Mantis the Celestial Messiah! And they traveled through time and learned the origins of the Kree-Skrull war and the Watcher’s Blue City on the Moon! 
< Bosda SLAPS BrainGlutton with [del]Mjolnir[/del] a Wet Trout > :rolleyes:
So you did. I’m going to my reading lesson now.
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Being more of a Greek/Roman mythology buff, I’m kind of curious as to what the sources for these stories are. How early do they show up in written form? What are some “classic” translations? I’ve got some in my copy of Bulfinch, but he doesn’t give it quite the treatment or attention he gives the Greek/Roman pantheon.
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The Prose Edda, Poetic Edda, Gesta Danorum – see here.
Eonwe OTTOMH
The only writings we have are the prose edda and the poetry edda (on preview gesta danorum? None of my books mention that) The vikings left plenty of artifacts, but without the eddas we could only say ‘Man being attacked by wolves, presumably a mythological event.’.
The Norse/Teutonic pantheon was syncretist. Even the the myths have the pantheon of the Aesir joining with the Vannir. There’s some evidence that Freya, Frigga, and Frey were originally a single hermaphroditic deity. Tyr/Tiu has obvious connections to the Celtic Dagda, a god whose lost hand was replaced with one made of silver. Hel, being half maiden and half crone, is matched by the Celtic war goddess Morrigan who had a beautiful nubile body and the face of a crone. Ravens were the messengers of Morrigan and their presence could determine the outcome of a battle. Ravens were the messengers of Odin/Woden/Wotan and could do the same. The Celtic Tuatha De Dannan fought endlessly with the evil Fomori. The Asgardians fought with giants.
There are also links to the Olympians.
Late artifacts combined Christianity and the Norse gods. A stone cross might have Jesus on one side and Odin on the other. At some point, the story of Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung was changed so that after the final battle, Jehovah would rule.
Freya diminishes from goddess to fairy godmother and appears in at least one of the Brothers’ Grimm stories under her Germanic name Frau Hulda.
But even though there are some correspondences between Norse and Hellenic mythology, it’s also skewed a bit. Take Zeus, he doesn’t correspond to Oðin, but rather Tyr. Oðin is a really interesting figure to me. He’s supposedly the “All-Father” of the Aesir. But he’s not exactly a fatherly figure, or a diety that someone would pray to for protection.
Oðin is frankly treacherous. He is the god of warriors, you could pray to Oðin for success in battle. But Ragnarok is coming. Oðin needs warriors for Valhalla to fight against the Giants. And only brave warriors slain in battle can go to Valhalla. So Oðin might help you become a mighty warrior…but he he will cause your shield strap to break, your foot to slip, your sword to twist…all at the worst possible moment.
Or take sacrifice. You could sacrifice to Oðin for knowledge of the runes. To do this, you would take an animal and hang it from a tree. The sacrificed animal could be a sheep, or a horse…but the most potent sacrifice is of course human sacrifice. But how did Oðin get knowledge of runes? By sacrifice of course. And what is the most potent sacrifice? Well if a man is potent, a god is even more potent. So Oðin sacrificed himself to himself on the tree of life and after hanging their for days looked down and saw the fallen sticks arranged into runes.
And this is the same Oðin who made himself blood brother with Loki at first meeting. Except after the death of Baldur, Loki had to be imprisoned…but this violated Oðin’s oath…which leads to Ragnarok.
So the whole Norse world view is…you can’t win. You can’t break even. And you can’t quit the game.
I’m a big fan of Thor, myself, so I’ll vote for either the journey into Utgard or else the forging of Mjolnir.
btw- as my Lady **Faeriebeth ** has been working on this, I had a short primer session for my older kids. Suffice it to say, my oldest (now 15) was much amused. the highlights:
Freyr (the idiot man-child of the gods…giving up his magic sword for a booty call)
Hel (and her ship made of the nails of dead men)
The first mead (so the gods all passed around this jar and spat in it…)
Balder getting whacked
And my kids are convinced that Odin was the ‘jackass’ of antiquity. ‘Hey! I’m Odin…I’m going to set fire to my ass…for wisdom!’
‘Watch me bash my head into this wall…for wisdom!’
It sounds like he needs it quite desperatly.
Bah. The really fun one is a Loki story – when Aes agree bet that a stranger can’t build walls around Asgard; if successful, the stranger got Freyja. When it turns out that the stranger is actually a giant, and with his stallion looks to be completing the wall on time, the Aes force Loki to make the giant lose.
So, Loki turns into a mare, and seduces the stallion away, so the giant loses. When the giant gets mad, Thor brains him.
And then Loki gives birth to Sleipner.
… plus, that giant’s daughter later comes back and makes the Aes agree that one of them will marry her for her father’s wergild – which becomes the first literary instance of a male beauty pagent for foot-fetishists that I’m aware of.
You skipped the part where Thor and Odin laughed their asses off at Loki’s predicament. Really makes the story, by putting the Gods of Legend in stark relief to their Marvel Comics reputations.
Good post. On an unrelated note, I just lost “the game”. And amusingly, the descriptions of the Norse World view fits the game perfectly.