Mythology
 

What region's mythology most interests you?

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Greco-roman and viking (nordic).
Studying history and archaelogy on the University of Lund in Sweden....

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Mostly Norse Mythology, although I enjoy some Greek and Egyption too.

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I dunno. Celtic? Japanese? Scandinavian? Arabic/Persian? If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with Celtic, because I'm of predominately Irish descent.

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Nordic is under the lines of Celtic, but I'm a HUGE fan of Norse mythology too! Go Go Odin's the MAN!!! ;)

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Quiz question since norse mythology seems popular...
Just wanna see how many are gonna get it right.

Odin (oden, wotan) is the name of the main god, but what is the name of the god of war?

Edit: Bonus points if you can tell me the truth about the traditional viking horned helmet.

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Is that a trick Question?
From what i have read there is no one god of war. Each one represented an aspect of war.

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And the main god was Thor not Odin.

Correction: Odin was the father of gods, my bad. I thought Balder was the son of Thor, but it was Odin, I am obviously a little rusty!

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Tyr was the god of war, and to Chibimonkey, Odin is the main god.

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Thats what i thought to But viking mythology (especially runes). Differ as mutch as the people who interpret them.

Edit: Vikings were not a whole culture they were split into many differnt tribes wernt they. That would mean different takes on the gods?

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Nope sorry, no right answer for the God of War yet.
Oden is the main god, and the most important ones after him are Thor (god of thunder) and Frey (god of fertility).

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And Odin was the omniscient god. He was said to have forseen Ragnarok Gotterdamerung, Apocalypse, whatever you want to call it) at the point of Balder's doom presented by Loki guiding Hoder's mistletoe dart into Balder. When an emissary from the gods came to the underworld to bargain with Hel, she said Balder would be revived if every living thing cried for Balder. Loki, hating Balder for his acclaim, disguised himself as an implacable old woman and refused to cry. So Balder stayed down. It's onw of the most famous and common stories of Norse Myth.

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No Tyr IS the respectable God of War figure in Norse Mythology.

And show some respect! Freya was a Goddess not a God. She was Odin's wife for Odin's sake! lol

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Tyr (Old Norse: Týr or Tívar) is the god of warfare and battle in Norse mythology, portrayed as a one-handed man.

But guess it stands wrongly there :rolleyes:

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There is also the blind Hod, son of Odin. His name means war.

Edit: It also says Odin is god of war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin

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Better:

Tyr
The archetypal warrior, Tyr was a Norse war deity identified with Mars and one of the Aesir god group. In the legends it was Tyr who sacrificed his hand in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir, providing time for the gods to disable the beast. At Ragnarok Tyr died like Odin-swallowed by the wolf, Garm, whom he simultaneously disemboweled. In fact the two gods have a lot in common and Tyr could even be an earlier version of the same deity, displaced into warrior status by the dominance of the Odin variant.

From Mythology A Visual Encyclopedia by Jo Forty published by PRC Publishing Ltd.

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You must mean Hoder. Odin and Freya begat the Aesirian race of gods and Odin's only children were Balder, Heimdall, Hermod, Hoder, Tyr, and Vidarr (aka Vali).

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Frey was the god of fertility...his sister Freya was the goddess of love...don't mix the two up.

BTW...beginning to see the problem with finding the god of war now?

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I think the native should clairfy. :rolleyes: Apperently he has his answer.

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Norse mythology intrests me alot. However, I have an utterly strong hatred of Christian Bible study groups absorbing our school/community/country. So to balance it out, i went with the Native Americans. The long myths and folklore-like tales, aswell as the strong relation with nature is kinda interesting.

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Uh, the Nords/Celts at heart did too though, so that serves little berring on the issue; but I know where you're coming from. Cheers! ;)

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yea :). i know the norse and celts became christians, and they had many similarities, but i still much prefer the Ragnarok story compared to the book of Revelations :D

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St. Patrick is the one who's day was notorized as the day he succeeded in converting Ireland. In all honesty, it wasn't so easy. There were many deaths, and it's mainly his 'defeat' over the Celts. Much like the Crusades + beer. Killing people who wouldn't convert...this time while drunk...what a feat.

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Pretty cool discussion mates:D

I am danish myself so I have always been told tales about the Vikings.

I do enjoy norse mythology.

One of the most interesting aspects of it(in my opinion) - Is stuff like that it was where tolkien got the name "Middle-earth" from.

And im pretty sure at Blizzard got inspired by their world tree(the elfs trees in warcraft 3) by Ygdrasil, the lifetree - which was the gateway between earth, heaven and hell.


I like some of the anology that the greatest warrior would go to valhalla and fight and eat until Ragnarok and the end of all things.

Its strange because some of the people mentioned in the mythology have exsisted - legends and myths have just build upon the true stories and everything that did not made sense, got peoples own logical explanation attached to it.

Like thunder - people could not understand how or where and why there was thunder so they simply made it up Thor, the god of thunder! Hehe...

but some of the myths and tales of super natural warriors where based around Vikings.

I think the first recorded massslaughter by Vikings was when the first Vikings sailed to england in their boots and slaughtered over 200 unarmed monks:-o

danish vikings actually had allot of cool winning in wars. At one point denmark got a hold of a large part of sweden, germany and even england.

Not even the roman empire in their peak could get through.

Some of the talk about a special group of vikings known as "Beserkers" was that they didnt even wear armor to battle and stated eating their own wooden shields(biting large marks in them) from pure rage - its even said that some of them because so frustrated with rage that they would attack their own allies of sheer madness.

Later studies shows that it might have been because of a plant the vikings used to eat and it got them extremely heated up for battle(think of it as a speed plant)!

man its not really cool role models to have...
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another mythology I think is crazy is japanese. holy...:o I like chinese too(after watching movies like crouching tiger, hidden dragon and hero) - but japanese - That was insane.

in that mythology their evil critters was mostly Oni(a kind of demons) and Then-gu! Spiders and foxs was also seen badly upon.

It really amazes me how they started adopting the hole samurai thing based on myths from their old empires aswell.

the stories of the legend Raikou is freakin crazy:-/

And of course greek mythology rules aswell... Troy could have been so much more.. Im still depressed because of that movie. It could have been 10 times as big as LOTR if it had been done right. How could anyone rape Homers lifework like that?:(

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Yep, if you take it from the movie, the siege of Troy seems to have taken 2-3 weeks, not 10 years as in the legend.....




As for Vikings, there are many misconceptions about them. Many think vikings were only violent raiders, killing monks and others that couldn't defend themselves.
Fact is they made many colonies and pretty much controlled all of scotland, northern england, parts of ireland and all of the islands around northern britain. York is a viking colony for example, as are many more old cities in great britain.

Ad the normands could thank the vikings for conquering England (of course, the normands were originally vikings as well, danish vikings under King Rollo that was given the offer by the frankish king to have normandy as their territory, in exchange for them securing the northern border for the franks.
When William the conqueror attacked england, the vikings launched an attack from their territories in the north, the english king was forced to choose which army he would face first, he chose the vikings. He defeated them (a battle which marked the end of the viking era) but in doing so, the normands were allowed to land unopposed on the english mainland and the channel was no longer a line of defense....and the rest is commonly known history.

The norwegian and danish vikings went west to england and other places (colonising iceland and greenland for example, and even had colonies in america, althoush they were abandoned) whilst the swedish went east, colonising Finland and sailing down on the russian rivers. Kiev is viking colony, amongst other russian cities.
It's even believed that the very word russian originally comes from vikings (the vikings that colonised there were called "ruser") something russian historians refute (nationalism calls for rewriting of history...).

Sweden, Norway and Denmark weren't really proper nations in the viking era, clans were ruled by chieftains and alliances formed and dissolved every time a new chieftain came to power....
Sweden is originally formed by 3 "kingdoms" (götaland, svealand and norrland), the swedish insigna is the 3 crowns which is still in use....

The vikings themselves were actually were organised as warriors, not really depending on pure rage and strength, but more on tactics.....a lot more than they are given credit for by most today.


well, end of history lession...

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The Hindu's Mythology is very impressive too! The legend of Ganesh and the legend of Hanuman are interesting!

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Odin/Wodan is the main god not Thor.Odin is mostly the Norse way of saying his name and Wodan is the AngloSaxon way saying name from the Anglo Saxon tribes in Germany and yes the believed in the same gods.Thor is the brother of Odin and is more the good luck although he is whorshipped in Iceland as their main God.
Tyr is short for Tyrant the God of War like Aries and yes he was left with one hand which is why you will see lefties out there as the Norse where taught to fight with both hands in case they lose their other hand.This is the reason people are left handed and yes it is genetic.The Vikings for the most part were explorers looking for new land to settle on as their population growed and many opposed them for settleing on their lands as those were Christians at the time.If Norse religion had prevailed over christianity we would possiply be in space right now.Yes I like Ragnarok it puts positive spin on the future of humanity.
Did you ever notice there are three days devoted to Norse Gods Odin/Wodan=Wednesday,Thor=Thursday and Frey=Friday.I could vote as this is mine alternativey Greek interesets me.
There is one god not mentioned and that is Loki who bugged Thor a lot and went to Hel where the frost giants lived.

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Mostly Greek and Roman literature and mythology (either translated or not). Interesting stuff.

Nordic mythology seems highly interesting too, but I still don't have a clue on the old-icelandic in which the Edda (which contains a ton of norse mythology) is written :p

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Berzerker comes from Bear shirt, for the bear skin they wore in battle.

Norse own every other mythology.

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There is lots of it in the old sagas to and Icelandic is the original Nordic language.It was the Icelandics who wrote all the sagas.

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I like the Greek Mythology the best, I find most info about it and learned about it in school...I always like greek monster Cyclopes because each of the cyclopes gigantic and had a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The Cyclopes made lightning and thunderbolts for Zeus to use. The brutal Polyphemus, a Cyclops and a son of Poseidon, lived on an island, where he was blinded by Odysseus.

According to Hesiod the Cyclopes were smiths, the sons of Uranus and Gaea. They were imprisoned in Tartarus by their father and again by their brother Kronos. In return for their freedom they gave Zeus the thunderbolt that aided him in overthrowing Kronos. In Homer the Cyclopes are a lawless, barbarous, and pastoral people, one of whom (Polyphemus) Odysseus encounters in his wanderings.

yea, I know greek monsters are like all fake..but its interesting :)

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It is true that Greek mythology is more common to hear about. Everyone probably knows who Zeus, Hera, Hades, Heracles, etc etc are. If you said something about Odin and such, people would be like "HEY, I KNOW WHO THAT IS! HES FROM FINAL FANTASY" So yea...

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Some parts of Nordic mythology is so common you don't even register it to be Nordic mythology tho, the whole thing with beautiful elves that like music and short bearded dwarves that are superior blacksmiths....guess where that comes from. Same thing with trolls and other monsters.

JRR Tolkien and other fantasy authors used so much of nordic mythology, few people even connect them together anymore.

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I'm assuming most people (that did not read the LOTR series nor played Warcraft fervently) truly did not know what elves and dwarves were. They probably thought elves where little people who were stuck in the north pole creating toys or holed up in some tree making cookies. And they probably thought dwarves were synonomous to midgets.

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Gilgamesh, Zoroastra, Mithra, along with Osiris, Tiamat, Marduk and Enlil can easily beat the pants off any of those other gods and heroes. In fact, I bet they invented pants.

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Grec and Roman.

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I grew up loving Greek's mythology, but hand in hand is the Arabian Nights.

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I just love Roman history... Romans were like me in a way... ambitious, clever, strong, greedy, self-centered... guess that's why I like em so much :)

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My dog is named "Loke" and my main computer is called "Hel" so guess what mythology :)


(and no the dog is not the computers father)

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i like the greece mythology cause i'm learing greek and latin at school. it's cool to know how the people were thinking in that time.

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just a comment... you can't take a proper poll if the readers are biased..

most of the people are speak english, which means the majority of them are from North American, or Europe. (or australia..) meaning that all of them would have learned about Greek Methology in school or from some other source...

i dare say that most of the people here never even read one of the options above and made a vote.

anyways i find Egypt methology very interesting, althou i havn't goten into it much..

i know a decent amount of greek methology by learning in school, and in my opinion, it is just like most other methologies in the world.

btw can someone tell me what Oceana Methologies are?

PS: is china, japan, south-east asia italicized for a reason? :P

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I really like Egyptian because tey all have animal heads( or almost all).
But i also love the aztec storys their sooooooooooooooo bloody and violent.

Fun fact: some historians belive beserekers amy have eaten mushrooms to make them hight and that is one reason why the fought so hard.

Fun fact: Some historians belive that the cyclops came from greeks finding a mammoth skull and looking at the hole where the trunk conects and taking it to be a giant eye soket.

Fun fact:Almost every dwarf in the hobbit has a name that etheir is or sounds like the name of a norse god.

got most of this from the history channel

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Fun Fact: A lot of the typhical "fantasy" in JRR Tolkien's world (and from him, most works in the fantasy-genre) is taken from nordic mythology.
As such, the dwarves have typhical dwarf names....which, since they come from the same language, sounds a lot like norse gods.

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Hi! :)

Born in Germany but had to go to school in Greece since my parents wanted it so back then.

So I grow up with the Greek Mythology automatically. :P
Though I always loved it through its many different aspects.

From the poll available to choose mythologies I must say that I know a bit from everyone of this except Oceanian Mythology(except if I heard something sometime and I don't remember anymore or don't know that it belongs to them. :boggled: ).

Since I'm a big fantasy fan, I always loved different aspects of any lands Mythology. :biggrin:

As about famous fantasy heroes from the mythologies around the world, I think that the most famous are Thor and Hercules (even marvel had/has them in their comics :P ).

Almost everyone around the world seems to know these.
BTW: I noticed that a poster earlier added Hercules in the "Gods" list.
Hercules is only a "Half-God" since Zeus is his father. ;)

There are a few different known "Half-Gods" in the Greek Mythology which actually only represent the "weakness" of the Gods back then which couldn't let their "fingers" of from the "mortals" sexwise. :P

Some of them or their mortal fathers/mothers were then "punished" from a other jealous God since they weren't able to do something against their "partners"(wife, man) like Medusa as example. :P

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Mythology in general rocks but I've never really gotten into any. I was thought Irish/Celtic mythology in primary school. (not really sure whether it's irish Legend or mythology) My favourite Irish legends are the story of Chúculain and Oisín and Tír na nÓg :D Fionn Mac Chuail goes in there somewhere but I can't remember the story.

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Norse and
Roman mythology is kinda good.

I LOVE Greek mythology, however

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Well...I am greek so...you know where my first vote goes. ;) Indeed Troy had way many innacuracies so some friends of mine who didn't want to get upset kept saying 'We are going to see Kroy tonight'. (ok, in greek the name is kinda different, but they still changed the first letter :P)
I also like norse, celtic and egyptian mythology.

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like the roman mythology but love the greek mythology

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I study anthropology and my thesis centers around ancient Irish mythology. So I have a bit of a bias towards the celt mythology area.


Plus I'm Irish.
Edit:
Forgot to say I was obsessed with Egyptian mythology as a child so I used to be biased towards that area. But Celtic mythology is quite interesting.

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How can you love Greek mythology but only think romen mythology is kinda good if the romans stole almost all the mythology from the Greeks.