Asgard
In Norse cosmology, Asgard (from Old Norse Ásgarðr, 'enclosure of the Æsir') is a location associated with the gods, that includes Thor, Odin, and Loki. Asgard is attested in a variety of sources, including the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, in the Prose Edda (written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson), and in euhemerized form in Heimskringla (also written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson). The Prose Edda describes Valhalla, the god Odin's afterlife hall for a portion of the battlefield slain, as located in Asgard.[1]
While the Nine Worlds are nowhere detailed in the Old Norse corpus, some scholars have proposed that Asgard may have been considered among them.[2]
About the Gods in Asgard[edit]
Asgard was home to the Aesir gods, a group of gods that includes Thor, Odin, Sif, Frigga, and at times Loki.
Origin[edit]
Asgard is a mystical place in Norse mythology. It is a series of poems that start with Beowulf. These poems were said during a viking funeral or burial and we now believe those poems to be norse mythology today. They were told at funerals or burials to provide a poetic passage for the individual dead into a world of ancestral stories, it was part of a ritual during the funeral. They would perform these stories beside the graves of the individuals, and it took place around 793 AD or the Viking age.
Timeline[edit]
| AD | |
|---|---|
| 700–1015 | Beowulf was written between these two dates |
| 793 | Opening of Viking Age |
| c.850 | Composition of the earliest surviving skaldic poetry Ragnarsdrápa, attributed to the Norwegian Bragi Boddason |
| 870/930 | Settlement of Iceland described in Landnámabók |
| 999/1000 | Conversion of Iceland to Christianity |
| 1016 | Accession of the Danish King Cnut the Great to the throne of England |
| 1066 | William the Conqueror establishes Norman conquest of England |
| 1178/9 | Life of Snorri Sturluson, author of Prose Edda |
| c.1220–25 | Prose Edda |
| c.1230 | Heimskringla |
| c.1240 | Egil's Saga |
| c.1270 | Compilation of the Codex Regius |
| 1262 | Iceland joins with Norway via the Old Covenant marking the end of the Icelandic independence movement |
| 1550 | Jón Arason, last Catholic Bishop in Iceland is executed |
| 1593 | Arngrímur Jónsson's Crymogæa, a history of Iceland in Latin |
| 1665 | Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum, a Latin translation of Snorri's Prose Edda |
| 1768 | Thomas Gray's Norse Odes |
| 1770 | Bishops Percy's Northern Antiquities |
| 1790 | Fuseli paints Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent |
| 1797–1804 | William Blake's The Four Zoas |
| 1876 | First complete performance of Wagner's Ring at Bayreuth |
| 1908 | Founding of the von List Society |
| 1920 | David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus |
| 1921 | Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party |
| 1932 | F. B. Marby's book in German on runic gymnastics |
| 1954 | Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings first published |
| 1962 | First appearance of The Mighty Thor in Marvel Comics |
| 1996 | Discovery of "Kennewick Man" in Washington |
| 2001–03 | The Lord of the Rings film trilogy released |
Notes[edit]
- ^ Simek (2007:20).
- ^ For example, drawing from the eddic corpus, Henry Adams Bellows (1923) proposes that the nine worlds consist of the following: "The world of the gods (Asgarth), of the Wanes (Vanaheim ...), of the elves (Alfheim), of men (Mithgarth), of the giants (Jotunheim), of fire (Muspellsheim ...), of the dark elves (Svartalfheim), of the dead (Niflheim), and presumably of the dwarfs (perhaps Nithavellir ... but the ninth is uncertain)" (Bellows 2004 [1923]:3).
References[edit]
- Bellows, Henry Adams. 2004 [1923]. Trans. The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems. Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-43710-1
- ODonoghue, H. (2019). From Asgard to Valhalla: the remarkable history of the norse myths. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Munch, P. A. (1968). Norse mythology; legends of gods and heroes. In the revision of Magnus Olsen. Translated from the Norwegian by Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt. Detroit: Singing Tree Press.
- Passing into Poetry: Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of Norse Mythology. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2020, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/174581710X12790370815779
- Simek, Rudolf. 2007. Angela Hall trans. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. ISBN 0-85991-513-1
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