Viking Mythology revisited

I really enjoy watching science fiction series and one of my favorites is Star Gate. Which one? you might ask and frankly, I don´t care much. SG1 is great because of the development of the whole story line and the building of back ground story with Asgard, Go'auld, Jaffa, Tok'ra and more races unwinding the reality the series is placed in. The SG-Atlantis has it´s humor mixed with deep philosophical dilemmas and incorporates other myths such as the Vampire race of the Wraith. And of course the SGU, which has unfortunately been cancelled after just two short seasons. I like the SGU's darkness and edge and it´s boldness of not overusing characters from the other two SG-series.


So, basically, I like all of these series - but.... *sigh* - there is a 'but'
One thing I have to rally up all my patience to discard is the misinformed use of Viking Mythology! Please, oh, please, if you are to use history and/or mythology, do your research properly!


It´s such a pity that a good series has this flaw, so I´ve decided to do something about it. The next few weeks I will be posting some short stories from the Viking mythology and I hope you will enjoy them.

The picture above shows Thor´s hammer, called Mjoelner and I kinda liked it, though it hasn´t much to do with the rest of the post.


I´ll post some of the myths from norse mythology, but for now, I will correct some of the misinformation from the series:


First there is the name of the gods. They are not called Asgards, but Ases (Aser in Danish: 'As' is singular, 'Aser' is plural)


Secondly, Asgard is the name of their home, that is 'Home of the Ases,' so the use of 'The Asgards' is like calling people living in The United States 'Homeoftheamericanses' - hmmm... doesn´t work very well, does it?


Thirdly, Thor is not the main god. Odin is. Thor is the god of thunder (Torden in Danish) and according to the mythology, thunder is the sound of Thor driving his car across the sky. Thor is not a commandor, but he is a well respected warrior.


And for the record, this is the basic idea on how the entities and their worlds are connected:


Basically, the world has three parts:
Midgard, meaning home in the middle, is the home of the Vanes, that is the humans
Asgard is the home of the Ases
Outgaard (Udgaard in Danish) is the home of the Yetten/Yetta (Jaetter in Danish)


Asgard and Outgaard are directly connected and travelling between them is possible, although not very used, since the Ases and Yetten are mortal enemies. A truce has been set up, but the myth of Ragnarok (the end of the world) says that one day they will continue their conflict in which most of the Ases and Yetten are killed and a new world will emerge.


Between Asgard and Middlegard the brigde Bifrost makes travel possible. The brigde is solely controlled by the Ases and guarded by Heimdall, who lives at the top of Himmelbjerget (Mountain of the Sky/Heaven)


If a Yetta was to travel to Midgard, he would then have to cross all the way through Asgard and then cross this bridge.