86 pages • 2 hours read
Norse Mythology
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Self-Fulfilling Prophesy and the Inevitability of Fate
After sacrificing his eye in order to drink from Mimir’s well of knowledge, Odin is granted the ability to see into the future. The loss of Odin’s eye indicates that all gain must come with some sacrifice. However, Odin’s knowledge of the future is not absolute; his prophecies come in the form of dreams, and even the all-father cannot fully decipher every bit of a dream’s meaning, which is ultimately what leads to Odin’s undoing. The prophesies covered in this collection all turn out to be self-fulfilling.
Odin has a vision that tells him Loki has been unfaithful to his wife and sired three children with the giantess, Angrboda. He interprets the dream to mean that Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungundr will all have an important role in bringing about the end of the world. Odin makes the decision to banish Hel, release Jormungundr into the ocean, and bind Fenrir. Because Odin is limited to his interpretation of the visions that his dreams bring, it is his actions that turn these visions into prophesy. This suggests a major difference between knowledge and wisdom: Wisdom is the ability to interpret knowledge. Unfortunately, it is Odin’s interpretation of his knowledge that helps bring about his own death and the end of the world.
The Bound Monster
The bound monster is a theme that runs throughout Norse mythology, and Gaiman’s collection is no exception. This theme represents the inevitability of fate and the shortcomings of prophesy. The characters considered bound monsters—Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungundr—are progeny of Loki—also a bound monster. Each of these entities represents a threat that either could not be destroyed by the gods, or was unwisely overlooked, and which will play a retaliatory role during Ragnarok.
Hel is the least obvious of the bound monsters, though her role in Ragnarok is no less important for it. Because she likes the dead better than the living, Odin banishes her to the underworld to be “the queen of those poor souls who die in unworthy ways—of disease or of old age, of accidents or in childbirth” (97). The Norse pantheon favors the souls of warriors. Many of Hel’s charges are ignoble, treacherous souls, who form Loki’s army during Ragnarok, the antithesis of the warrior souls Valhalla—Odin’s army.
Odin releases Jormungundr, the Midgard serpent, into the ocean. Of Loki’s children, the serpent is the least sentient; it does not seem capable of speech. It grows so large it encircles the whole world. The serpent swallows its own tail, effectively binding itself, until it is freed during Ragnarok. Thor and Jormungundr have an antagonistic relationship throughout Norse Mythology. Thor kills the serpent, but is killed in turn by its caustic venom.
Fenrir, the mighty wolf, is betrayed by the gods. Odin has a vision of Fenrir at the end of the world and decides that the safest course for the gods is to restrain the wolf. The gods bind Fenrir in a ribbon fashioned out of contradictory materials, and Fenrir, sensing treachery, bites off Tyr’s hand. Fenrir vows vengeance against the gods, with whom he would have otherwise been friends. Because of this, he kills Odin during Ragnarok, making Odin’s dream a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Sacrifice
One of the most prevailing themes in Norse Mythology is the idea of gain coming at a cost. In a world still actively being created by the gods who inhabit it, change and gain often comes with a sacrifice. Two of the strongest examples of sacrifice in the book are Odin’s sacrifices for knowledge, and the creation of the mead of poets.
Odin is the wisest god, however, his wisdom is not an intrinsic aspect of his divinity; rather, it is something for which he paid dearly. Odin wanders the earth in disguise, constantly searching for wisdom. While Odin is most well-known for the eye he sacrificed for knowledge, he made a greater, earlier sacrifice. In the formative era of the nine worlds, Odin hanged himself from Yggdrasil, making himself the god of the gallows. Odin, in effect, sacrifices himself to himself, indicating the sacrifice of time and energy necessitated for self-improvement—especially the pursuit of knowledge. After hanging for nine days with a spear piercing his side, “his sacrifice bore dark fruit: in the ecstasy of his agony he looked down, and the runes were revealed to him. He knew them and understood them and their power” (22).
Kvasir, like Odin, is sacrificed; however, Kvasir’s death is a betrayal. Unlike Odin, Kvasir’s sacrifice brings good to others—not himself. Kvasir is born from the comingling of saliva of the Vanir and Aesir gods, uniting the life-sustaining qualities of the Vanir and the powerful, warlike aspects of the Aesir. This makes Kvasir the wisest of the gods; he represents a union of head and heart. When the elves Fjalar and Galar betray him, his blood is drained into vats of mead, and this commingling brings about the birth of poetry. Kvasir’s dualistic qualities emphasize the combination of logic and emotion producing poetry. Fortunately for Kvasir, he is immortal; unlike Odin’s eye, which is never restored, Kvasir returns to life—and the gift that his death brought to the world endures.
Unlock all 86 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Neil Gaiman
