Odin, Asgard & the Norse Gods

Dr. Eleanor Janega gets chummy with the gods of Norse Mythology. She's joined by Professor Carolyne Larrington to explore Odin’s quest for wisdom and the heart-wrenching trials he undergoes; Loki's shapeshifting exploits, and the tragic saga of Baldr orchestrated by the wise but fallible Frigg. Through tales of divine intrigue, sacrifice, and cosmic wonder, discover how these myths reflect human nature and societal values. MORE The Viking Age: what new discoveries reveal https://open.spotify.com/episode/0aChBL6wP2qPpSz5al8tp2 Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega, King Gilfi is played by Eric Nolan. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:20Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  I am King Gilfi, mightiest of kings. I once traveled to Asgard, seeking to learn from the Norse gods who lived there. There was one whom I strove most to understand, for his ways are strange and his hunger for wisdom without end. He is the Allfather, Odin, the highest and oldest of the gods, though he is known by many different names. He is the keeper of secrets, ruler of all things, and birthed war into the world. All earthly knowledge stems from him, knowledge I will share with you, if you are willing to listen.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga. This month on the podcast, we've been delving into the strange and spectacular world of Norse mythology, the ancient tales of gods, giants, and the nine realms. To help us tell these stories, we've been joined by King Gilfi, a legendary figure from the Icelandic sagas, who is guiding us through these myths of creation and cosmic mayhem. Matt and I, meanwhile, have been calling on leading experts to uncover the history that lies behind these legendary tales. In our first episode, we explored how the universe was said to begin, with fire, ice,

• 3:38Speaker 02

  and giants at the dawn of time. Still to come, we'll meet Thor and Loki, those tricksy gods of thunder and chaos, explore how to reach the famed mead-stained Hall of Valhalla, and we'll round things off with Ragnarok, the end of the world, when gods and monsters alike will perish.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  But today, we'll turn to the Allfather Himself and the celestial realm He ruled. Odin, King of Asgard, seeker of wisdom, god of battle and poetry.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  He's a figure both fearsome and fascinating, and perhaps the most complex of them all.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  In a little while, I'll be joined by Professor Carolyn Larrington, expert in Old Norse literature, to help us unpick both Odin's character and the other Norse gods who bow the knee to him. But first, here is King Gilfi to tell us more about how we came to know the one-eyed god.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  On my travels across the stars, I came before three heavenly kings in the glittering halls of Asgard. They told me much of the realms above and the caverns below. They said there are nine worlds, all held in the branches of a mighty ash. Yggdrasil is its name. The world tree, its leaves are above the sky and its roots plumb the deepest depths.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  From its boughs the dew falls, from its roots the rivers rise. An eagle sits upon its highest crown, while deep below coils a serpent, gnawing endlessly at its throne. Down in those depths lie four shadowed realms. Nilfheim, a land of mist. Moosbel, the world of flame. Jotunheim, home to the frost giants. And hell, where the dead go to die. Up the trunk lie three more worlds: Midgard, Alfheim, and Nydvalir, the land of elves, dwarves, and mortals.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Then cradled up top, high among the leaves, is where the gods dwell in their splendor. But even here, the divine are divided. Two tribes exist and two worlds they own. The tribe Vanir, wise in magic, make their keep in Vanaham, a world abundant in crop and nature.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  The tribe Isir, Odin's kin, meanwhile hold fast in their golden fortress of Asgard. Above and below, flame and frost, gods and monsters, all hang upon Yggdrasil's limbs. The tree draws its strength from an inky black well, whose waters feed its roots and keep it ever living. In that fathomless pool dwell many of the most powerful forces in all the cosmos. Chief among them are the Norse, three wise maidens who decide the destiny of all living things. With their knives, they carve ruins into the very bark of the World Tree,

• 7:05Speaker 03

  and through those marks their will is carried into every corner of the nine realms.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  But Odin, gazing down from his high throne in Asgard, watched them with envy.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  A ceaseless hunger for knowledge burned within him, and it gave the Allfather his purpose. He was willing to pay any price to master the mysteries of life and death. Long ago, he had torn out his own eye to drink from a frost giant's well of wisdom. Yet still the Norse and their ruins held power and secrets that even he, the greatest of gods, could not command. Thus, Odin went in search of the power the ruins possessed, but they do not reveal their secrets to just anyone, only to those who are worthy of such knowledge and fearful insight.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  And so it was that Odin chained himself to the trunk of Yggdrasil, and hung from its branches for nine nights, peering into the shadowy waters below. His side was pierced by the point of a spear, his body buffeted and battered by the wind, as life slowly drained from his feeble limbs. No food did he eat, nor water he drank, for nine days and nine nights in the dark. But as agony closed, Odin's mind awoke and the ruins revealed their heart.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  With their mystery unlocked, his binds did snap, and he fell, shrieking from the tree. He cried. Then, begin I to thrive, and begin I to get. I grew, and well, I was, ruins that shall find unfaithful signs, that the ruler of gods doth write. The Allfather had gained the power of magic. The world was now his to control. Yet Odin's thirst for wisdom was not still. For in the world there walked another, a goddess whose powers rivaled even his own, Freya of the Vanir,

• 9:25Speaker 03

  mistress of dark magic and dread sorcery. She wandered from hall to hall, selling her craft for hire. And wherever she went, desire and envy followed in her steps. At last she came to Asgard itself. There the Isier struck by wonder at her skills, pressed her for her services.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Soon they found their own laws, their oaths of kinship, and their honor undone.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  For each sought selfish gain from her witchcraft. And when strife and discord rose among them, they cast the blame upon Freya. They named her greedy for gold, and sought to destroy her. Three times they seized her, three times they burned her body in the Hall of the Gods.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  And three times she rose again, reborn from the ashes, unbroken and unbowed. As the poets wrote: "The war I remember, the first in the world, when the gods with spears struck down Freya, and in Odin's hall they burned her body. Three times burned, and three times born. Oft and again, yet ever she lives." Thus the Isier came to hate the Vanir.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And the Vanir in turn despised the Isir. And so, the first war of the world began. On the host his spear did Odin hurl. And in the world did war first come. The wall that guarded the gods was broken. And the fields of the war like Vanir were trodden. The Isir fought with steel and storm. Their war cry carried on the winds of Asgard. The Vanir answered with cunning spells and hidden power. Bending fate itself to their will. Blow for blow, spell for spell, the struggle raged.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Neither side prevailed. And both grew weary of endless strife.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  At last, the gods laid down their arms and made a truce. Oaths were sworn, peace was sealed. With the ancient custom of hostage-taking, Freya, Freyr, her brother, and Nord, their father, crossed into Asgard to dwell among the Isir. And in turn, the Isir gave to the Vanir their own. From the ashes of two people, one was made. And peace reigned in Asgard henceforth. Thus did Odin bind together gods of war and gods of wisdom. Though at great cost.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  For it was he who hurled the first spear and brought strife into the world. He who won the ruins through suffering and yet set the nine realms aflame with war. Such is the Allfather, a bringer of knowledge, but also of chaos, a seeker of truth, yet never free from envy and hunger.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  More, I could tell you of this one-eyed god, of his bargains and betrayals, of the many names he bears, but much have you already heard of Odin's eyes? To learn more, I have once again sought out the wisest in the land, to help you better understand what I have told.

• 13:50Eleanor Janega?

  Caroline, thank you so much for being with us at God Medieval.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  It's a great pleasure to be back again.

• 13:57Eleanor Janega?

  We are talking about really the heavy hitters today. You know, we're talking about the pantheon, a lot of the household names that everyone tends to know. And so I'm going to start you off with a fairly generalized question, which is, who is Odin?

• 14:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, who is Odin? Yeah. So he is, well, it depends who you ask in some ways. In the account of the gods that we have transmitted through the poetic edda and through other poetry, he's the Allfather, he's the leader of the Norse gods, he's the god of poetry and of war and of wisdom. He's married to Frigg and his son is Thor, but Baldur is also one of his sons. And he has a few more like Hermoda and Forseti and so on, who aren't quite so important.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  If you ask the author of the prose edda, however, the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturtleson very likely, Snorri can't really go along with the idea that the pagan gods were really gods in the same sense as the Christian god. And so Snorri tells us that Odin, along with the rest of the Isir, the main tribe of gods, is a refugee from Troy. And after the Trojan War was over, you can see how this works. Isir, Asia, right? So they all made off from Troy as fast as they could and made their way up to Scandinavia,

• 15:35Speaker 05

  where because they had superior eastern technology and a degree of magic, including shape shifting, the credulous Scandinavians began to worship them. And so this is a explanation for pagan divinities that's known as euhemerism, after the late antique philosopher Euhema, who thought it up as an explanation for how there could be pagan gods when obviously there was only one god and that was the Christian god. And he decided this must be kind of like Roman emperors who decreed that they would be worshipped either in their lives or after their deaths.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  So a smart and powerful human can persuade other people that he is a god. And so you can either follow Snorri, who has got a very sort of Christian rationalizing explanation here, or you can go with what's obviously the older and more deeply rooted in Viking religion kind of explanation.

• 16:41Eleanor Janega?

  I really love Snorri's explanation because it's just so medieval. You know, I love that there's a tracing everything back to Troy. It's like how Britain is founded by Brutus who leaves Troy. They do, they do love a connection.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  They do, and Thor is a bit hard to explain away, but because he has a chariot, he's known as Urkuthor, the Thor who drives. And Urkuthor, if you say it really quickly, Urkuthor sounds a bit like Hector. So Hector wasn't killed by Achilles at all. Oh, no, no, no. He's, he's made it to Scandinavia too.

• 17:17Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, that's a nicer Hector.

• 17:20Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, okay. I'm absolutely tickled by this. Sorry, you know, to kind of drive you into a Trojan direction, but.

• 17:28Speaker 05

  We can put that on one side, I think, for the rest of the conversation.

• 17:31Eleanor Janega?

  I will never put that. I will never put that on one side. That's too good. I suppose my next question is, what does the name Odin mean? Is this sort of like a randomly given name, or is there something behind it?

• 17:42Speaker 05

  It seems to be connected with the adjective ozer, which means furious. And his equivalent in Old English, for example, is woden, who gives us Wednesday. And there does seem to be a fairly strong understanding in Old Norse that the connection with fury exists. Not I think that Odin comes over as a particularly furious god, but we do have a Latin gloss that says, actually, for the English version, woden ides furor, that is fury. But it may be that he's capable of producing a kind of battle craziness in warriors, connected

• 18:27Speaker 05

  with his function as god of war. And so it may be that that's the furious element.

• 18:32Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I suppose this leads me to my next question, which is, what are the main attributes of Odin? Because it does strike me as odd, considering him to be furious. I suppose I associate fury a bit more with Thor. But then again, you know, I'm not an

• 18:46Speaker 05

  expert. You're right, that Thor gets more furious in person, as it were, whenever he's confronted with giants who are defying him in some way, and when he needs to smash them with his hammer. And it's more, I think, as in quite a lot of aspects of the myth of Odin, it's his capacity to induce things in other people, rather than necessarily performing.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Behaviors himself. So he's normally depicted as being old and being one eyed. And the reason why he's one eyed is one that we'll come back to in a moment, I imagine. He travels around mankind much more often than any of the other gods, who mostly don't seem to be bothered about mankind. But Odin is a patron of kings and so he likes to go recruit heroes, promote them to kingship and then take them off finally to Valhalla. When, um, when the time comes and he can be recognized.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Well, of course, in the myths, humans tend not to recognize him. And it's only a bit later on, they kind of think, oh, I wonder if that old one eyed man with the hood pulled down over his brows or wearing a broad brimmed hat was Odin. Well, he seems to have behaved in quite a tricksy fashion, so he probably was. But of course, stories depend on you not realizing that at the time.

• 20:19Eleanor Janega?

  I obviously, I think that this is, this is quite interesting too, because he's got this real connection with the world and people. And part of that also is, as you mentioned, you know, he's this god of poetry. And so we have this inspiration, not just in a fury sort of way, but also he could be responsible for inspiring men to do great things with literature as well.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. And he's often invoked by poets. He's the god who, who poets mention as being the god who gives them inspiration, the probably the god that they worship, though that's not always all that clear. And we have quite a complex myth about how the myth of poetry came into being. But essentially Odin got wind of the fact that the giants had this barrel full of poetry, which they clearly weren't making use of. And it was squirreled away in a cavern below a mountain, being guarded by a giant maiden. And in an extremely elaborate ploy, Odin.

• 21:30Speaker 05

  Manages to get access to the mountain. He bores his way in with a kind of auger-like tool. Changes himself into a snake because shake-changing is one of his attitudes. Wriggles into the mountain. Takes on some kind of form, which is presumably quite attractive because he seduces the the girl who's looking after the mead. And she promises him that he can have three sips of the mead. But of course, and in in some versions, there are three barrels of the mead and some it's just one. But with the three sips, he drains the whole lot. Turns into an eagle and takes a quicker way out than crawling back through the passage

• 22:13Speaker 05

  and flies off, pursued by the girl's father, the giant Sutunga, also in eagle form. And so Sutunga is chasing Odin and he's getting closer and closer to Aysgadur, the home of the gods. And the gods can see that this is a kind of neck-and-neck race. So they build a huge bonfire in the courtyard of Aysgadur. And Odin whizzes over the wall, but in his haste, he, as as Snorri Sturtleson tells us, ejects some of the mead backwards. So he he kind of excretes the mead out. And this mead is what bad poets use for inspiration.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  But he flies over the bonfire and spews up all of the good mead into a huge cauldron where it can be sent off to humans and other gods, the god of poetry, for example. Meanwhile, poor Sutunga is burnt as he flies into the bonfire and that's the end of him. So the mead of poetry is one of Odin's gifts to mankind, along with the runes, which are the wherewithal for writing down your poems. And this is a very mysterious part of Odin's life, but he tells us that he hanged himself for nine days and nine nights on Yggdrasil, the world tree, and doesn't eat or drink in that time.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  So it's a really grueling ordeal. And at the end of this, he says, screaming, I peered downwards and I saw the runes and I took them. And where the runes came from isn't at all clear in this story, whether they rose up out of the earth. But Odin not only gives mankind poetry, but he also produces this writing technology, which is going to turn out to be so important for, particularly for memorializing people. Runes are most often used on memorial runes then across Scandinavia.

• 24:19Eleanor Janega?

  And this is a real integral part of his character, though, right? Is this seeking of knowledge or seeking of ways to express that same thing, which this ties into the reason he lost his eye, correct?

• 24:33Speaker 05

  That's right. He's the god of wisdom. And so he's interested in wisdom in all its forms. And if you were being reductive, you might say that what he's most of all interested in is trying to see if anybody in the universe knows a different narrative for the future. Does anybody know of a storyline, we might say, in which Ragnarok is not going to happen, the end of the world is not going to come. And so Odin goes to speak, he enters a wisdom contest with a giant, which he wins, but the giant confirms the Ragnarok story.

• 25:14Speaker 05

  And he speaks to various other people, seeresses and so on, to try to find out, is this fate inescapable? And it looks like it is. And Mimir is one of the Isir, who at close to the beginning of the reign of the gods, another group of gods called the Vanir, and that's the group that Freyr, Freya, and the sea god Nudur belong to. The Isir and the Vanir start a war, which nobody can win, because the Isir have lots of great weapons, but the Vanir seem to have the gift of resurrection. So after a while, they decide this isn't getting

• 25:59Speaker 05

  anywhere, and they agree on a hostage swap. Not a hostage in the sense of taking somebody and treating them badly, but rather just, we'll have some of your guys in our society, and you can have some of ours, and that will keep the peace between us. And so Mimir and somebody called Hainir, another of the Isir, go to live among the Vanir.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  But then Hainir comes back again, saying, this hasn't gone terribly well on our part, because the Varnir kept inviting Mimir, who is so very wise, and me to our councils. And Mimir would have great ideas, but Hainir just kept saying, let others decide. And so the Varnir thought Hainir was a bit useless. And for possibly out of annoyance, cut off Mimir's head. I would have cut off Hainir's head myself.

• 26:54Eleanor Janega?

  Personally, yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  But they cut off Mimir's head and send it back to Hainir, with Hainir, to the gods. I imagine with a kind of rude note attached. And Odin is quite disturbed by this head of his friend returning in this way. So he embalms it, wraps it in herbs, and puts it in a well at the bottom of the stem of the world tree. And there he can go and consult it. But in order, for the first time, it seems to activate this connection with the head, he has to make a sacrifice. And so he sacrifices his eye, which is to be found in the well with the head. How all of this works is not at all clear.

• 27:40Speaker 05

  But it looks as if it's that kind of sacrificial logic of you give up something that's very valuable to you, and you'll get something valuable in return. You lose one of your eyes, but you gain insight of a kind of mystical kind into the workings of the universe. So that's why Odin only has one eye.

• 28:05Eleanor Janega?

  So we've got one eye, a head in a well, shape shifting abilities. But he's also got a bit of a menagerie, doesn't he? He's got, he's got his ravens, he's got wolves.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  He's got his, his very important ravens, Hugun and Munin, whose names mean something like thought and memory. And they fly out across the world every day gathering information and bringing facts or news, let's say, back to Odin. And where other people might have hunting dogs, you can imagine something like Irish wolfhounds in the Hall of a Norwegian King. Odin has a couple of wolves called Gery and Freki, which means something like fierce one and ravena. And so they sit by his side when he's at his high seat in Valhalla.

• 28:55Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, this, it's a pretty good deal. I think if I could have two ravens that came and brought me all the information I needed every day, I'd be pretty happy about that. Also, I think we should be calling more pet dogs after these wolves.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  I think Freki is a good dog name.

• 29:12Eleanor Janega?

  Freki is a really good dog's name, right? I know, I know a lot of dogs who are called Freya and not enough dogs who are called Freki. So this is a call to action.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:20Eleanor Janega?

  Audience, let's, let's go, let's move out.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  Freki is the ideal, it, it can also be used generally as an Old Norse common term for wolf, so.

• 29:30Eleanor Janega?

  Perfect. Wonderful.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  If you don't want to call your dog wolf, call it Freki.

• 29:36Eleanor Janega?

  There you go. So there is a lot, I, I think that it would be fair enough to say that Odin's a super enigmatic figure, you know, he's got a lot of contradictory traits about him, you know, he's the god of war, but he's the god of poetry. He is the king of the gods, but he's also really intensely interested in what's going on with humans and, and the most interested in kind of keeping this equilibrium going. Is this something that it's, we're supposed to be reading? Are we supposed to understand him as, I don't know, a fairly enigmatic individual?

• 30:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's probably.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  True that we would read him as enigmatic, but I think what that boils down to is he has many different functions. And one of the most important aspects, and again, this is something that we find in later Christian writing about him, but it's extremely important, is that he's an ancestor. He's the ancestor of the kings of Norway. And his equivalent, Woden, turns up in the genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon kings, somewhere after Adam and Noah. But before Henges and Horser, you have Woden.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  And so Oden is seen as being an ancestor, and of course, this ties up a little bit with the whole Trojan business. He's given a role in the human world, which ties into kingship and being interested in law, as L A W law, as well as being interested in magic. And this is why he turns up so often in Human Affairs in an enigmatic way. And if you're a young man, if you're the hero Sigurdur, for example, and you're trying to pick the best horse out of your uncle's stud to be your horsey companion through

• 31:42Speaker 05

  life, and a mysterious hooded man with one eye comes and stands beside you and says, I would take that one if I were you, then you take that advice because you know that this is probably someone who knows what they're talking about. And indeed, Grani is descended from Oden's horse, Sleipnir, but he just has the regular number of legs, not eight legs. So Sigurdur very wisely makes that choice. But Sigurdur, depending on what his mother has told him, Sigurdur might also reflect on the fact that he's born posthumously. To his father, his father dies in battle while his mother is pregnant with Sigurdur,

• 32:27Speaker 05

  precisely because Odin has appeared to Sigmundur and said, "Time is up. You now, you're getting on in years and we need you in Valhalla to train with the other Ainherja, the other dead heroes for the army that will fight at Ragnarok." And so Odin is very multifaceted in this relationship with kings. He will come and say, "You're my chosen one and you should have this throne." But he also takes it away from you.

• 33:01Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm, hmm. I suppose that that's sort of the deal though, isn't it? I mean, imagine the way that he has to trade his own eye for wisdom. I suppose that, you know, his blessing comes with a consummate, you know, downside.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, nothing lasts forever in that case. And there is one poem in which Odin is told mischievously, perhaps by his wife Frigg, that one of his proteges, a man called Geröther, is behaving rather badly as a king. He's extremely stingy with food when guests come to the hall. And Odin says, "I need to go and investigate this." So he disguises himself and goes to Geröther's hall. But sneaky Frigg has sent Geröther a message saying, "Watch out for this weird wizard-type character who's going to come to your hall. You'll recognize him because dogs don't bark at him.

• 34:01Speaker 05

  Have nothing to do with him, he's very dangerous." And so when this figure turns up, Geröther asks him who he is and he won't speak. So Geröther places him between two fires. And he sits there for eight days and eight nights without speaking. And he doesn't have any food, he doesn't have any drink. It's again, it's an echo of his ordeal on the world tree to get the runes. And then Geröther's son gives him a horn of mead and he starts to speak. And he imparts a lot of mythological information about the names of the halls of the gods and the relationships of some of the gods and so on.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  And then he embarks on this long list of names because Odin goes by many names. Primarily in some ways because he needs to have lots of names to be evoked in poetry. Because poetry in Old Norse is illiterative. And so if you want to have an Odin name which will fit in any poetic line, you need a great repertoire of different names. And so he begins to recite all of these names and you could imagine if you were filming this, that the camera will pan across to Gera. They're thinking, oh no, this is Odin, this is my patron I've been torturing for a week. This can't end well.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  And in fact, as he comes to the end of his recital, Gera leaps up to pull him away from the fire and welcome him into the hall. But he trips over his own sword and falls on it and dies. And Agnar, the son, becomes king in his place because Agnar gave Odin the horn of mead. Agnar is a generous and wise person. And I always feel a little bit sorry for Gera there because he's been set up basically by Frigg. Now Frigg has it in for him because there were originally two brothers, Gera and his brother who was also called Agnar.

• 36:07Speaker 05

  And they went down to the beach one day when they were young and got into a boat. Or rather, Gera persuaded Agnar to get into a boat. Agnar got into the boat and he pushed it away and said, go where the trolls will have you. So Agnar sails that sea, gets lost and is rescued by a troll, but he's now stuck with the trolls. Gera gets to be king and Agnar was Frigg's particular protege while Gera was Odin's. So this is Frigg having kind of long term revenge for what happened to her protege.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  But it's interesting in that story that Frig takes this direct interest because we then have a great deal of information about her. And it shows how Oden's proteges are just as sneaky as he is, if need be. They can be deceitful if they have a particular end in view. And Oden is certainly not a god who punishes evildoers, except insofar as they're breaking kind of fundamental codes like hospitality and so on.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 38:10Speaker 06

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

• 38:19Speaker 06

  I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipsum, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:56Eleanor Janega?

  Can we talk a little bit more about Frigg? Because I think it's very easy to get bogged down when we're talking about Norse myths. You can just spend all day talking about Odin and Thor and Loki. And here's Frigg, she's Odin's wife. What are her own particular attributes? Does she have anything that she is the goddess of?

• 39:20Speaker 05

  Snorri tells us she's the goddess of marriage and of love, but married love rather than passionate erotic sexual love, which is Freya's domain. She's said to have a flying coat, which you can use to fly between worlds. It turns you basically into a falcon, but she's never said to use it. And really, we don't have very much information about her at all. We see an intervention from her when Odin and Loki are talking about events in the distant

• 39:59Speaker 05

  past, when they seem to have both sworn blood brotherhood with one another and to have shared in the practice of the slightly disreputable magical practices known as Seder. And as they're talking about this, Frigg says, "It's best if you two don't talk about the things that happened in the bygone days." And as readers of that poem, we find ourselves going, "Why not? We want to know. What did they do?" But Frigg is very wise and all seeing. And her most important story in Old Norse is when the god Baldur begins to have bad

• 40:43Speaker 05

  dreams, which anticipates his death. And so after Odin has been down to the Hall of Hell and said, "Why is Baldur having these dreams about death?" And Hel says, "Well, because we're expecting him any day now. We're brewing the beer. We're strewing fresh rushes on the floor for him."

• 41:06Speaker 05

  Odin goes back and reports this and it's Frigg who decides that the way around this is to get everything in creation to take an oath not to harm Balder. And so she goes around asking the rocks and the trees and the stones and the weapons and everything you can think of, except for, as it turns out, the mistletoe. And then when Loki in disguise comes to have a chat with her, pretending to be an old woman, and says, "Did you really ask absolutely everything?" And she says, "Oh, yes, but I didn't bother with the mistletoe. It's so slender and flexible. That's not going to hurt anybody."

• 41:48Speaker 05

  And so Frigg has this foresight that allows her to make a plan to save Balder, but she also makes this mistake of admitting that there's a tiny flaw in it. And when Balder does die, she promises all her favor to anybody who can go down to hell and negotiate to get him back. And one of Odin's sons goes off and comes back and says, "Everything will have to wait for Balder." So it's Frigg as protective mother, which is the most important aspect of her story, I think, that's preserved in the Norse myths.

• 42:27Eleanor Janega?

  This is really interesting because in many ways, this kind of mirrors, for example, the story of Achilles. You know, he's almost invincible except for the heel, you know. Balder is almost invincible unless you get mistletoe involved. You know, and quite similarly with Frigg, we kind of see these overlaps with, you know, Hera, who's the wife of Zeus, and she's, you know, she's the goddess of marriage very specifically. But is this so simplistic? I mean, do Norse gods have a similar sort of domain deity kind of thing? Or are they, they seem a bit more complex in a way than the Greek ones?

• 43:08Speaker 05

  I think it's partly because we know quite a lot less about them than we do about the Greek gods. Because what we know about the Greek gods is not only a whole huge corpus of stories about them, but we also know quite a bit about the rituals with which they were worshipped, the idea of sacrifice, what kinds of beasts you would sacrifice. Which myth was connected to the origin of that ritual and so on. So we have a much more complex picture of of Greek myth. And that makes it easier to say, okay, so

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Demeter is the goddess of fertility and harvest. And then we have the myth of her and Persephone explaining why it is that we have the the seasons. But with the the Norse gods, there may have been, in fact, there surely was much more information which explained their functions. And there would have been a whole kind of raft of practices that people use in order to worship the gods. And there will be presumably particular things you would ask the gods for. And we can certainly see, at least that the poets are invoking Ovyn for their inspiration.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  Farmers and seafarers in particular invoking Thor because he's the god of weather. And therefore, he has a fertility function as well as making the seas possible to cross. And presumably, they also invoke the god Njöður, who is the god of the sea. But it's Thor who gets mentioned most of the time. We don't have too many stories about Njöður. So it's also, I think, quite likely that people in different parts of Scandinavia worship the gods, particular gods. And so Thor is immensely popular in Iceland because most of the Icelandic settlers came from Western Norway, where place name evidence suggests he was also very popular.

• 45:12Speaker 05

  Freyr and Freya were popular in Sweden. But because Sweden didn't provide anything like so many immigrants to Iceland, it's clear that the people who were writing down the stories in Iceland didn't have that key Swedish information, though would have allowed them to tell us much more about Freyr and Freya, for example. So there's a regional dimension to this, which means that the functions of some of the gods are pretty obscure.

• 45:43Eleanor Janega?

  Do you have any favorite Norse gods among the the obscure pantheon?

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Um, well, I always kind of like Skadi, who starts life as a member of the giants. And she is the goddess, so Snorri tells us, of skiing. Not that I go skiing, ever, but she, her domain is in the mountains because she's a giant. And when her father, Thiazie, is killed through the machinations of the gods. He has kidnapped, it has to be said, Thiazie ends up kidnapping Etham, the goddess who has the apples of eternal youth.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  And once those apples have passed into the power of the giants, the gods all start aging and getting very unhappy. And so Loki, who helped Etham to get kidnapped in the first place, is charged to go and get her back. And so he goes to get her back successfully, but Thiazie is killed in the process. And when Skadi finds her father has been killed, she puts on her war gear and she marches into Asgard. And says, I want compensation for my father. And the gods say, well, what would you like? And how about if you marry one of us?

• 47:12Speaker 05

  And Skadi, who seems to have a thing for the god Baldur, says, yeah, okay. I'll, I'll certainly accept one of you as a husband. Then the gods say, well, you can choose your own husband, but you must choose him by his feet. So all the gods go and stand behind a sheet, essentially, and poke their feet out to the bottom. And Skadi looks at all these feet and decides that the cleanest and whitest must be those of Baldur. So she says, well, I'll have this guy. But these feet turn out to be the feet of the sea god Njöður. Because obviously, if you're a sea god, you will have clean feet.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  And so she has to marry Nyirder, and she's not very pleased about this. Um, and so she's not going to go through with the marriage and she's not going to settle for the death of her father. Uh, she says unless somebody can make her laugh. And so Loki volunteers to do this and they get a goat with a long beard and he ties his testicles to the beard. And the goat pulls in one direction, Loki pulls in another. And so we're told, nobody could decide who was screaming the most. And as this is going on, he falls into Skarthy's lap and she starts laughing too. So now she has to go through with this deal and marry Nyirder.

• 48:42Speaker 05

  But the marriage doesn't last because of irreconcilable differences, if you like. She's the goddess of the mountains, she likes to be up in the mountains. He's the god of the sea, his, his palace is by the seashore. And she says, when she's in his palace, she can't sleep because of the noise of the seagulls. And he says, when he's in her hall up in the mountains, he can't sleep because of the howling of the wolves. So they go their own separate ways eventually and she, um, marries somebody else.

• 49:16Eleanor Janega?

  I like this because we, we have these real differing domains for all of these varying gods, which I suppose brings me on to my next set of questions, which is about, I suppose the topography of deities. Because I was going to ask about Asgard, you know, this is kind of the place that I imagine the gods living, but the gods are everywhere. Is that right?

• 49:40Speaker 05

  Well, Asgard, um, if you like, is the whole domain of the gods. So we could think of it as a kind of country where the gods live or where the Isia gods live. Uh, the Vane gods live in Vanehamer, which is somewhere else on, on the same kind of horizontal plane we might imagine.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  But within Aosgárd, as it might be within Norway, each god has their own territory. And so they have differing names. And within the territory, the god has a principal hall, again, as a Scandinavian chieftain would. So it's that kind of model of landholding. And so although Odin is the king over all, the lord over all of Aosgárd is the chief god, his main hall is Valhallud, where he entertains the dead heroes. But he also apparently goes to drink with Freya in her hall from time to time,

• 50:47Speaker 05

  because Freya owns half of the dead with Odin. And we might imagine that they sit there drinking and divvying up the dead after every day. And so you take that one, you take that one. And her hall is called Sæsa bekir, sunken benches, which makes it sound like it might be underwater. But we don't know any more about that. And so the gods do have lots of different territories and some halls with quite speaking names, but quite often names which are associated with light and beauty.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty. From Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:00Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so we've got Asgard, we've got Vanhemer. How does this work? Are these separate worlds?

• 53:10Speaker 05

  They're separate domains, but Hemer does mean world. Gathor means more or less the same as modern English yard, or it means enclosed space. So Midgathor, the word for the world of the humans in Old Norse myth, is the middle yard, if you like, the middle enclosed space. And so if you imagine the world tree as a kind of huge vertical axis that runs through the worlds, we can imagine Midgathor, Ausgathor, Jotunheimor, the home of the giants, Vanhemor. All, there's no sense that to go from one to the other, you have to go up or down.

• 53:53Eleanor Janega?

  Okay.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Up at the top of the tree, we have assorted animals. There's an eagle whose wings cause the wind. There are some deer who are nibbling on the branches of the world tree. And one of the world tree's branches overshadows Valhalla, which is quite convenient because on the roof of Valhalla is this goat, Hadron, who eats the leaves on the world tree and her others give mead, so that keeps the warriors happy. So we have this sort of basic horizontal plane, but then down below the roots of the world tree.

• 54:35Speaker 05

  Under the earth possibly, but exactly what kind of earth it is, isn't very clear. But down at the roots, you've got the well of Mimir, where his head is. You've got the three Norse, the divine figures who determine fate are also at the roots by a body of water. And then there's the world of the dead, Nipelheim, mist world, where Hell's Hall is down there. Snorri Surtleson also tells us that the Svartarvar, the dark elves, are in this lower area too. But what they are, we really don't know. He doesn't tell us anything more about them.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  I slightly suspect that they're supposed, they've been kind of made up on the basis of being like devils or demon in Christian ideology. And that they're malign forces that live down where hell would be in the Christian model.

• 55:33Eleanor Janega?

  And that that gives you a nice kind of way to connect all of these things. That makes sense. So I wouldn't put that past Snorri. He's very good at thinking of these sort of rhetorical traps to make Christianity make sense on top of it. Yeah, it's very good.

• 55:47Speaker 05

  Yes, and thinking they must have had a thing like this. So with Snorri, for example, you can see how he decides that after Ragnarok, when the world comes back, there's also been a kind of last judgment built into this. So the new world will have some lovely places where the gods are and which are full of light and which are very much like heaven. And then there are places which are horrible, halls with roofs made of woven serpent spines and the serpents are spitting poison. And that's where bad people are.

• 56:27Speaker 05

  And you think, whoa, we didn't, we don't really have this model of a heaven and a hell in that way in the Norse ideology that we know about. So he's obviously just decided to punish a lot of murderers and oath breakers and put them in this unpleasant setting after death.

• 56:47Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, fair enough. It's nice to be able to create an idealized justice system for yourself. I can't put it past him there. But, okay, so I suppose my next question is, say that I am Odin and I wish to travel to Midgard from Asgard. How do I do that?

• 57:08Speaker 05

  It's not very clear that Odin, how Odin would do that. Mostly he walks. He's a wanderer. I suppose he can get on his horse, Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse, and canter off if he wants to. But we don't, we don't have accounts that I can think of a Sleipnir turning up in the human world. So mostly you're just a warrior going about your daily business and suddenly this old man comes into your hall and does something a bit strange. And you think, then you respond to it. So for example, towards the beginning of the

• 57:48Speaker 05

  story of Sigmundur, the father of the great hero Sigurdur, his sister is getting married to a king called Sigur. All of these people have names that begin in the same way. And Sigur is marrying Signi. Sigmund and all his brothers are there and his father Vursi is there as well. And the wedding feast is all going fine, though Signi's not that keen on marrying Sigur particularly. And then an old man in a cloak, looks like he's only got one eye, comes into the hall. He's carrying a sword and he plunges the sword into a great tree that grows up in the middle of Sigur's hall. So it's kind of a decorative feature,

• 58:32Speaker 05

  if you like, to have this tree. And it should be symbolic of the family tree of generations to come and so on. So. This man, this old man drives the sword into the tree and says whoever can take it out can have that sword. And so of course the feast sort of breaks out while all the men have a go at trying to pull the sword out. Sigur is very keen to get it. He's, he's the lord of the hall. He's the bridegroom, but he can't pull it out, but Sigmund can. And Sigmund whisks it out and this is the sword that through a few incarnations is the one that will kill the dragon Faupnir.

• 59:15Speaker 05

  So that sword is his great sword and Sigur says, I'll buy it off you. And, and Sigmund says, no, no, no, that was Odin and he means me to have this sword. And this unleashes all kinds of disasters for Sigmund's family who all get killed by Sigur one way or another, but Sigmund survives and takes his vengeance. So what is, what was Odin doing there? He was marking out Sigmund as his chosen one. It also is no accident that Odin is at some remove Sigmund's ancestor. He's probably about his great, great grandfather or something.

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  And so he was, of course, he's the patron of his line, but he wants to kickstart something here to, for Sigmund to show what a hero he is. And also to kind of take Sigur's line out of consideration. And Sigmund does turn out to be a hero. He's mentioned in one poem as being in Valhalla already to go and greet King Eric Bloodaxe when he dies. He's Sigmund and Hermoder, I think it is. One of Odin's sons are told to go to the door and welcome him in, into Valhalla.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  So Sigmund's place is assured, but the, the sword works as this kind of catalyst to start the strife, which is going to, to prove the metal of the heroes.

• 1:00:51Eleanor Janega?

  I suppose that's in keeping with what we expect from Odin. You know, he seems to be. Back and forth all the time to the world of the humans. But I suppose also, if you're specifically attempting to cultivate an army and Valhalla, you also need to be doing that cultivation. You need to be involved with the humans on earth.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, so you've got to be inspecting them and checking them out. And there is one wonderful story, in fact, where there's a hero, a really unpleasant guy called Starkadder. And he is a sort of brutish fighter, but he's, he's had a difficult childhood, to be fair. But he's attached to a king called Vikar. And they're fighting their way around Norway. And then Vikar has a kind of foster father called Horsehair Granny, which is a slightly odd name. And one evening, Horsehair Granny comes to Starkadder and says, I want you to come with me. And they row across a lake to an island.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  And there there are 12 thrones and the 12 of the Ischia gods are sitting there. And, oh, look, Horsehair Granny turns out to be Oden. And the god Thor says, I really don't like Starkadder because his grandfather fell in love with a girl that I was interested in. And he took her, so I've really got it in for him. And Thor puts some curses on Starkadder. And Oden can't, in the classic fairy tale way, you can't take a curse away, but you can mitigate it. So Thor says that Starkadder will behave very badly in life. And Oden says, but he'll live for 300 years, he'll live three lifetimes.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  And then Thor says, but he'll commit an appalling deed in each one. And so it goes on like this, for good and bad. And then Starkadder is rowed home. And Horst Hergrani says, what I need you to do tomorrow is to get King Vikar to play the part of a sacrifice in order to get a wind to sail to the next place you want to go to. And what you need to do is get him to stand on a tree stump, kill a calf, wind the guts of the calf around the neck of of King Vidar, take a reed and say, poke him with the reed and say, I give you to Othen. And so Starkother explains this to Vikar, who says, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, why not?

• 1:03:29Eleanor Janega?

  Why not? Normal. Yeah.

• 1:03:30Speaker 05

  Why not? Yeah. If if that's what it takes to get a wind, I'll do this. And so Vikar stands on the tree stump, but as Starkother pokes him with the reed, the reed turns into a spear. The calf noose of guts around his neck kind of leaps up over the tree, the stump falls away, and Vikar is both hanged and stabbed, which is the classic mark of a Nodinic sacrifice. So the king is now quite dead. And everybody is looking at Starkother going, you know, what the hell? And Starkother sort of tries to explain that this was all supposed to be a mock sacrifice, but he's driven away. And that's the first terrible deed that he does.

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  And you can see that partly the blame is put there on Thor, but it's really Othen who wanted the king to be sacrificed. Yep, taken maybe off to Valhurt in this way. And so that's the kind of the kind of stunt that Othen will pull on occasion. This is a slightly later story, but Starkother is a an old and well attested hero.

• 1:04:41Eleanor Janega?

  So we have all of these stories of of gods interfering, I would, I suppose, with with humans, but we don't, it doesn't seem to go both ways, you know? It seems as though gods can visit humans, humans can't necessarily visit the world of the gods, though. And I suppose this might have something to do with the story of the walls around Asgard. And I was wondering if you could maybe lead us out with a story about how those are built? Because I think this is a really interesting one.

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  It is an interesting one, and it goes back to that war that I talked about earlier between the Isir and the Varnir. So, assuming that Aosgathar had walls in the first place, which isn't very clear. Now, the walls have been destroyed in this battle. And so the gods need a new wall to be built around their territory. And along comes a person who says that he's a master builder and he can build them wonderful new walls in three years. And if he can do that in that space of time, the only reward he wants is the sun and the moon and the goddess Freya.

• 1:05:50Speaker 05

  And the gods think this sounds a bit doubtful. They don't ask Freya, as far as we know, but they say, no, no, we're not going to go with that. But if you can do it in half a season, so over a summer, all by yourself, then you have Freya, forget the sun and the moon, because he obviously looks like he knows what he's talking about. And the builder says, can I have the help of my stallion to pull the stones along and help me gather the material I need? And the gods think this sounds quite reasonable.

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  But when only a couple of days remain till the end of the summer, when winter is on them, they realise that the walls are going up at an incredible rate and the master builder is going to fulfil his contract and he's going to take Freya. And so they say to Loki, Loki, you need to get us out of this. It's not clear in the versions we have that Loki sort of recommended this guy, but it sounds quite possible. And Loki says, okay, leave it to me. And so that night, as the master builder is working, a rather attractive young filly

• 1:07:10Speaker 05

  appears on the edge of the forest and winnies to the stallion, who whips around and disappears off into the forest with the filly. And the master builder realises that with the loss of his stallion, he won't be able to complete the contract. So he, he falls into a giant rage, the sources say. And at that point, the gods go, ha, he's a giant.

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  And Thor turns up and whacks him with the hammer. And so the master builder is killed. So on the one hand, they've got a pretty well complete and very good wall without having to pay for it. And if you know your Wagner, you will see that this is kind of the plot of Das Geingold, the the first opera in in the Ring of the Nibelungen. But they've also broken the oaths that they gave to the master builder in the first place. Because they they made a contract with him. They circumvented this contract through Loki's behaviour. And now they're forsworn.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  And in some readings of Norse myth, it's this first act of oath breaking that kind of dooms the gods. They're now locked into this constant enmity with the giants, which is in the end going to culminate in Ragnarok. Now, that might be a bit kind of too direct, an idea of cause and effect in some ways. I think mythology is usually more complex than that. But the other outcome of this, of course, is that Loki comes back after a while, leading this eight legged foal with him that he's apparently given birth to.

• 1:08:59Speaker 05

  And that is Odin's horse, Slapnir, who is the best of horses, we're told in in some poems. And that points to Loki's extraordinary role as being the queer god, the one who is capable of switching genders, of giving birth even, and of giving birth to an animal. And so that story about the master builder tells us quite a lot about the moral dimension of the world in which the the gods of Asgard and Odin as their leader kind of exist.

• 1:09:40Eleanor Janega?

  Because it's important for everyone to actually keep their oaths. I mean, I think that this is a it tells us a lot about how society functions and what matters as a general rule of thumb. Well, yes, it's possible to circumvent your oaths, but it even causes problems for the gods when they attempt it. So a lesson for all of us men, I suppose.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  Yes, and of course, in an oral society where you don't have written contracts, how can you deal with any other humans in your social group if you can't trust them to keep their word? When they say that they'll deliver you the sword on Wednesday, or they will turn up in three weeks' time with fifty men to support you to do whatever it is. So that the fundamental nature of oaths in that society is kind of reinforced by this delinquency on the part of the gods. We'll have that story in one poem, and we have it in Snorri Sturtleson as well.

• 1:10:45Speaker 05

  And it is that that story of the master builder who comes and makes you a brilliant offer to build something that you want is an internationally well-known folk tale, though this version that we have is one of the earliest versions that we have in Europe. And usually, it's okay to swindle the master builder because he's really the devil.

• 1:11:10Speaker 05

  And so when he comes along and says, I can build you a church in a year. And usually, he says to the person who's the patron of the church, and I'll take you away, you'll be my possession. And I can do with you what I like, unless you can guess my name. And the master builder's fairly sure that the patron won't be able to guess his name. And the patron starts getting very worried, but he wanders on the hillside and hears a troll or a giant or somebody singing to her child, saying, don't worry, little baby, tomorrow your father Finn will bring back the eyes and heart of this patron for you to play with.

• 1:11:53Speaker 05

  And he goes, ah, the master's builder's name is Finn. And then, a bit like Rumpelstiltskin, he can get out of this. So in in most versions of this folk tale, the master builder is so evil, it's entirely illicit to deceive him. And you also, you do guess his name just by accident, and so the contract isn't broken. But in this story...

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  There is foul play in the story of Loki and the Master Builder. And that, I think, is problematic for the way in which the history of the gods develops.

• 1:12:34Eleanor Janega?

  I suppose that's what I find interesting, though, about pantheons and mythologies of deities, though, because they are these intensely human characters, even if they are, in theory, divine. You know, they have personalities that are conflicting. They don't always do the right thing morally. They are these really malleable characters. And I suppose that I always like that as a way of organizing the world, if that's what we're using pantheons and mythologies to do, because it kind of explains why the world is so awful.

• 1:13:11Eleanor Janega?

  You know, if what we have to look to are these deities who sometimes do the wrong thing themselves, then how can we really ask for the world to be perfectly just as well? You know, I find that that explicates the state of the world in a really useful way.

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, the gods are made by humans in their own image. And so it's no wonder, in a sense, that the gods turn out to be very much like humans. They have passions, they have hates, they have loves, to be jealous, to be vengeful, to hold grudges, but also to behave nobly on occasion. And so particularly in the kind of story systems that grow up about them, just having God sitting happily and peacefully, just going, "Oh, I wonder if a human is going to sacrifice to us today." "Oh, yes, they have. Oh, good. Yes, you can have luck in battle."

• 1:14:11Speaker 05

  That's not going to generate any stories for people to tell. And so you have to have, I think, this kind of very varied palette of personalities among the gods in order to generate the kinds of mythological stories that humans can not only enjoy, but also learn from.

• 1:14:31Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Caroline, thank you so much for coming on today to share so many of those stories with us.

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  It's been a great pleasure.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Thanks once again to Carolyn for joining me, and thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you haven't already heard our first Northmists episode about the creation of the world, do go back and listen to Matt's Friday episode. You won't want to miss it. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, released weekly, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.