Norse Mythology

Almost all of it comes from Iceland, and almost all of it was written by Christians. The Poetic Edda preserves older verse; the Prose Edda was composed around 1220 by Snorri Sturluson, a politician and poet who wanted to teach skaldic technique and needed to explain the myths the metaphors depended on. Without him we would have very little.

What distinguishes it is that the end is known in advance. Ragnarök is not a threat but a schedule: the wolf gets loose, Thor kills the serpent and walks nine paces, Odin is swallowed, and the gods who know this go on anyway. Odin spends the whole mythology gathering intelligence about a defeat he cannot avert.

Yggdrasil holds the nine worlds; the Norns are at its root and outrank everybody. And Loki — bound at last under a serpent’s venom, with his wife holding a bowl — is neither an enemy nor a friend, which is the most interesting thing about him.