Episode 12 - The One Where Thor Wears a Dress

Norse Mythology: The Unofficial Guide - A podcast by Wælhræfn

Categories:

History

In one of the most famous Norse myths of all time, Thor's hammer is stolen by the jǫtnar and the only way to get it back is to dress in drag. But this story is much more than a surface-level comedy. It turns Norse ideas about gender and societal expectations on their heads and teaches us a lot about the personalities of the gods. It also seems to prove the age-old adage that comedy is the one place where anything goes.

Sources:

  • “Negative Reciprocity” by Margaret Clunies Ross in “Prolonged Echoes” Volume I, 1994
  • “Níð, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Attitudes” by Folke Ström, 1974
  • “Paganism at Home: Pre-Christian Private Praxis and Household Religion in the Iron-Age North“ by Luke John Murphy, 2018
  • “The dating of Eddic poetry – evidence from alliteration” by Haukur Þorgeirsson, 2017
  • “Þrymsvkiða, Myth and Mythology” by John Lindow, 1997
  • “The Poetic Edda”, transl. by Carolyne Larrington, 2014
  • “The Prose Edda”, transl. by Anthony Faulkes, 1995

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Music:

Celebration by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/