History YMMV / NorseMythology

** Ragnarok. In contemporary views it is the tragic end of the Aesir, but possibly what ultimately leads to the age of man that we now know now. In some people's views, the Aesir are DesignatedHero gods at ''best'' and they have it coming, with Ragnarok's 'tragedy' being UnintentionallyUnsympathetic. Then to others, people are ''missing the point'' and that it was ''intentional''; as each of the contributing factors of Ragnarok are caused by the Gods' own hubris and actions (Thor having spent centuries harassing Jorgumandr by trying to catch them before they got big enough to fight, Odin having Fenris bound, Loki's punishment, and the many enemies of Asgard the Aesir had antagonised) which themselves were motivated by the fact they had foresight and ''knew'' what was destined to happen, it can be interpreted as the Gods suffering from YouCantFightFate and/or a SelfFulfillingProphecy. They knew they were all going to die, so they acted like jerks to prevent it, but by acting like jerks they set in motion the events that eventually kill them.

** More to the point, the Norse Gods are described repeatedly in the original myths as vulnerable ''and'' mortal, they are afraid of Frost Giants, Trolls and others and rely greatly on powerful weapons and artifacts (such as Mjölnir) to feel safe, have to sacrifice eyes and limbs to achieve their ends (Odin sacrifices his eye, Tyr sacrifices his arm) and of course there's the fact that in the end, EveryoneDies. Founding an ideology of power and domination based on Gods who are mortal, vulnerable and self-destructive is [[{{Understatement}} missing the point]].

** UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} promised the end of all wicked people. Odin promised the end of all ice giants. [[/Main/FridgeBrilliance I don't see many ice giants around.]]

** UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} promised the end of all wicked people. Odin promised the end of all ice giants. [[FridgeBrillance I don't see many ice giants around.]]

** UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} promised the end of all wicked people. Odin promised the end of all ice giants. [[LogicalFallacies I don't see many ice giants around.]]

** More to the point, the Norse Gods are described repeatedly in the original myths as vulnerable ''and'' mortal, they are afraid of Frost Giants, Trolls and others and rely greatly on powerful weapons and artifacts (such as Mjölnir) to feel safe, have to sacrifice eyes and limbs to achieve their ends (Odin sacrifices his eye, Tyr sacrifices his arm) and of course there's the fact that in the end, EveryoneDies. Founding an ideology of power and domination based on Gods who are mortal, vulnerable and self-destructive is missing the point.

** The written sources for Norse Mythology are the Eddas by Creator/SnorriSturluson and Icelandic Sagas which were written down in the 1200s, which makes it, as of this writing, ''less'' than a millenia old, younger than ''Literature/TheQuran, Literature/TheShahnameh, Literature/{{Beowulf}}, Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}}, The Song of Roland, Arthurian Sagas'', leave alone ''Literature/TheMahabharata'' and ''Literature/TheRamayana'', and far, far younger than Roman and Greek mythology (which dates back to 5th and 6th Century BCE) and ''Literature/TheBible'' (Old and New Testaments); indeed, the ''Poetic Edda'' implies that the Judeo-Christian God replaced the Aesir.

** While the days of the week in the Anglophone are based on Norse pantheon, it was entirely forgotten and obscure for most of TheMiddleAges, UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance and UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment. Writers like Shakespeare, Chaucer, Cervantes, Dante, Goethe and Schiller kept making references to the Bible, to the Arabian Nights, to the chivalric cycle of the Middle Ages and especially Greek and Roman mythology but made no references to Norse mythology for source material or poetic reference. German intellectuals deprecated any of the poems deriving from that (UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat noted that ''Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}}'' was not worth a powder of shot). The Norse myths and the original texts were rediscovered in the late 1600s and 1700s and became popular in the 19th Century, and German and European intellectuals came around to it when Music/RichardWagner composed the Ring Cycle.
** Its entry to PopCulturalOsmosis can definitely be credited to Creator/JackKirby and Creator/StanLee who deliberately created ComicBook/TheMightyThor to avert SmallReferencePools and avoid the overexposed Greek and Roman Pantheon, and that comic dates from TheSixties. The Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse is likewise how most audiences around the world who were broadly familiar with the Graeco-Roman classical traditions came to learn of the Norse pantheon. Unlike the Greek and Roman Myths which are well represented in the architecture, vases of antiquity (giving later artists a reference for how Zeus and the other gods, heroes, and figures were seen as by its worshippers), very little material culture survived for the Norse myths, and this gave the Marvel Universe license to define Asgard, the Bifrost, the Nine Realms, its various creatures, its heroes, and its villains for several generations around the world.

** Baldur was described as quite a NiceGuy, and [[ImmortalsFearDeath lived in fear of dying despite being a god.]] Despite all the god's attempts to protect him, Loki still found a way to kill him (pretty much just to [[ForTheEvulz be a dick]]). Even worse, he couldn't be brought back to the dead just because Loki [[MoralEventHorizon refused to cry for him.]] But that’s in one version that was heavily influenced by Christianity; at least one other version made him a jerk.

* FridgeLogic: Couldn't they chop Loki's head in half without touching his neck? Or scalp him or something?
** Apparently not - one version has Loki insisting that by his head, he meant his ''whole'' head, so they couldn't leave ''any'' of it behind or they'd have forfeited.

** The written sources for Norse Mythology are the Eddas by Creator/SnorriSturluson and Icelandic Sagas which were written down in the 1200s, which makes it, as of this writing, ''less'' than a millenia old, younger than ''Literature/TheQuran, Literature/TheShahnameh, Literature/{{Beowulf}}, Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}}, The Song of Roland, Arthurian Sagas'', leave alone ''Literature/TheMahabharata'' and ''Literature/TheRamayana'', and far far younger than Roman and Greek mythology (which dates back to 5th and 6th Century BCE) and ''Literature/TheBible'' (Old and New Testaments).

** Baldur was described as quite a NiceGuy, and [[ImmortalsFearDeath lived in fear of dying despite being a god.]] Despite all the god's attempts to protect him, Loki still found a way to kill him (pretty much just to [[ForTheEvulz be a dick]]). Even worse, he couldn't be brought back to the dead just because Loki [[MoralEventHorizon refused to cry for him.]]

** Unfortunately, due to the [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] deification of all things blond and blue-eyed, a disproportionate number of the "fans" of Norse mythology you'll find these days are Wotanists, a neo-nazi white supremacist sect who wish to return the lighter-skinned "to their ancestral religion." How these nutters would react to the fact that Norse mythology is full of InterspeciesRomance (such as the marriage between Njodr and Skadi, Loki being a Frost-Giant, Frey falling in LoveAtFirstSight with a giantess), or what can be called the polymorphous perverse (Thor being a WholesomeCrossdresser and a fetching bride as Freya, Loki's fondness for coupling with animals), is anyone's guess.

** Unfortunately, due to the [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] deification of all things blond and blue-eyed, a disproportionate number of the "fans" of Norse mythology you'll find these days are Wotanists, a neo-nazi white supremacist sect who wish to return the lighter-skinned "to their ancestral religion." How these nutters would react to the fact that Norse mythology is full of InterSpeciesRomance (such as the marriage between Njodr and Skadi, Loki being a Frost-Giant, Frey falling in LoveAtFirstSight with a giantess), or what can be called the polymorphous perverse (Thor being a WholesomeCrossdresser and a fetching bride as Freya, Loki's fondness for coupling with animals), is anyone's guess.

** Unfortunately, due to the [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] deification of all things blond and blue-eyed, a disproportionate number of the "fans" of Norse mythology you'll find these days are Wotanists, a neo-nazi white supremacist sect who wish to return the lighter-skinned "to their ancestral religion." How these nutters would react to the fact that Norse mythology is full of InterSpeciesRomance (such as the marriage between Njodr and Skadi, Loki being a Frost-Giant, Frey falling in LoveAtFirstSight with a giantess), or what can be called the polymorphous perverse (Thor being a WholesomeCrossdresser and a fetching bride as Freya, Loki's fondness for coupling with animals).

** Its entry to PopCulturalOsmosis can definitely be credited to Creator/JackKirby and Creator/StanLee who deliberately created ComicBook/TheMightyThor to avert SmallReferencePools and avoid the overexposed Greek and Roman Pantheon, and that comic dates from TheSixties. The Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse is likewise how most audiences around the world who were broadly familiar with the Graeco-Roman classical traditions came to learn of the Norse pantheon. Unlike the Greek and Roman Myths which are well represented in the architecture, vases of antiquity (giving later artists a reference for how Zeus and the other gods, heroes, and figures were seen as by its worshippers), very little material culture survived for the Norse myths, and this gave the MCU license to define Asgard, the Bifrost, the Nine Realms, its various creatures, its heroes, and its villains for several generations around the world.

* DesignatedVillain: Being a giant, one would believe Ymir was evil, and Odin, officially a hero, just happened to kill him for no apparent reason. He never did anything evil, actually just gave birth to people, whose descendants would turn out AlwaysChaoticEvil, while getting nourished by a cow.
** This is most likely a case of ValuesDissonance, with Norse mythology not working [[GreyAndGrayMorality on the same principles of good and evil as modern society]], and most current religions. Ymir wasn't inherent evil, nor was his children. In some versions Odin Vile and Ve's mother was one of them. They were however in conflict with the Aesir, and so Ymir was killed.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Odin may have been this to the Norse themselves. Because of linguistic reasons some believe that Odin was a less important death-deity, a couple of centuries later and he replaced Tiwaz/Tyr as the dominant god.

** Despite his selfish, dishonest, violent, morbid, gray-area behavior, in the more Christianized stories, Odin is portrayed as a benevolent god. And when his infamous cunning, wisdom, and habit of breaking oaths [[FridgeLogic raise questions]] as to why he's so buddy-buddy with Loki, Odin's made out to be a trusting old fool who only keeps Loki around because he swore a blood oath.
*** Depends on which ones you're looking at; some Christianized stories snark at him rather a lot. Or literally beat him up: in one story he gets decked three times by a mortal woman. (And then pretends to be a female physician to get a chance to rape her.)
* HilariousInHindsight: Loki is a jotun, which is sometimes localized as troll, and may have inspired the word. During the age of the Internet, the term "{{troll}}" took on a whole new meaning: a person who sows chaos and discord (sometimes ForGreatJustice, sometimes ForTheLulz), which is Loki's raison d'être. But wait, it gets ''better:'' trolls are known for "flaming" others, and guess what color Loki's hair is? Here's a hint: one of his kennings is "Flame-Hair." Bow before your god, all ye Internet trolls.

*** For what it's worth, back then many of the aforementioned traits and deeds would probably have been looked down as being ''argr'' or ''ragr'' (a hard-to-translate word with the connotations of somebody being unmanly, weak, pathetic, and possibly homosexual (the latter attested by the even more inflammatory form ''rassragr'' or "arse-''ragr''"); a rather grave insult among the Norse people at that time), as mentioned by the gods themselves, such as Thor being concerned that the other gods will consider him ''ragr'' after putting on a bride's dress. The complex and often ambiguous nature of mythology or system of religious lore (especially one so fragmentarily preserved as the Norse one) naturally leads to one man's ValuesDissonance being another man's ValuesResonance, both now and probably then as well.

* NewerThanTheyThink: In many respects, it's [[ZigZaggedTrope the newest ancient polytheistic pantheon]] in history and more importantly, cultural memory:

* DesignatedHero: Not quite as bad as some other polytheistic religions, but the Norse Gods in the stories (and especially in Creator/NeilGaiman's retelling) are still a bunch of exploitative individuals who profit of other people's labour (all their famous weapons -- Gungnir, Mjolnir -- were created by the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim), go on about the importance of oaths while using ExactWords and RulesLawyer to make sure ''they'' don't have to be bound by oaths (such as when a "stranger", a Giant in disguise builds a Wall for them which they Aesir make him pay for), loathe being reminded of their hypocrisy, are utter snobs[[note]]Frigg dismissing the Mistletoe and refusing to ask it to spare Balder[[/note]], and think nothing of abusing their own kind[[note]]Whether it's repeatedly pimping Freya over her own objections, or forcing Tyr to reluctantly trick and sacrifice his hand to Fenrir to bind him[[/note]] and more or less pass their time living in a FluffyCloudHeaven and ignoring their problems. This makes Ragnarok feel like a deserved comeuppance more than an appallingly tragic EndOfAnAge.
* DesignatedHero: The Norse Pantheon are supposed to be the good guys in the overall narrative, but they tend to show a lot of unheroic traits that we don't really associate with the supposed behaviors of Vikings. How much of this was an actual part of the Scandinavian belief system (and thus OmniscientMoralityLicense being in play), mistranslations by Anthropologists, ValuesDissonance and/or [[HijackedByJesus Snorri Sturluson's authorial biases]] makes these hypocrisies rather suspect.

** The rest of the Aesir aren't that much better either, being a tribe of {{War God}}s who always talk a big game about honor and SacredHospitality, but they are shown to have a lot of tendencies that modern people would find profoundly racist and dishonorable (just ask the dwarves.]] They routinely scam people who they had made deal with who come through on their end and are just being all around dicks to their allies. As problematic as Loki could be, people tend to think that their responses to his more harmless pranks were disproportionate, with [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation him orchestrating Balder's death having been an act of revenge for all the times they used and abused him.]] The fact that they had amassed so many enemies from across the realms is a testament to this.

** The rest of the Aesir aren't that much better either, being a tribe of {{War God}}s who always talk a big game about honor and SacredHospitality, but they are shown to have a lot of tendencies that modern people would find profoundly racist and dishonorable (just ask the dwarves.]] They routinely scam people who they had made deal with who come through on their end and are just being all around dicks to their allies. As problematic as Loki could be, people tend to think that their responses to his more harmless pranks were disproportionate, with [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation him orchestrating Balder's death having been an act of revenge for all the times they used and abused him.]]

** The rest of the Aesir aren't that much better either, being a tribe of {{War God}}s who always talk a big time about honor and SacredHospitality, but are shown to have a lot of tendencies that modern people would find profoundly racist, routinely scamming people who they had made deal with who come through on their end and just being all around dicks to their allies. As problematic as Loki could be, people tend to think that their responses to his more harmless pranks were

* DesignatedHero: The Norse Pantheon are supposed to be the good guys in the overall narrative, but they tend to show a lot of unheroic traits that we don't really associate with the supposed behaviors of Vikings. How much of this was an actual part of the Scandinavian belief system (and thus OmniscientMoralityLicense being in play), mistranslations by Anthropologists, ValuesDissonance and/or [[HijackedByJesus Snorri Sturluson's authorial biases]] makes these {{hypocric|y}}ies rather suspect.