My favorite story was always the story of how Balder died: Balder, the most beloved of the gods, had nightmares of his own death. So Frigg, Odin’s wife and his mother, rode out into all of the nine worlds and made everything swear not to harm him. Then the gods got drunk and decided to start throwing shit at Balder, since nothing could hurt him. (You get the impression the Norse gods would be massive fans of Jackass.) Loki, pissed everything was going so well (since gods are all massive, spoiled children), found out from a drunk Frigg that she had neglected to extract an oath from mistletoe. I think you know what happens next: Loki finds some mistletoe and gives it to Hod, Balder’s blind brother. Then, since playing “pin the sacred plant on the Aesir” hadn’t been invented yet, Loki steered Hod’s arm so that when Hod threw the mistletoe, it killed Balder. Loki ran like a bitch and now the world is going to end sooner.
Moral of the story: Wherever you find a drunk Frigg, you’ll find a way to catch something nasty.
Dragging this back to the topic, Loki is Sleipnir’s mother-father. A giant came to Asgard, where the Norse gods live, disguised as a builder and said that he’d build a wall in a year and a half in exchange for Frigg. The gods, arrogant as usual, took him up on the offer. Unknown to the gods, the giant had a wonderful stallion that actually could do the task. Loki, apparently interested in a little horseplay at this point, changed into a beautiful mare and lured the stallion away. Then had sex with the stallion. That union produced Sleipnir and a good million or so really shameful wet dreams before Freud had even wrapped his lips around his first ‘cigar’.
Moral of the story: The furries moved to Norway and started writing fanfic before anyone could stop them.
Perhaps we’re having too much fun in this thread for a serious question, but I’ve been curious about David Faux’ theory.
I won’t try to summarize his theory; but one curiosity is the high incidence of Y-haplogroup Q in Norway (and Norse colonies like Iceland) which is also found in Hungary and otherwise rare in Europe. Q is likely associated with the Huns; Snorri’s myths seem to describe Odin as King of Huns; …
It would be nice to hear reaction of SDMB experts to Faux’ theory.
If he wants to get into steppes culture and linguistics, he really should get a copy of The World of the Huns which even though incomplete thanks to the death of the author is about the best and most in depth study of the steppes cultures through the study of extant documents written in period by the people actually dealing with the tribes [generally through letters, treaties and trade agreements] salted with interesting archeological finds. [on an odd aside, I find the interesting fact of intricate bronze castings of household goods, and mention of an interesting nomadic variant on agriculture fascinating considering most people think they were nothing but horse riding barbarians with no real culture.]
As to Faux’ theories … well - considering that it is well known that groups of nomads roamed all the way from siberia to scandanavia, and still do [with a few constraints] I do not find it unusual to find genetic material shared the entire swatch of the arctic circle. I will also add that the rate of casual bastardy in history is in excess of what most people believe between casual affairs, prostitution in the lack of effective birth control, rape and unrecognized intermarriage/concubinage. The rather widespread practice of slave trading moved a lot of genetic material around, as did the Roman practice of the auxiliaries to the legions being hired in blocks of mercenary groups [thracian cataphracts serving in Africa, or Nubian spearmen being shifted to Britannia. Which actually makes me laugh at the white supremecists, because there were “niggers in the woodpile” 1900 years ago :smack::D]
You think that’s weird? Check out how Thrymr the giant stole Mjolnir, Thor’s Hammer, and Thor and Loki had to dress in drag to get it back.
And then there’s the Lokasenna, in which Loki shows up in Aegir’s hall uninvited and basically turns the whole party into a taping of the Jerry Springer show.
And we all know how Freya acquired Brisingamen. More power to ya, Lady!
I’m a heathen. My gods party harder than your gods.
You just gotta love Oðin. He’s the god of warriors, right? So warriors pray to Oðin for success in battle, and the bravest and most powerful he helps out. Except if you accumulate a lot of renown, Oðin will cause your shield strap to break, or your foot to slip, and you’ll be killed in battle. Because Oðin is gathering the best warriors killed in battle, because he needs them for Ragnarok, when the Gods battle the Giants and the world ends.
So Oðin will help you out, but he’s going to betray you and get you killed. Whatta card.
Um, I might be talking outta my ass here, 'cause I’m an Italic (ie, Romance) linguist, not a Germanic linguist, but I’m pretty sure the Norse name “Odin” doesn’t include a voiced dental fricative, as spelled in the bolded words, above.
I think it’s just a regular [d] (a voiced dental plosive). That’s what the comparative phonology would suggest, at least, looking at the Old English cognate “Woden”.
(It could also be that the letter ‘eth’ [ð] actually only did say a voiced dental plosive, in Old Norse.
