Viking mythology is one of the most interesting mythologies and one which most of us know very little about. He have heard of Odin and Thor and possibly Ragnarok but once you move past that you find that there is a great deal of depth to these views.

Viking Mythology like many older religions is a pantheon, but beyond that there is a great deal of variance in the believes of the Norse people.

The cosmology of of Norse mythology says that there are nine worlds. These worlds are Asgaror Vanaheimer,Miogaror,Muspellheim, Niflheilm, Svartalfahiem, Alfheimr, Hel and Jotunheimr. Each of these worlds represents a group of people or elements and has important places in the Norse religion. The worlds are connected by Yggdrasil the world tree with Asgard at the top.

the gods of the Norse religion are more varied than those of other mythologies we are more familiar with. From dragons, wolfs and sea serpents, as well as Loik, Odin and Thor. These gods unlike that of many other mythologies fight among each other and have their own clans in these naturalistic spirit.

In addition to the fighting of the gods which marks Norse mythology as something different there is also the belief that their gods can be injured and will eventually die. According to the beliefs of most Viking people there will be a great battle called Ragnark which will result not only in the world being flooded but the death of Odin, Thor, Freya Heimdall and Loki. Only a single pair of humans will survive this battle and they will repopulate the earth.

These beliefs as well as many others which make up the Norse mythology are interesting not only in themselves but in what they tell us about how myth effects culture and culture effects myth. The vikings who live in a far more savage part of the world than many other people who’s myths we know have a more brutal and savage set of beliefs. Their gods fight in clans just as the people who believed the myths fought and were often injured just as those people were injured.

Many of the gods and ideas which are part of Norse mythology can be tracked to Germanic roots and even farther back, some of the gods seeming similar to Roman gods and goddesses, but it is far more different from those sets of beliefs than similar in many ways and though it seems of little importance now it was once the belief of a people who were one of the most feared groups in Europe and these beliefs were among many reasons that the vikings were such a dangerous force.