Thanks a ton to Adam for helping me with this video! Check out his stuff here: CZcams: / ludohistory Twitch: / ludohistory Patreon: / ludohistory #NorseMythology
Lära sig kvinnlig trollkonst i kvinnlig form. Loke är en biologisk mor. Bland annat till en häst. De flesta av de där historierna går nog inte att berätta på CZcams. Och berättar man den I Ryssland blir man nog mördad. Tor klädde ut sig till Freja och lodsasdes gifta sig med en " jätte" för att få tillbaka sin hammare. Min lärare blev ofta djupt skenerad när vi läste om de gamla gudarnas tokerier i skolan
I have been ill and Im very tired and forgot 2 write in English. Im just saying that talking about the actuall chenanigans of the old goods probably would get you in trubble with people that take these things a bit 2 seriously. It's crude and silly stories. Sorry about the spelling. Dyslectic.
I like how thors hammer in actual mythos isnt only wielded by the "worthy" but its just so incredibly powerful, that only someone capable of its power can handle it.
My favourite bit about Mjolnir is that it's existence is merely a by-product of Loki's Shenanigans (and it's supposedly imperfect due to more of Loki's shenanigans).
@@Lupinemancer87 kinda? Mjolnir has a safety feature , which is thors gauntlets... If anyone handles Mjolnir without it, theres a chance that they will just vaporize on contact... So anyone other than thor, or anyone as strong as thor can actually weild the hammer.
That why that old Avengers's kinda cool when Hulk was going rampage and pick up Thor hammer and hitting people with it, the hammer got nothing to do with worthy but it's just so damn heavy that even seem like Hulk trying to lift a mountain of something.
Magnus Chase is actually very accurate, they even diss the Marvel Thor movies in the first book. And sure, there are some pretty stupid and outlandish jokes snuck in, like Thor challenging Jesus to a duel and Odin loving Powerpoint presentations, but the funniest thing is nothing about it is any more ridiculous than actual Norse myths, like Loki tying his balls to the beard of a goat and having a tug of war with it in that fashion for example
And don’t forget Heimdal and his selfie stick and Thor watching shows on his hammer and constantly being behind. But they are obvious and technically we don’t know how they would react if the gods existed know. Who knows they Odin could have fallen in love with power points and started to run Valhalla as a hotel
The "worthiness" to wield a weapon maybe a call back to an Arthurian legend of being worthy to pull the sword out of the stone/anvil. But Marvel just widened the description.
If we go by the Mcu, Thor hammer was only affect by the whorthy spell in the first movie. So before that, anyone could use the hammer. Odin put the spell in order to restore Thor's character, nothing more.
Subbing exclusively because you are the first CZcamsr I've seen accurately speaking on Thor's description and my god I've been RAGING since God of War Ragnarok was revealed as the debate has usually been a back and forth of "This is what Thor looks like" and "No, here is what Thor ACTUALLY looks like" and it has actively been driving me insane. I've even been told I'm wrong when saying exactly what you are saying here. Finally...sweet, sweet validation.
It only took one picture depicting the mythological Thor to convince me that Marvel's depictions were not historically or mythologically accurate, and I have brain damage.
Also yeah there's a similar issue with Celtic gods around, we know the big names which were referenced in some variation or another everywhere (Brigid/Brigantina/Briget, or Lugh and the various spellings of his name.), but a lot of the minor deities we've lost all record of, particularly outside of Gaul. (Where the romans generally didn't give a shit about the details so we only really know that there WAS worship of a local deity in an area, not anything about them)
Celtic in and of itself is an umbrella term. Lugus from pre-Christian Ireland is not Lug Lámfada nor are either of them Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Whatever the Irish mythology was beforehand is further muddled by the things the monks wrote down only having a handful of deities that were actually present in pre-Christian Ireland and most of which twisted away from whatever their original roles were. This is again muddled further by the thousand plus years of fanfiction written by British nobles.
@@Aerlas I mean if we consider the Aphrodite the Spartans worshipped and the Aphrodite the rest of greece later adopted the same deity despite the significant regional difference in those interpretations, I don't see why the same doesn't apply to Brigid/Brigantia/etc, Lugh, or any of the other gods.
@@000Dragon50000 That isn't a good comparison for those under the umbrella term of Celtic. For the Spartans Aphrodite, who is likely a form of Astarte who in turn is Ishtar who is Inanna, had her usual traits in additional to her battle oriented ones and we have their other deities for comparison as well. However for the Gaels and the Welsh that doesn't hold up. Classifications shouldn't be held together by unsupported theories alone.
@@Aerlas glad to know there's more ppl on the Internet who doesn't think Irish and Scottish folklore and legends is representative of Celtic mythology as a whole
I thought the guy who made up the Marvel stories admitted he made up the Thor/Loki brothers angle because he liked the idea of Brother vs. Brother more so than any mythological inspiration.
I wish we could invent time travel just to go back in time and very clearly preserve the true norse myths prechristianity, truly get it right as it was originally meant. Would be amazing to read the true myths, especially if we could compare current understanding to the true understanding!
agreed. time travel would give historians the final tool to get the full scope, beyond the hard work they already do on the daily! honestly time travel would give so much context it'd be insanity.
I wish we could create a device to show what happened in a certain place long ago. Like you go to some random field of grass, and the device projects what was happening at whatever time your choosing to look back at. It would be so useful, especially for historians.
I live in Sweden and while having history classes we actually learn about Norse mythology. Tor was canonly “åskguden” (the thunder god) and the Norse mythology believers thought that when it thundered it was Tor that flew over the sky throwing his hammer to kill jättar (I think ogres) so the lightning-hammer thing is in fact canon
Unfortunately, your secondary school history class is... not exactly right. At some point, it is very likely that Thor had thunder associations - the most likely etymology for Mjollnir is that it's derived from 'Meldunaz" - lightning-bringer. HOWEVER, in the Viking Age, as persuasively argued by Declan Taggert ("How Thor Lost His Thunder"), there is minimal to no evidence to suggest that Thor was seen as a storm god. The closest we get is in a handful of saga narratives where Thor gets associated with storms specifically at sea (though these, with only one exception, tend to frame Thor as a Christian demon due to the lateness of the material), but the majority of storms, including storms with lightning, are in fact never linked to Thor.
@@Ludohistory Early versions of Þor have been traced back to Donnar/Thonnar/Þonnar originally mentioned by the Romans as a god of rain, thunder, and fertility of the earth to Germanics or Gauls in the Rhine valley. He carried a large club. Thunder was the sound as he struck the ground to summon the fertility out of the deep earth/world serpent. He also had a fire spirit (possibly an early analog of Loki) that he could summon, control, and put down.
@@TheUnspeakableh Love to see 19th century scholarship resurfacing on the Internet. If you have a citation, there, please do send it my way, I'm happy to change my views when presented with a compelling argument, but this reads a lot like parroting Jakob Grimm (particularly the fire = Loki part), who freely blended Tacitus' mention of Hercules, Caesar's immensely vague accounts of the Gauls, and Adam of Bremen's account of the festivals at Gamla Uppsala. Literally all of those sources are incredibly problematic and often demonstrably wrong, and that interpretation (other than that the Proto-Germanic root word for "Thor" is "Thunraz") is in no modern scholarship that I am aware of on the god.
jake honestly think you are one of the best CZcamsrs out there I mean you make funny videos your animations are very good and the subjects are very interesting keep up the amazing work
I've always interpreted Mjollnir as "You'd have to be incredibly crazy or incredibly stupid or both to even consider trying to wield a weapon that powerful." Fortunately Thor fits the bill!
I know that, regarding the children of Thor, Magni and Modi weren't strong enough to carry Mjolnir alone. So I wonder if their sister Thrud was capable of doing it, considering the fact that her name means "strength". As for the Vanir, I feel like there are a lot of other figures among those deities that are now forgotten or have other names we don't know of. I also believe that both the parents of Loki were more prominent back in the day, after all their names have some special meaning: Farbauti means "he who strikes severe blows" and Loki is called the son of his mother, not his father, like many other characters.
I think that Loki uses his mother's name because she was an aesir, while his father was a jotunn, so it would make sense for Loki to choose an aesir name since he lives in Asgard.
Good points good points. But I do want to comment on the supposed destruction of literature. It is possible the reason we have Snorri's writings and such today is specifically because it was written by Christians or because it specifically doesn't specify any details on worship. We do know that Snorri used sources that do not exist today. With none of the surviving text mentioning specifically how worship was done. I can fully understand no content being maliciously destroyed during the catholic age in Iceland as an example. But you can't overrule the possibility of literature on how to worship being destroyed during the reformation age, even if a bit minimally. During the reformation age just having some wood boards with "evil magic" written in runes was grounds to get accused of witchcraft and subsequently executed. Anything deemed to be "evil magic" would be destroyed. Even if it was written by christians several hundred years back just documenting how worship was done by heathens.
I don't buy this - while the Reformation was a mistake, this doesn't actually make sense, particularly in an Icelandic context. The vast, *vast* majority of saga manuscripts postdate the reformation, including texts that include our faint references of worship practice (Hakonar saga goda, Austarfararvisur, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, etc.) and original legendary compositions and ballads were composed well into the 19th century. Folk Christianities proved very durable across Scandinavia, with folk traditions largely being recorded in the 19th century, and so it doesn't make sense to pin this on malicious destruction as the primary agent of destruction, as opposed to time itself (700 years of non-practice is a long time for oral traditions of ritual practices to be preserved) (I will say, frustratingly, that most accounts of the reception of Norse mythology stop at the reformation, and so the impact it had on the reception is rather understudied. There are some good chapters on the 16th century in the ongoing Brepols series on Research and Reception, but that's inordinately expensive, so I can't honestly recommend it unless you're a specialist)
@@Ludohistory maybe the christians didn't needed to destroy anything. After all, the viking religion was largely oral tradition, there might not been any text on "how to worship your gods" anymore because there has never been any to begin with?
@@efaristi9737 I agree with that! And there seems to have been neither interest nor ability to destroy oral traditions that suggest practice to the gods!
@@Ludohistory (700 years of non-practice is a long time for oral traditions of ritual practices to be preserved) I think that is what most people refer to when they say that Christianity destroyed viking litterature. It did not destory the litterature, but the possiblity for the litterature to be written down by someone who believd in ''Asatro'' (I don't know the english name) was destroyed
My mom actually minored in Scandinavian Studies, she also worked at a museum about that stuff and I can commonly just ask her about stuff and see misconceptions a lot
I'm using your video here as a supplement to teaching my students about G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man". Thank you for your work here. The kids were really engaged.
He really covered his bases with his Thor design with the beard. Who's to say that Thor couldn't have a body builder physique or a bit of a beer belly under there? Well played, sir
I learned a lot about this video, I never really knew there isn't an exact description of Thor's appearance. I think that means getting creative in my book.
It's the channels like these that remind me why I love history more than everything else in school! Gosh I hope I learn about mythology in high school, no matter how complex, since it's just so freaking INTERESTING! edit: These are things I'd never know that I found out from watching this video.
it's nice that you make funny videos to interest people and make it simpler and then if they want they can watch the secondary video you make for more detail
I want to study early medieval archeology, so this video actually helped me alot to understand many concepts and debates better. Thank you 😊👍 the video was very interesting
About the whole topic with Thor's body , I feel like the only way to truly understand how he looked is if we loo at the norsemen's idea for perfect human body. The norsemen were rather robust and quite bulky, a product of all cthe hard work and fighting they were doing and since Thor was supposed to be the embodiment of everything manly, powerful and mighty, he would probably be extra buff, with muscles surpassing even those of Chris Hemsworth and biceps as big as a regular human's head
No...? He is undoubtedly strong, and (usually) taller and larger than ordinary humans. but... no? "The Vikings" weren't hugely bulky, they were actually smaller on average and more poorly-nourished than modern people. Additionally, saga evidence suggests that being "well-proportioned" was more important than being jacked, and some of the best-known saga characters, like Kjartan Olafsson or Gunnar of Hlidarendi don't seem to have been massively bulky, but rather very skilled. That being said, fishers did have to be able to deadlift hundreds of pounds of fish, so they are *strong*, it's just that the strength doesn't translate to being built like a modern bodybuilder.
@@Ludohistory Ah, thanks for the correction. But even with that out oc the way, this still doesn't change the fact that Thor is mighty strong and he is atleast way more muscular than the average norsemen.
@@Ludohistory Vikings have been found to weigh up to 140 kg (309 lbs) in archeological findings, and were described as stronger (on average) than most people they encountered. On average they were certainly big
@@bennogb5069 oh, PLEASE give me a citation for that - the vast majority of archaeological site reports I've seen don't even speculate on weight and stick to height, and most heights are somewhere in the vicinity of 5'6", with above 6' being exceedingly rare. (for a representative example, see Jesse Byock et al's report on the "Axed Man" of Mosfell, 2012, which indicates a full-grown pre-Christian Icelandic homicide victim had below-average height for early-medieval Europe and evidence of tuberculosis). So, if there's a good study that is challenging it, I want to check it out and update my information accordingly!
I love your vidoes they make me want to learn more of mythology and you explain it and make me laugh at the same time can you do pysche and aros? or Zeuz'ez lovers thanks :D
Amazing video! 😍 I love the fact that you make not only super funny cartoons, but also academically rigorous videos debunking the idea that mythologies are monolithic. The internet needs more content like this. P.S CZcamsr Jessie Gender has made a literal hour-long vídeo essay about why Loki has become such a big LGBTQ+ icon, and she's as careful with the source material as you are. The video's a must-watch, imo.
@@painpokebeys History can be very gay if you know where to look. I literally have a professor whose specialty is sexuality in Ancient Rome/Greece, and, spoiler ahead, people from those civilisations could be VERY gay/bi. A similar thing could be said of, for example, pre-westernization Japan (see Linfamy's videos on Kagema and Wakashu). Even the notoriously anti-gay Medieval Europe had its fair share of Queerness: my Medieval History professor told my class last week that lesbian women were highly valued as s** workers bc they wouldn't fall in love with their clients. The Church was perfectly awake of that, but actively banning br*thels or even shaming them too harshly for employing Queer women would decrease the Church's power by a lot.
Remember that the vikings didn’t believe in the stories, they were created to teach each other and that they didn’t believe in the Gods as super human creatures
Re: #10, it's worth keeping in mind that "viking" wasn't a race or an ethnicity, but an occupation rather, since it referred to people who raided in general. So back then talking about vikings was more like talking about pirates who had probably come from somewhere further north, which was relative depending on where you lived.
Two considerable errors in the discourse: 1. Vikings could very well have known volcanos before settling Iceland. The pre-viking-age Nordics certainly had contacts with the Mediterranean world, where volcanos were known, they could just have imported such a story and made it Ragnarøk. 2. Vikings would simply have borrowed a concept of alternate worlds or dimensions from the Celts, who had such. The Vikings *_did not_* develop their mythology in isolation, and even if they hypothetically were strong dumb mountains of muscles and masculinity, they could simply have pilfered funny concepts from other cultures.
Great video altough i was slightly distracted by the teleporting ´cat On the matter of the Video: I personally dont find that misconceptions in regards to a mythologie are something inherently bad. Tales like the Norse Myths live from being retold time after time each version slightly different and those unique. It can be tricky and frustrating yes but hey mytholigy isnt rocket science. In fact myths are far more complicated since rockets at least dont change the way they work every happy paradigmn shift.
I've never been a norse myth buff but the way you describe the incomprehensibility of the realm layout reminds me of how in Ghostwalk, a D&D setting, the land of the dead is just... a place you can go. You can literally walk there. Nobody DOES because that's spooky as shit but you CAN.
Mythology can be a fun and incredibly powerful tool to understand different cultures, but it’s also VERY complicated with how a culture can change/alter their own mythos
Nr. 11, the Jotnar were giants. The Jotnar were in fact not giants, but a tribe of beings like the Aesir and Vanir who represented chaotic forces and natural disasters. The best way to think of them, are gods of chaos. Nr. 12, only the Aesir were gods. The Aesir were not the only gods, in fact, Aesir, Vanir, Jotnar and even some Elves were worshipped as gods in the old norse myth.
Granted, this is purely my own perspective and although it's based on the written sources and the region I live in (Sweden), it shouldn't be seen as fact. But I interpret Yggdrasil as the world itself. The branches connecting the "worlds" teach us that everything is connected. The texts do state some directions. Járnviðr is in the Eastern part Jötunheimr, Niðavellir (I think) lies somewhere between Miðgárdr and Niflheimr - it's stated that you go through the region when you venture to Niflheimr from Miðgárdr. Svartálfheimr lies East of Niflheimr. Niflheimr lies in the North and Muspelheimr in the South. Etc. I don't pretend to know where on the map the places are though. But Járnviðr makes me think of the Swedish forests. There's also a reference to Álfheimr being an early medieval kingdom in the region that connects Southern Norway and Sweden. But again, it's all just speculation on my part but it does have, at least, some merit I'd say.
Thor is basically travelling around with his dad's best friend. A sort-of cool uncle. 9:52 Well, giving birth would get you defined as a woman in most societies. 11:00 Which would make him a multi-hermaphrodite?
As a mythology nerd, I enjoy incorporating it into the stories I write. I try to keep it as accurate as possible to the mythology. However, I also like learning about the origin, spread, and evolution of the mythology which is something I try to depict when adapting the gods from fiction into reality. This is difficult however. In order to make gods work in fiction as real beings, it's easier to simplify parts of the myths. Mostly, the idea of gods ruling over specific domains and the cosmology being separate realms. It gets more complicated when I want all gods of every belief system to exist and when I also want to represent how the real belief systems changed and spread over time. For example, so many European religions originated from Proto Indo-European.
The mjolnir only being wielded by worthy people was completely made by marvel. In the first Thor movie basically the what happens is that Thor is cast down to earth as he is not worthy of his power, and Odin casts an enchantment on mjolnir, so only worthy people can wield it. The plot is about Thor regaining his worthiness, and it was most likely entirely made up for the movie.
Thor's hammer being so impossibly heavy that only him, a giant and his two sons combined can carry it seems pretty plausible. He's known to be supernaturally strong even for a god and it would explain why no one else seems to use this WMD.
15:02 That's how I built my fantasy version of Medieval Europe for a norse inspired game! Except, get this, I pulled a sneaky! To get to places like Nidavellir and Vanaheim you had to move through the FOURTH dimension of space! In my game the various worlds were 3d slices of a 4d sphere, with Earth being just one of them, and the gods were 4th dimensional beings. Mortals were to them as a 2d being would be to us.
I was once told that "viking(sic)" was originally the Norse word describing the adventuring activities --not a name of their ethnicity as such. Viking seems to be fairly well-accepted. The topic may have arisen as an anecdotal etymology for the word Eskimo (meaning something like --eaters of raw meat) being the somewhat pejorative nickname for the Inuit peoples as described by other tribal groups and Europeans making it the equivalent of a tribal identity. It's always a good idea to follow the ethnonym used by the actual people rather than asking the ones next door.
The walls around the worlds could still be connected to Yggdrasil if you look at them as tree rings. Just wanna put it out there. I mean Vikings were amazing ship builders and craftsman, they would've noticed tree rings when they felled great trees.
I like calling attention to the lack of domains. By what I’ve read and researched their “domain” is like you said more their accomplishments but also their personalities and interests.
So, I know the website Jake is referencing with the blurred-out image and the "not naming names" text at 0:38 (I even read one of that guy's books years ago), and while I doubt it will actually happen I would *love* a video dedicated to debunking some of the claims made by that guy specifically. When I'd originally read his book I remembered seeing a bunch of (presumably scholarly) sources cited at the back, so for a while, I just took the information he presented in it for granted, but after reading some of the medieval literature that serves as our primary sources for this stuff, there's always been something off to me about his website and book since then, though I can't exactly put it into words.
I like how the examples of “feminine activities” were all things Loki and/or Odin have done.
Lära sig kvinnlig trollkonst i kvinnlig form. Loke är en biologisk mor. Bland annat till en häst. De flesta av de där historierna går nog inte att berätta på CZcams. Och berättar man den I Ryssland blir man nog mördad. Tor klädde ut sig till Freja och lodsasdes gifta sig med en " jätte" för att få tillbaka sin hammare. Min lärare blev ofta djupt skenerad när vi läste om de gamla gudarnas tokerier i skolan
For anyone that cant read Swedish, this basically means “A lot of this stuff is controversial and you can get killed for saying it”
@@sunflowerolsson1521 in russia
I have been ill and Im very tired and forgot 2 write in English. Im just saying that talking about the actuall chenanigans of the old goods probably would get you in trubble with people that take these things a bit 2 seriously. It's crude and silly stories. Sorry about the spelling. Dyslectic.
@@roosajarvinen5698 but why Russia was Norse mythology was not even spread there
I like how thors hammer in actual mythos isnt only wielded by the "worthy" but its just so incredibly powerful, that only someone capable of its power can handle it.
My favourite bit about Mjolnir is that it's existence is merely a by-product of Loki's Shenanigans (and it's supposedly imperfect due to more of Loki's shenanigans).
Basically it's just so incredibly heavy that only Thor can properly wield it due to him being so freaking strong.
@@Lupinemancer87 kinda? Mjolnir has a safety feature , which is thors gauntlets... If anyone handles Mjolnir without it, theres a chance that they will just vaporize on contact... So anyone other than thor, or anyone as strong as thor can actually weild the hammer.
@@Lupinemancer87 and having a belt and gauntlet of strength
That why that old Avengers's kinda cool when Hulk was going rampage and pick up Thor hammer and hitting people with it, the hammer got nothing to do with worthy but it's just so damn heavy that even seem like Hulk trying to lift a mountain of something.
I love that odin has an entire like 6 pages dedicated to just listing who he is.
As he shoukd
“Who are you?”
Odin: “who am I not?”
Magnus Chase is actually very accurate, they even diss the Marvel Thor movies in the first book. And sure, there are some pretty stupid and outlandish jokes snuck in, like Thor challenging Jesus to a duel and Odin loving Powerpoint presentations, but the funniest thing is nothing about it is any more ridiculous than actual Norse myths, like Loki tying his balls to the beard of a goat and having a tug of war with it in that fashion for example
Odinn absolutely does love powerpoint presentations though and i will not be convinced otherwise-
And don’t forget Heimdal and his selfie stick and Thor watching shows on his hammer and constantly being behind. But they are obvious and technically we don’t know how they would react if the gods existed know. Who knows they Odin could have fallen in love with power points and started to run Valhalla as a hotel
@@sallen5686 Just keep an eye on the presentation and email it to Huginn once you're done so that somebody else can take the notes.
Shame the Magnus Chase series went in a downards spiral after the first book
To an extend, I like how they make fun of the Marvel movies for being inacurate, yet still portrays the Jotnar as "giants".
The "worthiness" to wield a weapon maybe a call back to an Arthurian legend of being worthy to pull the sword out of the stone/anvil. But Marvel just widened the description.
There is actually a similar sword in Norse mythology called Gramm, that only the worthy can pull out of a tree.
@@humbelduff2916
Ah, the weapon of Sigurd right?
@@higonakamura1236 That is correct
ah yes "hammer in a stone" as the mcu says it
If we go by the Mcu, Thor hammer was only affect by the whorthy spell in the first movie. So before that, anyone could use the hammer. Odin put the spell in order to restore Thor's character, nothing more.
Subbing exclusively because you are the first CZcamsr I've seen accurately speaking on Thor's description and my god I've been RAGING since God of War Ragnarok was revealed as the debate has usually been a back and forth of "This is what Thor looks like" and "No, here is what Thor ACTUALLY looks like" and it has actively been driving me insane. I've even been told I'm wrong when saying exactly what you are saying here. Finally...sweet, sweet validation.
technically, all thor representations are correct, as long as he's got a big orange beard, a belt, his gauntlets, and mjolnir!
@@skeIliemaan.j well then Marvel Thor is indeed wrong.
@@Greyman-Gaming sometimes they give him a belt and gauntlets.
It only took one picture depicting the mythological Thor to convince me that Marvel's depictions were not historically or mythologically accurate, and I have brain damage.
@@skeIliemaan.j don't forget his trusty gloves!
Also yeah there's a similar issue with Celtic gods around, we know the big names which were referenced in some variation or another everywhere (Brigid/Brigantina/Briget, or Lugh and the various spellings of his name.), but a lot of the minor deities we've lost all record of, particularly outside of Gaul. (Where the romans generally didn't give a shit about the details so we only really know that there WAS worship of a local deity in an area, not anything about them)
Celtic in and of itself is an umbrella term. Lugus from pre-Christian Ireland is not Lug Lámfada nor are either of them Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Whatever the Irish mythology was beforehand is further muddled by the things the monks wrote down only having a handful of deities that were actually present in pre-Christian Ireland and most of which twisted away from whatever their original roles were. This is again muddled further by the thousand plus years of fanfiction written by British nobles.
@@Aerlas I mean if we consider the Aphrodite the Spartans worshipped and the Aphrodite the rest of greece later adopted the same deity despite the significant regional difference in those interpretations, I don't see why the same doesn't apply to Brigid/Brigantia/etc, Lugh, or any of the other gods.
@@000Dragon50000 That isn't a good comparison for those under the umbrella term of Celtic. For the Spartans Aphrodite, who is likely a form of Astarte who in turn is Ishtar who is Inanna, had her usual traits in additional to her battle oriented ones and we have their other deities for comparison as well. However for the Gaels and the Welsh that doesn't hold up. Classifications shouldn't be held together by unsupported theories alone.
@@Aerlas glad to know there's more ppl on the Internet who doesn't think Irish and Scottish folklore and legends is representative of Celtic mythology as a whole
Normal people: OH HEY LOOK, A MISTLETOE!
Aesir: INCOHERENT CONCERNED SCREAMING!
Loki: (Grabs popcorn)
*Baldur is blessed with invulberability to all threats, physical or magical.*
@@Berd-Wasted. Yes... all of them... except Mistletoe as that is what Loki used to kill him in Norse Mythology. A spear with Mistletoe.
@@costelinha1867 Shhh. We can't let Freya hear that.
@@Berd-Wasted. Fair enough.
@@costelinha1867 how would that work? Baldur is blessed with invulnerability to all threats, physical or magical.
I thought the guy who made up the Marvel stories admitted he made up the Thor/Loki brothers angle because he liked the idea of Brother vs. Brother more so than any mythological inspiration.
yeah, he did.
@@projekttaku1 yea well he should not have
@@Hadrada. why not?
@@projekttaku1 because Thor’s shall strike him down for being a wrong doer
@@Hadrada. okay.
10:20
The way the cat just appears in the background is funny
I wish we could invent time travel just to go back in time and very clearly preserve the true norse myths prechristianity, truly get it right as it was originally meant. Would be amazing to read the true myths, especially if we could compare current understanding to the true understanding!
agreed. time travel would give historians the final tool to get the full scope, beyond the hard work they already do on the daily! honestly time travel would give so much context it'd be insanity.
how bummed would you be if it was really boring though?
@@TheEthanEdge with what we already know, it probably wouldn't be.
I wish we could create a device to show what happened in a certain place long ago.
Like you go to some random field of grass, and the device projects what was happening at whatever time your choosing to look back at.
It would be so useful, especially for historians.
@@auliamateAnd also create a powerful super weapon that would…probably break the Universe.
Knowing Ludo from his contribution over on the OSP channel, it's great for you to have him over here, Jake!
I live in Sweden and while having history classes we actually learn about Norse mythology. Tor was canonly “åskguden” (the thunder god) and the Norse mythology believers thought that when it thundered it was Tor that flew over the sky throwing his hammer to kill jättar (I think ogres) so the lightning-hammer thing is in fact canon
Jättar (Singular: Jätte) could probably translate into ogres but the more accepted translation is giants.
@@emiledlund9559 yeah, i forgot Abt that lol
Unfortunately, your secondary school history class is... not exactly right.
At some point, it is very likely that Thor had thunder associations - the most likely etymology for Mjollnir is that it's derived from 'Meldunaz" - lightning-bringer. HOWEVER, in the Viking Age, as persuasively argued by Declan Taggert ("How Thor Lost His Thunder"), there is minimal to no evidence to suggest that Thor was seen as a storm god. The closest we get is in a handful of saga narratives where Thor gets associated with storms specifically at sea (though these, with only one exception, tend to frame Thor as a Christian demon due to the lateness of the material), but the majority of storms, including storms with lightning, are in fact never linked to Thor.
@@Ludohistory Early versions of Þor have been traced back to Donnar/Thonnar/Þonnar originally mentioned by the Romans as a god of rain, thunder, and fertility of the earth to Germanics or Gauls in the Rhine valley. He carried a large club. Thunder was the sound as he struck the ground to summon the fertility out of the deep earth/world serpent. He also had a fire spirit (possibly an early analog of Loki) that he could summon, control, and put down.
@@TheUnspeakableh Love to see 19th century scholarship resurfacing on the Internet. If you have a citation, there, please do send it my way, I'm happy to change my views when presented with a compelling argument, but this reads a lot like parroting Jakob Grimm (particularly the fire = Loki part), who freely blended Tacitus' mention of Hercules, Caesar's immensely vague accounts of the Gauls, and Adam of Bremen's account of the festivals at Gamla Uppsala. Literally all of those sources are incredibly problematic and often demonstrably wrong, and that interpretation (other than that the Proto-Germanic root word for "Thor" is "Thunraz") is in no modern scholarship that I am aware of on the god.
jake honestly think you are one of the best CZcamsrs out there I mean you make funny videos your animations are very good and the subjects are very interesting keep up the amazing work
I've always interpreted Mjollnir as "You'd have to be incredibly crazy or incredibly stupid or both to even consider trying to wield a weapon that powerful." Fortunately Thor fits the bill!
One of the most underrated historian channel of all time
Thank you!
*I am not a historian, nor have I even studied this stuff academically. But Adam did, so listen to him .
I know that, regarding the children of Thor, Magni and Modi weren't strong enough to carry Mjolnir alone. So I wonder if their sister Thrud was capable of doing it, considering the fact that her name means "strength".
As for the Vanir, I feel like there are a lot of other figures among those deities that are now forgotten or have other names we don't know of.
I also believe that both the parents of Loki were more prominent back in the day, after all their names have some special meaning: Farbauti means "he who strikes severe blows" and Loki is called the son of his mother, not his father, like many other characters.
imagine you and your brother can barely lift your fathers hammer, then your sister comes along and just picks it up like nothing.
@@projekttaku1 Exactly what I'm talking about and exactly the type of story Snorri Sturluson would write, if you ask me.
@@lenardbordo9838 honestly, yeah. Tho that would just give me a giggle.
I think that Loki uses his mother's name because she was an aesir, while his father was a jotunn, so it would make sense for Loki to choose an aesir name since he lives in Asgard.
@@manolomartinez5033 Oh! I never knew anything else besides her name. Could you perhaps specify where you found this out?
Plot twist: Thor was the adopted one
Absolutely nobody: *Collective shock*
Well for a lot of people it was a shock cuz of the mcu
@@gen1136 lol not really. compared to his two siblings in the mcu, he's the one that stuck out compared to loki and hela
@@kaelang12 thats probably because hela and loki are more mischievous so they get noticed more. Idk im tired and that probably makes no sense
@@gen1136 they're the goth edgy kids and thor is the sunshine jock
Good points good points. But I do want to comment on the supposed destruction of literature. It is possible the reason we have Snorri's writings and such today is specifically because it was written by Christians or because it specifically doesn't specify any details on worship. We do know that Snorri used sources that do not exist today. With none of the surviving text mentioning specifically how worship was done. I can fully understand no content being maliciously destroyed during the catholic age in Iceland as an example. But you can't overrule the possibility of literature on how to worship being destroyed during the reformation age, even if a bit minimally. During the reformation age just having some wood boards with "evil magic" written in runes was grounds to get accused of witchcraft and subsequently executed. Anything deemed to be "evil magic" would be destroyed. Even if it was written by christians several hundred years back just documenting how worship was done by heathens.
That's actually a really good point
I don't buy this - while the Reformation was a mistake, this doesn't actually make sense, particularly in an Icelandic context. The vast, *vast* majority of saga manuscripts postdate the reformation, including texts that include our faint references of worship practice (Hakonar saga goda, Austarfararvisur, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, etc.) and original legendary compositions and ballads were composed well into the 19th century. Folk Christianities proved very durable across Scandinavia, with folk traditions largely being recorded in the 19th century, and so it doesn't make sense to pin this on malicious destruction as the primary agent of destruction, as opposed to time itself (700 years of non-practice is a long time for oral traditions of ritual practices to be preserved)
(I will say, frustratingly, that most accounts of the reception of Norse mythology stop at the reformation, and so the impact it had on the reception is rather understudied. There are some good chapters on the 16th century in the ongoing Brepols series on Research and Reception, but that's inordinately expensive, so I can't honestly recommend it unless you're a specialist)
@@Ludohistory maybe the christians didn't needed to destroy anything. After all, the viking religion was largely oral tradition, there might not been any text on "how to worship your gods" anymore because there has never been any to begin with?
@@efaristi9737 I agree with that! And there seems to have been neither interest nor ability to destroy oral traditions that suggest practice to the gods!
@@Ludohistory (700 years of non-practice is a long time for oral traditions of ritual practices to be preserved)
I think that is what most people refer to when they say that Christianity destroyed viking litterature. It did not destory the litterature, but the possiblity for the litterature to be written down by someone who believd in ''Asatro'' (I don't know the english name) was destroyed
Following the saga of your cat's journey from napping spots and out of the room and back is easily as interesting as Egil's Saga.
I don't care how incorrect Thors depiction in GoW5 is, it's just amazing to see a big angry bear of a man have a good character arc
10:22 your cat can teleport, I now worship Jake's cat.
As a scandinavian I was told that when it thundered it was the sound of Thor killing a jotun with mjöner.
Would love to see your comedic take on the Trojan War
that would be kool tbh
This was absolutely wonderful! Thank you so much for expanding on the subject❤
This is fantastic! You two tackled so many things that either annoy TF out of me, or that I wish more people knew. So thank you!
i love your cat sleeping in the background for the begging its so cute
please make a video on "I Try To Explain Egyptian Mythology"
Great idea
"So how many gods should we have?"
"YES"
@@projekttaku1 apart from like the main ten or so the rest weren’t really that important or referenced
@@projekttaku1 he should do i try to explain mayan mythogly
@@glamorgirl911 lol yeah, or I try to explain japanese mythology
My mom actually minored in Scandinavian Studies, she also worked at a museum about that stuff and I can commonly just ask her about stuff and see misconceptions a lot
Tbh GOW:ragnarok's depictions of the norse beliefs were pretty good at communicating the original concepts compared to most others.
This was a great video and I love all of your content. Keep it up and I think you could be one of the biggest youtubers out there. Have a great day!
I'm using your video here as a supplement to teaching my students about G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man". Thank you for your work here. The kids were really engaged.
He really covered his bases with his Thor design with the beard. Who's to say that Thor couldn't have a body builder physique or a bit of a beer belly under there? Well played, sir
Great video. Love the feature of the specialist
I learned a lot about this video, I never really knew there isn't an exact description of Thor's appearance. I think that means getting creative in my book.
Just experienced a friendship-breakup, you really help me get my mind off it.
It's the channels like these that remind me why I love history more than everything else in school! Gosh I hope I learn about mythology in high school, no matter how complex, since it's just so freaking INTERESTING!
edit: These are things I'd never know that I found out from watching this video.
it's nice that you make funny videos to interest people and make it simpler and then if they want they can watch the secondary video you make for more detail
I want to study early medieval archeology, so this video actually helped me alot to understand many concepts and debates better. Thank you 😊👍 the video was very interesting
About the whole topic with Thor's body , I feel like the only way to truly understand how he looked is if we loo at the norsemen's idea for perfect human body.
The norsemen were rather robust and quite bulky, a product of all cthe hard work and fighting they were doing and since Thor was supposed to be the embodiment of everything manly, powerful and mighty, he would probably be extra buff, with muscles surpassing even those of Chris Hemsworth and biceps as big as a regular human's head
No...? He is undoubtedly strong, and (usually) taller and larger than ordinary humans. but... no? "The Vikings" weren't hugely bulky, they were actually smaller on average and more poorly-nourished than modern people. Additionally, saga evidence suggests that being "well-proportioned" was more important than being jacked, and some of the best-known saga characters, like Kjartan Olafsson or Gunnar of Hlidarendi don't seem to have been massively bulky, but rather very skilled.
That being said, fishers did have to be able to deadlift hundreds of pounds of fish, so they are *strong*, it's just that the strength doesn't translate to being built like a modern bodybuilder.
@@Ludohistory Ah, thanks for the correction. But even with that out oc the way, this still doesn't change the fact that Thor is mighty strong and he is atleast way more muscular than the average norsemen.
@@Ludohistory Vikings have been found to weigh up to 140 kg (309 lbs) in archeological findings, and were described as stronger (on average) than most people they encountered.
On average they were certainly big
@@bennogb5069 oh, PLEASE give me a citation for that - the vast majority of archaeological site reports I've seen don't even speculate on weight and stick to height, and most heights are somewhere in the vicinity of 5'6", with above 6' being exceedingly rare. (for a representative example, see Jesse Byock et al's report on the "Axed Man" of Mosfell, 2012, which indicates a full-grown pre-Christian Icelandic homicide victim had below-average height for early-medieval Europe and evidence of tuberculosis). So, if there's a good study that is challenging it, I want to check it out and update my information accordingly!
@@Ludohistory They haven't replied yet, but I would put (a lot of) money on this being an outlier that the poster has claimed to be an average.
Respect to the Yardrat Cat at 10:21
Loki is also a chaotic god and he not only changes gender, but also changes form and shapes all the time, turning into various animals
so he's genderfluid and a furry?
@@projekttaku1 now THAT’S a god I can get behind
@@rockethero1177 lol loki is legit a gen-z god.
I love your vidoes they make me want to learn more of mythology and you explain it and make me laugh at the same time can you do pysche and aros? or Zeuz'ez lovers thanks :D
Amazing video! 😍 I love the fact that you make not only super funny cartoons, but also academically rigorous videos debunking the idea that mythologies are monolithic. The internet needs more content like this.
P.S CZcamsr Jessie Gender has made a literal hour-long vídeo essay about why Loki has become such a big LGBTQ+ icon, and she's as careful with the source material as you are. The video's a must-watch, imo.
Vikings are gay. I don't know why I love that
@@painpokebeys History can be very gay if you know where to look. I literally have a professor whose specialty is sexuality in Ancient Rome/Greece, and, spoiler ahead, people from those civilisations could be VERY gay/bi. A similar thing could be said of, for example, pre-westernization Japan (see Linfamy's videos on Kagema and Wakashu).
Even the notoriously anti-gay Medieval Europe had its fair share of Queerness: my Medieval History professor told my class last week that lesbian women were highly valued as s** workers bc they wouldn't fall in love with their clients. The Church was perfectly awake of that, but actively banning br*thels or even shaming them too harshly for employing Queer women would decrease the Church's power by a lot.
Doing a research project on Norse mythology this was very helpful.
Remember that the vikings didn’t believe in the stories, they were created to teach each other and that they didn’t believe in the Gods as super human creatures
@@LoKing1337 yea but are you telling the truth or trying to trick us
@@Hadrada. it’s up to you to decide
cant wait to watch this
Jake: Explains mythology
Me: *sees cat in the background * *gets distracted by cat *
Re: #10, it's worth keeping in mind that "viking" wasn't a race or an ethnicity, but an occupation rather, since it referred to people who raided in general. So back then talking about vikings was more like talking about pirates who had probably come from somewhere further north, which was relative depending on where you lived.
I love how the cat appeared at 10:24 😂
Love this so much
Two considerable errors in the discourse:
1. Vikings could very well have known volcanos before settling Iceland. The pre-viking-age Nordics certainly had contacts with the Mediterranean world, where volcanos were known, they could just have imported such a story and made it Ragnarøk.
2. Vikings would simply have borrowed a concept of alternate worlds or dimensions from the Celts, who had such.
The Vikings *_did not_* develop their mythology in isolation, and even if they hypothetically were strong dumb mountains of muscles and masculinity, they could simply have pilfered funny concepts from other cultures.
That's nice and all but I very much enjoyed the teleporting cats
I heard the "god of x" thing is generally the case in mythology
I love your teleporting cats.
Super random, but I couldn't help but notice your team CFVY mug!
Oh my god the cat sleeping in the background is the best thing I say today
Thanks, Ludohistory - I have followed you on Twitter!
Great video altough i was slightly distracted by the teleporting ´cat
On the matter of the Video:
I personally dont find that misconceptions in regards to a mythologie are something inherently bad. Tales like the Norse Myths live from being retold time after time each version slightly different and those unique. It can be tricky and frustrating yes but hey mytholigy isnt rocket science. In fact myths are far more complicated since rockets at least dont change the way they work every happy paradigmn shift.
I've never been a norse myth buff but the way you describe the incomprehensibility of the realm layout reminds me of how in Ghostwalk, a D&D setting, the land of the dead is just... a place you can go. You can literally walk there. Nobody DOES because that's spooky as shit but you CAN.
The cat spontaneously appearing at 10:19 XDD
Great video as always, the best thing about it was definetly the cat
Some of these I never heard of e.g. the first two.
Others, like Thor and Loki being brothers, I didn't know where false.
So good job.
Great video, Jake!
If I go back in time to show someone a picture and they respond with "oh cool" I would take that as a sign that I shouldn't be using time travel.
Mythology can be a fun and incredibly powerful tool to understand different cultures, but it’s also VERY complicated with how a culture can change/alter their own mythos
Holly crap, the cat just duplicated i 10:25 like it was nothing
Ok, the Norse gods were powerful but could they make a cat manifest out of nowhere ? 10:20
(Viking seeing modern depictions of Thor): “He got the drip, boys! I was right!”
If Thor needs a magic belt imma assume he’s BIG
Nr. 11, the Jotnar were giants. The Jotnar were in fact not giants, but a tribe of beings like the Aesir and Vanir who represented chaotic forces and natural disasters. The best way to think of them, are gods of chaos.
Nr. 12, only the Aesir were gods. The Aesir were not the only gods, in fact, Aesir, Vanir, Jotnar and even some Elves were worshipped as gods in the old norse myth.
Is kraken Greek or Norse?
@@Eric-py8yy Norse.
The Kraken is Greek.
@@brendandoherty256 No it's not
@@Lupinemancer87 What did Perseus use Medusa’s head to kill then?
I sincerely love this.
It's fitting I got an ad for Loki season 2 at the end of this
Dude looks like a lost Green brother.
Hadn’t thought of that, but wow. He does
This is a compliment I will happily take lmao
Ludo seems quite polite
Granted, this is purely my own perspective and although it's based on the written sources and the region I live in (Sweden), it shouldn't be seen as fact.
But I interpret Yggdrasil as the world itself. The branches connecting the "worlds" teach us that everything is connected. The texts do state some directions. Járnviðr is in the Eastern part Jötunheimr, Niðavellir (I think) lies somewhere between Miðgárdr and Niflheimr - it's stated that you go through the region when you venture to Niflheimr from Miðgárdr. Svartálfheimr lies East of Niflheimr. Niflheimr lies in the North and Muspelheimr in the South. Etc. I don't pretend to know where on the map the places are though. But Járnviðr makes me think of the Swedish forests. There's also a reference to Álfheimr being an early medieval kingdom in the region that connects Southern Norway and Sweden. But again, it's all just speculation on my part but it does have, at least, some merit I'd say.
I find it fascinating how nobody ever mentions how insanely cute Jake is ...
its very fun to see what the cats are doing throughout the video-
Thor is basically travelling around with his dad's best friend. A sort-of cool uncle.
9:52 Well, giving birth would get you defined as a woman in most societies.
11:00 Which would make him a multi-hermaphrodite?
As a mythology nerd, I enjoy incorporating it into the stories I write. I try to keep it as accurate as possible to the mythology. However, I also like learning about the origin, spread, and evolution of the mythology which is something I try to depict when adapting the gods from fiction into reality. This is difficult however. In order to make gods work in fiction as real beings, it's easier to simplify parts of the myths. Mostly, the idea of gods ruling over specific domains and the cosmology being separate realms.
It gets more complicated when I want all gods of every belief system to exist and when I also want to represent how the real belief systems changed and spread over time. For example, so many European religions originated from Proto Indo-European.
10:20 watch the cats multiply.
I just learned that jake has at least two cats because they just sleep during random parts of the video
i'm swedish and these things pisses me off every day i think about marvel
Yea I could imagine
I understand
I’m half paying attention to the video and half paying attention to your cat in the background
I love how the cat instantly appears
I’m pretty sure that one myth says he has a “Barrel of a belly” not completely sure, but almost
Man went from posting his vids to the osp subreddit to getting one of the ospeeps in one of his videos
happy to see more true norse info
This dude should make videos on finnish mythology. That stuff is really interesting.
0:33 my favorite book of all time and my favorite movie of all time
The mjolnir only being wielded by worthy people was completely made by marvel. In the first Thor movie basically the what happens is that Thor is cast down to earth as he is not worthy of his power, and Odin casts an enchantment on mjolnir, so only worthy people can wield it. The plot is about Thor regaining his worthiness, and it was most likely entirely made up for the movie.
Imagine in the future if we go back in time and get the full Norse mythology
Thor's hammer being so impossibly heavy that only him, a giant and his two sons combined can carry it seems pretty plausible. He's known to be supernaturally strong even for a god and it would explain why no one else seems to use this WMD.
Remember That Thor needs his magical belt and gauntlets that Double his strength
15:02 That's how I built my fantasy version of Medieval Europe for a norse inspired game! Except, get this, I pulled a sneaky! To get to places like Nidavellir and Vanaheim you had to move through the FOURTH dimension of space! In my game the various worlds were 3d slices of a 4d sphere, with Earth being just one of them, and the gods were 4th dimensional beings. Mortals were to them as a 2d being would be to us.
Not to be THAT GUY, but isn‘t the fourth dimension simply time?
In any case it’s a nifty idea though! :D
I was once told that "viking(sic)" was originally the Norse word describing the adventuring activities --not a name of their ethnicity as such. Viking seems to be fairly well-accepted.
The topic may have arisen as an anecdotal etymology for the word Eskimo (meaning something like --eaters of raw meat) being the somewhat pejorative nickname for the Inuit peoples as described by other tribal groups and Europeans making it the equivalent of a tribal identity.
It's always a good idea to follow the ethnonym used by the actual people rather than asking the ones next door.
Yay new vid
The walls around the worlds could still be connected to Yggdrasil if you look at them as tree rings. Just wanna put it out there. I mean Vikings were amazing ship builders and craftsman, they would've noticed tree rings when they felled great trees.
I like calling attention to the lack of domains. By what I’ve read and researched their “domain” is like you said more their accomplishments but also their personalities and interests.
So, I know the website Jake is referencing with the blurred-out image and the "not naming names" text at 0:38 (I even read one of that guy's books years ago), and while I doubt it will actually happen I would *love* a video dedicated to debunking some of the claims made by that guy specifically. When I'd originally read his book I remembered seeing a bunch of (presumably scholarly) sources cited at the back, so for a while, I just took the information he presented in it for granted, but after reading some of the medieval literature that serves as our primary sources for this stuff, there's always been something off to me about his website and book since then, though I can't exactly put it into words.
My brain just created 10,000 “ok lads” in the last few minutes
Basically, Loki was bugs bunny