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Comment by hulahoof | Hacker News Reader

for some reason I thought norse mythology was older than this !

No comprehensive account of Norse mythology was ever written down by those who believed in it, or if it was, those records or references to them have not survived to this day. The only accounts we do have are those compiled by Christian monks who were converting the old Norse believers, right at the end of the pagan era.

These accounts are heavily colored by the expectations and the worldview of those monks, and we do not know where the ideas that the Norse actually believed in end and where the ideas of what the monks thought religion is supposed to be begin. For example, much of the popular conception of Ragnarok is heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, instead of the original Norse beliefs. To complicate it even further, the Norse beliefs were in no way static, and as the influence of Christianity spread, the beliefs might have morphed to absorb concepts from Christianity.

Jackson Crawford [1] does a decent job of explaining what bits of the mythos we still have. He also explains some of the misconceptions you speak of and even some of the things that movies get right and wrong. Related to some other discussions in this thread, he also pronounces many words for people.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/JacksonCrawford/videos

how do you know all that?

"For example, much of the popular conception of Ragnarok is heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, instead of the original Norse beliefs. "

In more easy words: christians believe that one day the world really ends with judgment day/apocalypse, and interpreted Ragnarok similar as the end of the world, which is what many people today think of Ragnarok (and that view that gets reinforced by the popular movies)

But Ragnarok is not the end of the world, just the end of a cycle and start of a new beginning. The snake that bites its own tail. Endless cycle of seasons. Really a different philosophy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbT8vzX4sZY

(Einar Selvik from Band Wardruna explains it, before performing a song about it)

> christians believe that one day the world really ends with judgment day/apocalypse, and interpreted Ragnarok similar as the end of the world, which is what many people today think of Ragnarok

There is also the interpretation that we live in a post-Ragnarok world, which conveniently allows the Christian narrative to perfectly mate to the end of the Norse gods’ reign.

To be fair, nothing in the New Testament explicitly denies the possibility of repeating the cycle. CMIIW.

Funnily enough, the early Church Father Origen believed that time was circular.

So does Futurama.

Maybe but the eddas are 7 and 800 years old respectively, so still older than 600 (and these words almost certainly existed before being written down.)

It is. The written sources we have for norse mythology are 13th century, and those are compilations of earlier (lost) writings and oral traditions. There are written fragments from the 10th century referring to the norse gods.

There are even 6th century writings referencing a germanic mythology with many similarities to the norse mythology.

It is.

First of all, it's a branch of Indo-European mythology, as are the Greek, Roman, and Hindu pantheons. So it has existed in some form for thousands of years. But "Norse mythology" as we know it was mostly written down in the 13th century - so 700+ years ago.

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