THUNDER AND FURY NORSE GODS

Uncover the secrets of the Viking pantheon and their powerful influence on the world

- Tom Birkett

The Norse gods are a world apart from their southern counterparts. Unlike the beautiful, aloof and immortal deities of the Greek tradition, the Norse gods get their hands dirty with the grime of human existence, and share all our proclivities, contradictions and failings. Along with their human allies, they are caught in an existential conflict with the giants and the monsters of the Norse imagination, and struggle to impose their will on a chaotic world. Most striking of all is the fact that they will ultimately fail in the effort to protect their civilisation, and will lose the final battle against the giants. They can delay the inevitable for a time, but there is no escape from the fate that the violent creation of the world sets in motion.

THE BEGINNINGS

The Norse story of the creation of the world, at least as it is told by the 13th century mythographer Snorri Sturluson, sees fire and ice meet in the empty void of Ginnungagap. Heat emanating from the primordial realm of Muspelheim melts the ice-flows draining from Niflheim, and in the mists of this between space, the first being emerges - a giant named Ymir. Ymir creates new giants in the sweat of his armpits and crossed legs and feeds from a cow, which also materialises from the mists.