Do you actually believe in this Norse mythology stuff?
Whenever I’ve been asked this question over the past decade or so, I’ve tried to explain that viewing all religions through the lens of evangelical Christian literalism isn’t the best way to understand the wide range of religious experience in this world.
Back in 2014, a religion journalist for OnFaith asked about my practice of Ásatrú, a modern religious tradition that revives, reconstructs, and reimagines ancient polytheism of Northern Europe. Here’s what I replied then:
I sometimes explain Ásatrú as “a poetic gloss on life.” I don’t view Ásatrú as list of laws for living or a registry of rules for ritual…
Rather than serving as a rulebook for orthodoxy and orthopraxy, I believe that the poems, myths, sagas, legends and histories of Northern Europe provide a way of seeing, a means of interpretation, a philosophical orientation.
For example, walking quietly through a forest can become a deeply meaningful experience that is informed by conscious and unconscious internal connections of the present moment to lore of the elves, to myths of Odin, to legends of Siegfried, to history of the Germanic tribes.
The meanings of this experience are not necessarily reducible to language and narrative; they can appear in the mind in symbolic form. Sometimes symbols held in the mind can be more meaningful than intellectual ideas expressible in language.
More recently, in light of all the nonsense with which we’re inundated on a daily basis, I’ve been thinking a lot about the symbolism of dragons and dwarfs.
Human-headed dragon from Joachim de Fiore’s Vaticinia de Pontificibus (15th century) [Public domain]
Death and transfiguration
In the 13th-century collection of Old Icelandic mythological and heroic poems that we now call the Poetic Edda, the poem Reginsmál (“Sayings of Regin”) tells of the great dragon of northern European lore.
Notably, the dragon does not start out as a dragon.
While on a walk with the gods Odin and Hœnir, Loki rashly kills an otter that is sleepily eating a salmon by a river. The three wanderers flay his skin for a bag, then show it off to a man named Hreidmar who hosts them for the night.
It turns out that the dead otter is actually Otr (“otter”), Hreidmar’s shape-changing son who enjoyed fishing in animal form.
From the beginning of the story, shape-changing is foregrounded as a key element.
Killing the son of a host is, of course, a very serious transgression. As in so many myths, Loki serves as a clear example of how not to behave.
Also repeating a mythic pattern, Loki is forced to make right for his wrongful deed and uses trickery to do so.
Hreidmar and his two surviving sons bind the two gods and send Loki to collect a ransom for their lives – an amount of gold large enough to both fill the otter-skin bag and completely cover it.
Loki returns to the river and captures the dwarf Andvari (“careful”), who has been cursed by a norn to have the form of a pike – the second instance of shape-changing in the story.
When Loki forces Andvari to give up all his gold, the dwarf curses it to cause death and strife, proclaiming that “my treasure will be of no use to anyone.”
After the ransom is delivered, Loki passes the curse along to Hreidmar and his son Fáfnir, declaring that it will cause both of their deaths.
The two sons demand a share of the ransom from Hreidmar. After he refuses, Fáfnir shamefully stabs his sleeping father to death. Again, the poem provides a clear example of how not to behave.
Fáfnir’s brother Regin asks him for a share of the gold and is flatly refused.
Fáfnir changes into the shape of a dragon as he obsessively guards his ill-gotten gold, a treasure trove that he simply hoards and never shares or spends. His name, meaning “embracer,” is quite fitting.
Regin shrivels into a dwarf as he becomes obsessed with jealousy and plots to kill his brother in order to take the cursed gold. His name, meaning “mighty,” seems to be ironic.
This poem shouldn’t be taken as some sort of primary evidence for literal belief in shape-changing, dragons, and dwarfs. It is the product of a particularly poetry-loving culture, and poetry is more about the expression of meaning in symbolic forms (as described above) than it is about one-to-one representation of physical realities.
Reginsmál has three core elements: shape-changing, how not to behave, and the corrupting effects of hoarded wealth. Within the poem, the otherworldly element of shape-changing serves to underscore and elevate the two worldly elements.
“As useless to men now as it ever was”
Fáfnir is not born a dragon. He is a man who wrongly kills his own father to steal his wealth, then turns into a dragon to embrace (as per his name) the gold that he hoards without ever using.
As a symbol, Fáfnir represents values (or, rather, the negation of values) belonging to the culture that produced him.
When praising a great leader, the poets of the Viking Age known as skálds used phrases such as “wealth-thrower,” “ring-damager,” “gold-breaker,” “gold-diminsher” and “bracelet-hating bracelet-flinger,” all of which were used to praise the generosity of powerful men who shared their wealth with their followers as gifts, rather than hoarding it all for themselves.
The Old Icelandic poem Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”) presents the wisdom of Odin, shared in gnomic form. Several verses valorize generosity, express anti-hoarding sentiments, and criticize those who prioritize personal wealth over community.
48. Generous and brave men live the best,
seldom do they harbour sorrow;
but the cowardly man is afraid of everything,
the miser always worries when he gets gifts
[because he will be expected to reciprocate].70. It is better to live than not to be alive,
it’s the living man who gets the cow;
I saw fire blaze up for the wealthy man,
and he was dead outside the door
[i.e. without a supportive community, his wealth can’t save him].136. Mighty is that door-bar which has to move aside
to open up for everyone;
give a ring, or there’ll be called down on you
a curse in every limb
[for not sharing generously].(Carolyne Larrington’s translation, my bracketed additions)
This is not really a complicated moral system, and it’s not difficult to see that Fáfnir is less of a mystical monster than a simple symbol of a specific behavior that is harmful to the community – a focus and fixation of Norse mythology, generally.
The ending of the Old English Beowulf expresses a similar sentiment. After the old hero has killed his own dragon but is himself mortally wounded (cf. Thor and the World Serpent at Ragnarök), his grieving people bury him with the treasure hoard he had only recently liberated from the dragon that hoarded it.
And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels
and a trove of such things as trespassing men
had once dared to drag from the hoard.They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,
gold under gravel, gone to earth,
as useless to men now as it ever was.(Seamus Heaney’s translation)
Using nearly the same language as Andvari’s famous curse, the message is clear: the point of wealth is for it to be shared.
The heart and the blood
As his greedy brother takes on the form of a dragon to guard his literally useless wealth, Regin shrinks down into a bitter dwarf as he is consumed from within by his obsessive jealousy and monomaniac hatred.
Although it’s not quite as glamorous as the very modern and fully made-up “nine noble virtues” that sometimes still pop up in Heathen-ish online spaces, moderation was much more of a core value back in the old pagan times.
The word hóf (not to be confused with hof, “temple”) embraces a range of meanings that includes moderation, measure, proportion, equity, fairness, reasonableness, temperance, and justness.
In the anonymous Poetic Edda, Saga of the Völsungs, and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, Regin grooms the young and fatherless Sigurð to be his tool of vengeance aimed at his brother Fáfnir.
For Regin, all things are subservient to his jealousy of and hatred for his brother, moderation be damned. There is no measure or proportion, only the single murderous goal for which he is prepared to jettison all aspects of the social contract.
“Envy” (Anonymous, 1796) [Public domain]
As he shamelessly prepares Sigurð to kill his own brother, hiding his final plan to kill the boy after the dragon-slaying is done, Regin casually betrays his formal role of fostering Sigurð for King Hialprek, the young man’s guardian. In a time when fosterage was a key element of building alliances, this is no small wrong.
In the Eddic poem Fáfnismál (“Sayings of Fáfnir”), after Sigurð has slain the dragon, Regin reappears from the heather where he had been hiding during the confrontation that he himself had contrived. His speech to the victorious young hero seems conflicted:
“You’re cheerful now, Sigurd, pleased with your winnings,
as you dry Gram [“wrath,” the sword Regin made for him] on the grass;
my brother you’ve wounded,
yet in part I myself brought it about.”(Larrington’s translation)
If Regin is being facetious, it means that he simply brushes aside the seriousness of bringing about his own brother’s death. Indeed, his sister Lyngheid had advised him immediately after their father’s killing to not follow a violent path himself:
“You should ask you brother cheerfully
about your inheritance, with a friendlier demeanour;
it is not fitting that you should demand the treasure
from Fafnir with a sword!”(Larrington’s translation)
If Regin is being serious in his speech to Sigurð, then he does indeed understand the seriousness of what he has brought about.
That realization, however, does not prevent the dwarf from telling Sigurð to cut out and cook his brother’s heart so that he can eat it after drinking his blood.
All of this underscores Regin’s characterization as someone so consumed by jealousy and rage that he is willing to spurn all aspects of right behavior that keep family and community together.
Dragons on thrones of gold
Here in the United States in the second half of the decade, we have a president who sits atop a pile of personal wealth to rival that of both Fáfnir and the dragon of Beowulf.
In the year preceding March 31, 2025, Donald Trump more than doubled his personal wealth, building it from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion. Not coincidentally, this was the period in which he campaigned for, won, and was installed in the presidency of the United States.
A large part of his enormous increase in wealth was by publicly trading the parent company of Truth Social (his personal Twitter-lite platform) and hawking a range of Trump-branded tchotchkes, including Bibles, high-top sneakers, and cryptocurrency tokens.
What does Trump actually do with his wealth, besides grow it and hoard it?
He doesn’t seem to read, collect art (except pictures of himself), go to performances or sporting events (except when he can make them about himself), or travel the world (excerpt when he can be the center of “pomp and pageantry”).
He also doesn’t seem interested in using his wealth for the betterment of his community, nation, or world. In fact, he has been “forced to pay more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds at the Trump Foundation for political purposes.”
Four of the world’s five richest men prominently attended Trump’s inauguration in January, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Tesla’s Elon Musk.
When asked what he planned to do with his immense wealth, Bezos famously replied, “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it. Blue Origin [his space technology company] is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune.”
Meanwhile, Amazon continues to treat employees like chattel and expose them to unsafe working conditions.
Zuckerberg’s “philanthrocapitalism” centers on self-serving charity that actually enables him to make investments and political donations with tax benefits for himself.
Musk’s giving “in large part has gone to enterprises that technically qualify as charitable, but that also support his own business interests and even his family’s welfare” while saving him billions in taxes owed.
These titans of business are clearly not behaving like the “bracelet-hating bracelet-flingers” praised by the skálds of old for sharing their wealth among their followers.
Instead, they sit like dragons atop their hoarded treasure, with all of the wealth they gather “as useless to men now as it ever was.”
Where are the Sigurðs and Beowulfs of today who will topple them from their golden thrones?*
The heroes are certainly not among our fellow citizens who idolize the billionaire class.
This I know, for Zuckerberg tells me so. Or, more accurately, Facebook’s algorithm shows me so.
Dwarfs stamping their feet in fury
I created The Norse Mythology Facebook Page over 15 years ago, and I’ve run it ever since. Recently, whenever I’m logged in as its administrator, the feed that the platform provides to me is filled with right-wing trash.
To be clear, the posts that Facebook shows to me are not from pages I follow or people I know. They’re from an endless array of accounts that ceaselessly post intentionally provocative material designed to rile up the right-wing base.
That base is always angry at any non-white, non-straight, non-cis, non-male people cast in any production of anything. They’re mad at those same folks both for living in cities and for moving to non-urban areas. They’re mad at them for working and they’re mad at them for not working. They’re just mad at them, no matter what.
They fear and hate their neighbors. They fear and hate liberals. They fear and hate trans people. They fear and hate black people. They fear and hate Latino people. They fear and hate women who aren’t young, large-chested, and obedient. They fear and hate everyone who doesn’t look like them and think like them, including members of their own political party who dare to even slightly disagree with The Donald.
Maybe the Facebook algorithm has decided that people who like Norse mythology tend to be angry, bearded, white guys in wraparound shades who rant that “Disney has gone woke” and who think that Homelander is a heroic patriot.
Maybe the Facebook algorithm just pushes the content that gets the most attention. I admit that I’ve posted snarky comments on some of the most egregious posts, which is undoubtedly interpreted by the algorithm as meaning that I want to see more of it.
Whatever the reason for the flow in my feed, it’s given me an insight into the vast numbers of Americans who have, like Regin, allowed their jealousy of and hatred for others shrink them down into bitter and angry little dwarfs.
The same folks who have always insisted that we must defend state rights and resist a supposedly tyrannical federal government are now cheering on the leader of the federal government for taking control of California’s national guard and sending U.S. Marines into Los Angeles against the publicly stated opposition of the governor and the mayor.
The same folks who insist that Ashli Babbitt was wrongly killed by Capitol Police while actively participating in the January 6 riot are now calling for the shooting of protesters at anti-ICE and “No Kings” rallies.
The same folks forwarding fairy tales of “white genocide” in South Africa are so terrified of their own communities that they fill their houses with the very guns that have enabled white males to be the ones most likely to commit suicide by firearm.
The same folks still furious about being asked to wear masks during the pandemic are ignoring the fact that pandemic deaths were far higher among Republicans and seem blithely unbothered by ICE agents hiding their own identities behind their ubiquitous maskss.
There is no hóf here, no moderation.
As in the case of Regin, their all-consuming jealousy and hatred makes them laser-focused on one harmful goal. Instead of killing the dragon, the goal is simply to “own the libs,” even at the price of self-harm.
Whether destroying their own families through COVID-19 deaths or suicide, whether giving up state rights and individual freedoms, all is fine and dandy, as long as it somehow redounds to the harm of those they hate.
After accidentally tasting the juices of the dragon’s roasting heart, Sigurð understood the speech of birds, heeded their warning that Regin was plotting to kill him, and immediately cut off the head of the treacherous dwarf.
Will we ourselves heed the warning before the dwarfs of our own time murder our democracy?*
Author’s note: Neither of the asterisked questions in this article are calling for physical violence. Please review this column’s introduction, re: symbols and meanings.
Editor’s note: All references to “dwarfs” in this column strictly refer to the mythological creatures. No reference to people with dwarfism is intended.
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