Every mythology promises something. The Greek gods promise glory; the Christian God promises salvation. The Norse gods promise something stranger and braver: that they will lose. The great myth at the heart of the Norse world is Ragnarök — the doom of the gods, the day the wolf breaks free and Odin himself is devoured and the world burns and sinks into the sea. And the gods know it is coming, and fight anyway.
That is what makes the Norse myths unlike any others. Their heroes and gods face a universe that is doomed, a fate they cannot escape, and their answer is not despair but defiance — to meet the end with courage, to die well, to laugh in the teeth of the wolf. It is the bleakest and, oddly, the most bracing of the world’s mythologies, and it has shaped everything from Wagner to Tolkien to the superheroes of today.
These are the tales preserved by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson and the old Eddic poets: Thor and his hammer, Loki the trickster whose treachery brings the end, Odin who trades an eye for wisdom and hangs himself on the world-tree to win the runes. Gods who are mortal, flawed, and magnificent.
This edition gathers the sagas and myths of the Norsemen in one volume.
Read The Sagas and Myths of the Norsemen →
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