100 things mythology [003/100]

[rainmage]

Nope, I haven't forgotten! I've just been sick lately and I wasn't feeling geeky enough to do it. I was going to make more graphics too, but in the end I thought it was too bleagh of an idea. So anyway, here's the disgusting conclusion to the Norse creation myth.

Warnings: bit of gore again, dwarf bashing, lack of cheerful LEGO

Comments

[mairenn_k]

Talking of creating weird stuff out of body parts, you've heard about Naglfar, right? You know, the large ship made of dead people's fingernails and toenails. I always wondered how they managed to keep it afloat.

I'd got the impression that dark elves/svartalver were different from dwarves (there are some stories in which dwarves are smiths working for the dark elves, I think?) but I'm not sure. And it's always light elves = good and dark elves = bad so yup, kind of racist there. No matter where you look in the Norse mythology, everyone who is good and noble is generally described as beautiful and "fair as the sun", etc. Then again, Loki/Loke is reported to be handsome too, even though he's mostly considered evil. (And while I'm at it, I really dislike how Loke is pretty much the only god who is given "foreign" looks in most Norse myth art from the last two hundred years or so. It's not surprising when it comes to the old national romantic artists' creations because they were... well, blatantly racist, but you find similar tendencies in many relatively modern works as well -- Peter Madsen's Valhalla series, for instance.)

[rainmage]

That boat is another in the collection of Really Gross But Small Things That Squicked Me. There are stuff you really shouldn't recycle. But Freyr has a folding ship, so I guess it doesn't matter if they break any laws of physics.

I think there's academic debate about the dark elves being dwarves or another type of elves like the ones in roleplaying games (which are based on the Norse idea of dark elves anyway.) So sometimes that world is dwarf workshop and sometimes it's elf central, but I've found more material where it's the world of the dwarves so I made the "RUDE!" joke again. It is a touchy subject.

I've always wondered if no one else noticed about modern-ish adaptations of Loki being black-haired and unattractive (Valhalla, Marvel most of the times*, even Tom Hiddleston has an Unfortunate English Face(tm)...) Yeah, he was supposed to be handsome but his personality was a turn-off! I suppose the exotic thing comes from him being a Jotunn (therefore a foreigner) as much as dark = eeeeeeevol. Lately in young adult and children literature I saw more instances of ginger Lokis, so I guess it's the newest trend now. I like to imagine him as a strawberry blond, incidentally. But speaking of blond hair = good, isn't Freya usually painted blonde and she gets a lot of slut-shaming?

* Although in Marvel he's not that exotic. There is this made up Ass called Hogun however, who is with the good guys, but he looks a bit exotic and he was even casted with a Japanese actor in the Thor movie.

[mairenn_k]

Lately in young adult and children literature I saw more instances of ginger Lokis, so I guess it's the newest trend now.

I hope so, that’d be a welcome change. I like to imagine him as blonde too, for some reason.

I suppose the exotic thing comes from him being a Jotunn

Yes, probably. On the other hand, some jötunn like Gerd and Skade are often portrayed as fair and beautiful, so it still bothers me that only Loke - the traitor, the one who can’t be trusted, etc. - is given different looks.

Freja’s almost always painted blonde, yes. As for the slut-shaming, that wouldn’t surprise me at all, although in most stories I’ve read (IIRC) she’s still being treated respectfully, being such an important goddess and all. There’s this poem where Loke is trying to slut-shame her (and pretty much everyone else), but it only leads to Tor driving him away. And Njord is all "so what if a woman has lovers", etc., so I don’t think they were that strict on sexual moral, originally.

I haven’t read the Marvel comic series so I remember wondering who Hogun was when I first watched the Thor movie, haha. I thought he was a cool character though.

[rainmage]

I specifically go with strawberry blond because it's neither blond or ginger but in between, just like Loki isn't good or evil. I'm just meta like that.

I didn't know they were blond. Hmmm. Must be the old idea of dark = sinister into play too.

I don't think that anyone in the myths except Loki bashed Freya over having slept around (Loki was calling every woman in there a slut anyway.) I also like that they respect it when she refuses to get married to random jotunn to get favors from them, which is also why the second book of Valhalla really annoyed me. But back to the slut-shaming, I mean that I see some of that in authors and scholars who talk about myths, as a lot of them are Christian and male. Paying jewelry with sex can be seen as uncomfortable.

Thor's three friends are comic-only characters, yeah! But they're so epic that I wish they were real Aesir. Madsen made a reference to the Warriors Three when Thor, Loki and Balder pretended to be random human warriors with Odin, and they were actually cosplaying as them (Loki was 'Hogur' as he's the black-haired one...)

ETA: Looked it up, here it is :D