It would be a hilarious joke if he wasn't being serious.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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As a Dane, I have had many a non Scandinavian try and educate me on Norse mythology too and their knowledge is based on those godawful Marvel movies and comics.
They usually get very confused when they learn that Thor and Loki aren't brothers. That Loki and Odin are the ones who are blood brothers. It's like it doesn't compute in their heads. And for those who don't know, blood brothers in old scandinavian culture was two men slicing their hands and clasping their wounded hands together to mix blood. That was a way to forge an alliance and an oath of loyalty as strong as if you came out of the same womb. I'm pretty sure it was still practiced in more recent times as well. Probably died out when AIDS became the big scary thing, but I dunno. I just have vague memories of older people telling me about doing the blood oath when they were young.
In any case, it is just super fun to have your culture reduced to a cringe American comic book where Thor looks nothing like Thor and Valhalla looks like ass and literally none of the gods look right according to their descriptions in mythology. Couldn't even give Sif her golden hair, could they?
Norse Mythology is absolutely sick.
Sick as in awesome?
Yes
It has its moments for sure. I still don't know what mythology is more crazy, Norse or Greek. Probably Greek.
I am a bit surprised that the MCU is that far off. I thought they’d have a little more respect for the source material.
Add the '/s' because it's 2025 and sarcasm is dying.
At least there's Age of Mythology, no?
Had to look it up as I don't really play video games. Based purely on the designs I saw of Odin and Thor, I'm not particularly thrilled about that one either. Maybe the games themselves are super faithful to Norse mythology and the designs are just an oopsie. I dunno.
Generally it seems like Americans interpret Norse Mythology in a very materialistic way. It is always to polished and over the top when they depict Norse gods. To most Scandinavians, Norse mythology and folklore too, is completely and utterly intertwined with nature. It is gnarled, ugly and brutal as well as delicate, beautiful and poetic.
Odin can be a bombastic god adorned in armor and riding Sleipner into battle, sure. But most depictions of him in Scandinavia is the unassuming cloaked stranger with the staff and the hat or hood.
And that is kind of how most gods and jotuns are for us. Everyday people with everyday problems that are just a bit more extraordinary than ours. It is easier to relate to and it is more authentic. I haven't yet seen an American depiction of Norse mythology or culture that isn't just complete and utter nonsense that only cares about looking cool. I think one of the best depictions of Norse mythology, culture and folklore are the ones done by Erik Hjorth Nielsen. That man gets it. Probably because it is his culture too.
I love the depictions of Odin as a wandering stranger. There was a creepypasta where anon was at a far out ranger station in the north and went through some shit. Towards the end, he's thinking of just laying down and dying or killing himself or something and the old dude with an eye patch shows up and kinda like picks him up, dusts off his pants, and sets him on the path he needs to be on. That's probably one of my favorite contemporary depictions of Odin.
Neil Gaiman's book Norse Mythology, and especially the audiobook, is incredible. I'd venture a guess that it's a fairer representation than, say, Marvel. I've also learned a bit of Norse cultural astronomy, and it's hella cool. Like what we know today as Auriga was for the Norse "the battleground of the Aesir", which is 1000x more dope than "oh, yeah, that circle is a, uhhhhhhhhhhh, charioteer". Much of the other constellations they saw are lost to time and history, but it's easy to start looking at the sky and imagining what they saw. Many cultures saw Draco, for example, and that may have been the world serpent. One wonders if, where the Greeks and Arabs saw a scorpion, the Norse saw a short-handled hammer, especially given their more northerly latitude which would have hidden the hook of Scorpius' tail below the southern horizon.
My favorite moment as a camp counselor for twice exceptional kids was when an autistic camper got into an argument with another counselor about the historical/mythological accuracy of this movie (camper insisted it was a terrible movie in mythological terms), and eventually the counselor got frustrated and said "fine, go write me a paper on it" and the camper went off to bed
About an hour later the kid pops his head out his door and asked how long he wanted the paper.
The same kid ended up eating a laundry pod later that summer.
I dub that kid Anakin in Mustafar, the counselor clearly underestimated his power 🤣
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It actually would be easier to list all the children Zeus didn't have
I'll start:
- Geryon
- Pegasus
- Bellerophon
Me
- Genghis Khan
Now list the people who aren't related to Genghis
- Zeus
- Zeus' mother
- Zeus' father
"Just you wait 'til I do some time traveling shenanigans!" - Zeus
oh no i didn't know they had time travel
I have to ask: wasn't Hercules Roman? I thought the Greek equivalent was Heracles. Thus Hercules is actually the son of Jupiter, no?
Pretty much yes. Hercules is the Latin name for Herakles.
The average person thinks Heracles is a mispronounciation of Hercules
Just had a chance to look it up and yes, Heracles is the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and Hercules is the son of Jupiter and Alcmena. So Disney was wrong too as it turns out, and the Xitter OP should have known better.
Well, if you are in a greek setting and are using the greek names for every other character, it makes more sense to use the greek name, but Hercules is just a latin adaptation of Heracles, so no big deal I suppose.
Jupiter and Zeus are the same god. Jupiter is latin, Zeus is greek.
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ah, the American education system...
There is no such thing as 'the American educational system.'
Each state makes its own rules, and each town has its own board of education. One place may decide to spend $5 million building a football stadium and not spend anything on new books; the town next door might have college level labs.
I attended a top 100 public high school in America, where we were taught Greek and Roman mythology. The problem wasn’t that the subject wasn’t offered, it was that a sizable portion of students weren’t paying attention. Even among those who did, few retained the knowledge beyond the next exam. The real issue with American education isn’t just what’s being taught but how it’s being taught. Subjects aren’t presented in a way that truly engages students or encourages long-term retention.
And collectively, that's the American system
Suns and sunflowers are exactly the same because they are both made of atoms, right?
I'll add that this is a sarcastic response.
the only real things are in disney movies. anything that's not in a disney movie is not real
I get a similar tick when some people claim that The Little Mermaid takes place in Denmark because it was written by HC Andersen. No, it literally doesn't. We don't have palm trees and mountains like the ones in the movie. And even in the original fairytale from the 1800s, it is very heavily implied that the prince lives in a fairytale country that borrows from the Mediterranean, Middle East and India. Even in the original illustrations for the story, there are palm trees and a arab looking palace in the background of one of the illustrations.
HC wanted to put the reader in the mermaids place. Give them the same longing for another world that she had. If he had set thr story in Copenhagen it wouldn't have captured the imagination of 1800s Dane the same way. He managed to make these gorgeous descriptions of the strange and beautiful country the prince is from. There is a reason why Edmund Dulac designed the prince the way he did in his illustration work for the story in the early 1900s.
Zeus is a shapeshifter, you can never be certain someone isn't his son.
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