Baldr is evil
His death was actually a My Death Is Just the Beginning, manipulating Loki into killing him. Once on Hel, he convinces her to state that she'll free him if everyone and everything cries for him (having a tremendous egocentrism, its easy to see why); he also asks for Hel to say to her father to disguise himself and not cry for him. However, what Loki didn't count on was Baldr communicating to the messengers of the gods (Odin's ravens most likely) saying who Angrboda really was, ending with the poor god suffering with the snake venom and all. Meanwhile, the gods gets sad and paranoid, and Baldr gets to build his armies. Eventually, he might send someone to free Loki, or somehow Loki frees himself, and in either case Baldr offers him the armies as a "gift for getting punished". Afterwards, Loki dies alongside with most of the army and nearly all of the gods while Baldr becomes the sole governor of the world!
- But he didn't plan for Surt surviving Ragnarok so the fire giant will attack him. Since Surt will be weakened from his fight with Frey, Surt and Baldr will mutual kill each other leaving Vidar as the new ruler of the restored world.
Niddhogg is Satan
If the idea that Norse Mythology is a prequel to Christianity was to be used, Niddhogg, the last surviving dragon, could very well be what we know as Satan, what with Lucifer being a dragon in the Apocalypse and all. Following the idea, Baldr is Jesus.
- Christianity formed out of Judaism in modern day Palestine, on the east coast of the Medditerranean Sea. Norse Paganism formed in Scandinavia, in the far north of Europe. The idea that Norse Mythology, or any indigenous faith for that matter, is in any way a prequal to Christianity is bullshit the early Christian Church came up with to make pagans convert.
- First: the christianization of Scandinavia didn't start until around the 9th century and didn't get anywhere until much later. Not exactly the early Christian Church. Second: This is Wild Mass Guessing not religious studies.
Loki was planning everything from the start
Loki is supposedly a pal of the Aesir before his
Heel–Face Turn, helping them out with brains when brawn wouldn't cut it. But notice how a lot of his schemes end up with a Jotunn chieftain (such as Thrym or Thiazi) ending up dead. It's like he's deliberately creating a power vacuum that he (the son of two Jotunn remember) can step in to fill. Ragnarok is essentially a rebirth myth, with a new world rising from the ashes of the old, so he could know that his role in bringing about the end of the current role is essential and be making early preperations for it just as Odin was.
All that stuff about the frost giants being stupid and ugly is
Trash Talk and propaganda on the part of the Aesir.
Although the frost giants aren't described very positively on the whole, whenever anyone gets up-close-and-personal with them they're often exactly the opposite.
- The stories make an awful lot more sense if you replace 'Giant' with 'Titan'.
Vast numbers of people are descended from Loki, both paternally and maternally.
And that's why there are so many trolls on the Internet.
- Ha ha. So funny I forgot to laugh
And part of the reason he sides with the giants in Ragnarok is because he's
not happy with how his kids have been treated.
- That actually makes a weird amount of sense, not to mention that it makes a lot of the stuff that happened downright tragic.
The Christian seeming parts of Norse Mythology were taken because of the sailors in the western Atlantic ocean.
Well, Surtur, the fire
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere is because colonies of vikings only discovered Iceland and its famous volcanoes relatively late. Similarly, the discovery of Vinland probably made the Norsemen question their old beliefs because it clearly proved Midgard was not arranged the way they had thought. What's more, some people in Vinland had religions that resembled monotheism more than polytheism and it might have caused them to further question their world view when these people kicked their asses, which
had to have happened because Greenland and Iceland were colonized but Vinland(Aka Canada) was not. When the Vikings returned to Europe, they would have brought this changing world view to the other Norse people, the new world springing up after Ragnarok symbolizing this. Formerly respected Loki undergoing a fall like formerly respected Satan and Baldur becoming a resurrecting messiah type is because they've run into faiths that were closer to the Christian/Jews than their own.
- While there is nothing excluding the possibility of a native american belief system superficially similar to abrahamic lore, based on what we know about "canadian" mythologies it seems unlikely, considering that the world in said mythologies generally runs on the same sort of gray morality, if a bit whiter at that. In addition, pure monotheism or even henotheism is exceedingly rare in most north american religions.
Odin is only king because he is a war god.
No he is not the strongest Aesir, that is either Thor or Tyr. Tyr even used to be a war god and king of the Aesir but was removed from this position because of an unexpected popularity surge Odin received among the Nordic people. But this is actually just natural story progression, rather than a change in religious practice. After Tyr lost his hand he lost his best attribute, his strength. He was still the bravest of the Aesir, but he could not change the course of large scale battles through brute force anymore, he had to think. Odin was smarter than him, thus a better war god and king.
Well Norse society believed ass kicking was the most important trait in a ruler so why would the Aesir not make Thor king and just have Odin hang around as an adviser? Circumstances changed policy, Ragnarok's approach made the Aesir act uncharacteristically.
Thialfi and Roskva became the servants of Thor willingly.
Face it. If your only choices are to live as an obscure farmer or get yourself a position as a servant to a god, which would you prefer?
Ragnarok was the Time War
- Odin is Rassilon. The Valkyries take people from the moment of their deaths via time travel, thus building an army to defend Gallifrey. Fenris is Fenric.
- What are you even talking about?
- Of course Fenris is Fenric, that was the entire point of the episode.
The Norse gods are aliens who reached a certain point in their evolution, became Starchildren, cruised around the universe until they found Earth, and then adopted Viking customs because they know what a good time really is
Because I really like the
Earth X explanation of where they came from and
2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't have enough interpretation.
Under that beard, Thor is actually very pretty.
Like anime bishonen could-pass-for-a-girl pretty. How, you may ask? When Thor disguised himself as Freya, goddess of beauty, to get his hammer back from that one giant, the giant lifted Thor's veil to try to kiss "her", before being driven off by Thor's expression. Note, the giant got a good look at Thor's face and STILL thought he was the goddess of beauty and the most beautiful woman in the Nine Realms. "She" just had angry eyes was all.
Thor's pretty face could be why he grows that beard, come to think.
Hell, considering how there might be nothing really heavy enough to give him a real workout, at least nothing he could encounter on a regular enough basis, he might actually be fairly lithe to boot.
Thjalfi is the farmer's son from Loka Táttur, and Loki planned on recruiting him from the start.
Loki's plan in that story hinged on the farmer/peasant's son being fast enough to outrun the Jotun so as to trick it into impaling itself. Thjalfi is the son of a farmer and one of his most important traits is his speed, to the point where he only barely loses a race against the manifestation of thought itself. Coincidence? Probably.
Odin is Zeus wearing a disguise
He rules the Norse pantheon in a guise that would make the wild and hardy Norsemen more likely to accept him. Come on, he's the chief of the gods, lives in a palace in the sky and he has two brothers! It's obvious, really.
Odin is Hades wearing a disguise
This seems more likely, since he's a death god. The reason "Vili" and "Ve" aren't mentioned much is because Hades' brothers really bug him, and he was hoping to have a cult of worshippers who admired rather than feared him without having to share. Obvious, really.
Odin became Santa, and St. Nick is the patron of sailors.
Obvious, really.
Odin is Athena wearing a disguise
A spear-wielding wise deity of war, anyone?
Odin is Hermes wearing a disguise.
Because
the Greeks and Romans said so
. (Wednesday—Woden's Day— is
Dies Mercurii in Latin.)
Baldr's death wasn't Loki's idea
Maybe he did it, but it wasn't necessarily down to free will.We don't have that much information on Sigyn, anyone married to Loki is bound to be at least a little crazy, and NO ONE is selfless enough to spend the remainder of their immortal life underground catching snake venom when there are vastly more interesting things to be doing - there has to be SOMETHING not right here.Hodr was killed for causing Baldr's death, and Loki was punished for causing Hodr to cause Baldr's death, but Hodr was just a link in a chain. So what if somehow it's Sigyn causing Loki to cause Hodr to kill Baldr, creating a chain of events that haven't been atoned for and making an already-convoluted mythology even more confusing. And who'd suspect Sigyn (who, as previously mentioned, SEEMS pretty selfless and forgiving) when there's Loki - chaotic, capricious and generally not easy to trust - in the picture?Alternatively, any mythological reveal of this was lost over centuries.It also gives Loki even more reason to be seriously pissed off with the gods when he eventually gets free.
When Norse poems call a god "son of Odin" it's not necessarily literal
Thor, Balder, Vidar, Hoder, Bragi, Hermod, Vali, Tyr, and Heimdall are all cited as sons of Odin in various places. That's virtually all the Aesir mentioned. But then, some of these figures are given other fathers in other sources, complicating matters. So perhaps they just use "son" to mean "subject". After all, Odin's title is "all-father", possibly meant in the same way a crime boss's underlings might call him "father" or "uncle".
- At least some of them could be foster children, adopted children, or sons-in-law (although the myths don't mention any daughters, so the last one is a stretch)
Hel was able to release Baldr after Ragnarok because Loki died.
The deal, the spell, was that Baldr would be released if everyone alive would weep for him. Everyone did, except the giant Thokk who was Loki in disguise. After Loki was killed in Ragnarok; the conditions of the spell were realized.
Someone had to say it.
Heimdall has albinism
He's known as "the whitest of all gods". It stands to reason that all viking gods are white, so logically Heimdall should be unusually pale for his whiteness to be mentioned.
Loki is pansexual and genderqueer
That Sleipnir deal was forced by circumstances, but Loki's other children include Jormungard and Fenrir, whose origin is not mentioned which propably means they were conceived similiarly to Sleipnir (with animals). Loki was apparently also known to have sex with male humans while in female form for no real reason.
Ragnarok wasn't the end of the world, it was the end of the Viking era.
And things got exaggerated.
