Norse mythology comprises the indigenous pre-Christian religion, beliefs and legends of the Scandinavian peoples, including those who settled on Iceland, where most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled.
Norse mythology is the best-preserved version of the older common Germanic paganism, which also includes the very closely related Anglo-Saxon mythology.
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Gefion (“giver”) is an old-Scandinavian vegetation and fertility goddess, especially connected with the plough. She was considered the patron of virgins and the bringer of good luck and prosperity. Every girl who dies a virgin will become Gefion’s servant. She is married to King Skjold or Scyld a son of Odin, and lived in Leire, Denmark, where she had a sanctuary. The Swedish kings are supposed to be her descendants.
It is traditionally claimed that Gefion created the island of Zealand (“Sjaelland” in Danish) by ploughing the soil out of the central Swedish region with the help of her sons (four Swedish oxen), creating the great Swedish lakes in the process. In Copenhagen, Denmark, there is a large fountain showing Gefion in the process of ploughing.
Gefion could be another form of Frigga who is also known under that name.
In Norse mythology, Forseti is the god of justice. He is the son of the god Balder and his mother is Nanna. Forseti rules in the beautiful palace Glitnir, which serves as a court of justice and where all legal disputes are settled. Glitnir has a roof of silver that is supported by pillars of red gold.
Forseti can be compared with the Teutonic god Fosite, who was worshipped on Helgoland.
Brunhilde (Brynhildr, Brunhilda, Brunhilde, Brünhild) was a female warrior, one of the Valkyries, and in some versions the daughter of the principal god Odin. She defies Odin and is punished by imprisonment within a ring of fire until a brave hero falls in love and rescues her. Siegfied (Sigurðr, Sigurd) brakes the spell, falls in love with her and gives her the ring, Andvarinaut. Siegfied is tricked and accused of infidelity. Eventually Brunhilde kills herself when she learns that Sigurd had betrayed her with another woman (Gudrun), not knowing he had been bewitched into doing so by Grimhild.
There are several versions of this character and her adventures. They vary slightly but the basic soap operatic theme is constant.
According to the Völsunga saga, Brynhildr (Brunhilde) is a valkyrie and the daughter of Budli. She was ordered to decide a fight between two kings, Hjalmgunnar and Agnar. Knowing that Odin preferred the older king, Hjalmgunnar, she sided with Agnar. For this Odin condemned her to live the life of a mortal woman and imprisoned her in a remote castle behind a wall of shields on top of mount Hindarfjall in the Alps where she must sleep within a ring of fire until a man rescues and marries her.
The hero Sigurðr Sigmundson (Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied), heir to the clan of Völsung and slayer of the dragon Fafnir, entered the castle and awoke Brynhildr by removing her helmet and cutting off her chainmail armour. He immediately fell in love and proposed to her with the magic ring Andvaranaut. Promising to return and make Brynhildr his bride, Sigurðr then left the castle and headed for the court of Gjuki, the King of Burgundy.
Gjuki’s wife, the sorceress Grimhild, wanted Sigurðr to marry her daughter Gudrun instead. She prepared a magic potion that made Sigurðr forget about Brynhildr. Sigurðr soon married Gudrun. Hearing of Sigurðr’s encounter with the valkyrie, Grimhild decided that Brynhildr should be the wife of her son Gunnar. Gunnar went to court Brynhild but was stopped by the ring of fire around the castle. He tried to ride through the flames with his own horse and then with Sigurðr’s horse, Grani, but couldn’t.
Still under Grimhild’s spell, Sigurðr shape-shifts into Gunnar and enters the ring of fire. Sigurðr (disguised as Gunnar) and Brynhildr get married, and they stayed there three nights, but Sigurðr laid his sword between them (meaning that he did not take her virginity before giving her to the real Gunnar). Sigurðr also took the ring Andvaranaut from her finger and later gave it to Gudrun. Gunnar and Sigurðr soon returned to their true forms, with Brynhildr thinking she married Gunnar.
However, Gudrun and Brynhildr later quarreled over whose husband was greater, Brynhildr boasting that even Sigurðr was not brave enough to ride through the flames. Gudrun revealed that it was actually Sigurðr who rode through the ring of fire, and Brynhildr became enraged. Sigurðr, remembering the truth, tried to console her, but to no avail. Brynhildr plotted revenge by urging Gunnar to kill Sigurðr, telling him that he slept with her on Hidarfjall, which he swore not to do. Gunnar and his brother Hogni were afraid to kill him themselves, as they had sworn oaths of brotherhood to Sigurðr. They incited their younger brother, Gutthorm, to kill Sigurðr, by giving him a magic potion that enraged him, and he murdered Sigurðr in his sleep. Dying, Sigurðr threw his sword at Gutthorm, killing him. (some Eddic poems say Gutthorm killed him in the forest south of the Rhine, also while resting).
Brynhildr herself killed Sigurðr’s three-year-old son, and then she willed herself to die. When Sigurðr’s funeral pyre was aflame, she threw herself upon it – thus they passed on together to the realm of Hel.
However, in some Eddic poems such as Sigurðarkviða hin skamma, Gunnar and Sigurðr lay siege to the castle of Atli, Brynhildr’s brother. Atli offers his sister’s hand in exchange for a truce, which Gunnar accepts. However, Brynhildr has sworn to marry only Sigurðr, so she is deceived into believing that Gunnar is actually Sigurðr.
According to the Völsunga saga, Brynhildr bore Sigurðr a daughter, Aslaug, who later married Ragnar Lodbrok.
In the Eddic poem Helreið Brynhildar (Bryndhildr’s ride to Hel), Brynhildr on her journey to Hel encounters the giantess a gýgr who blames her for an immoral livelihood. Brynhildr responds to her accusations:
“Munu við ofstríð alls til lengi
konur ok karlar kvikvir fæðask;
við skulum okkrum aldri slíta
Sigurðr saman. Sökkstu, gýgjar kyn.”“Ever with grief and all too long
Are men and women born in the world;
But yet we shall live our lives together,
Sigurth and I. Sink down, Giantess!”
In the Nibelungenlied, Brünnhilde is instead the queen of Isenland (Iceland). Gunther here overpowers her in three warlike games with the help of Siegfried – equipped with an invisibility cloak. Firstly, Brünnhilde throws a spear towards Gunther that three men only barely can lift, but the invisible Siegfried diverts it. Secondly, she throws twelve fathoms a boulder that requires the strength of twelve men to lift. Lastly, she leaps over the same boulder. Gunther, however, defeats her with Siegfried’s help also in these games, and takes her as his wife.
The Nibelungenlied also differs from Scandinavian sources in its silence on Brünnhilde’s fate; she fails to kill herself at Siegfried’s funeral, and presumably survives Kriemhild and her brothers.
Though the cycle of four operas is titled Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner in fact took Brünnhilde’s role from the Norse sagas rather than from the Nibelungenlied. Brünnhilde appears in the latter three operas (Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung), playing a central role in the overall story of Wotan’s downfall.
In Wagner’s tale, Brünnhilde is one of the valkyries, who are born out of a union between Wotan and Erda, the personification of the earth. In Die Walküre Wotan initially commissions her to protect Siegmund, his son by a mortal mother. When Fricka protests and forces Wotan to have Siegmund die, Brünnhilde disobeys her father’s change of orders and takes away Siegmund’s wife (and sister) Sieglinde and the shards of Siegmund’s sword, Nothung. She manages to hide them, but must then face the wrath of her father who is determined to make her mortal and seal her in a ring of fire to be claimed by any man who happens across her. Brünnhilde argues that what she did was in obeyance of the god’s true will and does not deserve such a fate. He is eventually persuaded to sentence her to await awakening by a hero who does not know fear.
Brünnhilde does not appear again until near the end of the third act of Siegfried. The title character is the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, born after Siegmund’s death and raised by the dwarf Mime, the brother of Alberich who stole the gold and fashioned the ring around which the operas are centered. Having killed the giant-turned-dragon Fafner, Siegfried takes the ring and is guided to Brünnhilde’s rock, where he awakens her.
Siegfried and Brünnhilde appear again at the beginning of Götterdämmerung, at which point he gives her the ring and they are separated. Here again Wagner chooses to follow the Norse story, though with substantial modifications. Siegfried does go to Gunther’s hall, where he is given a potion to cause him to forget Brünnhilde so that Gunther may marry her. All this occurs at the instigation of Hagen, Alberich’s son and Gunther’s half-brother. The plan is successful, and Siegfried leads Gunther to Brünnhilde’s rock. In the meantime she has been visited by her sister valkyrie Waltraute, who warns her of Wotan’s plans for self-immolation and urges her to give up the ring. Brünnhilde refuses, only to be overpowered by Siegfried who, disguised as Gunther, takes the ring from her by force.
As Siegfried goes to marry Gutrune, Gunther’s sister, Brünnhilde sees that he has the ring and denounces him for his treachery. Still rejected, she joins Gunther and Hagen in a plot to murder Siegfried, telling Hagen that Siegfried can only be attacked from the back. So Gunther and Hagen take Siegfried on a hunting trip, in the course of which Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back with a spear. Upon their return, Brünnhilde takes charge, and has a pyre built in which she is to perish, cleansing the ring of its curse and returning it to the Rhinemaidens. Her pyre becomes the signal by which Valhalla and all the gods also perish in flames.
Buri is the primeval man in Norse mythology. He had neither father nor mother, but was created by a cow named Audhumla. As she licked the salt blocks of Ginnagagap, the shape of a man — Buri — was formed. Buri had a son named Bor. Bor had three sons who were gods: Odin, Vili, and Ve.
The god of eloquence and poetry, and the patron of skalds (poets) in Norse mythology. He is regarded as a son of Odin and Frigga. Runes were carved on his tongue and he inspired poetry in humans by letting them drink from the mead of poetry. Bragi is married to Idun, the goddess of eternal youth. Oaths were sworn over the Bragarfull (“Cup of Bragi”), and drinks were taken from it in honor of a dead king. Before a king ascended the throne, he drank from such a cup.
Note: Originally, Bragi did not belong the pantheon of gods. He was a poet from the 9th century, Bragi Boddason. Poets from later centuries made him a god.
Little is known about Vali, except that he is a son of Odin and his giant mistress Rind. When Balder was killed unintentionally by his twin brother Hod, Vali was born to avenge his death.
“In the west Rind will give birth to Vali.
Merely one night old he will avenge the son of Odin.
He will not wash his hands, nor will he comb his hair
until Balder’s murderer burns at the stake.”
Ve is one of ancient Scandinavian gods and, together with Odin and Vili, the son of the primordial pair of giants Bor and Bestla. The three brothers created heaven and earth from the slain body of the primeval being Ymir and built the twelve realms. They also created Ask and Embla, the first pair of humans.
In Scandinavian myth, one of the primordial gods, brother of Odin and Ve. The three of them were responsible for the creation of the cosmos, as well as the first humans.