#i'm a huge theology nerd i'm in a nerd timeout now

[bereft-of-frogs]

A Theology of the MCU: Myth, Marvel, and Mímir’s Well

(I love coming up with pretentious essay titles ya’ll this is one of my true academia skills)

aka, solving the in-universe discrepancies between the Marvel Asgard and Myth Asgard that no one asked for but I’m going to do anyways

So I was finally inspired to work out what I thought about the in-universe Norse Mythology and how it related to the actual Asgardian characters we know and love by this post. I’ll get to what I agreed with and what I didn’t a little later, but this kind of meta has been long coming because I def use and abuse mythology and should figure out what I think about how mythology and the relations between myth Thor & Loki and ‘real’ Thor & Loki before I screw anything up too badly.

The easy explanation is that the contents of the mythology in the alternative universe depicted in the MCU is just different. Our only real engagement with the myth in the movies is when Selvig pulls out the children’s book at the library and the images clearly look like Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, rather than other depictions of the mythological Thor and Loki.

[Sidenote: eddas for dummies ’s illustrations of the Norse gods are great: https://edda-for-dummies.tumblr.com/]

So we could just say that things are different, they match onto ‘reality’ a little better than the Norse mythology we’re familiar with in our version of the universe, and done.

Or we could make things more complicated.

Which, in my opinion, is infinitely more fun. And I apparently have a lot of time on my hands (lol I don’t, I’m just procrastinating), so I’m writing up my explanation of how the ‘real Asgard’ and ‘myth Asgard’ were connected in the Viking Age and how the real Asgardians could have inspired their mythological counterparts.

And the answer is syncretism!

One of the main problems the original post points out is that the dates don’t line up. Loki is commonly accepted to be born in 965 CE, as stated in Thor. So he was born after the myth development and worship, and at the start of the Christianization of Scandinavia. Thor is accepted to not be that much older, given their similar appearance as children and other general character/relationship traits. How is this possible?

My headcanon explanation is: the Thor and Loki of the myths are actually amalgamations of several different Asgardian heroes, or even other deities from the proto-Indo-European mythology, that are eventually condensed into the figures of Thor and Loki (and Frigga and Heimdall, etc etc). (Very common in real world mythological and religious development.)

But since it turned out that these figures were real in the MCU and there was indeed a physical place called Asgard where Odin reigned, with Valkyries and gods, a Valhalla, etc…So that’s where I got the ‘amalgamation of several Asgardian heroes’ thing. Perhaps two thousand years ago the barrier between Asgard/Midgard was thinner, or it was more acceptable to travel on Midgard. Asgardian heroes, infinitely stronger and magical and seemingly immortal, travel on Midgard and have adventures and are seen as gods. The stories told, the sagas, poems, etc are all depicting something much more concrete, and material, than distant deities. Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology has its flaws, but the introduction does contain one of my favorite quotes: “…myths of a people who did not entirely trust or even like their gods, although they respected and feared them.” which I feel like would be a good description of this relationship. They write down stories of stuff they did with their wandering friends, and over time they take on spiritual significance.

“But,” you say, “that doesn’t 100% make sense either. There are references to Thor and Loki earlier than 965CE, and there are some stories that you pick out and attribute to the ‘real’ Thor and Loki when you’re using and abusing mythology for fanfiction inspiration. How do you explain that, hmmm?”

This is where the original post was like a lightbulb going off. Mímir’s Well could give a humans a glimpse of the wider Realms and/or future. (Or at least I think it was supposed to be Mímir’s Well…I think the movie may have said something about the Norns, but I also have Thoughts about the Norns,* so I’d prefer to have it just be Mímir’s Well.) But I thought the ‘drunk Viking fell in a well’ was a little reductionist.

Absolutely no disrespect to OP intended! I love that post. It’s brilliant and the meta on the ages are so well thought out I have officially adopted that explanation for the age discrepancies. I just have a lot of Feelings about the development of religious systems and tend to be sensitive about attributing religious development to things like ‘drunk people making up stories’ because I think spirituality/religion of any kind is a profound reflection of man’s attempt to make sense of the universe, and so complex and varied and beautiful and I’ve struggled a lot against people who don’t understand, or purposely misrepresent, the fundamental societal purpose of religion and the quest for meaning…but anyways…

So yeah, due to my weird neuroses about religion and myth, I want to give the early poets more credit than ‘drunk Viking that fell in a well.’ Instead of accident or foolish ignorance, there could have been a mortal, or several mortals, who gained particular favor among visiting Asgardians and were gifted with knowledge of the future and of Asgard and built their myth upon that. Because of increased traffic between Asgard/Midgard, early Scandinavian societies were interacting more with Asgard than modern humans. So they were getting stories of Asgardian heroes, interacting with travelers, etc. They prove themselves to Asgardian travelers in various ways, then the Asgardians show them the wells. Perhaps mortal sorcerers were held in higher regard as well. Anyways, they also enter Mímir’s well at the invitation of whatever Odinic wanderer that may or may not be Actual Odin, and see the future, but distorted by their own limited perception and experience.

You have to keep in mind that linear time is essentially a social construct. (I’m only half joking with that.) Especially in Norse mythology, where time is simultaneously linear and cyclical. So, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter that the timeline doesn’t add up. When the mortals enter the well they see things that happen no matter where they happen in the timeline. So they see Ragnarök, which has both not yet happened and already happened. For another example, they could see the essence of Loki’s betrayal/fall from grace, and it gets combined with another figure, who, let’s say, went to a feast and insulted all those assembled.

This makes it super easy to steal from the myths at will, and kind of sort myths into ‘yes this story involved the ‘real’ Thor & Loki’ and ‘nope this involved someone else and was later attributed to Thor and/or Loki.’ So I sit there and say like “Ah, I like this one, someone saw this in the well” and “nope, I don’t see this one as fitting their characters, that one was from another Asgardian hero.”

Examples of the divide:

People seem to generally like ‘lips sewn shut’ storyline (‘The Treasures of the Gods’ in Crossley-Holland), the birth of Sleipnir (‘The Building of Asgard’s Wall’), and I’ve seen the Lay of Geirrod (‘Thor and Geirrod’) done fantastically well. I tend to lift themes/motifs pretty frequently (and that’s how I stole the essence of Helreith Brynnhildr, which was written down in the 13th century, but actually happened to the Valkyrie in the 21st) and there are other stories I’ve seen less frequently adapted, like ‘Thor’s Journey to Utgard’ that I think make sense, but I don’t really see either Thor or Loki as having wives or children, so I can file that as someone else.

[Two more headcanon-y headcanons: there was another figure that was more like the myth-Loki - blood brother of Odin who at some point betrayed them, and was the more malevolent figure, that was syncretized with Loki at some point. And Hela got so much more distorted because of whatever Odin did to erase her from memory. He was successful on Asgard, where he had more control/power, but he couldn’t catch everything on Midgard, which was already starting to grow more distant from Asgard, if the Hela thing occurred between Thor and Loki’s births like the timeline seems to imply.]

So yeah. This is a thing I did. I did a lot of thinking about this while washing dishes the last couple of days. I just really like exploring the relationship between mortals and the gods, which would also be important if Asgard was going to sail their way to Earth and rebuild in Norway, like Odin wanted them to in Thor: Ragnarok. (That was a great line too: “Remember this place. Home.” Ahhhhhh, we can have such interesting interactions between modern Scandinavians and Asgardians and it would have been great. Thanos ruins everything. But also, we probably never would have because I don’t anyone working at Marvel cares to think this much about myth…)

*My Thoughts about the Norns: I weirdly like the idea that the Norns are essentially the True Deity. Mostly because I’m super, super into triple goddesses. And the way (though I’m pretty sure I picked this up from other fanfiction), the characters invoke the Norns like ‘God’. (tbh it’s also a good cheat for fixing dialogue where I’ve snuck in a ‘oh my god’ or ‘godforsaken’ etc.) You’ll also notice though, that I only ever have the like ‘highborn’ Asgardian characters invoking the Norns. The ones who have their names directly taken from mythology (Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Frigga, Odin, etc, plus I think people who were actually living in Asgard, so most of the survivors on the Ark), invoke the Norns, but other ‘lowborn’ characters from the Nine Realms will say ‘gods’ instead. That worked itself into the second chapter of ‘Misuse of Magic’.

God, I’m such a nerd. I’m going to go put myself in nerd timeout. Bye…

[PS - I used the Kevin Crossley-Holland anthology, The Penguin Book of Norse Myths, above because well…I own it. And it’s in my apartment and not my parents’ basement. But I do recommend, accessible but with an extensive notes section.]

Did I do it right? This is the first time I’ve ever posted this sort of thing hope it’s okay ahhhh

back to timeout

#mcu meta #maybe meta? idk it's probably more headcanon #whoops #i'm a huge theology nerd i'm in a nerd timeout now