Zeus VS Odin [YAVSB]

“Human beings in a mob,
What’s a mob to a king?
What’s a king to a god?”
– Frank Ocean

Zeus, the Titan-toppling thunder god of the Olympians.

Odin, the almighty All-Father of the Aesir of Asgard.

Even among the immortals, there are those who tower above the rest at the very peak of the pantheon. These two embodiments of divine might are quite literally the stuff of legends. Holding nothing back in a battle for the ages, which of these gods among gods would go down as the winner in the epics of history?

Before We Start…

Like how Death Battle handled Heracles when they had him on the show, I’ll be using the original myths as the source material for both characters… well, as close as I can get to those original myths, at least. I’d really like to emphasize here that there is no solidly defined canon for either of these characters. There wasn’t even one back in the day – unlike some of the religions practiced in modern times, there was no single primary text of unimpeachable facts at the center of either of these belief systems.

In this blog, I am focusing on the historical sources that inform our current understandings of Greek and Norse mythology. These sources don’t really even come close to capturing how these mythological figures were perceived during the times they were actually worshipped; only a fraction of the stories told about Zeus and Odin were ever actually written down, and only a fraction of those texts actually survived through the centuries. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we’ve got, and it’s what I’m using.

I’d also like to mention that I’m not an expert in Greek or Norse mythology. I did a lot of research and tried my best to double and triple check my work, but these traditions are so expansive that just statistically I’m bound to have made some kind of error somewhere. Probably a bunch of them, actually. Remember, I’m just some random idiot doing this in my spare time, with next to no budget, just for kicks. I’m not trying to craft some kind of rock solid peer-reviewed academic work here, but I still did strive for a high level of accuracy, and overall I’m happy with how it turned out.

If you want a basic rundown of the texts I’ve gone through, check out these source lists. They also include which translation I’m primarily using. These only list things that I actually took quotes from, I went through more than just these:

Zeus Source List
Odin Source List

Here’s the basics on what I used and what’s most relevant to this blog:

For Zeus: The most important sources are the works of Hesiod and Homer, as well as Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library. I’ve consulted many more sources than just these, they’re just the ones that I’ll be quoting the most. These mythological sources are pulled from several different time periods, some dating as far back as the 8th century BC.

I’m generally going to be taking the word of older sources over the word of newer ones, as the further towards the present you get, the further away you get from the earliest, original forms of Greek tradition. So, if something from an older source is contradicted in a more recent source, I’ll tend to go with what the older one has to say.

For Odin: The two most important sources are collectively called the Eddas. There’s the Prose Edda, a guide on Norse mythology and poetry written by scholar/politician Snorri Sturluson in the early 13th century, and the Poetic Edda, a compilation of Norse poems from around the same time period. Despite being put together centuries after the Norse world was converted to Christianity, these sources draw on older tradition and are considered the most reliable sources we have on viking era beliefs. Pretty much everything you know about Norse mythology from pop culture can be traced directly back to the Eddas.

There’s also the Norse sagas, which are generally dated to the 13th and 14th centuries. These draw on the same kind of older traditions that the Eddas do (many of them likely being based on older source materials), but are seen by some as generally less true to the original viking myths as those sources. While I am pulling feats for Odin from the sagas, I’m mainly bringing them in for the additional context they provide on some topics. And again, I’ve gone through more than just these sources. They’re just the ones I’ll be quoting the most.

Naturally, I’m also excluding a few things. Some are rather obvious, but there are also some sources that fall into a weird grey area where you could argue for or against their inclusion, and I ultimately decided to leave them out… but again, decisions like these will always be arbitrary to some degree, since there’s no real “officially defined” canon here.

The following are being excluded:

Modern depictions: This should already be evident, but to make this clear, I’m not factoring in modern depictions of the characters, such as Odin’s appearances in Marvel’s comic books or Zeus’s appearances in the God of War video games. Even if I use visuals of those for the categories, it doesn’t mean that I’m drawing feats from them. Those images are totally irrelevant, I’m just pulling them from wherever I like. Ideally I could’ve done this whole blog with older artwork, but there just aren’t contemporary visual depictions of every power these two gods possess.

Lost and untranslated sources: Another obvious thing is that I can’t include sources that no longer exist – sorry, I’m not a wizard or a Time Lord, it’s not like I can pop back to ancient Greece and grab the lost epics. Again, the majority of mythological stories are lost, due to many of them only being spread orally. I’m only not using these because I literally can’t, not because there’s any issue with their accuracy.

There’s also the matter of sources that are currently untranslated, or which are translated, but have major barriers to their accessibility. For an example, there’s some Norse stories that you can only find translated to English in an out-of-print five-volume compilation that goes for 600 dollars on the aftermarket. I’m sorry, I’m not dropping hundreds on this stupid blog, I’m just not going to do that. Luckily, most of these untranslated or tough to find works don’t include anything terribly relevant to the blog. The tales that feature the gods have always tended to have more interest in them, and thus almost all of the surviving ones have been translated into English and made easily accessible.

Second-hand sources: As a rule, I’m also sticking to historical texts for feats. Many of the sources you can find online about mythology are what I call “second-hand” sources, in that they aren’t actually historical sources, they’re just pieces written by authors in the modern day about those historical sources, which often implement their own personal theories or interpretations into the original tales. Sometimes they even include just straight up falsehoods that the writer pulled out of their ass.

While some of these kinds of sources can be helpful as aggregators of mythological stories… well, I’d rather just stick with the actual existing texts themselves, even if it requires a bit more reading. What I’m saying here is, I’m not pulling feats from random Internet articles or books like “Greek Mythology for Fourth Graders.” I will however cite some modern research articles and such when covering specific theories or broader topics like cosmology. You’ll get it later.

If you really want to be anal retentive, technically the historical sources I’m using are “second-hand” since they’re transcribed versions of oral traditions. But those are different, since they’re the basis of our current day knowledge of Greek and Norse mythology. It’s not the same thing as grabbing feats from any random modern book on either subject.

Later Greek / Roman sources (for Zeus): This is Zeus VS Odin, not Jupiter VS Odin, so I’m not focusing on myths of Roman origin. (Yes, I know that’s Jupiter in the thumbnail, I picked that image cause it looked cool.) While it is true that the Romans were inspired by the Greeks and that the two mythological figures were conflated by them, there are still noticeable differences between Greek and Roman myth and in how the gods were portrayed by those two cultures. So while there may be no “official canon” for mythology, Zeus is still an identifiably distinct character from his Roman counterpart.

While I have read through Roman mythological sources, feats from them are not being focused on here. There are also some later Greek sources on mythology written when Greece was conquered by Rome or part of the Byzantine Empire, which are similarly being avoided. Some of them however do include fragments of earlier works that didn’t survive to the modern day, so those are useful in their own way, and I’ll be citing those fragments every now and then. (Just to explain what a “fragment” is really quick, it’s basically a quote from an earlier lost source that has been preserved in a later surviving one. So while the original may not exist any more, we still have those “fragments” of them.)

It wouldn’t really change anything if I did go all in on these later sources anyways, so this decision isn’t kneecapping Zeus or anything like that. It’s just that it’s hard to say that some of those later stories are truly representative of the original Greek concepts of Zeus and the other gods. Many of them are clearly more informed by Roman thoughts and experiences than Greek ones. Am I saying these stories are any less culturally valuable? Am I saying they’re “non-canon” or that they “don’t count” or something? No, just that I’m not going to focus on them in this blog since I instead want to focus on the earlier stuff we have. The YouTube show Death Battle did the same (that seemed to be their angle at least), and I’m trying to emulate them here. That’s it.

I have included some citations from a number of sources which come from later time periods. Specifically, ones where the author is actively attempting to explain older Greek beliefs. One of my most-quoted sources, Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library, fits this description – while historians don’t know exactly when the work was written, there’s a general consensus that it was compiled in the 2nd century AD during the time of the Roman Empire, but also that the author thoroughly tried to ignore Roman influence, as evidenced by the lack of any notable stories first related by the Romans. This has made it a uniquely valuable resource for those researching Greek mythology despite its later origins. (It’s also one of the few historical sources we know for sure Death Battle looked at. Again, I’m trying to match those guys here.)

Non-Norse sources (for Odin): Odin wasn’t only worshipped by the Norse, he was also part of several other pagan religions that fell under the wider umbrella of Germanic myth. The Roman historian Tacitus seemingly makes mention of Germanic groups worshipping Odin and Thor in a work of his called the Germania, though they’re referred to as “Mercury” and “Jupiter” respectively. For some examples of the other sources he’s been found in, Odin is obliquely referenced in some surviving Old English documents that cast him as an ancestor of royal lines, as well as some Old English poems and German manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

Like before, I read what I could find of this stuff, but left it out. I mostly want to focus on the classic Norse stories and sagas here, like how I’m focusing on the classic Greek tales for Zeus. These references in other materials are scattered, and once more they wouldn’t really change things at all.

Euhemerized depictions: A lot of what we know about Norse mythology was compiled by Christian scholars. To make things palatable for their pious audiences, they provided explanations that the Norse gods were actually human warriors. The stories about them being deities? Well, those were just exaggerated/metaphorical retellings of their lives. Similarly, some Greek and Roman writers also tried to give mundane historical explanations for mythological tales. Notable among them was Euhemerus, a 4th century BC Greek mythographer who claimed Zeus was just an ancient king of Crete, among other things. His name is the origin of the word used to describe the process of explaining away myths like this: “euhemerism.”

I’ve mostly ignored these kinds of euhemerized depictions as, again, these accounts just aren’t the classic stories I want to cover. For Norse sources in particular however, there are some cases where it’s tough to separate what was “Christianized” by the author and what wasn’t. I’ll try and explain that whenever it’s relevant.

…with some exceptions: Two important exceptions to the “no euhemerized depictions” rule are Heimskringla and Gesta Danorum, which I’ve elected to use for Odin despite some issues.

The first, Heimskringla, is a compilation of Norse sagas put together by the same guy who wrote the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson. The first saga in the collection, the Ynglinga saga, features a heavily euhemerized Odin. He’s not a god, but instead a human warrior-king with great magical powers, and his story is totally different from his mythological version. As an example, he just randomly dies of some vague sickness instead of being eaten by a giant wolf. Odin’s great feats of war and sorcery went on to inspire the myths about him, and even during his life and reign people (incorrectly) worshipped him and his kin as sort of “gods.”

(An important thing to keep in mind is that magical powers aren’t really that unusual for someone to have in old Norse stories. Even in the stories that attempt to be rooted in some kind of “realism,” or ones that explicitly reference capital-G God and Christianity, there’s still often references to giants, dwarves, witches who can cast spells, berserk warriors who are impervious to blades, people who can turn into animals, etcetera. So even if Odin is portrayed as using magic in these euhemerized sources, that’s not something special.)

As the sagas in this compilation continue on, Odin starts showing up in a more traditional “godly” role after his death. People make sacrifices to him for longer lifespans or victory in battle, and they actually get those things afterwards. In one instance, Odin actually seems to appear in the flesh after his death: a bearded, one-eyed old man mysteriously shows up one day, impresses a king with his worldly knowledge, and gives him some high quality meat that no random peasant would reasonably have on hand. Scenes just like this one, where Odin visits humans in disguise, are commonly seen in sources like the Eddas and the sagas. So that’s no random old dude, that’s Odin.

So yeah, while the Ynglinga saga gives the explanation that Odin was just a human that people started to think of as a god… well, what’s the deal with these scenes that come later, then?

It’s pretty simple, really. Well, as simple as the study of 13th century Icelandic historical texts gets. Heimskringla was based on a lot of earlier mythological material that is now lost, outside of the fragments included within Heimskringla itself. Snorri had access to a whole slew of Norse poetry and other sources that we just don’t have nowadays, at least not in full. Some aspects of those original myths are bleeding through despite Snorri’s attempts to tone them down and provide “mundane” explanations, both in the Ynglinga saga and in these later scenes.

If you read scholarly, annotated versions of texts like the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, you’ll find that the historians that put those translations together will frequently reference Heimskringla to fill in “gaps” left in those sources. There’ll be a vague reference in a poem to some myth that isn’t attested in either of the Eddas, and the footnotes will bring up what Heimskringla has to say about it. In particular, Heimskringla shines a lot of light on some of Odin’s magical powers that are only briefly described in the less euhemerized sources. Obviously that’s a topic of great relevance to this blog, and any additional information we can gather up is useful.

The second main exception, Gesta Danorum, is a Latin text written by Saxo Grammaticus and a similar case to Heimskringla. It’s heavily euhemerized, but Odin still sometimes shows up in his traditional godly role despite mostly being depicted as a human, and translators will often reference it to fill gaps in knowledge on certain subjects. Like Snorri, Saxo was drawing on earlier non-euhemerized mythological sources which we don’t currently have.

My thought process here is: if these are good enough sources for people with degrees to cite in their academic translations to try and fill in details, then they’re good enough sources for me to use in this stupid versus blog. However, I’ll be explicitly pointing it out whenever I bring up something from either of these two sources.

“Mythology mixing”: Some ancient cultures, while studying other cultures’ myths, would try to understand them through inserting their own deities and ideas. The Greeks did this with the Egyptians, the Romans did this with the Greeks and some other European cultures they encountered, the Christians basically did something like it with the Norse as explained above, and so on. For some specific examples, Odin (the version of him present in the folklore of those Germanic groups I mentioned earlier) was interpreted as being Mercury by the Romans due to some similarities, Thor (again, the Germanic version) was interpreted as Jupiter or Hercules, and as I’m sure everyone in this community has heard by now, some Eastern sects portrayed Heracles as being the Buddha’s bodyguard.

Additionally, both Odin and Zeus are believed by historians to have thematic roots in earlier Proto-Indo-European religions that existed before and evolved into the Greek and Norse mythological traditions as we understand them. This is an incredibly complicated topic that I don’t really feel like getting into here, I’m already going on way too long with this section, so do your own research if you want to learn more about that. I’m not going to bring it up past this section, so it’s not really all that necessary to cover in-depth here.

So what, do all of these different pantheons scale to each other? Is this a “same series” fight all of a sudden? Well, I think the problem with including these kinds of things is blatantly clear: all of this “mythology mixing” just kind of muddles everything up and strays very, very far from the classic stories that we actually know about these characters. It’s a distraction, and it’s just not worth including any of it in the blog.

I know I just vomited a twenty paragraph essay at you, but it’s seriously not that complicated. I’m focusing primarily on the oldest sources that we currently have available for both characters, and some material that came around later will be brought in for extra context / supporting evidence. Also, I’m trying to match how Death Battle did things for Greek mythology, for a reason that I’ll make clear later. That’s the TL;DR.

If you’re uncomfortable with reading about topics such as sexual assault or incest, this blog probably isn’t for you – it’s not like there’s graphic descriptions or anything, but with these two characters, it comes up more than you’d expect in your average knockoff G1 blog. If you know anything about mythology, yeah, you’ll probably get why I’m saying this.

Alright, enough preamble. Let’s finally see who would really win this battle of mythic proportions.

Background

Zeus

“Come, you gods, make this endeavor, that you all may learn this.
Let down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay hold of it
all you who are gods and all who are goddesses, yet not
even so can you drag down Zeus from the sky to the ground, not
Zeus the high lord of counsel, though you try until you grow weary.
Yet whenever I might strongly be minded to pull you,
I could drag you up, earth and all and sea and all with you,
then fetch the golden rope about the horn of Olympos
and make it fast, so that all once more should dangle in mid air.
So much stronger am I than the gods, and stronger than mortals.”

In the beginning, there was nothing, nothing but a swirling primordial chaos. Powerful embodiments of cosmic forces sprung forth from the void and from them descended a race of divine beings. Thus begins the story of a line of fathers and sons, ultimate rulers of all of creation.

First, there was Uranus, the representation of the vast starry sky. He was born from Gaia, the primordial Earth, and with his own mother he had many children. First there were the twelve Titans, then the one-eyed Cyclopes, and finally the hundred-handed Hecatoncheires. Uranus despised the latter two groups for their monstrous appearances and had them all locked away in the Underworld. Sickened at the treatment of her children, Gaia created a jagged sickle and rallied the Titans against their father. Only Cronos, the wiliest of the twelve, was willing to take up the blade. He attacked Uranus, slicing off his genitals and casting them into the sea.

And so Cronos claimed his father’s place as highest of all. Exulting in his newfound power, he took his own sister Rhea as a wife. She bore him children, but learning nothing from the fate of his father, Cronos treated his sons and daughters cruelly. He swallowed each one as they were born so that none could overthrow him someday. By the time she gave birth to their sixth child, Rhea had grown sick of Cronos’s deranged, abusive behavior. Instead of handing the baby over to Cronos, she swaddled a rock in infant’s clothing and gave him that instead. The stout-hearted young god was passed on to his grandmother Gaia, who whisked him away to a faraway cave. This child was Zeus, destined king of god and man… but for now he was just a boy, being raised in secrecy.

Attended by nymphs and nursed by the goat Amaltheia, the young prince grew up fast. Soon, the time came for him to continue the family tradition and challenge his father. Zeus allied himself with his cousin Metis, who slipped Cronos an emetic that caused him to vomit up all of his kids he had swallowed. Being immortals, they had survived inside his stomach for all those years, and the five quickly teamed up with their brother Zeus. Together, the young gods clashed against the Titans in an epic series of battles that would be recorded in legend as the Titanomachy. The war stretched on for ten long years, the shockwaves of their combat felt through all of existence. Zeus managed to get the upper hand by freeing his imprisoned uncles, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires. With their assistance, the Titans were swiftly defeated and imprisoned in the darkest pit of the Underworld, Tartarus.

After ascending to the throne, Zeus had a few orders of business to attend to. First was divvying up the universe. He and his brothers Hades and Poseidon drew lots to decide who would reign over what. Hades got the Underworld, Poseidon got the oceans, and Zeus got the sky… pretty much the best out of the three. It fit him well, as the Cyclopes had armed him with an arsenal of powerful thunderbolts, with which he could swiftly smite just about any being he wished.

Next was finding himself a queen. He first married Metis, but this didn’t last for long. Zeus’s grandparents told him of a prophecy which said his second child with Metis would be a son even stronger than he was. Not wanting history to repeat itself yet again, Zeus did the only rational thing he could and ate his own wife. She was pregnant at the time with their first child, and eventually Zeus gave birth to that baby through his own head – this was Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. This was his first child of what would be many. And I mean many, as in, triple digits.

After Metis, Zeus bounced from lover to lover, more than a few of them being his relatives. He eventually settled on his sister Hera as his queen, though he wasn’t exactly the most faithful husband. Even after tying the knot with Hera, he basically just kept doing whatever (and whoever) he pleased. These dalliances would lead to various conflicts with his wife, most notably over his bastard son Heracles. But you probably know all about him already.

Zeus’s life as the king of everything wasn’t all sunshine and incest. More cosmos-quaking battles were on the horizon. There was the Gigantomachy, a battle between gods and giants that nearly reached the scale of their first war with the Titans. Then came Typhon, a monstrous, hundred-headed serpentine being so enormous he brushed against the stars. Zeus took him on alone while the other gods fled, and after a hard-fought battle, the king of the Olympians managed to imprison him beneath a mountain.

No matter what threat beseiged Olympus, Zeus was always there to take it down. When the other gods stepped out of line, he was quick to put them back in their place. And if an uppity mortal ever dared to defy him, things never ended happily for them. Uranus and Cronos may have reigned before him, but Zeus was the true ruler of the endless universe, and he was never ashamed to let that immeasurable power go to his head.

But one may wonder if that old prophecy ever kept Zeus awake at night. Yes, if fate is to be taken as fact, then someday an even more powerful god than he will be born, and the cycle of Uranus’s bloodline will complete itself once more. Remember, the infant Olympians survived within Cronos’s stomach, so Metis is still alive within Zeus. Someday there will rise a threat that even Zeus’s power cannot match… as impossible that is to believe.

Odin

“Of small sands, of small seas,
small are the minds of men;
thus all men aren’t equally wise:
half wise, half not, everywhere.

Averagely wise a man ought to be,
never too wise;
for those men have the best sort of life
who know a fair amount.

Averagely wise a man ought to be,
never too wise;
for a wise man’s heart is seldom cheerful,
if he who owns it’s too wise.

Averagely wise a man ought to be,
never too wise;
let no one know his fate beforehand,
for he’ll have the most carefree spirit.”

In the beginning, there was nothing, nothing but the opposing forces of hot and cold. From these primordial opposites was born Ymir, the first giant, and Audhumla, a cow that fed him with rivers of milk. Ymir sweated as he slept, and his body reproduced with itself, birthing an entire race of frost-giants. Meanwhile, Audhumla licked away at a block of ice, eventually freeing from it the first man, Buri. Buri had a son, whose name was Bor. Bor took a giantess named Bestla as his wife, and together they had three children destined for greatness: Vili, Ve, and Odin.

For a time the three brothers lived among the giants. But eventually they grew ambitious. Together, Bor’s sons challenged and slew Ymir. So much blood flowed from his wounds that it wiped out all the giants except for a single household of them. Odin and his brothers created an ocean from this blood, and within it they shaped a world from the rest of Ymir’s body. Flesh and bone became soil and rock, his hairs became trees, his brains became clouds.

But they didn’t stop at just a blank canvas. Taking two logs and giving them life, they created the human race to populate their new world. They then built the city of Asgard, which would become the dwelling of the gods. Odin would take a wife, and from this union the Aesir gods were born. His many sons gained renown as mighty warriors; the thunderous Thor perhaps the greatest among them. Despite their immense power, they all submitted to Odin like children before their father. At some point, Odin would become blood brothers with the enigmatic Loki, an unpredictable shapeshifter who both assisted and worked against the gods. His tricks ranged from playful banter to ruthlessly engineering the death of Odin’s son Baldr. What can you say, the guy likes his pranks.

Odin’s position as leader of the Aesir was not without strife. Soon there would come a war between the Aesir and another tribe of gods called the Vanir. The details of this war are scattered and unclear, but what we do know is that the battle ultimately ended in a truce. The Aesir and Vanir sealed the deal by spitting into a vat, and as a further symbol of their new union, decided to magically transform it into a man. His name was Kvasir, and he was incredibly wise and well spoken, able to answer any question asked of him.

However, Kvasir was not meant to live for long. He was captured and murdered by giants, descendants of that single family who survived the death of Ymir. Those giants turned Kvasir’s body into a mead that granted whoever drank it the gift of poetry. Odin soon set his sights on this magical drink, and through various tricks, stole it for both god and man to enjoy.

In this new era, Odin somewhat faded into the background. Sure, he had his fair share of public accomplishments that won him fame from the common people, but for the most part, he let his sons take the spotlight. Mortals still worshipped him, giving him many names and attributing him many roles, but he wasn’t out slaying giants and fighting battles like Thor (or at least, not as often as Thor).

The truth was that Odin was preoccupied. The god had discovered a terrifying fact; he, his fellow Aesir, and the entire world he had helped create were all destined for destruction. The Doom of the Gods, Ragnarök, was not far away.

The All-Father consulted seereesses, soothsayers, and other learned beings to confirm this. He sought out all forms of information he could; he gave up his eye for a drink from Mimir’s well of wisdom, he hanged himself from the World Tree to unlock the secrets of runes, and he had his pet ravens travel the world daily to report to him whatever they heard. And, armed with knowledge, Odin began to scheme ways to overturn this dark fate.

To this end, he constructed the legendary Valhalla, the hall of the slain. Those who died in battle would be taken in by Odin’s valkyries and become Einherjar, supernatural warriors destined to join the gods in their final battle. Valhalla became the dream destination of every viking, but not all were so enthusiastic about being brought there. Odin began to manipulate events in the world of mortals, raising up great warriors and engineering their deaths to bolster his ranks. Many a hero’s tale was both started and cut short by Odin’s machinations.

Ultimately, Odin’s efforts would be in vain. Heralded by an unending winter, the Aesirs’ entire rogues’ gallery would rise up to crush them once and for all. Surtr and his fiery kin came from Muspelheim, shattering the rainbow bridge Bifrost. The World Serpent Jörmungandr emerged from the ocean, spattering earth and sky with poison, and the wolf Fenrir burst free from its bonds. Naglfar, a ship made of the unclipped nails of the deceased, sailed in with a crew of giants. Loki was among them, his true colors finally on full display.

Odin, the rest of the Aesir, and their faithful Einherjar warriors engaged these enemies on a vast field. But just as it had been foretold, this battle would be their last. Soon Odin found himself fighting Fenrir. Outmatched by the wolf’s vast power, he was finally caught and swallowed by its gaping jaws. And though he’d be swiftly avenged, that was the end for him. All his planning, all his work, all those knives stabbed in all those backs… it had been for nothing. Even for the divine, fate is not a force so easily overcome.

Surtr flung flames over the world, burning everything away, and the earth sunk into the sea. A new world emerged from the waves, and the few surviving gods made themselves a new home on its untouched plains… but their All-Father would not be there to lead them.

Godhood

Zeus

The Olympian gods are the latest and greatest generation in a line of deities that stretches back to the very start of creation itself. According to Hesiod, the first being in existence was Chaos, with Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros following soon after. Gaia would have many children, including Uranus. With Uranus – yes, her own son – she had the twelve Titans. The strongest of the Titans was Cronos, who took his sister Rhea as his wife, and from their bond was born Zeus and his siblings. So, Zeus has a direct genetic link to some of the most ancient beings in Greek myth. (It’s also a miracle he doesn’t have some kind of birth defect from all that inbreeding.)

Perhaps due to this primordial heritage, Zeus and the other gods are unaging and immortal. The amount of punishment these guys have bounced back from is immense. Even fresh out of the womb, Zeus’s siblings survived getting eaten by their father and being held in his stomach for years. In Greek myth, immortality seems to grant some form of regeneration: the most famous example of this is with the Titan Prometheus, who was punished to have his immortal liver eaten by an eagle daily, as it regrew each night. The giant Alcyoneus, who was immortal as long as he was in his homeland Pallene, also displayed regeneration. When Heracles first shot him with an arrow, he fell to the ground, but started “reviving” as he was still in Pallene. Of course, Heracles just dragged him out of the region and he died after.

Despite their immortality, the gods can and have been wounded before, sometimes even by mortals. Instead of regular blood, they bleed a substance called ichor, and instead of bread or wine, they consume “ambrosia and nectar”, divine fare not meant for mere mortals. Aside from being delicious, these foods have special properties. Thetis was able to preserve Patroclus’s corpse with the stuff, keeping away flies and preventing it from rotting, and in one of Pindar’s odes, the gods made the mortal Tantalus “incorruptible” (or immortal) by letting him feast on ambrosia and nectar with them. Of course, he tried to steal some for man, and things didn’t turn out so well for him in the end.

Immortal beings are often described as “deathless” (“ἀθάνατος” or “āthánatos” in the original Greek), and it seems they can’t even die if they want to. After being accidentally struck by one of Heracles’ hydra poison arrows, the immortal centaur Chiron was in so much pain that he desperately wanted to die, but he just literally couldn’t. After a deal was struck with Prometheus, Zeus removed Chiron’s immortality and the centaur was able to pass on. Note that there’s some debate over what exactly happens here, as the original Greek is vague. But in all interpretations, Chiron is always unable to die, and Zeus always takes his immortality away.

That’s another thing, actually, Zeus seems to even have some kind of control over immortality. Aside from pulling off the Chiron-Prometheus deal, he can confer it to other beings as he pleases. He’s done so with Ariadne, Ganymede, Endymion, Amphiaraus, and Tithonus, just to name a few. In that last case, he made Tithonus immortal but not ageless, and the man eventually lost his mind as he grew far older than any being should. Other gods have granted immortality to mortals as well.

Just as Cronos had overthrown Uranus, Zeus overthrew Cronos and took his position as the ultimate ruler of all of existence. He is the “most excellent” of the Olympians and “supreme in power,” and was the one to personally assign the other gods their positions and privileges. If he wants to, he can even take away these divine rights as a punishment, which he planned to do to the deities that didn’t join him in the battle against the Titans. After Apollo displeased him by slaying the Cyclopes, Zeus kicked him out of heaven and ordered him to toil for King Admetus as his slave for an entire year. Zeus also punished Apollo and Poseidon at one point by forcing them to work for King Laomedon, during which time they built the walls of Troy. Though he may be the top dog of the Olympians, Zeus still hears and responds to the prayers and sacrifices of mortals like the others do.

After usurping his father, Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades drew lots to pick their domains. Poseidon got the sea, Hades got the underworld, and Zeus got the sky. As such, many of his godly titles relate to the weather – he’s often called “Zeus who gathers the clouds” or “Zeus who delights in thunder” or other things like that. Aside from his well-known roles, Zeus has a few others. He’s a god of oaths, a god of hospitality, and a god of marketplaces. He’s also associated with fate. One of his names is Zeus Moiragetes, or “Zeus, leader/guide of the Fates.” He gained this moniker because of his relationship with the three fate-manipulating women known as the Moirai, or in English, the Fates; to be more specific, Zeus is sometimes shown as superior to the three, in that they’re his daughters who sit close to his throne, following his instructions and working through his power. However, just like the other Greek gods, Zeus is sometimes stated or shown to be just as bound by the threads of the Moirai as any other being.

Zeus’s occasional superiority over fate may be most famously displayed in the Iliad, where the Olympian considers intervening in a battle to save his son Sarpedon, who was long fated to die at the hands of Patroclus. Hera convinces him not to, but it still shows that if he really wanted, he could’ve gone against fate and prevented Sarpedon’s predestined demise. Something similar happens later with Hector, this time Athena convincing Zeus not to intervene. The Iliad also twice shows Zeus determining the fates of mortals with a special pair of scales, and they’re mentioned a third time as a metaphor for the turning of fate. Another, more arguable showing can be found in the tale of the Teumessian fox, a creature often said to be “fated” to escape any pursuer, and a hound (sometimes called Laelaps) who was similarly “fated” to capture whatever prey it pursued. When these two beasts wound up matched against one another, Zeus turned both of them to stone to put an end to the paradox they presented. You could argue he’s basically overriding fate in this instance.

Odin

Odin’s heritage is strange, to say the least. He’s the son of Bor and Bestla, daughter of Bolthorn. Bolthorn and Bestla are jötnar, or giants, a powerful race spawned from the primordial being Ymir. Bor was the son of Buri, a man who mysteriously appeared out of a block of salty ice that was licked away by the primeval cow Audhumla. No mother is named, so it seems Buri reproduced asexually. All of this somehow comes together to make a being of incredible might, the forebear of the Aesir gods.

As you’d probably expect, the Aesir are a bit different from us mere mortals. Like my Aunt Kathy, Odin can subsist on wine alone, requiring no food to live. And while they do naturally grow older, they all counteract the effects of aging by eating the goddess Idunn’s youth-restoring magic apples. Without these apples, the gods will quickly turn ugly and grey.

The Aesir live in the great city of Asgard, and all have their own special positions of power. They can hear and answer people’s prayers/sacrifices to them, which Odin is often shown doing in the Eddas and the sagas. Odin in particular takes on many godly roles. He’s known as the god of the hanged, the god of prisoners, and the god of cargoes, but he may be most famous as the god of the slain. He maintains Valhalla, a hall populated by deceased warriors who will join the gods in battle during the events of Ragnarök. These Einherjar spend their days drinking and beating each other up – yeah, it’s about what you’d expect from viking heaven.

His valkyries, working in conjunction with the fate-governing beings known as the norns, fly to every battle to pick who lives and who dies, and who wins and who loses. Odin does have dominion over them, but they have on occasion gone against his wishes and given victory to warriors he wanted dead. However, it’s sometimes said that Odin personally makes every decision, picking half the slain daily; Freyja, another god, gets to pick the other half, who go to her court Fólkvangr. There’s actually some speculation among historians that Freyja has some kind of connection with the valkyries, due in part to this detail. Keep this in the back of your mind, it’ll be relevant later… like fifty pages later, but still, later.

Mighty though the other Aesir may be, Odin still rules over them. He’s the “highest and most ancient” out of all of them; Odin is to the other gods as the World Tree Yggdrasil is to other trees. Even the strongest of the Aesir, such as the hammer-slinging giant slayer Thor, still submit to Odin like children before their father. Part of that is of course because… well, he literally is their father. But still, it tells much of his power that some of the mightiest beings in existence kneel before his presence.

Experience and Skill

Zeus

Nowadays, Zeus isn’t always portrayed as the most intelligent of deities. His impulsive and capricious nature as well as his various vices are all heavily played up. This has resulted in a popular characterization of Zeus as an impetuous id-driven imbecile, far removed from how he actually is in the original myths. While he definitely has his shortcomings, Zeus is an incredibly capable and intelligent being, possessing one of the fiercest minds in Greek myth.

His history as both a leader and a warrior is one few can hope to match. Zeus lead the Olympians to victory in the decade-spanning Titanomachy and then did the same in the Gigantomachy that followed it. The Olympian also managed to defeat Typhon in single combat (though how easily varies from telling to telling, and in some he did need assistance), an enemy that sent all the other gods packing. With that much hands-on combat experience against that many universe-threatening adversaries, it’s clear Zeus is no slouch in battle.

As for statements and comparisons, there’s plenty to go over. He’s known as the “god of counsel”, and is considered wiser than other deities such as Poseidon and on par with other particularly crafty ones like Athena. In Homer’s works, Zeus is compared to Odysseus in terms of strategic shrewdness (or, well, Odysseus is compared to him), a legendarily clever hero who Zeus himself believes is “beyond all mortals in wisdom.” Cottus, one of the ancient hundred-handed Hecatoncheires, praised Zeus’s wisdom and understanding as “exceeding.” Though Prometheus did famously manage to sneak fire past the Olympian, Zeus did see through another trick of his once. That passage repeatedly describes Zeus’s wisdom as “everlasting,” and also says that it’s “not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus.” Which… well, that’s a pretty tough statement to believe when you consider the times he has been deceived, but it’s there in the text.

Like the other gods, he has often taken on the role of a manipulator. He orchestrated events behind the scenes of the Trojan War, constantly putting the other gods back in their places when they tried to intervene and ensuring that the flow of the conflict followed his whims. One particular trick he pulled was sending a deceptive dream to Agamemnon to goad him into attacking Troy. While Zeus does indeed think with what’s between his legs rather than what’s on his shoulders from time to time, he can be far more cunning than the jokes give him credit for.

Odin

Odin is widely regarded as the wisest of the Aesir, and his thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. In the god’s unending search for more insight into the universe, he’s given up his own eye for a drink from Mimir’s well of wisdom, has his pet ravens constantly circle the world to bring him news, and even sacrificed himself to himself to gain knowledge on runes. To do so, Odin had to stab himself with Gungnir and hang himself from a branch of the world tree for nine days. A little intense, but he did learn his ᚣᛒᛈ’s in the end, so I’d say it was worth it.

As a god of war (just one of his many titles), Odin naturally is wise in all manners of combat. He describes himself as “trained in battle” and personally participated on the front lines of the Aesir-Vanir war. In sources like the sagas, he frequently appears to give warriors advice or assistance, such as Sigurd or King Jormunrekk and his men. One particular thing Odin likes to teach his heroic pupils is a certain wedge-shaped battle formation called the svínfylking. He makes mention of it in the Poetic Edda poem Reginsmal, and it pops up repeatedly in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, where he teaches it to both Harald Wartooth and Hadding. The fragmentary text Sögubrot also references Odin teaching it to Harald. Going back to Gesta Danorum, it gives us another taste of Odin’s tactical acumen and combat prowess, detailing that while undercover as a Russian soldier, Odin was able to lead the king’s army to glorious victories, even beating the entire enemy line to flight single-handedly in one battle.

Outside of combat-relevant talents, Odin is also known for his skill as a poet. He was the one to steal the mead of poetry from the giant Suttung, giving it to both god and human. He was also able to best both King Heidrek and the all-wise giant Vafthrudnir in contests of intellect, though admittedly by way of a pretty cheap trick question. And in one particularly memorable poem, he dueled his son Thor in a “flyting”, basically an exchange of crude insults. Who won? You decide… but it was totally Odin.

The euhemerized source Heimskringla has probably the most extreme portrayal of Odin’s intellect. Though Odin may only be portrayed as a human in it, he and the other “gods” are said to be the originators of all skills men practiced for long after. They all taught their skills to other people, with Odin being superior to them all, and even keeping some skills to himself that he never gave away. He’s also an accomplished warrior in this source, taking power over many countries and winning every battle he waged, “so blessed with victory that in every battle he was the winner.” His immense, unprecedented talent and streak of victories lead to people thinking he could literally decide who wins and who loses, which eventually became the basis of the myths about him that spread after he died of sickness in his old age.

Abilities

Zeus

Weather Manipulation

Zeus’s most famous ability is his dominion over the weather. As the lord of the sky, he was believed to be responsible for much of the earth’s weather as it changed throughout the seasons, though other deities like the various personified winds each played their own roles. While he may be most commonly associated with thunderstorms and lightning, he’s equally capable of whipping up regular old rain, blasts of wind, snow, hail and blizzards, and even rainbows.

Zeus’s weather manipulation doesn’t stop at just the mundane. He can make blood rain from the sky, and does so twice in the Iliad; first as a signal before a battle starts, then to honor Sarpedon before his fated death at the hands of Patroclus. This power is also shown in Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles, where Zeus makes it rain blood again as a signal for Heracles during his fight with Cycnus. Going back to the Iliad, there’s one memorable instance where Zeus creates a cloud of gold to hide himself and Hera while they make love on a mountaintop. This golden cloud was so opaque not even Helios could see through it.

Shapeshifting

Zeus can alter his form in just about any way he pleases. He can take on the shapes of different animals, such as a bull or a swan, and other individuals, such as King Amphitryon, Apollo, or Artemis. He can also take on less “solid” forms, as he famously did when he turned himself into a stream of gold to seep into an underground chamber and impregnate the princess Danaë. Shapeshifting seems to be a universal ability of the Greek gods, as almost every single one of the major Olympians is shown doing so in at least one source.

Transformation / Granting Life

Alongside the ability to shapeshift, Zeus and the other Greek gods have frequently displayed the power to transform other beings. They can turn people into animals, usually as a punishment, as in the cases of Alcyon and Ceyx, whom Zeus turned into birds for being prideful, Actaeon, a hunter that was turned into a deer and ripped apart by his own dogs after seeing Artemis bathing, and Ascalaphus, who Demeter transformed into an owl after Heracles set him free from the Underworld.

It’s not always a punishment, though, as Zeus once turned a woman named Io into a cow to try and hide that he was having sex with her when Hera came to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Hera didn’t buy it. Zeus also transformed the young Dionysus into a baby goat to disguise him from Hera, passing him on to Hermes. It’s also not always humans who are the ones being transformed: when Zeus’s son Aeacus was lonely, the Olympian transformed some ants into men for him.

The gods can also transform people into nonliving materials. Zeus has turned the people of Queen Niobe into stone, turned a dog and a vixen into stone, and seemingly turned a snake into stone which he sent as an omen to the Achaeans. This often takes the form of turning someone or something into a star or constellation to honor them, as Zeus has done several times.

They can also do the opposite, transforming nonliving materials into living beings. Zeus and the other Olympians created various races of men that existed in the ages before our own, crafting them out of various materials such as ash-trees. These races all eventually went extinct, and one of them – the silver race, as they’re called – Zeus personally wiped out, as they were fools who refused to give proper honor to the gods. Zeus was also responsible for the creation of the first woman, Pandora, though that was also a team effort alongside the other gods, and he somehow allowed the mortals Deucalion and Pyrrha to create humans by throwing stones over their heads.

We know that Zeus can create life on his own, as he once made a woman out of clouds that resembled Hera to trick the lustful mortal Ixion. After Ixion had sex with the cloud-woman and bragged about getting with Hera, Zeus revealed the ruse and punished him. The cloud-woman Zeus made, Nephele, wasn’t just some kind of nonliving dummy, but an actual sentient being, capable of having sex, getting pregnant, and giving birth to the centaur race. In Diodorus Siculus’ Library of History, she’s even able to intervene in a fight between her sons and Heracles, assisting the centaurs by conjuring up a heavy rainstorm.

And finally, the gods can also just transform one kind of material into another. Poseidon, on Zeus’s advice, once turned a seafaring ship into stone to sink it.

Mist

The Greek gods are able to either generate or manipulate some kind of magical force referred to as “mist.” This power is primarily used for hiding or obscuring things, though it may have other uses, as it’s only ever described in the vaguest of terms.

Zeus himself isn’t frequently shown making use of mist. In Book 8 of the Iliad, he uses the power to hide his horses and chariot. Some translations say he’s just hiding them in a “cloud”, implying what he’s doing in the scene is an extension of his weather manipulation. As translations that lean more towards direct accuracy show, this is just the word for “mist” being translated differently. In Book 17 he makes a more clear use of this power, spreading mist over a battlefield to obscure the sight of the warriors present. He keeps this up throughout the chapter, spreading even more mist, but after being prayed to by Ajax, he disperses it so that they can see clearly again. Similar to before, some translations will instead use the word “darkness” in place of “mist,” but in the original, it’s mist. Hera does something similar to this later on, spreading a thick mist to hinder some Trojans fleeing from Achilles, as does Apollo, who spreads a mist over Hector’s corpse to keep the sunlight from withering it.

The Olympian who’s most frequently shown manipulating mist is Athena, who constantly makes use of it in the Iliad and the Odyssey. By removing the mist from the mortal Diomedes’s eyes, she allows him to discern disguised gods from humans. The gods are shown to have the power to disguise themselves as specific mortals or even hide themselves from mortals present, allowing only specific ones to discern their presence. That scene with Diomedes could imply those powers are performed by manipulating mist, which is backed up in other scenes which seem to describe Athena, Hera, Hypnos, and Apollo (multiple times) as hiding or cloaking themselves using mist. In the Odyssey, Athena used mist to disguise Odysseus when they visited the Phaeacians, and again later to prevent him from recognizing his own homeland.

Gods are also shown transporting mortals through the use of mist, though whether this is some kind of magical mist-based teleportation or just the gods cloaking themselves as they move the target personally is unclear. In the Iliad, Aphrodite uses this to whisk Paris away from a battlefield before Menelaus can kill him, with Paris seeming to disappear to the soldiers present, and later on Apollo uses it to protect Aeneas from Diomedes, then temporarily moves both himself and Aeneas away from the battlefield to a mountain called Pergamus. Apollo also creates an illusion of Aeneas to take his place, but it’s unclear if that’s a use of mist or just something Apollo can do. Apollo also uses mist later to save both Hector and Agenor from Achilles. There’s even more examples: Poseidon pulls this trick off as well, using mist to save the twin brothers known as the Moliones after they’re wounded in battle by Nestor. Later on, Poseidon uses mist again to save Aeneas from Achilles. In this instance, the god specifically sheds the mist around Achilles, preventing the warrior from seeing him physically move Aeneas away. When Poseidon disperses the mist, Achilles pretty quickly puts together what happens, but it’s still as if Aeneas just vanished in front of him.

Zeus can likely use mist to transport people as well. In Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library, Zeus seems to do so when he “snatches” Heracles away from the island of Cos after he was harmed in battle (presumably while watching over his son from Olympus). In the Iliad, he seems to consider doing the same kind of thing to rescue Sarpedon, before Hera convinces him not to. However, mist isn’t explicitly mentioned in these instances.

Blessings / Protection

The moral failings of the Greek gods are much spoken of nowadays, so it can be easy to forget that they were ultimately seen as benevolent forces back in their time. Benevolent to those they favored, at least. Zeus can provide his faithful with enhanced power, protection from harm, and other boons.

“Through him mortal men are famed or unfamed, sung or unsung alike, as great Zeus wills. For easily he makes strong, and easily he brings the strong man low; easily he humbles the proud and raises the obscure, and easily he straightens the crooked and blasts the proud.” He told humanity of certain auspicious days of the year when it is best to take certain actions, and he can protect his favored cities from famine and disaster, and ensure that they flourish in all ways. The tribes of Tlepolemus’s family are one example, receiving much wealth from the god.

If a warrior needs an assist in battle, a god can breathe strength into them, letting them fight with far more ferocity than they could before. This happens basically every other sentence in the Iliad. Zeus repeatedly aroused might in the hearts of the Trojans, vouchingsafing them and Hector glory in battle. With Zeus in his corner, Hector racked up kills, and at one point he was able to lift and throw a huge boulder thanks to Zeus’s help. Alongside making Hector and his men stronger, Zeus even “breathed great might” into a pair of horses he took pity on. It’s also mentioned that Zeus granted might both to the people of Pylos and to Aeneas in the past, specifically giving the latter the speed he needed to flee from Achilles.

Aside from just increasing their strength and speed, Zeus and the other gods have been shown to grant people special powers. As I covered in the Godhood section, Zeus has bestowed immortality onto multiple mortals, but that’s not all he’s done. After the mortal Tiresias was blinded, Zeus granted him the ability of prophecy to make up for it. (This is just one of many different tellings of how Tiresias got his powers, by the way.) In a fragment of one of Hesiod’s lost works, it’s said that Zeus is the reason for a number of tribes’ knowledge of seercraft. In the Iliad Apollo was similarly able to bestow prophetic powers to a man named Calchas, and in the Odyssey he did the same to a mortal named Polypheides. Zeus has also granted a few mortals extended lifespans and some degree of agelessness – not immortality, just extra decades. As for other gods, Poseidon gave Orion the ability to walk on water and gave Periclymenus the ability to shapeshift.

When it comes to protecting their faithful, the Greek gods tend to be a little more hands on. They seem to have an ability kind of like telekinesis, which they often use to remotely manipulate objects in small ways. For one example, Zeus was able to cause Teucer’s bowstring to snap before he could shoot Hector, saving the Trojan hero from certain death. Aphrodite did something similar to save Paris, causing the chinstrap of his helmet to break before he was choked to death with it. Apollo attempted to interfere in a chariot race by causing one competitor’s lash to fly out of his hand, but Athena countered by returning the lash, then causing a different competitor’s yoke to break. (I’ll note that these feats are sometimes described vaguely; while there are times where the gods are explicitly moving or breaking objects remotely, there are some instances where they could just be moving the objects with their hands while hidden by mist. Due to how these old sources are written, it can be hard to tell.)

A frequently depicted use of this protective ability is redirecting projectiles. When she wishes to assist a warrior or save them from harm, Athena has often steered arrows or guided spears. Gods such as Apollo and Poseidon have accomplished similar feats as well. Zeus himself did this during the Trojan War on an impressive scale, ensuring that the Trojans’ thrown spears and other projectiles made their marks by straightening them in midair, while the Achaeans’ own projectiles fell down uselessly.

There are also times when the protection the Olympian grants is described more vaguely, such as when Zeus “warded” the warrior Sarpedon from destruction in his battle with Tlepolemus, or when he “warded off death” from the wounded warriors Deïphobus and Helenus.

Curses / Punishments

Just as Zeus can reward those he deems worthy, he can punish those who wrong him. While the gods are responsible for wealth and fame, they’re equally responsible for poverty and obscurity; there’s many customs you need to hold yourself to, lest you incur the contempt of the gods. While Zeus ensures his favored cities know nothing but peace and prosperity, he besets sinful ones with widespread famine, plague, death, infertility, and destruction.

Zeus and the other Greek gods can reprimand mortals with woeful afflictions of all kinds. Zeus was able to strip the human Lycurgus of his ability to see, as well as remove the ability of speech from the beings that we now know as diseases. During the Trojan War, Poseidon paralyzed the soldier Alcathous so that he couldn’t avoid an oncoming spear thrust from Idomeneus. Oh, and one time, Aphrodite made a bunch of women smell really bad so their husbands wouldn’t have sex with them, and another time, a demigoddess (or lesser deity) named Pasiphae cursed King Minos so that he ejaculated snakes, scorpions, and millipedes. Those last two aren’t all that relevant, but, what, was I just supposed to leave them out?

Aside from these simpler curses, Zeus has come up with some pretty twisted punishments for those that truly displeased him. Here’s a couple of the ones we know he personally put into action:

• For fighting against the gods in the Titanomachy, Zeus condemned Atlas to bear the weight of the heavens on his shoulders.
• When Hera went against his wishes by blowing Heracles off course, Zeus put an unbreakable golden chain around her wrists and hung her from heaven with anvils tied to her feet.
• Zeus bound the mortal Ixion to a spinning wheel for all eternity after he attempted to rape Hera.
• The poet Pindar says that Zeus hung a large stone over Tantalus’s head for stealing from the gods. Tantalus’s punishment is described much differently in sources such as the Odyssey.
• A fragment of a poem by the lyric poet Alcaeus implies that Zeus was the one that gave Sisyphus his legendary punishment of repeatedly rolling a boulder up a steep hill.
• After Prometheus tricked him and gave fire to humanity, Zeus imprisoned him on a mountainside with “inextricable bonds” and set an eagle on him to constantly eat his regenerating liver. (Some sources elaborate that these bonds were created by Hephaestus.)

Zeus also decided to set humanity back to compensate for the gift Prometheus gave them, rallying the gods to create the most horrfying thing imaginable: women. Specifically, the first woman Pandora, along with a jar full of all the evils that persist to this day. Pandora promptly opened that jar and all those evils spilled right out.

The Greek gods are often shown summoning animals to attack or otherwise give trouble to uppity mortals. Poseidon sent a sea monster to attack Troy after the king refused to pay him for building the city’s walls, and sent another sea monster to attack Ethiopia after the queen boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than any of Poseidon’s. He also sent King Minos a bull to sacrifice, but after it was spared, he drove it mad so that it would attack. Artemis sent a giant boar to attack Calydon when they didn’t sacrifice to her, and when Admetus also forgot to sacrifice to her at his wedding, she filled his wedding chamber with snakes. Hera was able to send two huge serpents to attack baby Heracles, as well as send a gadfly to pester Io after she was turned into a cow by Zeus. She also sent another gadfly to disperse a group of cows Heracles was herding. Zeus can do this kind of thing as well. He set that eagle upon Prometheus, ordered another eagle to kidnap the mortal Ganymede, and regularly sends eagles and other creatures as signs to mortals. (Those latter two things will be expanded on later.)

If Zeus or one the other gods wishes to lock someone or something away, they can throw them to a deep part of the Underworld known as Tartarus. This vile pit is where the gods imprisoned the Titans after defeating them. Since they were immortal, they couldn’t just kill them or anything like that. Zeus personally sent Menoetius there, a child of the Titan Iapetus, after striking him with a lightning bolt. He also nearly threw Apollo down there once, but his mother convinced him to pursue an alternate punishment. Considering the kinds of threats Tartarus can keep contained, escaping should be no easy feat.

Mind Manipulation

The Greek gods are able to alter the mental states of other beings, even when they’re in heaven and their target is on Earth. Zeus can take away someones “wits” or intelligence, as he did to Iphicles and Glaucus, can rouse people to fight and put fury in their hearts, as he did to Patroclus, and can induce powerful fear in people, as he did to Ajax. In some tellings of a particular tale, Zeus made a man fall in love with his own daughter and have a child with her. And no, we don’t get a reason why he did that. He just did.

This mind manipulation works on gods as well, as Zeus was able to “cast sweet desire to be joined in love with a mortal man” onto Aphrodite. Zeus has even made good use of this power in combat before. During the Gigantomachy, he filled the giant Porphyrion with lust for Hera. The giant was distracted and immediately began to assault the goddess, thus giving Zeus and Heracles the opening they needed to take him down. Yeah, it’s… well, it worked, didn’t it?

The Greek gods use this power incredibly often, so grabbing every single instance is impossible. Probably the most infamous showing of this power was when Hera sent Heracles into a frenzy, causing him to slaughter his own family. In the Odyssey, Athena repeatedly uses it to exacerbate the bad behavior of Penelope’s suitors, once sending them into an uncontrollable group laughing fit. The power isn’t always used in a negative way, as in the Iliad, the gods often use it to grant their favored fighters a boost of courage. Here’s one example with the river deity Xanthus/Scamander and the Paeonian warrior Asteropaeus.

Sending Signs

A god’s powers can be hard to classify sometimes, so this is a somewhat general category. Zeus is frequently shown sending “signs” or “omens” to mortals, which can take many different forms. These are occasionally described vaguely, such as just being referred to as “tokens of ill.” A few of the specifically described signs he’s sent include a snake that devours a sparrow and her children then suddenly turns to stone, an eagle with a fawn caught in its talons, an eagle with a monstrous snake caught in its talons, two eagles that tear at each other with their talons, or just one eagle that’s kinda big. Lots of snakes and eagles, for some reason. Of course, Zeus will sometimes just stick with his trademark weather manipulation, sending thunder, lightning, or rainbows as signs. He can even send stars in the sky as portents, and he’s known to be able to send mortals dreams as well.

Of course, it’s up to the mortals who see these omens to interpret what they mean. Usually the nature of the sign reflects the message the god is trying to send. However, if Zeus wants to deceive rather than assist, these signs don’t always have to be accurate. In the Iliad, he sent a dream to Agamemnon that took the form of his father Nestor giving him some faulty advice. Just another of his many efforts to manipulate the Trojan War from behind the scenes.

Prophecy

The ancient Greeks believed in oracles and prophecies, and in their myths even the gods made use of them. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Apollo claims that of the Olympians, only Zeus knows the art of sooth-saying, or predicting the future. The other Olympians are forbidden from learning it, and Zeus shares his counsels with Apollo. However, Apollo also makes mention of other methods of divination which he has practiced. Other sources disagree on the claim that Zeus is the only god that knows how to prophesy, some saying that Pan taught Apollo how to do so, for one example.

As mentioned above in the Blessings section, both Zeus and Apollo have granted the power of prophecy onto mortals. One of Zeus’s many names is Zeus Panomphaeus, which can be translated different ways, but basically means “Zeus, source/author/sender of all oracles.” This title of his pops up in the Iliad. While Apollo may be more well known as the “Greek god of prophecy” nowadays, Zeus has a pretty undeniable connection to the practice as well.

It should be noted that it sometimes seems possible Zeus gets his prophecies from elsewhere. The Greek gods are pretty regularly shown to be knowledgeable about future events without the specific source of that knowledge ever being pointed out – so either they could be divining the future on their own, or they could just be recalling prophecies they heard about from someone else. In some tellings, Gaia and Uranus are the ones to inform Zeus of the prophecy of his future son with Metis, and in Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library, Gaia tells Zeus a prophecy of how the Titanomachy would be won. Other sources imply that Zeus gets his foresights from the Fates, though the most solid instance of this I could find is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

All-Seeing

Zeus is sometimes mentioned as being able to see everything in the world and understand it all as well. A fragment from the playwright Aeschylus goes as far to claim that “Zeus is air, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven, yea, Zeus is all things and whatsoever trancendeth them.”

Don’t get me wrong, Zeus doesn’t exactly seem omniscient or omnipresent in many stories. Most famously, Prometheus was able to trick him and give fire to humanity, sneaking it out of Olympus. In the Iliad, Poseidon was able to intervene in a fight that Zeus had declared off-limits to the other gods by sneaking onto the battlefield while Zeus was looking away, and later on, Hera was able to seduce and distract Zeus (along with having Hypnos put him into a magical sleep) to keep him from looking down and seeing what Poseidon was doing. Later still, Hera is able to send Iris to deliver a message to Achilles without Zeus knowing. If Zeus truly was constantly seeing everything everywhere all at once, then these moments wouldn’t make much sense.

At the very least, the Greek gods are capable of watching earthly events from heaven, shown countless times across many sources. Here’s one example from the Iliad. For a specific feat of sight for Zeus, while on Mount Ida on Earth, he was able to see Hera and Athena gearing up in Olympus to intervene in a battle between mortals, and so sent Iris to stop them from doing so.

Omnipotence (Orphism)

Hmm… maybe I should’ve lead with this one.

Generally, Zeus is not shown to be all-powerful, despite being called “almighty” or “omnipotent” from time to time. Just like the other Greek gods, he’s often shown exerting effort and faces some clear limitations. However, in a sort of separate religion that existed under the wider Greek umbrella known as Orphism, Zeus was believed to be a truly omnipotent creator god. There’s honestly not a wealth of material on this belief system like there is for the more “traditional” form of Greek mythology, so even saying that much is a bit of a guess.

Yes, I’m sure some of you were waiting for me to say the “O” word. In the world of battleboarding, Orphism has picked up quite a reputation over the years. People seem to think it’s the Star Wars Legends or Archie Sonic of Greek mythology, the weird obscure secondary materials that bump up all the characters to Suggsversian levels of power. (Yes, I’m fully aware of how deranged that last sentence must sound.) And that’s not without reason, as Zeus actually does get some pretty absurd feats and statements in these Orphic materials. Here’s a few:

• Hymns call Zeus “indestructible,” “invincible,” “father of all, beginning and end of all, earth-shaker, increaser and purifier, all-shaker,” and “gentle Zeus, who gives birth to all.”
• A hymn to the Fates puts Zeus on the same level as them, saying that “Fate and Zeus’ mind know all things for all time.”
• One fragment says that Zeus was able to turn into a dragon and bind Rhea with a knot, and mentions that he swallowed Phanes, a being who hatched from the egg that created the world.
• This fragment tells the story of Zeus swallowing Phanes more completely – it says that after Zeus swallowed Phanes, he “had the body of all things in his belly” and took Phanes’ strength for his own. Because of this, the entire universe was absorbed into Zeus, including all the other immortal gods and goddesses. “All that had existed and all that was to exist afterwards became one” inside him.

Sadly, most of these old texts were lost to time and only survive in fragments (which are a bitch to find sourced online), so we’re somewhat lacking in broader context. It’s hard to say that Orphic stories should be drawn from for the purposes of this blog, as they’re pretty far removed from typical Greek myth. If you’re attempting to present a more “traditional” or “standard” version of Zeus, well, I would say that leaving them out makes the most sense. I’ll explain why I bothered including this section later.

(In case you’re curious, the image for this category is a photo of the Petelia Gold Tablet, an artifact dated to the 3rd century BC which is inscribed with an Orphic saying.)

Odin

Creation

In the beginning, there was nothing but the icy world of Niflheim in the north, the fiery world of Muspelheim in the south, and the yawning void of Ginnungagap. When the spreading frost and drifting sparks of those two worlds met in the vast empty gap, it resulted in the creation of Ymir, the first giant. Later on, three godly brothers named Odin, Vili, and Ve would be born, and together they would challenge and slay Ymir. The trio took the giant’s corpse, brought it to the middle of Ginnungagap, and from it created the world and everything in it.

Ymir’s flesh became the ground we walk on; his blood, the lakes and rivers and oceans. His hair made the trees, his brains made the clouds, his bones and teeth made stones and rocks. To crown their world, the gods took Ymir’s hollowed-out skull and, propping it up with four dwarves, they populated it with sparks from Muspelheim to make the stars in the sky. They set some to be fixed in place and gave others certain courses to follow. Night and day, as well as the Sun and Moon, were created when Odin and the other gods gave certain beings chariots and horses and had them fly around the world 24/7. The chariot of the sun, like the other stars, is another spark from Muspelheim.

Though none are quite as large in scale, Odin’s creations didn’t stop with just the world. Along with the other gods, he constructed the city of Asgard and the fiery rainbow bridge Bifrost. Odin also personally designed certain halls, including Valaskialf, and presumably Valhalla as well.

To imprison a disobedient valkyrie named Sigrdrifa (or Brynhild, the name is different in different tellings for a few reasons), Odin struck her with a magical slumber and built a blockade around her. The specifics of this blockade fluctuate in the many different tellings of this tale, but it’s either shown as a hall with a banner flying over it and a fiery light in the sky above, or a fortress surrounded by a burning ring of fire. In the blockade’s second appearance in The Saga of the Volsungs (which contradictorily depicts both versions), the ring of fire surges when Sigurd rides over it, the flames reaching “to the heavens” and causing the earth around them to shake. 

“Creation” isn’t exactly the best word to use here, as Odin doesn’t seem to be able to conjure something out of nothing. He at least never explicitly displays such a power. In regards to places like Asgard, the gods are described as “building” their halls and crafting tools out of normal materials, in multiple sources. And of course, Odin and his brothers used Ymir’s body parts to make the world – they didn’t just poof the mountains and the seas into existence out of thin air. “Construction” would probably be a better word choice, but let’s just face it, that’s an awful name for a category.

Granting Life

When Odin, Vili, and Ve were first strolling the beaches of the world they had created, they came across two logs. From these logs they created the first human beings, Ask and Embla. Odin was the one to grant them breath and life, while his brothers gave them their consciousness, movement, speech, and senses. In a different source, Odin is instead said to have done this with two lesser known gods named Hænir and Lodur, though he’s still the one to grant them breath.

Later on, Odin and the other Aesir also granted higher intelligence and human shape to the dwarves, who were originally just maggots wriggling around in Ymir’s flesh. And together with the Vanir, they also made a man called Kvasir out of a big kettle of god spit. Cause, well, what else are you going to do with a big kettle of god spit?

Eighteen Magic Spells

In the Poetic Edda poem Havamal, Odin lists out eighteen magic spells that he knows. Yeah, interestingly, this poem is written from his perspective. Different translations use the word “song,” “chant,” or “charm” in place of “spell.” These various translations differ in other word choices as well, which can affect what exactly each spell is interpreted to do. I’m mainly sticking to the primary translation of the Poetic Edda I’m using for this post, though I will bring up translation differences wherever I find them most relevant.

Keep in mind that we get little information on these spells within Havamal itself; just a scant few lines of poetry for each. The specifics of how they work, their precise uses and limits, how Odin performs them, etcetera etcetera, it’s all very unclear and up for debate. We mostly just get a general sense of what they do. If Odin uses (or at least does something similar to) one of these spells in another source, I’ll include that under the description of the spell.

Spell 1: Helping

A simple helping spell. Odin says it can help with “law-suits and sorrows and every sort of anxiety.” How exactly it helps you out, or how much it helps, is never stated.

Spell 2: Healing

All Odin really says about this spell is that it’d be useful to people who want to work as physicians. From that, we can assume it’s some kind of healing spell, but how it works exactly is never stated. Yeah, get used to that.

In the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, we do actually get two scenes of Odin using his healing skills. In the first, he uses a healing potion to repair Hadding’s wounds after he’s injured in a battle with the Kurlanders. In the second, he heals the warrior Sigvard’s wound with just a “manipulation of his hand,” even though all previous attempts to treat the gash were “completely hopeless.” Odin also sprinkles some magic dust into Sigvard’s eyes that makes spots shaped like little snakes show up in them, which I’m pretty sure they sell at Hot Topic.

Spell 3: Blunting Weapons

This spell allows Odin to hinder his enemies by blunting the edges of their weapons, making it so that they cannot cut. It even seems to work against non-edged weapons, such as cudgels. The focus on weapons in the description of this spell has me thinking it wouldn’t work on, say, an opponent’s fists or magical attacks.

However, some translators believe that the line that implies it works against non-edged weapons is actually trying to imply that the spell can defend against magic, arguing that there’s no way to “blunt” something that’s already blunt, and that the “cudgels” mentioned could be magic staffs. This is just a few translators’ interpretation, however – the majority of translations just interpret the stanza as saying the spell can protect against blunt weapons as well as sharp ones.

The power to blunt blades frequently appears in sources of Norse myth, both as a passive property of a warrior or set of armor, usually thanks to a blessing of some kind, and as actively casted magic as described here. The euhemerized source Heimskringla also mentions that Odin possesses this power, though it only implies that it works on edged weapons, saying that Odin can make them “cut no better than sticks.”

Spell 4: Escaping Bonds

A simple chant Odin can use to escape bonds, be they fetters around his feet or chains around his wrists. Any binding Odin is trapped in will just spring off of his body. Simple as that, really.

Spell 5: (Slowing / Stopping) (Arrows / Spears)

If an arrow is shot at Odin, this spell lets him slow it down, as long as he’s able to see it coming. This main translation I’m quoting from here says he “hinders it,” which can be interpreted various ways; other translations choose to say that he can stop the arrow completely, or that he catches it with his fingers, and some alternately say that the spell stops spears, not arrows. Apparently, the most literal reading of the original Norse favors the “stops it completely” interpretation, and the “arrow versus spear” debate comes from the neutral word “shaft” being used. It’s unclear if this works against all projectiles or just arrows/spears.

Spell 6: Redirecting Curses

This one requires a bit of external context to make sense of. In the main translation I’m quoting from, Odin says that “if a man wounds (him) using roots of the sap-filled wood” he can use this spell to make it so that “the evil consumes him, not me.” Here’s some more literal translations for a bit of extra perspective. You can get a vague idea of what it does from Havamal, but you really need to consult some other sources for the full picture.

This mention of “sap-filled wood” is seemingly a reference to a type of harmful spell in Norse stories that involves the caster making use of a piece of wood. In The Saga of Grettir the Strong, a witch casts a spell on the titular protagonist by carving runes into a tree’s root, which she further enchants with incantations. When Grettir later comes into contact with this tree, he winds up incurring a wound. At first it heals quickly, but because of the witch’s magic, it suddenly flares back up again and becomes grotesquely infected. This develops into a sickness which brings Grettir to the brink of death, and ultimately he’s killed in battle due in part to being hindered by the wound.

There are other cases of wood being used in harmful spells too. In fact, Odin does as much in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum. During his attempts to force himself on Princess Rinda, he touches her with a piece of bark “inscribed with spells.” This enchanted bark “made her like one demented” and she also later happens to fall sick, kind of like Grettir, but it’s not explicitly stated to be the bark’s fault.

(I’d like to note that this second connection is one of my own; while I’ve seen several academic translations link the instance of a wood-based curse from Grettir’s saga back to Odin’s sixth spell while attempting to explain its purpose, none have linked this scene from Gesta Danorum. I don’t have a degree in this crap so take this particular point with a grain of salt.)

All that to say, this spell protects Odin from this kind of harmful magic, redirecting its effects back to the caster. Its exact mechanics are unclear, however. Does it work on all kinds of curses and magical attacks, or just curses like these ones described? And is it a constant defense for Odin, or does he need to do something to consciously activate it? It’s all very debatable, since again, all we have is a few lines of poetry.

Going back to the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, we do get a scene where Odin counteracts a witch’s magic, though he doesn’t do so for himself, and it’s unclear if it’s reflected back to the caster. When a witch named Guthrun uses her magic to blind a number of Danish soldiers, causing them to attack one another in confusion, Odin pops in and uses his “divine power” to undo the witch’s blindness-inducing sorcery. To reiterate though, this scene doesn’t line up 1:1 with how this magic-counteracting spell is described, and it’s another connection I’m making myself. It’s also just kinda the best place I could put this.

In The Saga of Hrolf the Walker, we get an example of a curse being redirected, though not by Odin. When a group of twelve magic users start performing a ritual to try and make the main heroes all kill one another, the dwarf Mondul goes around and carves counterspells into the special platform the men are using to cast the curse. Like Odin’s sixth spell in Havamal, this makes the magic backfire onto the casters, causing them to all kill themselves.

Spell 7: Counteracting Flames

This spell allows Odin to “counteract” even the most towering, widely-burning flames, protecting his companions. Though we know this is performed verbally, there’s technically several ways to interpret the word “counteract.” It could be that Odin grants himself and his allies some kind of immunity to heat, or just that he puts the flames out. Though different translations go with different interpretations, the vagueness exists in the original Norse version.

While we don’t really get a story where Odin uses this ability to put out a fire, he does make a ring of fire around Sigrdrifa/Brynhild in a story recounted in several sources, as detailed above in the “Creation” section. The euhemerized source Heimskringla also mentions that Odin has the ability to put out fires in a list of his powers.

Spell 8: Calming Hatred

When hatred flares up between the sons of warriors, Odin can use this spell to quickly bring settlement between them. This is another one where we don’t exactly have a lot of information on the specifics, but it seems pretty simple anyways.

While we don’t really get any scenes of Odin magically calming hatred between warriors in other sources, there is a source for him possibly magically causing hatred. In the Poetic Edda poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, a man named Dag claims that Odin was responsible for the battle between Helgi and Granmar’s armies by casting “hostile runes.” However, this is a bit debatable, since Dag is trying to minimize his role in killing Helgi here, and thus may just be trying to pass the buck. He also could just be speaking figuratively – Odin was seen as a war god, and anything pertaining to war is often metaphorically connected to him in Norse poetry, such as swords being called “Odin’s sticks,” battles being called “Odin’s storms,” and warriors being called “Odin’s trees,” as some examples.

Spell 9: Controlling Winds / Seas

If Odin is out at sea and needs to save his boat, this spell lets him quieten the wind upon the wave and “lull all the sea to sleep.” It seems this is moreso wind manipulation than water manipulation, as he’s said to calm the sea by controlling the wind that’s affecting it.

This ability is potentially showcased in a story where Odin possibly dispels a storm, though that’ll be covered in-depth in a later section. And same as his seventh spell, the euhemerized source Heimskringla also mentions this power in a wider list of Odin’s abilities. It splits things by saying that Odin can both “calm the sea” and “turn the winds in any direction he wished with words alone.” While it could still be the case that Odin calms the seas by way of manipulating the winds stirring them, the two claims being divided like this could imply that Odin can also control water directly.

Spell 10: Countering Projection

For this spell, the main translation I’m using is hard to decipher; Odin says that if he sees witches “playing up in the air,” he can make it so that they “wander astray from their shapes left at home, from their minds left at home.” While you could maybe get a general sense of what this does from this description, this is going to be another one where we have to bring in some outside context.

In Norse stories, there’s a form of magic where a character projects themself from their body, taking on an animal form. This is kind of like shapeshifting, but not really; their body remains either sleeping or in a sort of trance while they do stuff in their animal shape. Stories where this kind of magic is used include The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions, where Bodvar Bjarki can utilize a bear shape to devastating effect in combat, and The Saga of Hjalmther and Olvir, where characters battle in the shapes of walruses, whales, dolphins, and vultures. For a source that gives a more straightforward description of how this works, there’s the euhemerized source Heimskringla, which details that Odin can use it to project himself as any kind of animal while his body lay “as if it were asleep or dead.”

What this spell does then is allow Odin to counter this type of magic. How exactly is up to interpretation; it seems like what it does is prevent the user from returning to their original body, potentially trapping them in whatever animal shape they were taking at the time.

Spell 11: Granting Protection

If Odin has to lead long-loyal friends into war, he can chant “under the shields” to ensure that they journey safely to the battle, and journey safely out of it as well. This spell lines up with Odin’s role as a god of war, as detailed above in the “Godhood” section, and I’ll expand a little more on the particular topic of Odin granting protection to warriors in the “Blessings” section below.

The euhemerized source Heimskringla also makes mention of this ability, or something like it, when talking about Odin and his army’s many victories. It says that it was a custom of his, when sending his men out to battle or on other missions, to lay his hands on them and give them “bjannak,” some kind of blessing. It was believed that things would turn out well for the men because of this. This custom of Odin’s and his unprecedented winning streak eventually inspired the belief that he was some kind of victory-deciding war god, despite him really just being a particularly gifted human.

Within the meta-narrative that Heimskringla is attempting to present, the idea of Odin using a magic spell to grant his warriors protection is just a false belief stemming from something he liked to do as a sort of good luck charm. This is kind of odd when you take into account all the actual magical powers Heimskringla ascribes to Odin, but it’s not like that’s the only area where it contradicts itself. And remember, otherwise normal people are shown to have magical powers all the time in Norse stories.

Spell 12: Resurrection

Through the use of runes, Odin can resurrect the dead. The specific example given here is of Odin restoring a corpse dangling in a noose to life, letting it walk and talk again.

Odin resurrecting the dead is a common theme in Norse myth. He’s called the “god of the hanged” seemingly as a reference to his ability to talk to hanged men. This is backed up by the euhemerized source Heimskringla in a section that also details his power to raise the dead. In the Poetic Edda poem Baldrs draumar, he’s shown speaking a “corpse-reviving spell” to resurrect a seeress so he can interrogate her, and it’s suspected that the poem Voluspa is another case of this, as it similarly takes the form of a dialogue between Odin and a seeress. This is notable since Voluspa is one of the most important poems towards deciphering the Norse mythos.

And while this isn’t exactly “resurrection,” Heimskringla also mentions that he was able to preserve Mimir’s severed head by smearing it with herbs and reciting spells. After doing this, Odin was able to keep the head around to chat with. Mimir’s talking severed head appears in non-euhemerized sources as well, but the story of Odin saving him like this is only recounted in Heimskringla (at least to my knowledge).

Spell 13: Granting Protection (Again)

Another protection-granting spell. By pouring water over a young warrior, Odin can ensure that they won’t fall in battle: “before swords that man will not sink.” As before, this has already been partially covered in the “Godhood” section and will be expanded upon more in the “Blessings” section.

Spell 14: Knowledge

This spell is… a little confusing, as it doesn’t exactly seem like a spell honestly. Basically, Odin just says that if he needs to talk about the gods to a group of men, he can know every detail about the Aesir and the elves. I guess the spell here grants Odin knowledge on the gods and the elves, or helps him recount them to people, but it’s not exactly clear, even looking at the original text as literally as possible there’s still some ambiguity and room for alternate interpretations.

Spell 15: Granting Power

This is another weird one. I couldn’t come up with a good name for it, saying it “grants power” is kinda… incorrect? Unclear? It’s not really explained what this spell does, honestly, that’s just my personal interpretation of it. Basically, Odin says that the dwarf Thiodrerir once chanted this spell, singing power for the Aesir, advancement for the elves, and thoughtfulness for Hroptatyr (another name of Odin’s). They presumably received these things after, if this is an actual magic spell and not just some kind of prayer. It seems like this spell can increase the abilities of other beings, but it’s not really clear to what extent. Again, this one is just super unclear – even the hyper-literal translation of Havamal I’ve been bringing up provides little additional insight, the author choosing instead to focus on some of their own more personal interpretations of Havamal as a whole.

Spell 16: Charming the Ladies

This spell lets Odin win a woman’s heart by forcibly changing her mind about him. Given that he’s an immortal shapeshifting god, it’s kind of weird that Odin needs any help getting laid. Just turn yourself into Robert Pattinson and you’re set.

Odin trying to get with women is another common theme in Norse myth. Notably, there’s the case of him “winning Rind by spells.” Rind is apparently a goddess or giantess who Odin had his son Vali with; Vali was “born quickly” and started “killing at only one night old,” with his victim being Hod, another of Odin’s sons, who had accidentally killed Baldr; similar claims are made in the Poetic Edda poem Baldrs draumar. While this story is delivered in pieces scattered across several sources, it’s not too tough to put together: after Hod accidentally killed Baldr, Odin somehow used magic to seduce Rind, with the specific purpose of having her give birth to Vali, so that Vali would kill Hod as revenge for Baldr’s death.

The story of Rind is covered more in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, where instead of a goddess or giantess, she’s a human princess named Rinda. In this source, Odin doesn’t exactly just hit her with some kind of love spell; instead, he goes through this complicated routine of befriending her father, shapeshifting into different forms to try and win her over, touching her with an enchanted piece of bark that makes her demented, and ultimately tying her up and having his way with her. Like in the non-euhemerized version of the tale, this results in her giving birth to a son that goes on to slay Baldr’s killer as revenge. It also resulted in Odin being booted from the gods as punishment for using actor’s tricks and dressing up like a woman, though eventually they do give him his position back. Yes, the gods were more offended by Odin doing drag than him committing rape.

Odin more directly references love-spells in the Poetic Edda poem Harbardzljod, where among other claims in his flyting with Thor, he says that he seduced some witches using them. He’s in disguise here and just trying to get under his son’s skin during the Norse equivalent of a rap battle, so it’s possible he’s not entirely telling the truth. But considering he openly admits to knowing several love-spells here in Havamal, it’s totally possible he’s being honest.

Spell 17: Charming the Ladies (Again)

Yeah, he has another of these. With this seventeenth spell, any young woman will scarcely want to shun Odin. That’s it. I guess the difference between this spell and the last one is that number sixteen wins the ladies over, while number seventeen keeps them around.

Spell 18: Top Secret

A spell that only Odin knows, and he intends to keep it that way. So, sadly, he never says what it does in the poem. Honestly, it kinda seems to be another lady-charming spell, but there’s no way he has three of those… right?

Altogether, these spells give Odin some respectable versatility. As to where he learned them, Odin at one point mentions being taught nine spells by an unnamed maternal uncle, though which ones these are is unstated – it’s even possible these nine aren’t part of the above eighteen, and that he has even more magic at his disposal we don’t know about.

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, magic powers aren’t uncommon in Norse stories. In fact, there are characters shown to know some of these same spells Odin mentions here. In the Poetic Edda, the poem Rigsthula features a character called Kin who is knowledgeable in runes and has abilities similar to spells one, three, seven, and nine, and the poem Grógaldr has the sorceress Groa casting spells similar to four, eight, nine, and eleven. Basically every power Odin outlines here is shown by another character in at least one Norse story (I’ve given you a couple, but you’ll see a few more examples as we go on).

Finally, these eighteen spells are possibly extensions of some of his other powers (such as how he mentions using runes as part of spell twelve). Conversely, some of the powers mentioned below could instead be extensions of these spells (such as his control over the elements, which could be related to spells seven and nine). Keep that in mind going forward.

Runes

Odin is wise on all matters, but his knowledge of runes is particularly deep. By stabbing himself with Gungnir and hanging himself from the world tree, he sacrificed himself to himself just to learn about them. Well, that’s at least how most people would tell you the story. In a passage with several obscure allusions from the Poetic Edda poem Sigrdrifumal, reference is made to Odin learning about runes and their uses from Mimir. Of course, it’s entirely possible both tales are true, and that he just got additional knowledge from Mimir.

More than just letters, the vikings ascribed special properties to runes. Two different viking era runestones, the Björketorp Runestone and Stentoften Runestone, claim to conceal “runes of power” and threaten a curse upon whoever breaks them. (Of course, the only kind of trouble you’d actually get for breaking these rocks would be from the government of Sweden. But let’s just humor these ancient “masters of runes,” alright?) 

In Norse stories, runes are claimed to have many different effects when carved into objects. Going back to Sigrdrifumal, a valkyrie says they can provide victory in battle, prevent women from being untrustworthy, and provide safety at sea, among many other benefits (another version of this speech appears in The Saga of the Volsungs). Speaking more generally, Odin claims that runes protect against evil in Havamal.

Of course, the actual effectiveness of these kinds of runes that are carved into items isn’t often proven – from what I’ve read through at least, there’s no story where just having a rune carved into a sword is explicitly what gives a warrior a victory in a fight. They could just be equivalent to good luck charms, kind of like how some vikings may have perceived them. In any case, Odin seems to be a fan, as he’s got runes carved into the tip of his spear Gungnir and Sleipnir’s teeth and sled straps (or alternately, Sleipnir’s reins and sled).

However, we do know that runes are used in different magical processes, like Odin’s resurrection spell as mentioned above, or in the creation of a memory-erasing drink. This seems to confirm that (at least in some contexts) their magical properties aren’t just exaggeration or superstition. And of course, since they’re also letters in an alphabet, some Norse stories mention characters writing messages using runes and such.

Shapeshifting

Like many other magical beings in Norse mythology, Odin has the ability to change his shape as he pleases. He can become a snake to wriggle through a hole, a hawk to avoid a slash from King Heidrek, or an eagle to soar through the skies, outpacing a giant who was also transformed into an eagle. Odin doesn’t shapeshift as often as someone like Loki does, and so we don’t really get a sense of what his exact limits are. The euhemerized sources Heimskringla and Gesta Danorum both provide additional insight into this power.

Heimskringla claims that Odin can become any animal he wants, but that his “shapeshifting” is more like projecting himself into the form of an animal while his actual body lays in a sort of trance. As explained above in the section covering Odin’s tenth spell, this is similar to a form of magic depicted in some Norse stories. However, it conflicts with how Odin is shown to actually physically transform his own body in other stories (including ones from the Eddas), as shown by those three feats in the last paragraph. Of course, it’s possible that Odin just has access to both forms of shapeshifting – Heimskringla does also mention that Odin “had the faculty of changing complexion and form in whatever manner he chose.”

Gesta Danorum features scenes of Odin disguising himself as other people, both in his various attempts to “woo” Princess Rinda and in his deception of Harald Wartooth by taking the place of his aide Bruni. While at some points it seems like Odin’s just changing his clothes, disguising himself in an entirely conventional way, it’s also suggested that these disguises are magical in nature to some extent. Similar scenes of Odin disguising himself as another person appear in sources like The Saga of Hervor and King Heidrek the Wise, The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions, and The Saga of Arrow-Odd.

Transformation

While he doesn’t show this ability often, Odin can seemingly transform beings and objects into other shapes. This is shown most explicitly in the Faroese ballad Lokka Tattur, where to hide a boy from a giant, he magically makes a field of grain grow overnight, then turns the boy into a single ear of grain in that field. The boy turns back to normal later. There’s also the aforementioned stories of the gods creating humans from logs and dwarves from maggots, and another story where Loki transforms Idunn into a nut (and presumably also turns her back into a god later) as part of a plan to save her from the giant Thiassi.

While Odin’s level of involvement in this particular moment is never pointed out, after the Aesir captured Loki, they transformed one of his sons into a wolf, who mauled the other, and then they used his guts to bind Loki, and those guts turned into iron. This story also has an alternate version where the details are less clear: one of his sons just kinda turns into a wolf for no stated reason. The gods could still be transforming him here, however.

This power was also possibly used during the creation of the world. In the scenes where Odin and his brothers use Ymir’s body parts to make things like mountains, trees, and clouds, it could be that they’re transmuting the giant’s flesh into those different materials. However, this is unclear. Sometimes in Norse stories, giants are said to have body parts made out of stone, so it’s entirely possible that Ymir was just made out of those natural elements to begin with. Remember, the guy was created from the mingling of elemental forces in the first place.

Teleportation

Odin has a habit of mysteriously appearing and disappearing. In the Poetic Edda, this happens twice; in the poem Grimnismal, he vanishes from King Geirrod’s torture chamber, and in the poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, he appears after Dag’s sacrifices to him for vengeance. Further examples appear in the sagas. In just The Saga of the Volsungs alone, he shows up to take Sinfjotli’s body then vanishes after, shows up to guide Sigurd to Grani then vanishes after, and shows up to give Sigurd some dragon-slaying advice then vanishes after. I could go on, but they’re pretty much all like this – he shows up out of nowhere, does something helpful, then disappears mysteriously.

Elemental Manipulation / Weather Manipulation

When it comes to manipulating the elements, Odin has pretty much all of the classics at his disposal. His aforementioned spells from the poem Havamal let him counteract flames and control the winds to calm the sea. The euhemerized source Heimskringla also makes mention of these spells, and possibly splits calming the sea into its own thing. Also described previously, he was able to create a ring of fire to imprison a valkyrie, though details differ from source to source. He also made a field of grain grow overnight in the Faroese ballad Lokka Tattur.

But that’s all been covered previously. Several sources include an interesting scene where a powerful storm gives the hero Sigurd some trouble at sea. A mysterious old man shows up calling for a ride, and once Sigurd invites him aboard his ship, the weather clears up. This old man is Odin, and while some sources are less explicit than others, it seems possible that he has some role in making the weather more favorable for Sigurd and crew. I’ve already given you the version from the Poetic Edda poem Reginsmal, but here’s variations from The Saga of the Volsungs and Norna-Gests þáttr. Still, neither of these give explicit confirmation (though Norna-Gests þáttr says the storm was magically created by the sons of Hunding, and that a favorable breeze springs up when Odin arrives, which could be a hint).

The euhemerized source Gesta Danorum includes a version of the scene where instead Hadding (a legendary Danish king) takes the place of Sigurd, and where we get the most direct confirmation. The storm is said to be magically conjured by the Biarmians, and Odin dispels it by whipping up “a cloud of his own.”

Another euhemerized source, Heimskringla, rounds out Odin’s mastery of the elements by claiming he has some spells that can manipulate earth and stone. The specific quote is that Odin “knew about all the treasure of the earth, where it was hidden, and he knew songs which would make the earth and cliffs and rocks and grave-mounds open up before him, and with words alone he would bind those who were in them and go in and take from there whatever he wanted.”

Illusions

Odin and the other Aesir are famed for their illusions, and this power is displayed in several sources.

The Prose Edda contains its older Norse stories within a framework where they’re presented as the topic of conversation between the gods and other beings. In the first major part, Gylfaginning, a king named Gylfi sets out to investigate the Aesir. Thanks to their gift of prophecy, they Aesir are able to foresee this, and before King Gylfi arrives at Asgard they prepare “deceptive appearances” for him. Gylfi eventually shows up at the city, finding his way to a vast hall, and is ultimately brought before a trio of men called High, Just-as-High, and Third.

The three men trade knowledge with Gylfi. At one point, they list out the names of the god Odin, and in that list are the names High, Just-as-High, and Third. At the end of the conversation, the city Gylfi found himself vanishes, leaving him alone in an open field. It was all an illusion, and the three men he was talking to were all guises of Odin.

The next part of the Prose Edda, Skaldskaparmal, also features the Aesir setting up these “deceptive appearances” for a guest. This time, it’s the magician Hler, and we don’t really get clarification on what those “deceptive appearances” are – though the gods are shown to use shining swords as lights in their hall, which may be one. Some translations, for both this scene and the one above, choose to use the word “illusions” in place of “deceptive appearances”, which just makes things more obvious.

While these feats are arguably performed as part of a group, with Odin’s exact role being unclear, Odin can use the ability on his own. In The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions, King Hrolf and his men come across a farm. The farmer there, who calls himself Hrani, offers them hospitality, but Hrolf turns it down and they head off. When they decide to return later, both the farm and Hrani have vanished. It turns out that it was Odin in disguise the whole time, with the farm and his appearance as Hrani just being illusions.

Both Heimskringla and Gesta Danorum reference Odin’s illusionary abilities. In Heimskringla, it’s mentioned that he often competed in “tricks and illusions” with Gylfi, and always proved superior. We aren’t given any more info than that, however. Gesta Danorum describes Odin as “skilled at conjuring up marvellous illusions” and includes a scene where, “through some marvellous feat of workmanship,” Odin makes a statue talk in response to being touched.

Prophecy

The Norse gods, especially Odin in particular, have an interesting relationship with prophecy. The introductory frame story segment of Gylfaginning, the first major part of the Prose Edda, claims that the Aesir have the gift of prophecy, which they used to foresee King Gylfi coming to Asgard in disguise. In the frame story segment that introduces the next part, Skaldskaparmal, it seems that they similarly foresaw the magician Hler’s arrival after he set out on his own trip to Asgard, though prophecy being used here isn’t explicitly stated.

There are other cases where the gods show the ability to foretell future events. In the Prose Edda, Baldr has foreboding dreams of his own death before it happens, and the gods are mentioned as knowing and “tracing” prophecies several times during the story of Loki’s children. In the Poetic Edda poem Hymiskvida, a group of gods used a fortune-telling method that involved throwing twigs and reading them to tell where they should go to get a drink. This same form of fortunetelling that uses pieces of wood is also referenced late into the poem Voluspa, with the god Hænir using it after surviving the events of Ragnarök to figure out what to do next. 

Side note: this kind of wood-casting divination is practiced by mortals as well as gods. As an example, it shows up in The Saga of King Gautrek. Some sailors who are grounded by strong headwinds cast wood-chips for a favorable wind, and receive the omen that Odin wants a sacrifice. Little do they know that their leader King Vikar had long been sought after as a sacrifice by Odin (as payment for a blessing he gave to his mother), so when they go to pull lots, his name is the one that comes up.

Back to the gods. The “interesting” part of the relationship here comes when you consider the recurring theme of Odin consulting seeresses for insight into the future. There seems to be a contradiction there – if the gods have the ability to tell the future on their own, then why did Odin seek out a seeress in the poem Baldrs draumar to learn more about his son’s foreboding dreams and the meaning behind them? And why does the poem Voluspa take the form of a conversation between Odin and a seeress he’s interrogating? If he’s capable of seeing the future on his own, it’s a little odd that he went through the trouble of seeking these ladies out. It’s possible that, in the cases where the gods seem to know prophecies in advance (such as in the story of Loki’s children, as mentioned above) it could be that they’re just already aware of the prophecies through Odin’s chats with seeresses, not that they’re divining them themselves.

This may seem like a modern day nitpick – “no duh, mythology isn’t consistent you dork, quit reading too much into things” – but it actually isn’t. Saxo Grammaticus, writer of the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, seemingly noticed the contradiction himself and actually tried to provide a justification for it: “Divinity is not always so perfect that it can dispense with human aid.” Of course, how much stock you want to put in this is your own choice… personally, I don’t think it matters that much.

Aside from that fun bit of information, euhemerized sources also provide us with more explicit uses of the power. The euhemerized prologue to the Prose Edda claims Odin had the gift of prophecy, and from it learned that he would be remembered in the northern part of the world. Gesta Danorum has two different scenes where Odin provides accurate predictions of the future to the hero Hadding, helping him through his adventures. Heimskringla, similar to the Prose Edda prologue, claims Odin used his prophetic powers to foresee where his descendants would end up, using that to decide what lands he’d conquer. It also links the power of prediction to the mysterious “black magic” known as seiðr, but we’ll get more into that later.

Sleep-Thorns

Odin has the power to utilize magical sleep-thorns. By striking someone with one, he can send them into a supernatural slumber. He used this power in the process of punishing the valkyrie Sigrdrifa/Brynhild. Her naptime would last until the hero Sigurd arrived and freed her from her prison.

As mentioned before, the Sigrdrifa/Brynhild story has several versions in different sources, but the basics are all pretty much the same. The version from Sigrdrifumal says that “Odin brought it about that I [Sigrdrifa] could not break the sleep-runes”, which implies that runes are involved in the creation or use of a sleep-thorn. The version from Helreið Brynhildar doesn’t mention the thorn directly, but I think we can reasonably assume that this is just a case of a detail being excised from a recap and not some kind of alternate version of the tale where Odin uses a different kind of sleep-inducing magic.

Like some of Odin’s other powers, this is one used by other characters in Norse stories, and we can draw more insight into the ability from those sources. You can pick up two main things: the magically-induced sleep ends when the thorn is removed, and while the victim is asleep, you can do just about anything to them without waking them up.

In The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions, the warrior Queen Olof uses a sleep-thorn to prank King Helgi after he tries to pressure her into a marriage. She leads him on and gets him drunk, and after he crashes asleep on her bed, she sticks him with one to keep him unconscious. From there, she shaves all his hair, covers him in tar, ties him up, shoves him in a sleeping bag, and has her men dump him by the shore near his ships. When Helgi’s men find the bag and open it up, the thorn falls out and he wakes up. He’s not amused by the situation, to put it lightly.

In The Saga of Hrolf the Walker, the villainous Vilhjalm uses one on the titular protagonist. While Hrolf is sleeping next to Princess Ingigerd, Vilhjlam sneaks into their shelter and sticks a sleep-thorn in his head. Despite the princess pounding on his chest, she’s not able to wake him up, and Vilhjalm ends up cutting off his feet and taking them as “proof” he killed Hrolf. Luckily, Hrolf’s oddly intelligent horse Dulcifal manages to get the thorn out of his head, and he’s able to continue his adventure.

There’s some dispute online over whether or not sleep-thorns are actually physical objects or just a spell. The idea is basically that “stabbing” or “stinging” someone with a “sleep-thorn” could just be metaphorical language for casting this spell on them. The stories seem to go back and forth on this, or at least describe things in vague enough terms as to cause confusion. In Hrolf the Walker, there’s explicitly a physical thorn that Dulcifal has to remove from Hrolf’s head to wake him up, and that seems to be the case in Hrolf Kraki and his Champions too, with the thorn described as “dropping out” of King Helgi before he wakes up. But in all the various tellings of the Sigrdrifa/Brynhild myth, there’s never really any mention of Sigurd having to pull a sleep-thorn out of the valkyrie to break her slumber.

While this isn’t explicitly identified as a use of sleep-thorns in the text, the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum adds to the debate. It features a scene where Odin helps the hero Hadding escape imprisonment by “weakening the attendants with sleep, to snore away through the lingering dark.” He doesn’t seem to have to physically hit them with a sleep-thorn, or at least no such detail is included. If this is a use of that power, it could be a point towards the “non-physical” interpretation. Of course, it could maybe just be some different form of sleep-inducing magic.

Blessings

Pictured above is an 8th century Danish artifact fashioned from a fragment of a human skull, believed to be an amulet of some kind due to the large hole near the top. The barely legible runes scratched into its surface are a plea to the gods, including Odin, to protect the wearer. Cool, right?

The vikings believed that Odin could empower, defend, or reward mortals through his divine abilities. The Poetic Edda poem Hyndluliod goes over some of these boons – from gold, to common sense, to favorable winds, Odin being on your side has all kinds of perks. In Norse stories, Odin frequently provides blessings to his favored warriors, bestowing various powers and gifts to aid them in their battles. Other gods are shown giving blessings to mortals too. This power seems somewhat open-ended, as Odin has granted all kinds of blessings, both broad and specific. As such, there’s no good way to organize this other than just listing them out in bullet points. Several of Odin’s eighteen spells could be construed as blessings as well, specifically eleven, thirteen, and possibly fifteen.

• Making your dad die: After Prince Agnar treats a captured Odin kindly, Odin pays back the favor with a non-specific blessing. Soon after, Agnar’s father King Geirrod slips and falls on his own sword, letting Agnar take the throne and reign as king for a long time.

• Marriage to a king: After a woman named Geirheid pledges she’ll pray to him, Odin seemingly makes it so that she’s encountered and married by King Alrek, though it’s a little unclear. He also helps her keep him later, as explained below.

• Invulnerability to swords: Odin blessed the viking king Framar with invulnerability to swords, though this was able to be overcome by Ketil Trout just… I don’t even know, Ketil just carves him up anyways.

• Long life, wealth, constant victory, and more: In one of the many tales to feature the antihero Starkad, Odin gives him an entire laundry list of blessings (while Thor piles on curses in-between). These include a three times normal lifespan, the best weapons and clothes, an abundance of money, “victory and prowess in every battle,” sick poetry skills, and the highest esteem from noble men.
  
  • The euhemerized source Gesta Danorum provides multiple possible origins for Starkad, with one being that Odin blessed him with a three times normal lifespan and fame as well, similar to the story in this source.

• Unlimited life in exchange for repeated sacrifices: In the euhemerized source Heimskringla, when King Aun makes sacrifices to Odin for old age, Odin gives him 60 more years initially, then an unlimited amount of time as long as he kept sacrificing to him every 10 years.

• Victory in a battle: Also from Heimskringla, Jarl Hákon makes a sacrifice to Odin, and two ravens show up after. He takes this as a sign that Odin recieved the sacrifice, and he wins in his next battle.

• “Insuperability”: In Gesta Danorum, a man named Frøger is given a blessing where he’d be “insuperable” unless his opponent could grab the dust beneath his feet. Guess how he dies? (Technically, this is never said to be Odin’s work in particular.)

• Invulnerability to swords (again): Also from Gesta Danorum. Odin gave the warrior Harald Wartooth invulnerability to piercing weapons like blades, and spears. However, blunt weapons such as maces are able to hurt him, and Odin even kills him with his own mace after he’s served his purpose.

One interesting case is with Odin’s berserker warriors. In the Prose Edda, he calls upon these warriors when he needs them to subdue Hyrrokkin’s giant wolf mount. In the euhemerized source Heimskringla, we get additional details on their powers: “[the berserkers] went without mail and were as wild as dogs or wolves, biting their shields, being as strong as bears or bulls. They killed the people, but neither fire nor iron took effect on them.” In my research, I didn’t really find a single “smoking gun” quote from any historical source that explicitly says Odin granted these guys their powers. A footnote from the scholarly translation of Heimskringla I read through claims it was “often said” that was the case (it’s included in the last excerpt linked), but I’m not certain that’s solid enough evidence to count. Regardless, Odin shows the ability to grant physical resilience in the cases of Framar, Frøger, and Harald Wartooth, so it’s not that much of a stretch.

Some supporting evidence can be found in Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. The text dates to the 11th century and provides some information on Norse religion, at least as seen through the eyes of a Christian. In it, Adam talks about a famous temple at Uppsala in Sweden where sacrifices were made to the gods. He states that the local pagans believed Odin “carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies,” and that Odin was offered to during times of war.

There are also the “blessings” that take the form of gifts or hands-on assistance. Pray to Odin and he may lend you his spear Gungnir or hook you up with a magic pregnancy-inducing apple. He may also just head out from Asgard to swap places with you for a riddle contest, or give you a hand in an ale-making competition with his ale-improving spit. In that last case, he gave the woman assistance because he wanted her future son Vikar as a sacrifice, which he did get eventually, as mentioned back in the Prophecy section.

Curses

If Odin can hand out blessings to his faithful, you’d better believe he can strike down his enemies with curses. Compared to blessings, we get less examples of Odin casting curses, but it’s hard to think that they’re much different. After all, the only thing separating a blessing from a curse is if it’s good or bad. I think it’s easy enough to argue they should work with a similar open-endedness. Like with the last section, I’ll be breaking this down into bullet points.

• Arranging your death: After King Heidrek attempted to slash him with the deadly magical blade Tyrfing, Odin cursed him to be killed by “the lowest thralls.” As you’d expect, Heidrek didn’t live much longer after that, getting murdered by his own slaves just like Odin said would happen.

• Defeat in battle: On two different occasions, groups of warriors lose in battle after pissing Odin off, with his involvement being suspected in their respective downfalls. While these moments could be moreso tied to Odin’s status of a god of war who decided the winners of each battles, slotting them in here just kinda works best to me.
  
  The first is from The Saga of the Volsungs. King Sigmund is winning in a conflict with King Eylimi’s armies, until Odin shows up and shatters his sword. The luck he had at that point turns around, with him and his men ultimately losing despite their initial dominance. It seems that Odin breaking Sigmund’s blade was a representation of the king losing his favor, and by extension, any hope of coming out on top in the battle.
  
  The other is in The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. King Hrolf and his men accidentally scorn Odin by refusing his hospitality when he’s in disguise as a farmer. They feel like they’ve lost his favor, and that they won’t win their next battle after that. Sure enough, the next fight they get into is their last, with one man suspecting Odin’s involvement.

• “Bewitching”: This may be related to some other power already covered above, as it’s pretty nonspecific. In the Poetic Edda poem Harbardzljod, where a disguised Odin is trading insults with Thor, he references that he “bewitched” the giant Hlebard “out of his wits” after Hlebard gave him a “magic twig.”
  
  This could potentially be a use of his sixth spell, with that “magic twig” being cursed like the tree that made Grettir sick. So Hlebard gave him a cursed twig, and Odin used a counterspell to have it affect him instead. Or it could be something else, since Thor calls the twig a “good gift,” which would be odd if it was an attempt at cursing Odin. Or maybe Thor is calling the twig a “good gift” as an insult, basically saying it’d be a good thing if Odin got cursed. Or maybe it’s a “good gift” because Hlebard gave it to him without any curse placed on it, and then Odin used it to curse him – in other translations, the magic twig is sometimes instead called a magic wand. Or maybe Odin is bullshitting in the first place, as Harbardzljod is just about him trying to get under his son’s skin in a flyting while in disguise. The poem makes mention to events not recounted in other poems, and at points gives details that go against other accounts (like Thor claiming that he was the one to turn Thiassi’s eyes into stars when it’s otherwise said Odin did that). There’s a lot of ambiguity with this one, if you can’t tell.
  
  There’s also the case of Odin using a piece of bark “inscribed with spells” to make Rinda demented in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, which could be comparable to what is happening here with Odin and Hlebard. Like I hypothesized back in the section on Odin’s sixth spell, this could be a case of Odin using that same kind of wood-based sickness-inducing curse that he can also defend himself against. But that’s just my theory.

• Inducing blindness, deafness, and panic: According to the euhemerized source Heimskringla, Odin can bring it about in battle that his opponents are struck with blindness, deafness, and panic. As mentioned before, Odin has a feat for countering a witch’s blindness-inducing magic with his own divine powers in another euhemerized source, Gesta Danorum.

Same as before, the other gods can hand out these sorts of curses as well. On one occasion, Thor gave the antihero Starkad a number of curses, counteracting the blessings his father gave to the man. Additionally, the variety of magic known as “seiðr” is also sometimes connected with the ability to cast curses, and Odin is known as a practitioner of that magic. Speaking of which…

Black Magic (Seiðr)

As Used by Odin

A mysterious magic that Odin can make use of. In the Eddas, Odin’s ability to use seiðr is only briefly mentioned, specifically in the poem Lokasenna, the one where Loki roasts all of the Aesir. When it comes time to diss Odin, Loki claims that he practised the mysterious magic on the island of Samsey and that he “beat on the drum as seeresses do.” Additionally, while some translations choose not to include the detail, one poem included in the second part of the Prose Edda references Odin using seiðr to “win” Rind – a topic we’ve covered before. That’s about all we get from those sources, though we can make some inferences based on what we have. In Lokasenna, we can assume that Odin was possibly performing some kind of divination ritual, given that his actions were compared to those of “seeresses,” female fortunetellers.

Most of our knowledge on Odin’s seiðr abilities comes from the euhemerized source Heimskringla. In this source seiðr (or “black magic”) is said to be customary among the Vanir, and the Aesir learned it from Freyja after the two groups reconciled. Odin is mentioned as being a practitioner of seiðr, which is called “the art which is accompanied by greatest power,” and through it can “predict the fates of men and things that had not yet happened, and also cause men death or disaster or disease, and also take wit or strength from some and give it to others.” However, this magic is accompanied by “such great perversion” when it is performed that it was considered shameful for a man to do so. The description here backs up seiðr’s association with fortunetelling, and explains why accusing someone of practising it is such an insult.

Other Users

Seiðr is a bit of a tricky topic to cover, as we don’t get a lot of instances of Odin using it, and there’s a lot of speculation and debate around it among historians. It was something that the Norse believed otherwise ordinary human beings were capable of in real life, similar to how the Puritans thought that people were actually able to perform witchcraft. Much of the existing research literature about seiðr as a concept is esoteric and based on theory. If you choose to read a paper on the subject, such as this one by Eldar Heide, you need to know about Norse society, language, history, and in particular their gender norms to fully understand everything that’s being said. Even then, a lot of the conclusions these kinds of papers present are based on the author’s own theories and analysis… which other authors will naturally challenge in their own books and papers, and so on.

Since that’s all a bit much to get into in a versus blog, I’m instead going to mainly focus on what we’ve seen explicitly-identified seiðr practitioners pull off in the same kinds of sources we’ve been analyzing so far. That’s just more relevant to what we’re talking about here, anyways.

Going back to the Eddas, while Odin’s use of seiðr is only briefly described, we do learn about other people who make use of the magic. In the Poetic Edda poem Voluspa, we learn about a mysterious woman named Gullveig. The Aesir stuck her with spears and burned her three times, but she was able to repeatedly revive from their punishments. She was said to perform seiðr, could deliver prophecies as well, and was possibly somehow involved or linked with the war between the Aesir and the Vanir. However, some historians will say that verses 22 and 23 are talking about two different characters, with “Bright One” or “Heiðr” being separate from Gullveig, or some kind of alternate form of her. Both are also interpreted as alternate forms of the goddess Freyja, due to their shared connections with seiðr and the Vanir.

The poem Hyndluliod also makes mention of a character called Svarthofdi, the ancestor of all seiðr-practisers. We don’t learn anything else about them, and they’re never referenced in any other sources (aside from this same line being quoted in the Prose Edda). Speaking of the Prose Edda, we don’t get any more information on seiðr from it.

In the sagas, we frequently see characters using seiðr, too frequently to list every single use here. Below I’ve gathered a number of the more impressive and/or notable ones.

In Heimskringla, a witch called Hulð appears several times in the Ynglinga saga, who seems to be able to practice seiðr (generally referred to in this source as “black magic,” as mentioned above). With her powers, she can magically transport people to different places, summon a being known as a “mare” (some kinda troll demon thing, not a female horse) to trample a man to death in his sleep, “enable” two brothers to kill their father (whatever that means), and curse a family so that killing of kindred will always happen in their line. There’s also references to other seiðr users later on, such as a number of sorcerers in the court of King Hugleikr, though they’re only mentioned in passing and don’t do anything.

In The Saga of Sturlaug the Hard-Working, three seiðr-casting sorcerors are able to give a man named Framar leprosy, and later on cure him as well. This lines up with how Heimskringla says Odin could cause people disease.

The Saga of Hrolf the Walker features seiðr heavily. The saga’s introductory foreword makes reference to seiðr, explaining how it can cause death or a lifetime of misery for some and reputation, riches, and honors for others. The story itself has several seiðr users in the cast. The most noteworthy is the villain Grim Aegir, who (seemingly with assistance from others) is able to use seiðr to make it so that the warrior Sorkvir can only be defeated by someone wielding a specific king’s equipment. Grim has a group of other seiðr users that work for him, who attempt to cast a spell on Hrolf and his pals to make them all kill each other. However, this spell is flipped back on the casters by the dwarf Mondul, who carves counterspells on the special platform the men are using to try and cast the spell.

Grim Aegir also displays a number of other powers, such as causing powerful blizzards, stenches, and ice storms (potentially with assistance), shapeshifting, travelling through seas and lakes, spitting hot breath, venom, and fire, sinking into the ground like it’s water and popping back out, resisting sword strikes, attempting to raise the dead, creating a bag that releases blinding mist, and according to the dwarf Mondul, cursing people so that they rot away into dust, though he doesn’t get the chance to do so. (Those last three things are after a night of preparation and are all ultimately stopped by Mondul.) However, none of these are particularly pointed out as uses of seiðr, and Grim seems to be knowledgable on more forms of magic than just that.

The Saga of the People of Laxardal gives us Kotkel and his family, a four-person clan of skilled magicians who know how to use seiðr. Through using that magic, they’re able to conjure a blizzard that sinks a ship, as well as perform chants over the course of a night, somehow killing a little boy who draws too close – he’s described as walking “into the magic” and dying instantly because of that, which is kind of odd to picture. Like the group of seiðr users employed by Grim Aegir in Hrolf the Walker, the Kotkel family is shown to have to construct a special platform to cast seiðr from, at least in the case of the blizzard.

On their own, Kotkel’s sons Hallbjorn and Stigandi are able to cast curses and perform other magical feats. Hallbjorn curses a man called Thorleik so that he will “know little enjoyment” while living at his farm, and that anyone who takes his place will “know but ill-fortune.” He’s also able to briefly return to life after being drowned and buried, fighting a guy before sinking into the ground and never being mentioned again. (It’s unclear if this is his spirit, some kind of apparition, or literally just his undead body.) The other son Stigandi is able to curse a slope of land so that all the grass there withers and never grows back. Like Grim, this could be a case of the characters having more magical abilities than just seiðr, as they’re not specifically described as using that type of magic in these scenes.

In The Saga of the Volsungs, a powerful witch appears who is identified as a seiðr user in the original Old Norse text. At a woman named Signý’s request, the witch is able to swap their appearances and later swap them back. Signý uses the disguise to go and… trick her own brother into having sex with her… yeah… I mean, it was to produce an incredibly powerful child by doubling up on their super-genes, so it’s not like she wanted to bone her brother for no reason. Weaponized incest, man. These old stories are fucking weird.

Another male seiðr user appears in The Saga of Gisli the Outlaw, a skilled blacksmith called Thorgrim Nef who is also “versed in all kinds of spells and magic.” The protagonist Gisli ends up murdering his own brother-in-law Thorgrim (yes, there’s two Thorgrims), and the killing becomes a mystery in their community. In the aftermath, Thorgrim Nef is recruited by Thorgrim’s brother Bork to cast a curse on the murderer, which makes it so that no matter who they try to get help from, “their assistance should be of no avail.” Nef is given a nine year old gelding ox for the ritual, and to actually cast the curse, he needs to build a raised scaffold to practice the seiðr from. The curse works and Gisli has a tough time getting assistance in the rest of the story – but eventually, it’s overcome by semantics. Nef only ever thought to make it so that no one on the mainland would prove to be any assistance to the culprit, which means that Gisli is able to find help on one of the islands.

We get probably the most detailed depiction of how seiðr is practiced in The Saga of Erik the Red. We’re introduced to the travelling seeress Thorbjorg, with her specific garb being described at length; among her accoutrements are a staff with a knob at the top and a purse which holds the charms she needs for making her predictions. When she actually makes the predictions, she perches atop a raised platform built for her and leads a ring of other women in a series of chants. These chants apparently attract spirits. Aside from all these interesting details, there’s nothing too special about what Thorbjorg actually pulls off. She just gives some accurate predictions of the future, and that’s about it for her role in the story.

In The Saga of Fridthjof the Bold, two witches named Heidi and Hamglom appear who seem to be able to perform seiðr. With it, they perform magical feats similar to some of the other seiðr users mentioned so far: the two conjure up a storm to impede the hero Fridthjof while he’s out at sea, and also project their bodies, similar to that kind of shape-changing magic I covered in the sections on Odin’s spells and shapeshifting. To cast their spells, the two witches used a raised platform made for the practice of seiðr. I think we can officially call that a recurring trend at this point.

And the last saga we’ll be looking at is The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions, which has appearances from two different seiðr users. The first is the seeress Heid, who as you may expect by now, makes use of a tall seiðr-stand and gives some accurate predictions of future events. The second, Queen Skuld, shows off a few more impressive displays of power. Skuld is a powerful sorceress, descended from elves on her mother’s side. While waging a battle against the forces of King Hrolf, she participates in the fight from a raised seiðr-stand within a black tent. She’s able to summon a monstrous boar, raise warriors from the dead to bolster her army’s numbers, and cast other spells that eventually win her the fight. With Hrolf and his champions dead, he takes command of Hrolf’s lands, but is swiftly and brutally deposed not too long after. 

I think I’ve probably given you enough at this point. So, across the many stories where seiðr users appear, there’s a number of common details. First is that the magic has many different uses. Casting curses, predicting future events, inflicting (and curing) diseases, summoning evil creatures, manipulating the weather, these are all tied to the power more than once. Second is the use of equipment to perform the magic, often some kind of raised platform that seems to be built for the specific purpose of casting seiðr. Third is that seiðr is often a group activity, as shown in the cases of the three sorcerors Framar met, Grim’s twelve seiðr-casting servants, Kotkel’s family, the seeress Thorbjorg and the women that chant alongside her, and the witches Heidi and Hamglom, who all work together to cast their magic.

Theories

Finally, while it is a subject too complex to hone into thoroughly in this post, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least talk a little about those theories I mentioned. Particularly, I’d like to bring up one I find particularly interesting: the idea that seiðr was linked in some way to the fate-controlling female deities called the norns. Here’s a few basic points you’ll see proponents of this theory bring up:

• Etymology: The term “seiðr” can be etymologically traced to words that involve rope, string, threads, and binding. This is relevant because…

• Norns’ association with threads: The norns are sometimes described as shaping fate by manipulating threads, either literally or metaphorically. Due to this shared connection with threads, a link can be made between seiðr and the process the norns perform to manipulate fate.

• Seiðr’s further connections with threads: A tool called a distaff seems to have been a part of seiðr rituals. The seiðr-casting seeress in The Saga of Erik the Red seemingly carries a ceremonial one, and possible distaffs have been recovered from graves suspected to belong to individuals who were known as prophetesses or seiðr practitioners, both in real life and in Norse stories. This is relevant because a distaff is a tool used in the spinning of threads.

• Seiðr being used to predict future events: As already explained, seiðr is sometimes connected with seeresses and the ability to foretell the future. Since the norns are known to be able to manipulate fate, and “predicting future events” could be thought of as “being able to access the knowledge of what’s fated to happen,” there’s a pretty clear connection you can draw there. One tale, Norna-Gests þáttr, even conflates the norns with traveling seeresses. It features a trio of female prophets called norns who go around sharing prophecies with people, and in one case, the youngest of them actually assigns the titular character his odd fate. This strange depiction just strengthens the connection between the norns and prophecy.

• Norns’ connections with valkyries and Freyja: The norns are sometimes associated with the valkyries, and some historians suggest a possible link between the valkyries and the goddess Freyja as well because of their shared role in selecting the dead, which I first mentioned all the way back in the Godhood section. Valkyries, with their role in choosing the slain, could be seen as “deciding people’s fates” similar to the norns. Njál’s Saga also has a scene of valkyries weaving body parts on a loom as they sing a song; this scene is both a metaphor for their ability to “pull the strings” behind the scenes of wars and select who lives and who dies, and yet another tie back to the recurring theme of spinning threads / textile work. Freyja’s connections to seiðr have already been detailed. It seems like there could be some overarching concept or force linking all of these fate-affecting female characters together, and in context with the other connections, seiðr could be a likely candidate.

• Seiðr’s connections with femininity: Sources such as Lokasenna and Heimskringla show us that seiðr was considered “unmanly” and “perverted” for a male to perform. Norse society put great emphasis on the importance of masculinity, to the point where there were laws in some places which legally let you kill someone for insulting your masculinity. Additionally, while male examples do show up, seiðr users in Norse stories are often female. The norns, the valkyries, and Freyja are all female figures as well… yeah, that’s a little obvious.

As an aside, we don’t exactly know why the practice of seiðr was considered so “unmasculine” in the first place. Given the description in Heimskringla, it seems the issue wasn’t with the magic itself, but how it was performed. The thing is, the sources we have rarely tell us much on how exactly seiðr was performed. We do know there was a particular process involved, as drums, incantations, raised platforms, and staffs are all referenced in regards to the practice, and other forms of magic in Norse stories involve chants, carving runes, and external equipment as well. It certainly doesn’t seem like something done at the snap of one’s fingers or the simple flick of a wand.

The scholarly translation of the Poetic Edda I used states twice in the Explanatory Notes that apparently crossdressing was associated with the practice, which is backed up when you consider that the Prose Edda mentions that Odin “won” Rind through seiðr, and in Gesta Danorum where his “winning” of Rind is detailed, he has to cross-dress as part of his plan. Gesta Danorum is euhemerized and thus a step or two separated from the original myths, so maybe in some earlier version of the tale Odin was dressing up as a woman to cast seiðr? It’s not the craziest theory. Going further, some researchers have even theorized that weird sexual stuff could have been involved in the casting of seiðr.

Alright, aside over. So what’s all of this mean? To dumb it down, it’s possible that some thought of seiðr as the same kind of magic harnessed by the fate-manipulating norns, or at least something similar. That could explain why its possible uses and effects seem so broad and almost open-ended – the ability to know and alter the course of fate would naturally have more than a few uses. Hell, you could maybe even argue that seiðr could be the force behind some of Odin’s other abilities, as he shares more than a few of them with the seiðr users detailed above.

However, some historians will argue that this is all based on a shaky foundation, as important sources like the Poetic Edda poem Voluspa possibly reference the norns carving slips of wood instead of spinning threads to determine fate. The argument generally goes that, despite some sources mentioning the norns spinning threads, it could’ve originally been that the norns carved strips of wood to determine fate, and the thread-spinning thing came about later because of a conflation with the Greek Moirai, who are frequently described as doing so in the sources of their mythology. From there you can make further connections, like drawing a link between the norns carving strips of wood to determine fate and the scenes of characters divining the future by casting strips of wood (mentioned above in the Prophecy section) and so on.

Again, there’s a lot of debate and different interpretations, and we can’t really settle on any kind of single correct answer. (If you’re interested in a great breakdown of the topic by someone actually qualified, consider picking up The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. It covers the history of the debate and the different proposed interpretations in-depth.) We simply lack the knowledge and context to do so. A single correct answer likely doesn’t even exist, as there were certainly different schools of thought on the topic back in the day.

Miscellaneous Abilities

If you couldn’t tell by now, Odin’s powers are difficult to categorize, overlapping at points. I’ve sorted a lot of things into certain places because they just didn’t really fit that well anywhere else. For a few less important abilities that I couldn’t fit in elsewhere, didn’t seem to need their own section, or were only referenced in a euhemerized source, I’ve just made this general one.

• Belief-inducing eloquence: In a longer list of his powers, the euhemerized source Heimskringla mentions that Odin “spoke so eloquently and smoothly that everyone who heard thought that only what he said was true.” It also says that “everything he said was in rhyme,” which is weird to picture. What is this, Dr. Seuss? I wonder if the other gods ever got sick of that.

• Binding: Yet another ability Heimskringla ascribes to Odin is the power to open “cliffs and rocks and grave-mounds.” With words alone, he can “bind those who were in them” and enter these places to take the treasures within. Given that beings like dwarves are said to live inside rocks and the mention of grave-mounds, this seems to be used against supernatural creatures and spirits.

• Knowing the location of treasure: Okay, this is in the same block of text as the last ability, but I’m splitting it up anyways. According to Heimskringla, Odin just knows the location of treasure somehow. It could be that he’s particularly knowledgeable on where treasure is located – he’s very wise, so that’s not out of the question – or that this is magical to some degree. Since it’s in a long list of other magical powers he possesses, the latter isn’t impossible.

• Respect from dogs: “No dog is so fierce” that they’d be willing to leap at Odin. Whether this is out of plain acknowledgment of his superiority or just fear is anyone’s guess. Sadly for Odin, this doesn’t seem to extend to giant wolves.

• Training birds to talk / talking to birds: Ever wonder how Odin can speak to his ravens? There’s a number of possible answers. The first is found in the euhemerized source Heimskringla, which simply claims that he trained the two ravens to speak. Simple as that.
  
  The second is a little more speculative. In Norse myth, there’s a consistently recurring theme of heroes or particularly wise people gaining the ability to talk to birds. In the Poetic Edda, Sigurd gets the ability by tasting some of Fafnir’s blood (also depicted in The Saga of the Volsungs), another man named Atli has the ability with no explanation, and Kin, a character who has several other powers in common with Odin, gains the ability at some point. In The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, Sigurd’s daughter Áslaug (here called Kráka) can also talk to birds. It’s possible that Odin possesses this ability as well (being a wise and powerful character) and that’s what he uses to communicate with Huginn and Muninn.
  
  There’s also a final theory I’ve come up with. There seems to be a form of animism present in Norse mythology, where all things – be they human or animal, living or non-living – have some form of sentience. This is most obviously displayed in the story of Baldr’s death, where the gods manage to get (almost) every single kind of being/object in existence to pledge not to harm Baldr. This includes animals and non-living elements like fire and stone. Since the gods are able to talk to these kinds of things in this story, perhaps Odin communicates with his ravens in much the same way.

• Sending eagles: In the story of Thorstein Mansion-Might, the titular hero encounters a helpful dwarf whose son is attacked by a great eagle. The dwarf believes that the eagle must be “a devil sent by Odin himself.” We don’t really get a confirmation if this is actually the case, nor a reason as to why Odin would send an eagle to pick on this dwarf’s son, but it’s at least alleged that he can send eagles to attack people.

• Ale-improving saliva: Another thing mentioned previously. Odin can make ale taste better by spitting in the yeast used to make it. Not much else to say about this one, really.

• Making things exclusive: Yes, that’s the best name I could come up with for this. In some tellings of Odin’s imprisonment of Sigrdrifa/Brynhild (covered above), he makes it so that only one person (Sigurd) would be able to cross the wall of fire surrounding her. In The Saga of the Volsungs, he stabs a sword into a tree and makes it so that only one person (Sigmund) would be able to draw it out, kinda like King Arthur and the sword in the stone.

Equipment 

Zeus

Thunderbolts

In ancient artwork, Zeus is commonly depicted as holding a thunderbolt like a javelin. Greek stories explain that bolts of lightning were thought of as the weapons of Zeus, which he carried on his person and tossed like spears. These weapons were crafted for him by his uncles, the immortal Cyclopes, and were first given to him after he released them from imprisonment. He can throw them from heaven with enough precision to separate two people fighting on the world below. Zeus’s bolts are weapons of incomparable might, capable of taking down beings like Typhon and the giants.

Harpe

Varyingly described as a sword or a sickle depending on what translations you read, the harpe is a style of weapon with a curved blade that appears frequently in Greek myth. Many characters wield them, from Heracles to Hermes. Zeus in particular owns a harpe made of the mythical material adamant, which he’s described as wielding against Typhon in some tellings of their battle. During the fight, Typhon snatched the weapon and used it to slice out some of Zeus’s sinews, weakening him. After some assistance from Hermes and Aigipan, the Olympian managed to recover and come out on top. He presumably reclaimed the weapon at some point after.

Another adamantine harpe was created by Gaia and given to Cronos, with which he depenised Uranus. (The Theogony alternatively claims this weapon was made of flint instead of adamant.) The hero Perseus also used an adamantine harpe to slay the Gorgon Medusa. There are some websites and other modern day sources out there that claim these weapons are all one in the same, rather than separate blades of similar make. I personally couldn’t find anything backing that up. Cronos was believed to have thrown his blade into the sea after castrating his father, so I guess it’s not impossible someone else scooped it up at some point, but that’s entirely hypothetical.

Aegis

When you think of the legendary aegis, usually Athena is the god that jumps to mind. However, the item is also associated with Zeus, who is often referred to as “aegis-bearing Zeus” or some variation thereof. Most people would probably also picture the aegis as a rounded metal shield (as it’s portrayed in the image above), though that’s more of a modern invention. The Greeks actually pictured it as an animal hide, which could either be draped over one arm like a shield or worn like armor. We know this thanks to mentions of Athena wearing it “about her shoulders” and references to it having “folds,” as well as ancient Greek artwork, which almost always depicts it as a cloak or vest-like worn item.

No matter what it is, the aegis is a fearsome defense. It can hold against blows from Ares, and even block Zeus’s own lightning bolts. It has some special properties as well. Probably its most well-known ability is that to induce crippling fear in people, possibly thanks to the head of the Gorgon Medusa adorning it. Zeus was able to drive the Achaeans to rout just by shaking the aegis in their presence. (He also seems to change the weather and/or spread mist in that scene, but it’s unclear if he’s just using his own powers or if the aegis can do that as well.) Both Athena and Apollo have also used the aegis to stir panic in groups of people. However, that’s not all it’s capable of. Athena was able to use the aegis to “put mettle” into the horses of Heracles’ chariot and inspire the Achaeans to keep fighting, basically the exact opposite of its usual use.

There’s some confusion regarding whether Athena borrows the aegis from Zeus, or if Zeus and Athena both possess their own aegises. As with most facets of mythology, sources differ on the topic, and there’s no one definite answer. In the Iliad at least, Athena is mentioned as equipping the aegis along with a tunic of Zeus’s, and Zeus is shown lending the aegis to Apollo so he can use it to raise powerful fear in the Achaeans. In this second scene, it’s specifically mentioned that Hephaestus gave the aegis to Zeus to begin with. Those moments suggest it’s Zeus’s property which is sometimes borrowed by the other gods, but again, mythology is rarely consistent.

Armor

Aside from the aegis, Zeus also possibly wears armor for defense. While the majority of ancient artwork we still have around depicts Zeus either wearing a tunic or nothing at all, the Iliad does mention Zeus dressing himself in gold before heading down to a battlefield. Whether this is just golden-colored robes or a defensive golden suit of armor isn’t exactly clear, but it’s contributed to the popular interpretation of Zeus wearing a gold breastplate that’s commonly seen in modern day media. (Some later sources, such as Nonnus’s Dionysiaca, do make mention of Zeus wearing a breastplate or other armor, sometimes conflating it with the aegis. To reiterate, I’m focusing on earlier stuff here.)

Sacred Scales

In the Iliad, Zeus is twice shown determining the fates of mortals using a pair of sacred golden scales. The first instance is in Book 8, where he uses them to determine whether the Trojans or Achaeans would have victory that day. The second is in Book 22, where they’re used to determine whether Hector or Achilles will come out on top in their battle. They’re also referenced in Book 16 when Zeus rouses fear in Hector; Hector is said to know “the turning of the sacred scales of Zeus,” and that’s why he calls on the other Trojans to flee. In that instance, the scales seem to be referenced as a metaphor for a changing or realization of fate.

The exact properties of these scales are hotly debated – does Zeus just use them to measure and find out what’s fated to happen, or does he actually affect fate through them? Some even argue they’re a symbolization of Zeus’s influence that’s only there for dramatic effect, and thus shouldn’t be taken all too literally. No matter what, I’ve already covered Zeus’s inconsistent relationship with fate in the Godhood section, so just refer back to that.

Sceptre

Zeus is traditionally depicted with a bolt in one hand and a sceptre or staff in the other. While it appears on many pieces of ancient artwork such as pottery, we don’t get a lot of information on it in Greek stories, aside from Zeus occasionally being referred to as “sceptred Zeus” or some variation. It could just be a badge of office representative of his position as ruler of the gods. In the Iliad, it’s mentioned that Hephaestus created a sceptre for Zeus, who then gave it to Hermes, who passed it on to a man named Pelops, with it eventually winding up in Agamemnon’s possession. This doesn’t seem to be Zeus’s own staff, rather one he commissioned as a gift, but its still possible that Zeus’s was also crafted by Hephaestus.

Odin

Gungnir

Odin’s legendary spear, crafted for him by the dwarves. Different translations give varying claims on its exact abilities. Some say it “never misses its mark,” while others say it “never stops in its thrust.” According to the Poetic Edda and The Saga of the Volsungs, it has runes carved on its tip. Which do… something, I guess. It’s not actually said what those runes do, but as mentioned before, runes can have a lot of different purposes.

There are surprisingly few instances of Odin actually busting this thing out. He’s mentioned as throwing it through the air during the Aesir’s conflict with the Vanir, he shatters Sigmund’s sword with it, it’s said that he’ll take it with him to the final battle of Ragnarök, and the Böksta Runestone possibly portrays him using it during a hunting trip. That’s about it. On one occasion, he lent the spear out to some guy called Dag so he could use it to kill another guy named Helgi.

Armor

When Ragnarök comes, the gods will equip themselves for their final battle. Odin in particular will don a golden helmet and a fine coat of mail. This helmet of his is actually one of his trademarks, referenced in other stories and poems as well. Of course, he’ll still wind up getting eaten by Fenrir regardless of how well-protected he is. That’s fate for you.

Shield

While Odin may be most famous for his spear, there’s a few references to him utilizing a shield. In the Poetic Edda poem Lokasenna, the Aesir in general are described as chasing Loki with shields, and in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, the warrior Biarki mentions that Odin protects himself with a “white shield.” However, Odin is also described as “shy of shield” in a fragment of a poem included in the Prose Edda, possibly implying he’s reluctant to use one. Take that as you will.

Draupnir

An enchanted golden ring, another of the treasures given to the gods by the dwarves. Alternately, it gained its magical power after being left on Baldr’s funeral pyre. The ring has the special trait to produce eight copies of itself every ninth night, identical to the original in size, weight, and material. Translated from Old Norse, “Draupnir” means “dripper.” Yes, Odin quite literally has drip.

Rati

An auger owned by Odin, a type of old timey drill. He used this during his quest to obtain the mead of poetry, drilling a hole through a mountain to get to the other side undetected. An alternate telling of the story from the Prose Edda has a giant named Baugi being the one to actually drill the hole, rather than Odin himself.

Hlidskialf

Hlidskialf is Odin’s godly throne. When he sits upon it, he sees over all worlds, and every man’s activity, and understands all of it. There are conflicting claims about where it’s located; it’s either in the golden temple Gladsheim or in the silver-roofed hall Valaskialf. After Loki tricked Hod into murdering Baldr, he fled from the gods to a far-away waterfall, and all Odin had to do to find him was take a seat in Hlidskialf. Kind of makes you wonder why he bothered trying to hide in the first place. Hlidskialf is a two-seater, as both Odin and Frigg are able to use it at once, and more gods than just Odin and his wife can make use of the throne, as Freyr once did.

The exact mechanics of Hlidskialf are a bit unclear. It’s never really pointed out if you actually see everything in the world all at once while using it, or if it just gives you the ability to see anywhere you want. As an example, when Freyr used it in the Prose Edda, it’s implied he looks in different directions before finding Gerd – if he was really all-seeing at that moment, he wouldn’t have had to look north to find her.

Gifts / Miscellaneous

There are some items that, while Odin technically had them on hand for a while, are either so minor as to not deserve their own section or are just not going to be given to him for the fight. The ones that fall into that latter category are mainly gifts that he gave away.

• Whetstone: A small tool for sharpening blades. Odin carries one around with him, and used it to trick a number of slaves into murdering each other.

• Brimir’s Sword: In a passage from the Poetic Edda poem Sigrdrifumal loaded with obscure allusions, Odin is briefly mentioned as holding a sword that had belonged to Brimir (another name for Ymir).

• Drum: When Loki accuses Odin of practicing seiðr magic in the Poetic Edda poem Lokasenna, he mentions that he “beat on the drum like seeresses do.” This drum is clearly a piece of equipment used in the casting of seiðr, though we don’t get much info on the specifics of what Odin was actually doing with it here.

• Sigmund’s Sword: A special blade which Odin gifted to the hero Sigmund, by way of stabbing it into a tree and having him pull it out à la King Arthur. This blade would later be split in half by Odin, and ultimately reforged into the dragon slayer Sigurd’s sword Gram.

• Disguised Spear: In a plot to kill King Vikar, Odin gave a spear disguised as a reed sprout to the antihero Starkad. Starkad used it at a pretend sacrifice of Vikar, thrusting it at his chest; the reed transformed into a spear, impaling Vikar and killing him for real.

• Stick: After King Erik pledges himself as a sacrifice to Odin, the god gives him this “stick” to throw over the enemy army while shouting “Odin owns you all!” The weapon seems to turn into a spear once thrown, and is able to somehow both induce blindness in the enemy troops and trigger an avalanche that wipes them out. This comes from The Tale of Styrbjörn the Swedish Champion, which sadly doesn’t have an accessible English translation. I had to make my own machine translation with DeepL, so there’s likely some inaccuracies here – take it with a grain of salt.

• Magic Apple: No, not Idunn’s. When a king and queen were having trouble conceiving an heir, they prayed to Odin for help. He heard this prayer and sent them an apple that, when eaten by the king, finally let him impregnate his wife. The pregnancy lasted longer than normal, and the resulting child Volsung is supernaturally powerful.

• Magic Stone Arrows: In The Saga of Arrow-Odd, Odin (in disguise as an old man named Jolf) gifts the hero Odd some magical arrows made of stone. These stone arrows disappear after being shot, so you can only use them once, but are incredibly powerful. They’re able to take out King Alf Bjalki, a sorceror who was able to deflect other arrows with his hands, even Odd’s Gusir’s Gift arrows; the Gusir’s Gift arrows were crafted by dwarves and are able to “bite anything they’re told to.”

• Skidbladnir: The legendary foldable ship that always has a breeze in its sails. Despite normally being Freyr’s property in sources like the Eddas, the euhemerized source Heimskringla says it’s Odin’s for some reason.

• Soothing Potion: In the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, Odin gives the hero Hadding a soothing potion after he’s defeated in battle which reinvigorates him.

• Harald’s Mace: In the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, Odin double-crosses his protege Harald Wartooth by taking his mace and bludgeoning him to death.

Companions

Zeus

Pegasus and Horses

There are few who haven’t heard of Pegasus, the legendary winged horse. Begotten by Poseidon and birthed from Medusa’s neck after her head was sliced off, divine blood runs through Pegasus’ veins. Though most famously ridden by the hero Bellerophon during his slaying of the Chimera, Zeus is the true owner of the flying steed. Pegasus can fly between heaven and earth, and brings to Zeus his thunder and lightning. It was also strong enough to crack a mountaintop with a kick, causing a spring known as Hippocrene to well up where the stone was shattered.

Aside from Pegasus, Zeus also owns a number of golden-maned flying horses. These horses pull his chariot through the sky, and he has a well-wrought golden lash to stir them on with. Zeus has ridden this chariot into battle before; in some tellings of his fight with Typhon, he rode the flying chariot down from heaven while pelting the giant with lightning at range.

Eagles

Zeus is often associated with birds, being portrayed with an eagle nearby him on various pieces of ancient artwork. As mentioned above, he often sent eagles as signs to mortals, and once sent down an eagle to capture the mortal Ganymede for him, a handsome young man who he fell in love with and wished to make into his cup-bearer. In a fragment of a lost play by Aeschylus, Zeus threatens to send his eagles to burn down the house of the mortal Amphion, describing them as “fire-bearing.” It seems that, in this lost source at least, the birds can carry and even throw Zeus’s bolts for him.

Some sources, mostly later ones, also mention that Zeus had a particular pet eagle (sometimes referred to as the Aetos Dios) who sat by his side. Varying claims are made about this bird: some say that was it originally a mortal king named Periphas that Zeus transformed into an eagle, or that it was the eagle that he sent to capture Ganymede.

Odin

Sleipnir

Odin’s eight-legged horse. Sleipnir is the result of… “dealings” that Loki had with the mighty stallion Svadilfæri while shapeshifted into the form of a mare. Thanks to this bizarre origin story, he’s no ordinary mount. In fact, it’s often claimed that Sleipnir is the greatest of all the Aesir’s horses, nay, all horses period. (Get it? Like neigh?) The only steed to get similar “best horse ever” statements is Sigurd’s mount Grani, a descendant of Sleipnir’s that was personally gifted to the hero by Odin himself.

These claims about Sleipnir seem to be more than just shallow talk. Odin rides him up the Bifrost bridge to heaven and back every day, and the beast can gallop over sky and sea no problem. When Hermod borrowed the horse in the wake of Baldr’s death, he rode it all the way to Hel and leapt right over the gates, so high that he never came near to them. Odin has similarly ridden Sleipnir from Asgard to Nifhel (Mist-hell), and in a race from Jötunheim to Valhalla, he handily beat the similarly supernaturally swift steed Gullfaxi.

As mentioned before, it’s said that Sleipnir has runes engraved on its its teeth and sled straps (or alternately, its reins and sled). Of course, we don’t exactly know what those particular runes are there for, but they can have many possible uses.

Sleipnir is likely mentioned in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, though not by name. We get a description of how, as Odin rides Hadding to safety on his horse, “the sea lay stretched out under the horse’s hoofs,” which could be either a description of him running atop water or flying.

Geri and Freki

Two wolves that Odin likes to keep by his side. They eat the food that Odin doesn’t when he dines in Valhalla. Whether he just keeps them around to eat his scraps or whether they actually join him in battle is unclear, but they’re pretty consistently referenced in Norse poetry – though usually just as shorthand for wolves in general, or in other metaphorical contexts.

If the aforementioned Böksta Runestone really does depict Odin chasing an elk on horseback, then the two smaller figures by Sleipnir are possibly his wolves joining in on the hunt. Just ignore the fact that they look nothing like wolves.

Huginn and Muninn

Two ravens that sit on Odin’s shoulders. Every day at dawn, he sends them out to fly all over the world. By dinnertime they return to Odin and inform him of all that they’ve seen and heard. These pets have earned Odin the title of “raven god.” Similar to Geri and Freki, these two are often mentioned in Norse poetry as shorthand for ravens or in other metaphorical contexts. An anonymous poem recorded in the 13th century Third Grammatical Treatise mentions the ravens flying from Odin’s shoulders, Huginn to the hanged and Muninn to the slain.

Depictions of the ravens can be found on various carvings and artifacts, including this cute little silver figurine uncovered near Lejre, Denmark where they’re chilling with Odin on his throne. Just like Geri and Freki, they potentially appear on the Böksta Runestone, where they’re shown joining Odin on a hunt, one of them pecking at the eye of the elk their master is chasing.

The euhemerized source Heimskringla makes reference to the two ravens, claiming that Odin “trained them to speak” and that they “flew over distant countries and told him much news.” While this lines up with their portrayal in the Eddas, the detail of Odin “training them to speak” isn’t mentioned in other sources and could have other possible answers, as explained previously.

Feats

Zeus

Overall

• Zeus is the “most excellent” of the gods and “supreme in power”
• Through a tug-of-war metaphor, Zeus claims he’s stronger than all the other gods put together
• Zeus claims that even if all the gods in Olympus were working together, they couldn’t physically turn him around
• Hephaestus says that Zeus is the mightiest of the Olympians
• Poseidon says that Zeus is far mightier than the other Olympians
• Hera admits that Zeus is far mightier than her
• Alongside the other gods and later the Hecatoncheires, battles the Titans in a series of conflicts lasting ten years called the Titanomachy. They eventually won and imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus
• Alongside the other gods, fights and defeats giants in a war called the Gigantomachy
• Defeated the monstrous hundred-headed giant Typhon
• Achilles says that even the Titan Oceanus fears Zeus’s lightning
• Hera confirms that Zeus is stronger than Cronos
• Ate his first wife Metis, keeping her in his stomach
• After accidentally killing a pregnant woman while trying to seduce her, plucks the six-month old fetus from her burning corpse and stitches it into his thigh. He’s able to carry and deliver the baby, who you may know as Dionysus
• Impregnated the Titan Mnemosyne with nonuplets (sperm feats?)

Power

The Big Ones

• In the Theogony, the battle between the gods and the Titans causes the earth, the sea, the heavens, Olympus, and even Tartarus to quake. Zeus’s lightning rises widespread fires, which cause all the lands and seas to “seethe”, and the resulting heat surrounds the Titans and even “seizes” Chaos. To see and hear this, it would seem like heaven and earth were crashing together
• In the Theogony, Zeus’s battle with Typhon reaches a similar scale. His thunder resounds across earth, heaven, sea, and Underworld, and him merely standing up causes Olympus to reel and the earth to groan. His actual fight with Typhon causes earth, sky, and sea to “seethe”, with long waves raging along the beaches. The shaking reaches Hades in the Underworld and the Titans in Tartarus. Zeus burns all of Typhon’s hundred heads, maims him, sends him crashing to earth hard enough to make it groan again, and the battle ultimately results in “a great part of huge earth” being melted
• Both Atlas and Heracles are able to lift up the heavens

Physical

• Slew the original jailor of Tartarus, Kampe
• Grabbed Hephaestus by the foot and threw him out of the heavens
• Threw his daughter Ate out of the heavens
• While in a rage after Hera blew Heracles off-course, tossed the other gods around his palace, and nearly threw Hypnos out of heaven before Nyx intervened
• Makes Olympus quake just by nodding his head, in multiple sources
• Makes Olympus quake just sitting down in his throne
• Zeus believes that a fight between him and Poseidon would be heard of even by the Titans down in Tartarus
• Zeus claims that in a tug-of-war with him on one side in Olympus and all the other gods on the other side in Earth, the other gods wouldn’t be able to drag him out of heaven, while he’d be able to pull all the others, along with the earth and the sea, up to Olympus
• Wrestled with his son Heracles, though we don’t get much detail in the source of the myth and it’s presented in a poetic way
• In some versions of his fight with Typhon, he grapples with the monster despite Typhon being large enough that his heads brush the stars; the two also throw mountains at each other, with Zeus trapping Typhon under Mount Etna

Magical – Lightning / Thunder

• Has slain many a mortal with his lightning bolts
• Zeus’s lightning bolts can fell trees, and uproot them
• Right before Amphiaraus is caught by Periclymenus, Zeus is able to throw a lightning bolt that splits open the ground, creating a crack that Amphiaraus and his chariot disappears into
• One of Zeus’s lightning bolts shatters a ship at sea, killing every man on board except Odysseus
• One of Zeus’s thunderstrokes shakes Mount Ida
• Zeus’s thunder shakes the wide earth
• Ares believes Zeus could mess him up with a lightning strike
• Zeus smites giants with lightning, though due to a special trait of theirs, he needs Heracles to finish them off for him
• After Hera and Athena start gearing up to try and intervene in a battle Zeus told them not to intervene in, he threatens to smite them with a lightning bolt, maim their horses, and break their chariot into pieces. The lightning would give them wounds that wouldn’t be healed for ten years
• At the ending of Aeschlyus’ Promethus Bound, Zeus creates a thunderstorm over the mountain where Prometheus is held. Hermes says that one of the lightning bolts will shatter a cliff and bury Prometheus in the rubble
• In some versions of his fight with Typhon, Zeus uses his bolts to blast back mountains that the monster throws at him

Magical – Other

• Through unstated means, Zeus can destroy the armies, walls, and ships of cities that displease him
• After smiting a king, wipes out his city and all of its inhabitants, though it’s never said how
• Rains stirred on by Zeus can cause floods that knock down embankments and walls
• Rains stirred on by Zeus can cause rivers to flood over and sweep away trees
• Zeus flooded Earth, wiping out the men of the Bronze Age, though some survived
• Zeus can cause winds that stir waves in the ocean
• Zeus can disperse clouds dense enough to obscure mountains
• When Menelaus was at sea, Zeus poured winds upon him that swelled the waves to massive sizes, sending him off-course
• While the Argonauts were at sea, sent a furious storm that sent them off-course
• Can send “stars” in the sky as omens for mortals to observe
• Has created stars and constellations

Scaling

• Considering his position of leadership and the various statements about his supremacy among the Olympians, Zeus is likely comparable to all of the other gods. Here’s a few of the feats the others have pulled off:
  • Amphitrite can “easily calm the waves upon the sea and the blasts of raging winds”
  • The river deity Xanthus/Scamander is able to turn his river in a towering wave against Achilles, washing away the corpses the warrior had left behind and slamming him with enough force to uproot a tree he grabs onto. This flood fills an entire plain. Hephaestus makes Xanthus/Scamander back down by creating fire that burns the surrounding forest and boils the river’s water
  • Apollo fills in the trench the Achaeans dug, then brings down their wall as easily as a child plays with sand
  • Earlier, it was mentioned that Poseidon could’ve destroyed the same Achaean fortification if he wanted; it was also said at one point that the Acahean fortification would be destroyed together by Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo in the future, though perhaps Apollo only brought down one wall of a larger structure
  • Poseidon shakes high mountains and forests walking through them
  • Poseidon causes “the vast earth to quake,” shaking mountains from their roots to their peaks. This quake reaches down to the Underworld, and Hades seems to fear that the earth above may split apart, opening a crack into the Underworld
  • Poseidon can move and shake the earth
  • Demeter causes a worldwide famine, then reverses it
  • Ares can “whirl his fiery sphere among the planets,” or in other words, move the planet Mars
  • Athena shook Olympus, earth, and sea with her might
  • During the Gigantomachy, Athena throws the island of Sicily at Enceladus, and Poseidon breaks off part of the island Cos and throws it at Polybotes
  • Hera causes Olympus to quake just by shaking angrily in her throne
  • In several different sources, Hera breastfeeds Heracles, sometimes resulting in the creation of the Milky Way from her breast milk; while these are mostly later sources, the story is likely much older, as Greek artwork from the 4th century BC depicts Hera breastfeeding Heracles

• Since the gods clashed with the Titans for a decade straight and won out in the end, it’s not much of a stretch to say Zeus should stack up to them. Similarly, there are some other beings he could potentially be scaled to as well, though there are arguments both for and against that:
  • Primordial beings personify the chaotic void, the Earth and the heavens; Gaia created the heavens (Uranus) on her own to surround herself and serve as a dwelling for the gods
  • With a sickle made by Gaia, the Titan Cronos “dismembered” his father Uranus, one of those aforementioned embodiments
  • The Titan Theia gave birth to beings that embody the Sun (Helios), the Moon (Selene), and the dawn (Eos). Eos herself was able to give birth to gods that represented stars/planets
  • Zeus himself refrained from upsetting Nyx, the personification of night

Durability

Direct

• Recovers after getting his head split open with an axe by Prometheus (or Hephaestus)
• Survives getting the sinews of his hands and feet sliced out by Typhon. Though he’s weakened without them, he’s still alive, and eventually Hermes and Aigipan are able to put them back in and Zeus is able to continue fighting
• Zeus’s aegis shield can block a spear strike from Ares, and it could even defend against his own lightning bolts

Scaling

• Zeus’s siblings all survived being eaten by Cronos and being held in his stomach for years
• Hera and Hades have both survived shots from Heracles’ hydra poison-tipped arrows, although they needed the physician of the gods Paeëon to help soothe the pain
• Heracles survives for a while after exposure to this same hydra poison, which had been diluted in Nessus’s blood and smeared on his tunic. The poison melts off Heracles’ skin and he tears his own flesh off trying to rid himself of it, yet the demigod’s still in good enough condition to travel for a bit, then construct a funeral pyre for himself
  • Hydra poison is able to kill centaurs, cause Chiron so much pain he willingly gives up his immortality, and kill Ladon, the dragon that guards the golden apples
• The gods can trade blows with one another; another showing of this
• Ares has survived and recovered from multiple brutal defeats at the hands of Heracles, usually involving him getting stabbed in the leg
• Hephaestus survived getting thrown out of heaven and falling to Earth, on two separate occasions
• Zeus’ daughter Ate survived getting thrown out of heaven and falling to Earth
• Prometheus survived having a shaft driven through his torso by Zeus, and is able to constantly regenerate from having his liver eaten by a bird
• The giant Alcyoneus, who was immortal as long as he stayed in his homeland Pallene, began to regenerate from being struck by one of Heracles’ arrows, though this was interrupted
• In some tellings, the Lernaean Hydra had one immortal head. This head was still alive after Heracles cut it off of the Hydra’s body and cauterized the stump, so he just buried it underground and covered the spot with a rock
• In one telling, the immortal giant Typhon survived getting burnt “to ashes” by Zeus
• Both Atlas and Heracles can withstand the weight of the firmament on their shoulders

Speed

Direct

• Comes down from Olympus during the Titanomachy, hurling lightning bolts
• Leaps from Olympus again to fight Typhon
• Quickly comes down from heaven to Mount Ida to intervene in a battle below

Horses

• Pegasus served Bellerophon well in slaying the swift-footed Chimera
• Pegasus can fly from Earth to Olympus
• The horses that pull his chariot can fly from Olympus to Earth

Scaling

• Gods and god-adjacent beings frequently travel between Heaven/Olympus and Earth:
  • Athena and the horses of Ares’ chariot travel between Olympus and Earth
  • Athena travels between Olympus and Earth before Achilles draws his sword
  • Athena travels between Olympus and Earth to give advice to Odysseus before the Achaeans flee on their boats
  • Ares quickly ascends up to Olympus after being wounded by Diomedes
  • Apollo speeds from Earth to Olympus “swift as thought”
  • Hera speeds from the mountains of Ida to Olympus as fast as thought
  • Thetis is able to travel from Earth to Olympus, then leap quickly back to the deep sea
  • Iris quickly travels from heaven to a deep undersea cave to summon Thetis, then they both travel back to heaven
• Demeter is able to quickly fly over land and sea “like a wild-bird” while searching for Persephone, and she and Hecate are able to travel to Helios together
• The Titan Themis quickly speeds around the world, seeking and summoning each one of the gods (even minor river deities and nymphs) to an assembly at Zeus’s house
• Beings exist that personify celestial bodies such as the Sun, and were thought to literally move around the world daily
• Heracles shot and wounded the Sun (AKA Helios) with an arrow. Though most sources imply he only threatened to, Panyassis claimed he did actually shoot the Sun here, though the text only survives in fragments; here’s an example of a source which claims this is only a threat

Odin

Overall

• Odin is the “highest and most ancient” of the Aesir; he is their ruler, and all the other gods submit to him like children before their father
• Odin is the “foremost” of the Aesir; he is to the other gods as the World Tree Yggdrasil is to normal trees
• Personally participated on the front lines of the Aesir-Vanir war
• Has drunk from Mimir’s well of wisdom
• Through employing various tricks, stole the mead of poetry from the giant Suttung
• During one summer, does the work of nine slaves for the giant Baugi
• Unlike some pop culture portrayals, Thor’s mother isn’t Frigg, it’s Jörð, the personification of the Earth herself… so, Odin has essentially banged a planet

Power

The Big One

• Alongside his two brothers, slew the primordial giant Ymir and created the world using his body parts, and also created the stars and the sky using sparks from Muspelheim and Ymir’s skull

Physical

• Slew the giant Sokkmimir, though it’s not mentioned how
• After the other gods brought Loki’s children to him, he threw the serpent Jörmungandr (before it grew giant-sized) into the sea, and threw Hel into Niflheim, though from where he did this is unclear
• Stabs Sigmund’s sword into a tree
• Charges against Sigmund, hefting up Gungnir at him; Sigmund’s sword breaks against it
  • This sword can saw through stone and iron
• Uses his auger Rati to drill a hole through a mountain
  • In the Prose Edda, this was done by Baugi, but in Havamal, it’s Odin
• Threw the giant Thiassi’s eyes into the sky, making them two stars
  • In Harbardzljod, Thor claims responsibility for this instead
• In Gesta Danorum, while undercover as a Russian soldier, beats the entire enemy line into flight single-handed
• In Gesta Danorum, bludgeons Harald Wartooth to death with his own mace

Magical

• With his ninth magic spell, can manipulate the wind to “lull all the sea to sleep”
• Created a burning ring of fire around Sigrdrifa/Brynhild
  • In one version, when Sigurd rides over the ring of fire, it flares up, the flames reaching to the heavens and causing the earth around to shake
• Seemingly stops a storm which had caused trouble for Sigurd’s ship
  • This is most explicit in Gesta Danorum, where he creates a cloud of his own

With Other Gods

• Assisted the other Aesir in restraining Fenrir, which involved tying him up to a large stone slab, fastening that slab deep into the ground, then thrusting another large stone into the ground as an anchoring-peg
• Assisted the other Aesir in restraining Loki, which involved first trying to catch him with a heavily weighted net, then taking three stone slabs, knocking a hole in each, and tying him to those slabs with the guts of his son Narfi, which somehow turned to iron afterward
• Together, the Aesir are able to kill the giant Thiassi after he follows Loki into Asgard
  • Both Thor and Loki seem to claim credit for the kill in different sources

Scaling

• Thor performs the most feats out of any the Aesir, or at least the most consistently impressive ones. Here’s just a few:
  • Thor is known for slaying giants on the regular; he’s shattered the skull of the stone-headed Hrungnir, took out Hymir with a punch that knocked him head over feet, slaughtered an entire wedding party of giants, broken the skull of a giant who had disguised himself as a mason, and was about to kill the giantess Hyrrokkin before he was stopped
  • In one version of Thor’s fight with Hrungnir, it’s claimed that mountains shook, the sky burned, and the earth nearly split apart
  • In a story recounted in both of the Eddas, Thor nearly fishes up Jörmungandr after using the head of an ox as bait on his line; in the version from the Poetic Edda, the earth starts collapsing because of this
  • When the gods are feasting at Aegir’s hall, the entire mountain range shakes when Thor arrives there from Jötunheim. He threatens to decapitate Loki, break every bone in his body, and throw him so far that no one will ever see him again
  • “Mountains split asunder” and the earth “flamed with fire” when Thor heads off to Jötunheim on his goat-drawn chariot
  • Thor strikes Utgarda-Loki with his hammer thrice, as hard as he can; though it initially seems like the giant resisted the blows, this was actually somehow just a trick and Thor was really striking a mountain, with each blow creating a valley on top of that mountain
  • Thor is able to visibly lower the amount of fluid in Utgarda-Loki’s mead horn with three gulps, though isn’t able to drain it; this horn was connected to the sea, and Thor’s feat here is how the tide came to be
  • Thor is able to partially lift the giant Utgarda-Loki’s cat, pulling one paw up from the floor; this cat is really Jörmungandr, and Thor lifted him so high that his hand nearly touched the sky and Jörmungandr was barely touching the ground
  • Thor threw the giant Aurvandil’s toe into the sky, turning it into a star
  • It’s worth noting his divine strength is doubled by his belt Megingjörð for most, if not all of these feats

• Other gods and god-adjacent beings also get some decent showings:
  • Loki, while being tortured with poison, causes the whole earth to shake when he writhes from pain; this is what earthquakes are
  • Freyr is the “ruler of rain and sunshine”
  • The blast of Heimdall’s trumpet Giallarhorn can be heard in all worlds
  • Freyja merely snorting shakes the “whole hall of the Aesir”
  • Gefiun’s four sons, in the form of oxen, are able to tear out a portion of land and drag it into the sea, creating both the island of Zealand and Lake Malar
  • Beings exist that pull the Sun and Moon around the world, as well as ones that embody winter and summer

• Several giants also show some impressive feats of both magic and strength:
  • Skrymir (really Utgarda-Loki) causes earthquakes by snoring and is so huge in size that one of his gloves appears to be a large building
  • Utgarda-Loki is able to “move” a mountain in front of Thor’s blows, blocking them
  • Hyrrokkin is able to push the boat Hringhomi out to see, the biggest of all ships that even the Aesir couldn’t move; her doing so causes “all lands” to quake
  • Thiassi, while in the form of an eagle, causes a “storm-wind” flying after Loki, who was in the form of a falcon
  • Hraesvelg, in the form of a giant eagle, causes of all the winds in the world just by flapping his wings

• During the events of Ragnarök, as recounted in the Prose Edda… (Poetic Edda version)
  • The wolf Sköll will catch and swallow the Sun
  • The wolf Hati will also catch and kill the Moon
  • Jörmungandr will cause the ocean to surge onto the land and “bespatter all the sky and sea” with poison
  • Fenrir will get free from its bonds and open its mouth so wide one jaw is against the sky and the other is against the earth, with no more room to open further
  • The god Vidar will tear apart Fenrir’s mouth, avenging Odin
  • Thor will kill Jörmungandr, but succumb to its poison
  • Surtr will “fling fire over the earth and burn the whole world,” including the heavens. Earth will sink into the sea, and will later emerge anew
  • However, there will be places such as Vidblain that Surtr’s fire will not reach
  • Earlier in the Prose Edda, it was said that a wolf called “Moongarm” would be the one to swallow celestial bodies and spatter the sky with blood, though this doesn’t happen in the later description of Ragnarök

Durability

Direct

• Survived hanging himself on the world tree Yggdrasil and wounding himself with his own spear. He hung there for nine long nights without food or water before he fell off
• Survived being tortured and made to sit between two hot fires for eight nights straight, only given one drink the entire time
• The Bifrost bridge constantly burns with flames to keep frost-giants and mountain-giants out of heaven; Odin and the other gods are able to ride up Bifrost to heaven every day just fine
• While shapeshifted into a hawk, has part of his tailfeathers cut off by King Heidrek wielding Tyrfing and still manages to fly off. This is why hawks have short tailfeathers
  • No man or animal can survive a wound from Tyrfing for more than a day, no matter how small. And yet, Odin did somehow.

Scaling

• Thor is just fine after getting a large fragment of a whetstone lodged in his skull, and just continues on living with that fragment stuck there after he couldn’t get it removed
• Tyr survives getting his hand bitten off by Fenrir
• Though it pains him, Loki is able to withstand repeatedly having venom dripped onto his face during his imprisonment. He eventually escapes in time for Ragnarök
• Loki is pained, but seemingly unharmed by playing testicle tug-of-war with a goat
• Several gods, including Vidar, Vali, Modi, and Magni, will actually survive through Ragnarök, “unharmed” by Surtr’s flames

Speed

Direct

• While they’re both shapeshifted into eagles, outraces a giant from Jötunheim to Asgard
• Transforms into a hawk and flies off before Heidrek can slash at him with Tyrfing, but the king does cut off his tailfeathers with another swing
• Threw the giant Thiassi’s eyes into the sky, making them two stars
  • In Harbardzljod, Thor claims responsibility for this instead
• In Gesta Danorum, while undercover as a Russian soldier, fights off an entire enemy line on his own

Sleipnir

• Along with the other Aesir on their own horse, rides Sleipnir up the Bifrost bridge to heaven and back every day
• On Sleipnir, rides all the way to Jötunheim, then outraces a giant (riding his own horse) from Jötunheim to Valhalla
• After Baldr’s accidental death, the god Hermod borrowed Sleipnir from Odin and was able to ride from Asgard to Hel in nine days. Sleipnir was able to leap so high over Hel’s gates that it came “nowhere near” them
• Odin rides Sleipnir from Asgard to Nifhel (Mist-hell)

Scaling

• Huginn and Muninn fly around the world daily, leaving at dawn and returning at dinner
• Valkyries are possibly described as being like lightning bolts, though it’s not clear
• In both the Prose Edda and Gesta Danorum, Thor can summon lightning as an attack 
• Thor is able to quickly row a boat out from Jötunheim to the part of the ocean where Jörmungandr is
• Thor threw the giant Aurvandil’s toe into the sky, turning it into a star
• There are beings that pull the Sun and Moon around the world every day, as well as wolves that chase after them and eventually will catch them during Ragnarök
• During the events of Ragnarök, as recounted in the Prose Edda, Surtr will “fling fire over the earth and burn the whole world,” including the heavens, and several gods will escape these flames unharmed

Weaknesses

Zeus

Anyone familiar with Greek myth knows that the gods are shockingly fallible. Zeus has been tricked or manipulated before by crafty schemers such as Prometheus and Hera. Despite being the feared ruler of the gods, many Olympians have circumvented his commands and gone against his wishes. Some even attempted to rebel against him in the past. Zeus always winds up on top, but still, his authority is pretty regularly challenged. Though he may be incredibly powerful, there are still beings that even he fears, such as Nyx.

Despite the gods’ immortality, they have still been wounded on many occasions. This even includes Zeus. In some tellings of his battle against Typhon, the giant sliced out some of his sinews, leaving him weakened. He needed an assist from Hermes and Aigipan to get his sinews back and continue the fight. Some gods have even been wounded by mortals before.

In several stories, Zeus is shown to be vulnerable to the influence of other gods’ abilities. The god Hypnos was able to put him into a magical slumber on two separate occasions, though he did eventually wake up from these forced naps, and Aphrodite can lead Zeus’s heart astray just as she can with most anyone else. Of course, he doesn’t really need much help with that anyways.

Though the memetic depiction of Zeus as a fratty idiot entirely driven by his basest urges is far from accurate… well, there’s still some small kernel of truth behind it. While he is incredibly wise, boasting extensive experience as a leader both on the battlefield and off, he still can often be callous and impulsive. Hera also used his lustful nature against him in the Iliad, seducing him to keep his eyes off the battlefield while Poseidon wreaked havoc on his plans.

Odin

Mighty as he may be, Odin has his fair share of shortcomings. Many of his spells are performed verbally or have other requirements – he can’t just cast them with a wave of his hand. And while he has a truly massive variety of magic at his disposal, some of his powers are also incredibly situational and likely useless in combat. While it’s neat that dogs don’t attack him or that he can make ale taste better by spitting in the yeast, those abilities aren’t really going to be helping him out in this fight.

The Norse gods are noticeably more mortal than their Greek counterparts: their agelessness isn’t an inherent property, only the byproduct of constantly eating Idunn’s apples, and several stories central to the mythos depict them fearing death or even being killed. They’re also consistently portrayed as needing assistance from other beings for certain matters: the Aesir couldn’t create a fetter capable of holding Fenrir on their own and needed to get the dwarves to make one for them, and they couldn’t push the ship Hringhomi out to sea, having to call in the giantess Hyrrokkin to do it for them. These moments show that their “godhood” doesn’t inherently make them superior to all other beings in every regard.

Odin also has a number of incredibly embarrassing moments to his name. Despite having several magical lady-wooing spells, he was still tricked and embarrassed by a woman he was trying to get with. Perhaps that’s why he’s gone on record saying that he doesn’t trust women, or “independent-minded slaves” for that matter. There was also the time he was captured and threatened with death by a family of mortals, a story recounted in the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and The Saga of the Volsungs. Admittedly the father did know magic, but it’s still less than you’d expect from a god. And who could forget the time a random Christian priest took him down by bonking him on the head with a crucifix and knocking him out of a boat? (Though you can at least chalk that last one up to a Christian storyteller trying to make him look bad.)

Summary

Zeus

Advantages:

• More numerous “cosmic” showings
• Greek gods have superior immortality to Norse gods
• Doesn’t require equipment / rituals to use all of his powers
• Is in the better God of War games
• Orphism is crazy bro

Disadvantages:

• Less equipment
• Fewer companions
• Odin has several counters to his options
• Unless you buy omnipotence, doesn’t have quite as many individual, distinct powers
• Orphism is not reflective of conventional Greek myth bro

Odin

Advantages:

• Likely more intelligent (he’s at least not as impulsive)
• More equipment and companions
• Has some magical options that Zeus may lack
• S-Tier in SMITE

Disadvantages:

• Not truly immortal
• Zeus has several counters to his options
• Some of his most powerful abilities require him to perform rituals to use them
• Lacks depth perception
• Got cucked on at least three occasions

Verdict

Preamble: Sike, There Is No Verdict

Alright, gonna be honest right out of the gate: I don’t think it’s actually possible to declare a winner here.

The Greek and Norse mythologies were not monolithic. They were both fluid belief systems. They differed from place to place and evolved and changed greatly over time. Same with what people in the Greek and Norse societies believed about the physical scope of the universe. There was no common consensus back then, and there isn’t really one now on what exactly they believed. The sources we have for both belief systems often contradict one another, even ones found from the same time periods. We just don’t have a complete, comprehensive single version of either of them, because there was no single version. Just like how modern religions have different denominations, there were differences in how individual groups and people interpreted these deities back when they were actually being worshipped.

For the Norse stories in particular, it’s almost impossible to separate the Christian influence of the scribes who recorded them. For this blog, I tried to cut out the most obviously euhemerized parts – the ones where Odin and his Aesir kin were specifically identified as human warriors – but even in the stories where they are portrayed as gods, scholars believe at least some Christian influence found its way in. If not in the content of the stories themselves, this influence is present in how they’re made to fit into a single coherent, cohesive system. This need for rigid canon and categorization is kind of a Christian thing. (Let’s not forget that before the word “canon” was used by nerds to describe which Star Treks and Star Warses “count” or not, it was mostly used in the context of religion.) If this wasn’t enough, some historians even go as far to argue that the surviving sources we have barely reflect the actual beliefs of the time period, since the stories were only collected from a small part of the Norse world.

There is no one “right” interpretation of Zeus, Odin, or any mythological character, really – and because of that, I don’t really think I can give you an answer as to who’d beat who. At least not one that I’d ever find satisfactory.

If people with degrees in these topics can’t come to a final consensus on them, then who am I to try and bang the gavel and deliver the verdicts on how these gods should be interpreted? Me, someone who spent my formative teenage years toasting my brain by watching a YouTube show about fictional characters punching other fictional characters?

So yeah, I don’t think this is a fight that you can actually decide a winner for like any other fictional character matchup. Gonna be real, it’s honestly just kinda asinine to try and apply Internet versus debating logic to ancient gods. You’re never gonna be able to actually represent these characters as they were in the minds of the people who worshipped them thousands of years ago. They’re just too inherently amorphous to use in a hobby that favors rigid analysis.

However, it’d be even more asinine if I didn’t try and at least give you guys something here. So instead, I’m going to try and predict who would win if Death Battle ever decided to do this as an episode. Since, y’know, they’d definitely try to actually settle on a winner rather than just saying “this stuff is too up in the air and non-definitive to call.” So basically, I’ll be looking at all this stuff, making interpretations like it’s any regular character matchup, and then giving my guess as to what Death Battle would be most likely to buy or use in the inevitable episode.

But there’s a bit of an issue with doing that, as it’s possible a Death Battle researcher could read this blog, and then it could possibly impact their decision-making if they do end up doing this as an episode. Which would basically render any prediction I can give immediately moot. So, I’m going to kindly ask any Death Battle employees that may be reading this blog to stop right here and… I don’t know, go play a video game or ride a bike or something.

This is going to be a really, really long verdict if you can’t already tell. I’ve tried my best to split it up into manageable chunks. I know it’s gonna seem like too much, but you gotta realize here that we’re talking about characters with millenia of history each, and the facts about them have been muddled by a mountain of modern day misinfo. Add on to that the whole meta aspect of attempting to analyze this as if Death Battle’s doing the analyzing… yeah, I think a ridiculously lengthy verdict is warranted.

What Would Death Battle Do?

Well, first off, would Death Battle do this episode? Sure, probably. They did Heracles VS Sun Wukong recently enough, showing that they’re willing to use mythological figures, and that episode got pretty good viewer numbers to boot. They’ve spoken positively about this idea in particular in a recent Discord live chat, and from their discussion, it really just seems like a matter of time.

However, I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. Definitely not this coming season like a lot of people seem to think, that’s just too soon after HvSW. Using mythological characters was probably intended as an experiment, they’re not going to be a once-a-season fixture. Given the relative success of the last one, they’ll probably do a follow up at some point, but not until season 11 at the very least.

If they do decide to make a second mythology episode, this is the only one I can realistically see it being. It’s certainly the most requested and hyped-up one in the fanbase currently, and among casual viewers it’s got the most marquee value. There’s a far greater amount of translated primary materials available for these two mythologies than any other, which I’d say would make them more attractive to use. There’s also more general interest into them as well thanks to popular media like Marvel and God of War. Finally, there’s the distinct possibility that they’d avoid dipping into Egyptian, Hindu, Native American, Polynesian, or Japanese mythologies out of fear of offending people. (I’m sorry Ra VS Amaterasu fans, that one’s just not gonna happen.)

And for the people who want to see heroes instead of gods, like Achilles, Cu Chulainn, Sigurd, or King Arthur… well, I’m with you, but I don’t see that as very likely. None of those guys have that big of a fanbase, and if they do, it’s usually for their Fate versions. In which case, why not just use the Fate versions? There’s also the fact that people really just want to see big “cosmic” universe-busting matches nowadays. The DB power creep phenomenon is real, I’m telling you. Beowulf and Robin Hood are cool guys, but they’re not exactly going to give the DB writers a lot of big numbers to show off to the audience, or allow for discussion and action on the scale that Zeus and Odin would bring to the table.

WWDBD?: For Zeus’s Stats

Before we get into this, I want to say that I’m not exactly quite sure what DB’s standards for their sources on Greek mythology are. They never gave a specific cut-off date – totally fair, I’m not doing that either – but in the HvSW episode, they said they were using “the earliest known accounts”, and in DJTiki’s Heracles profile that was posted to Ultraguy’s blog, he says they’re using “BCE era” sources (though admittedly he never says if they’re doing so exclusively). However, the “suggested media” list they also put out on Ultraguy’s blog includes… well, it includes things that fall out of those guidelines.

The big one is Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths, which is a book from 1955 that’s generally considered very questionable in terms of accuracy by many scholars of Greek myth, which also cites a bunch of sources outside of “the earliest known accounts” or the “BCE era.” Even Graves himself admitted he’s no scholar or expert on mythology. And then there’s also timelessmyths.com, which just seems to be a website retelling Greek myths but not actually translating or citing any old materials. Theoi and Perseus are both listed, which are great websites that actually host translations of older sources, but it’s unclear if they used those sites to access those sources or just read the articles on those sites which retell the stories in their own words.

They did go through a translation of Pseudo-Apollodorus’ The Library, which is good. If you’re interested in Greek mythology and just want to read one thing to get all the major stories, that’s about the best choice you can make. And of course, like I did with my media lists, they could’ve read more than what’s listed and just left some stuff off.

Just for the record, I’m not trying to diss them or anything like that. All of the resources they cited are useful ones in their own ways. What I’m trying to say here is, I couldn’t really tell you where DB draws the line in terms of what they’d be willing to pull from for Zeus. Since I tried to match them in this blog, I pulled mainly from the earliest surviving sources (and Pseudo-Apollodorus) like they implied they were doing. I didn’t use Robert Graves or anything like that, though.

For Zeus’s strength/durability, they’d maybe stick with Atlas/Heracles lifting the firmament. It’s not hard to argue that Zeus should be stronger than his half-god son, and they did wrestle that one time. Zeus is also pretty solidly above the Titans. There are other “cosmic” level feats they would definitely bring up, such as all of the crazy stuff from the Titanomachy and Zeus’s fight with Typhon.

In addition to the feats I’ve already listed previously, there are a few more that I want to mention. I left them out of the main body of the blog because, to reiterate and make this very clear, I wanted to focus on the earliest sources, as well as a few later sources that are specifically focused on earlier Greek beliefs. These feats aren’t from the earliest sources we have, and a few are pulled from Roman sources, but they are fairly well-known thanks to the HvSW G1 Blog and general battleboarding osmosis. I’m only listing them here for two reasons: one, because people will say I forgot them if I don’t, and two, because I think there’s a shot Death Battle might bring some of them up.

• Zeus shatters Olympus with his lightning, and strikes down two other mountains while fighting against the giants.
• Zeus tossing his hair shakes “ocean and earth and all the starry sky.”
• Zeus fears that the spreading fires from his lightning bolts could burn the universe, destroying it.
• Zeus (with some assistance from other deities) floods, then unfloods the world, scattering storms.
• Zeus shakes the entire firmament by nodding his head.
• Apollo is incapable of harming Zeus.
• After Dionysus was ripped into pieces and boiled, Demeter gathered up his parts and put him back together.
• Zeus pours fire onto the world, boiling the ocean, drying up rivers, and wiping out all life.
• Zeus shakes the Earth, the ocean, the heavens, and makes Atlas stagger while smiting the giants.
• Zeus can perceive everything in existence, as well as shake the entire firmament by throwing lightning bolts around.
• Zeus attacks Gaia, then floods the entire world.
• Zeus raises the waters of the seas to flood all of the world’s cities.
• Apollo and Poseidon fighting threatens to flood the entire Underworld or even “lever out of gear” the entire universe.
• Strikes down Phaethon with a single lightning bolt, who at the time was in control of the Sun, repairs the damage he caused to the world, then sets Phaethon into the sky as a constellation.
• Zeus moves heaven and “twists the starry poles” just by frowning.

There’s more I could list, but I think you guys get the picture. All of these feats come from sources such as Quintus Smyrnaeus’s Posthomerica, from the 4th century AD, Nonnus’s Dionysiaca, from the 5th century AD, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Roman source from 8 AD. When you take into account that Hesiod and Homer’s works both come from the 8th century BC, then yeah, these are far from the “earliest known accounts.” I’ve heard that Nonnus’s Dionysiaca in particular really shouldn’t be considered reflective of older Greek myth, though I think Ovid’s Metamorphoses is fairly well regarded when it comes to studying Greek myths despite its Roman origins.

So yeah, I didn’t forget them, I’m well aware all of these feats exist, I just left them out of the earlier sections because they’re not from the kinds of sources I wanted to focus on. If you see or hear about something that you think is “missing” or that I “forgot,” check what source it’s from, and then the century that source comes from. Chances are I know about it and just left it out since it doesn’t come from one of the earlier sources I chose to primarily focus on for the main part of this blog. Or, that it was just redundant anyways. Sorry for repeating myself, but I just really want to hammer that in for the people in this community who lack reading skills… which is, y’know, a lot of them.

While I think Death Battle would (at least nominally) focus on earlier stuff like they did in HvSW, since these feats are cool as hell, I can see the show bringing up some of the more well-known ones. None of these feats really change anything at all, they’re all in-line with stuff he has in the earlier sources. Think about it as if you were the writer of the episode. Would you really deny yourself a line as metal as “Apollo and Poseidon fighting nearly destroyed the universe” or “Zeus feared his own thunderbolts could burn away the entire universe” just because of some boring arbitrary historical BS that only like 0.002% of your audience would know or care about? No, no you wouldn’t.

I have a feeling the show will want to make Zeus out to be stronger than Heracles. It’d definitely seem weird if Zeus was ranked the same as his half-god son. But if they want to give him bigger numbers, well they already ranked Heracles as infinitely strong. They even used the words “conceptual” and “boundless,” which unless I’m reading too far into things, is kind of a big deal. If you’re reading this blog and are somehow unfamiliar with battleboarding… why? Why are you reading this blog? How did you even find it? Well, allow me to explain: when people in this stupid hobby break out those two words in particular, that’s when you know shit is truly wack. (And that episode was written by one of the researchers, so it’s not just someone unfamiliar with the hobby picking those words randomly. They know what they’re goddamn doing, you can’t tell me they don’t.)

Again, I’m maybe just reading too much into this one specific word choice, but “boundless” is the highest tier on VSBW, a site that has some of the most absurd power scaling this side of SpaceBattles. If those guys think that’s the peak of fictional power levels, then… well, if DB wants to make Zeus numerically stronger than Heracles they’ve got their work cut out for them. Of course, they could always just do that by emphasizing Zeus’s godly traits like his immortality and special powers, which is probably the angle they’ll go for.

Moving right along. Zeus has a few options for speed. Again, they could possibly stick with Heracles shooting the sun with an arrow, which DB already calculated to 90-100c. But this might also be where they’d try and make Zeus stronger than Heracles numbers-wise, so, they alternatively might try something else.

There’s other speed feats they could mention, like Zeus and other gods creating stars and constellations or moving planets (if they counted Heracles shooting the sun as a speed feat, they could probably count those as speed feats too), Heracles spitting up Hera’s breast milk and the milk stream creating the Milky Way (I mean, again, if shooting the sun counted why not this), Helios also just personifying the sun, and the numerous cases of gods quickly traveling from Olympus to Earth. But I don’t really think these would get crazy numbers or anything. Honestly they’re like, all either worse than the shooting the sun thing or it’s questionable that DB would even use them, based on how they skipped over them in HvSW.

If I had to bet, out of what I just brought up, I think they’d most likely use the breast milk thing for speed. I mean, they love calcing weird shit for funsies, and they have little qualms about using those weird calcs as the deciding factor in an episode. They’ve used their Hulk-Umar sex multiplier in two episodes now as an important part of their Marvel scaling. (I could go off about how stupid the Hulk-Umar sex multiplier is but the last thing this blog needs is another pointless tangent.) I’m kind of shocked they didn’t try and calc the milk’s speed already, like damn, you’d think they’d be chomping at the bit to do that, their audience would eat it up. Or, drink it up, I guess.

Back when I was on the Heracles VS Sun Wukong G1 Blog, people calced those “traveling from Olympus” feats to pretty absurd numbers because of the specific model of the Greek universe we were using. Of course, the show didn’t end up using those numbers, and I don’t think they would use them if they brought Zeus on. The numbers were only that ridiculous because of the specific interpretation of the cosmology we chose to use, which was different from the one Death Battle ended up going with.

Another thing we did that got crazy high was trying to use Zeus being able to see and perceive everything as a speed feat, as well as him “shaking the firmament.” I kinda get why Death Battle skipped over the “perceiving everything” feat for speed; I think it’d be a little confusing to try and explain to the audience. It’d also be tough to like, get across how Heracles would even scale. For the “shaking the firmament” thing, I guess the thought process was that if shockwaves counted as a speed feat for DBZ, why shouldn’t they count for Greek myth? But they skipped over that in the episode, and I think one of the researchers even called it out as not being workable in some Discord channel. I forget who it was and what their reasoning was. In any case, they didn’t go with either of those options in HvSW, but maybe they’d reconsider for a stronger character like Zeus.

The final thing I think they might try is using Zeus defeating Cronos to say he’s immeasurable. The argument would go like, since Zeus beats Cronos, and Cronos is the personification of time, that Zeus is above time, and thus immeasurable in speed. I’m not too sure about this one myself – the exact nature of embodiments is incredibly unclear, so scaling in this way is somewhat speculative. Uranus is the personification of the heavens, right? But he was still able to get his penis cut off. Which, y’know, implies he had a humanlike physical form said penis was attached to. Cronos and the other Titans definitely seemed to be in physical forms during their clashes with the Olympians, given how the fights are described in the sources that cover them. But, well, I can see the researchers arguing this somehow. It’s certainly a possibility, and honestly, I think it has a decent chance of showing up in the episode.

WWDBD?: For Odin’s Stats

I think Death Battle would probably use the same kinds of sources for Norse myth that I went with. The Eddas would be the main pillars, with other sources basically just analyzed in relation to them. Their recommended reading list probably won’t look too different from my Odin source list, give or take a couple of sagas.

For Odin’s strength/durability, they’d definitely use him and his brothers killing Ymir and creating the world and the sky from his corpse. Since they’ll probably bring up the “Heracles lifting the infinite sky” feat for Zeus, they might want something where they can draw a direct comparison. They could just go with “Odin and his brothers created the sky using Ymir’s skull” but they may also mention how the sky is constantly being held up by four dwarves and then scale Odin to those dwarves. Or just mention how Odin and his bros had to lift the skull up to pass it over to those dwarves in the first place.

And then for his speed, they have a few options. Odin throwing Thiassi’s eyes into the sky and making them stars, they could count that as a speed feat the same way they counted Heracles shooting the sun as a speed feat. Same deal with Thor throwing Aurvandil’s toe and making it a star. Then you have other things like, y’know, deities representing the sun and the moon moving around the world, wolves being able to chase them and catch up to them during Ragnarök, the gods being able to travel between heaven and earth, and so on. It’s all very similar to what you find in Greek mythology, honestly. If Death Battle does change their stance on using all-seeing as a speed/reactions feat, Odin could still match Zeus. He and other gods are able to use the throne Hlidskialf, which lets them see over all the world and percieve everything happening in it.

But yeah, how good these feats are would depend on how they interpret the Norse cosmology, though, which… we’ll get into that. Oh God, will we get into that.

The Norse Cosmology Makes Zero Sense (And It Wasn’t Trying To)

Alright, this is one of those things that made me decide this is just too vague and “up for debate” to be actually analyzable. If you’re enough of a geek to be reading this blog, I imagine you’re familiar with how Marvel Comics or God of War presents the Norse cosmology: there are nine different “realms” or “worlds” which are all their own universes/dimensions linked together by a gigantic magical tree called Yggdrasil. Asgard is the universe/dimension where the gods live, Midgard is the universe/dimension where the humans live, and so on. Well, in the actual myths, that’s not how it works at all. Well, that’s my own personal opinion after researching the topic, at least.

You see, that’s the rub, you can’t possibly know anything for sure because all the existing sources contradict both themselves and each other on how the cosmology is put together. To quote Wikipedia’s article on Asgard on this one, since it phrases things better than I ever could:

“Cosmology in Old Nordic religion is presented in a vague and often contradictory manner when viewed from a naturalistic standpoint. Snorri places Asgard in the centre of the world, surrounded by Midgard and then the lands inhabited by jötnar, all of which are finally encircled by the sea. He also locates the homes of the gods in the heavens. This had led to the proposition of a system of concentric circles, centred on Asgard or Yggdrasil, and sometimes with a vertical axis, leading upwards towards the heavens.

There is debate between scholars over whether the gods were conceived of as living in the heavens, with some aligning their views with Snorri, and others proposing that he at times presents the system in a Christian framework and that this organisation is not seen in either Eddic or skaldic poetry. The concept of attempting to create a spatial cosmological model has itself been criticised by scholars who argue that the oral traditions did not form a naturalistic, structured system that aimed to be internally geographically consistent.”

Note that I’m not citing Wikipedia here. Just borrowing their wording. But let me use a little of my own to try and go more in-depth.

In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson presents the world as basically a big landmass in the middle of a vast sea created from Ymir’s spilled blood, with Muspelheim and Niflheim as their own areas that existed before Odin and his brothers made the earth inside of Ginnungagap. Midgard and Asgard are depicted as specific areas on that world, rather than two separate universes as in modern media. Midgard is a “fortification” made from Ymir’s eyelashes to separate the lands where humans live from the lands where giants live (AKA Jötunheim, also clearly not its own universe, and seemingly part of this landmass), and Asgard’s just a city. The heavens are located above this landmass, reachable by the rainbow Bifrost bridge.

If you read the Prose Edda with that short description in mind, it mostly makes sense. But then sometimes, Snorri mentions nine worlds, which raises questions. Just what are these nine worlds? There’s tons of instances of this, both of the Eddas actually repeatedly mention “nine worlds” rather than just one. And hell, if you add up all the “worlds” mentioned, it doesn’t even come out to nine. Taking that into account, the “nine” in “nine worlds” is possibly being used figuratively and not literally, like the “seven” in “seven seas.” Nine is just a number that had specific spiritual significance.

So what, is Asgard one of these “worlds,” or is it just a city? Is Midgard a “world” or just a fortification on a larger landmass? Is Jötunheim a “world” or is it just the lands where giants live? Is the word “world” being used to refer to a single city or region, and not an entire celestial body or universe?

And then in terms of specific location, Asgard alone is said to be in the center of the world, in the east, and in heaven in the sky in the Eddas and other sources. Some people have argued that there could even be multiple Asgards, given some other weird details in the Prose Edda. I would personally just say that Asgard is a single city in heaven, based off of some points in other sources which show that Asgard was thought of as being located somewhere “high”; the identification of Asgard as a place on Earth is possibly just something Snorri added in himself. But it’s not like Asgard is the only place with issues of inconsistent location. Hel is underground, then it’s in Niflheim, then it’s above the sea. I’m not even going to try and explain what Niflhel is, since none of these old sources try to either. It’s sort of hard to get a sense of how inconsistent and vague things are without just reading these sources for yourself.

So, you can’t exactly use sources like the Prose Edda or Poetic Edda to try and chart out a cosmology. Well, you can, but you won’t be able to settle on something every scholar out there will agree upon. The stories contradict themselves and each other too often. Within these historical sources, nothing is elaborated on to the point you can actually settle on a solid answer. That’s because there was never intended to be some kind of consistent “map” of these locations in the first place. The Prose Edda is attempting to synthesize a wide number of stories and traditions that weren’t aligned with one another to begin with. And again, there’s the whole unavoidable factor of Christian influence seeping in and just making things muddier.

I know that there’s at least one modern scholar who has tried to put forward a model similar to the interpretation seen in modern media, where different locations exist in different “bubbles” that are all inaccessible to one another by normal means. They seem to be doing this to explain away the shifting locations of places like Asgard, and I can’t help but feel that maybe they were influenced by these modern depictions. But the article supporting this “bubble” model is in Norwegian, so, I couldn’t tell you what it says beyond the English summary.

My main issue with the modern “the nine realms are all their own universes” depiction is that the “worlds” definitely seem to all share the same physical space: the spreading frost and drifting sparks of Niflheim and Muspelheim were able to mingle with each other in Ginnungagap, Midgard, Asgard, Jötunheim, and the sea that surrounds them were all created inside Ginnungagap from the corpse of Ymir, the Bifrost bridge physically reaches the heavens and is visible from Earth, characters are constantly able to travel between different “worlds” through entirely conventional methods (such as riding on a horse, or riding in a chariot, or flying in the form of a bird), the roots and branches of the giant tree Yggdrasil are able to reach all of these places, there’s very conclusively only one Sun and one Moon, and the “worlds” seem to share the same sky and the same ocean.

I think the likeliest answer is that the word “world” in this instance isn’t being used to refer to separate universes or anything like that, but rather just different locations scattered across one universe. I tried to look into the specifics of the Old Norse word being translated as “world” in these instances – “heimr” – to try and get some more insight into this. I’m no language expert, but according to Wiktionary, “heimr” can alternately mean “realm,” “region within distance to a parliament,” “land,” “village,” or “home.” So, at the very least you could say that the word used for “world” here has other possible meanings that have nothing to do with planets or universes. Obviously words can have multiple possible meanings, but they still share an etymological link. And I mean, come on. Would the vikings really even have the concept of a planet or a universe in mind as we know them today while thinking of these locations?

WWDBD?: Cosmology VS Cosmology

Yep, if it isn’t clear, this will end up being one of those fights. Y’know, the ones that end up being decided based on not anything the characters themselves do, but the sizes of the universes they inhabit. I personally find that boring as hell, but some people apparently can’t get enough of this cosmology VS cosmology stuff. To each their own, there’s no accounting for taste. 

Luckily, we already know exactly what Death Battle would do for the Greek side of things, cause they already covered that in Heracles VS Sun Wukong: the heavens are infinite in scope, and Heracles can lift them, so he’s infinitely strong. This would obviously carry over to Zeus as well.

Is Death Battle’s judgment here correct? No, not necessarily. Like, it’s very debatable – we know that there were many different cosmological models presented during the time of the Greeks, it was a topic of debate even back then, one that evolved as new thinkers brought in new ideas – but that doesn’t really matter. Again, we’re trying to predict what the show would do, and they’ve already told us what they buy for this topic in a very recent episode. So we don’t have to spend any time thinking or talking about Greek cosmology. Thank Christ.

So, what would Death Battle decide on for the Norse cosmology? Well, I feel like they’d probably just go with the pop culture “nine worlds are nine separate universes/dimensions” thing without any regard to what the Prose Edda or Poetic Edda has to say. Trust me, I’m still not dissing them, I totally get the decision-making process here.

They’re making a medium-length YouTube video intended to be accessible to just about anybody. Are they going to stop and spend five minutes explaining how Norse cosmology is impossible to pin down because all the primary sources contradict both themselves and each other on the topic, and how it’s all based on an assortment of conflicting oral traditions that weren’t ever attempting to be internally consistent, when they’ve already got a bunch of other confusing shit to explain? Or are they just going to present the audience with the “nine worlds” interpretation that everyone already knows about from pop culture, and maybe throw in a black box covering the contradictions and lack of a general consensus? Obviously they’re going to do it the second way, cause that’s the smart way to do it.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they say there’s one realm, or nine realms, or nine billion realms. They’ve got Zeus pegged at infinite. What matters is if they’d think Odin can beat that. Odin being anything less than infinite means that Zeus has a strength advantage that is, y’know, infinite.

So, would Death Battle interpret each of these worlds as being infinite in size? No, probably not, since locations like the heavens are said to have edges that you can reach, and “worlds” having edges is repeatedly referenced throughout the Eddas. (Again, it seems like the word “world” is being used to refer not to a bunch of individual universes, but to specific locations in one universe.)

Would Death Battle interpret the whole cosmology all together as infinite in size? Mmmmaybe. I don’t know. They could, I guess?

Like okay, let’s go back to HvSW again. In that, they didn’t really try to break down the old Greek stories and build a cosmology out of them, they used what philosophers at the time believed about infinity and the universe and all that crap, which isn’t really directly related to us in the same sources that talk about their myths. By this I mean, though sources like the Theogony and the Iliad do make references to how the cosmology is laid out, those references aren’t always in line with what philosophers thought. In HvSW, Death Battle didn’t use those in-story references to try and map things out, they used the ideas of Thales of Miletus and Anaximander and that kind of stuff.

I’m gonna be honest, I think it’s a little weird to hop between the stories and the actual scientific worldviews of these cultures like this. And then mixing in our own modern day knowledge just makes things even weirder. Like, here’s an example, Odin “making stars” is kind of odd to use as a “star-level feat” since… they’re not star stars, they’re fiery sparks from Muspelheim set within the inside of a giant’s skull. Same deal with scaling his speed off of throwing Thiassi’s eyes or Aurvandil’s toe to the stars. Do you really think the vikings knew exactly how big stars are, or how far away they are from Earth?

But Death Battle is definitely not going to have the same viewpoint as me here. They hopped between ancient cosmologies and real world measurements in HvSW, most evident when they used the real world measurement of the size of the observable universe (which ancient Buddhists definitely wouldn’t have known about) when calculating Wukong’s speed. Sure, that may have just been a “lowball” or whatever, but it still shows they’re willing to mix and match. So, let’s just move along and forget about it. It’s versus debating, you gotta make arbitrary choices at certain points. It’s weird even using these characters in the first place honestly.

So, what did the vikings think about infinity, and the universe, and all that crap? Well, no one really knows. They weren’t a broadly literate society. If they ever wrote anything down about those topics, well, those writings have been lost to time. Most viking age writings we have today are in the form of runestones. These runestones mostly talk about battles, expeditions, and deceased family members. Many of them are also from after the vikings widely adopted Christianity. There’s not really any runestone out there with some random viking’s ruminations on the nature of the universe carved into it. These things took time and resources to make. If you wanted to put up a runestone, you needed a reason to do it – like a battle to commemorate, an expedition to record, or a deceased family member to remember – and to put in some serious effort. 

By the way, this is why we have to rely on later sources like the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda for our knowledge on old viking traditions and beliefs. Despite the gaps in information they have, and the possible bias of the people who put them together, it’s just the best we have. Paper beats rock, as they say.

(If you’re wondering, runestones give us little additional info on Odin. Here’s one that historians believe depicts him getting eaten by Fenrir. He’s on the right.)

All the modern day research into the topic of “Norse cosmology” that I’ve found just looks back to the Prose Edda and the other historical sources on their myths, which as I’ve already established, you can’t really cobble together anything truly definitive from.

And even then, it’s possible the vikings saw their myths as allegorical to some degree, right? I mean, looking at their accomplishments in seafaring, you’d have to assume that at least some of those guys figured out that the Earth was round and not some sort of giant disc or infinite flat expanse. Here’s an interesting blog on this topic which more goes in-depth. (There’s also the fact that the entire idea of “everybody in the past thought the Earth was flat” is something of a myth to begin with, but that’s a little too complicated a topic to get into here.) Then again, some people even today think the Earth is flat, so that’s not really much of an argument honestly.

Think of it this way. There’s lots of Christians who, while they do believe in God, don’t seriously believe every last detail in the Bible. They go to Church every Sunday, they pray before dinner, but they don’t actually think Noah built a boat big enough to carry two of every animal on the planet. Sure, plenty of them do, but not all of them. Similarly, the vikings didn’t necessarily have to doggedly think that all of their myths and stories were exactly literal either. They knew what metaphors and allegories were, they understood the concept of fiction versus fact. Just because they lived hundreds of years ago doesn’t mean that they were stupid or incapable of introspection and rational thought. But I guess when it comes to what these people seriously believed about the scope of the universe, well, all we can really do is make assumptions.

It’s easy to assume that some uneducated Swede living in the year 748 would think that the world and the sky just went on forever. It’s equally easy to assume that, since he could go and look at a cliff and see that the land ended at the sea, that he’d think everything had to have an edge at some point.

Man, I’m really getting philosophical out of nowhere on you guys, huh? Let’s get back to talking about dumb versus debating BS.

WWDBD?: They Probably Wouldn’t Scale Odin to the Entire Cosmology

Honestly, no matter if they call it infinite or not, I don’t really think that Death Battle would scale Odin to being able to affect the full size of the Norse cosmology in the first place. I mean, if they really wanted to scale him that high, mythology is always going to be vague enough that they could maybe Scotch tape together some kind of Reed Richards stretch of an argument. But even trying my hardest, I couldn’t really think of anything that suggests Odin would reach that level.

Sure, there’s the feat of Odin and his brothers making the world. But Odin and his brothers didn’t make the primordial void Ginnungagap. Ginnungagap was kinda just… there. And as an aside, Ginnungagap isn’t even identified as endless or infinite in any of these historical sources, at least in what I’ve read. It just, y’know, it just kinda feels like it should be. They also didn’t make Niflheim or Muspelheim, those were also around before they were even born. Odin and his brothers made the earth, the sky, the heavens, and presumably some of the other “worlds” mentioned as well. A lot of stuff, sure, but not everything.

Out of these things they created, you can pretty easily argue that the earth, the ocean, and the various heavens all have edges you can reach. From there, you can also reasonably extrapolate that the other “worlds” should probably have edges too. All of these “worlds” seem to share the same sky no matter what interpretation of the term “world” you use. This sky isn’t endless either, considering it’s Ymir’s skull being held up by four dwarves at its corners – yes, it explicitly has corners, so it’s not endless. While other cosmographical facts are presented in multiple contradicting ways in the Eddas, I couldn’t find any instance of the sky being Ymir’s skull held up by dwarves at its corners being contradicted. It’s actually a solid enough fact that in Norse poetry, synonyms for the sky include “Ymir’s skull” and “toil/burden of the dwarves.” The skull holds the heavens, the Sun, the Moon and the stars inside of it. Outside of the skull, there’s presumably just more Ginnungagap void that Odin and his brothers didn’t fill in.

Since we know the sky isn’t endless and has corners, and yet it’s able to cover the entire world, then we can also extrapolate from that to say that the world and the ocean that surrounds it isn’t endless either, and neither are the heavens contained within it. So, Odin and his brothers didn’t create an infinite world, they created an indeterminately large yet finite one within a possibly infinite void that they did not create.

But now we’re reaching the point of trying to use the Eddas to lay down a definitive cosmology, which as I’ve already told you, many scholars have tried and failed to do because everything is just so ambiguous. If you’re a college student like I am, I advise going to your school’s library, looking up all the resources they have on this topic, and reading as many as you can. I did, and that’s what opened my eyes to how scholars are actually still debating this stuff to this day. You’d think it’d be settled, but it’s not.

(This collage shows a variety of proposed models from Kevin J. Warner’s article Off-Center: Considering Directional Valences in Norse Cosmography, all based on different descriptions from Norse sources.)

As I’ve said before: people with degrees in this subject cannot agree on a single answer, so who am I to try and give you one? If you’ve read everything I’ve written so far, you’ll probably understand that there is no single answer. Just like myths, there’s many different equally valid possible interpretations – again, it’s not like there was a consensus among the Norse to begin with, people back then were bound to have different views from one another.

But we’re not looking for some kind of definite solution, we’re looking for the interpretation that a certain YouTube show about fictional characters beating up other fictional characters would be most likely to buy. At a certain point, I just have to call it by my gut feelings, and my intestines are telling me that they wouldn’t go with “Infinite Odin” off of this feat. There’s just too many contradictions, too much vagueness. That’s what I’ve been trying to illustrate with all of this, I’m not trying to conclusively tell you how the cosmology works, just that it’s incredibly easy to put forward an informed argument that what Odin and his brothers created isn’t infinitely big.

I would guess that the only other thing people would ever try and use to scale Odin this high would be Surtr’s feat of burning away the world during Ragnarök. But again, there’s several problems with it. He didn’t destroy everything. His flames scorched heaven and earth, but he didn’t affect the heaven Vidblain, and he didn’t destroy the ocean given that the earth was able to sink into it and rise from it again. He certainly didn’t do jack to Ginnungagap. Plus, he pulled this off by flinging flames over the world. Little known fact about flames, but they can spread; the embers of a single campfire can burn down an entire forest (consult Death Battle S4E12 for more info on this). It’s not like he shot out some kind of epic Dragon Ball Z supernova attack that blew everything up. Finally, I’d also say it’s a little silly to try and scale the gods to something that killed a bunch of them.

The only situation where I can see them going with Odin being infinitely strong is if it wouldn’t affect who wins or loses otherwise, and if they can find some simple way to argue it that I’m missing. Cause yeah, Death Battle will sometimes be more or less generous on what they present in the episode based on whether or not it really impacts the fight that significantly. You can find good examples of them doing this in Omni-Man VS Homelander and Beerus VS Sailor Galaxia. They’ll do a highball estimate for a character who loses with or without it, or they’ll lowball things to make a fight look more fair than it really is.

DJTiki said they’re being “as lenient as possible” with mythology (he technically only said that about Greek mythology, but there’s no reason not to extrapolate this to mythology as a whole), so I think them accepting some kind of shaky highball estimate for the Norse cosmology is totally possible. Y’know, the same way they basically just went with the highest possible interpretation of the Greek cosmology and ignored the other possible models. In this case, since the particulars of the Norse cosmology are so debatable, they’d probably only use Infinite Odin if they know it wouldn’t score him an unfair win.

WWDBD?: Comparing Numbers

So, we’ve got almost everything we need now – the strength/durability feats, the speed feats, and the likeliest interpretations of the cosmologies that they’d go with to process them through. Let’s lay everything out now. And in fact, let’s do it as a chart, cause who doesn’t like a good chart?

	Zeus	Odin
Power and Durability	Shaking the firmament Atlas and Heracles lifting the sky Other cosmic feats (Infinite)	Creating the world and sky Dwarves constantly lifting the sky Various earth-shaking feats (Up to interpretation)
Speed	Heracles shooting the sun Gods creating stars and constellations Deities representing/moving celestial bodies Being able to see and perceive the entire world Defeating Cronos, who embodies time (90-100c minimum, they’d probably go higher)	Creating all the stars in the sky, setting their courses Throwing Thiassi’s eyes to the stars Thor throwing Aurvandil’s toe to the stars Deities representing/moving celestial bodies Being able to see and perceive the entire world (They’d probably call this stuff similar enough?)

Well, if they go with Infinite Zeus and don’t use Infinite Odin, it seems pretty clear to me that Zeus has this one in the bag – his number isn’t just bigger, it’s boundlessly conceptually infinitely bigger. But numbers are only part of the picture… and again, it’s possible they’ll be generous and highball Odin to make things look more even. What secondary points could they use to further justify a Zeus victory? Or, alternatively, what secondary points could actually score Odin the win?

WWDBD?: Comparing Immortality

Alright, I’m gonna make this section (relatively) short since there’s not really much argument over this. The Greek gods are simply more immortal than their Norse counterparts, who die pretty much on the regular. Baldr dies, Hod dies, and then a bunch of them – including the greatest of them all, Odin – all die in various ways during the events of Ragnarök. They aren’t even truly ageless, they just have access to Idunn’s youth-restoring apples. Compare that to Greek immortals, who are actually ageless and literally just cannot die. Even if they want to die, they just can’t.

For the Norse side of things, the case of Baldr is a particularly embarrassing showing, since all it took was a single thrown dart to take him out (albeit one thrown by a fellow god). And because I know that people are going to get confused over this point because of Baldr’s depiction in God of War, allow me to explain myself a bit further.

Baldr was not “weak” to mistletoe. He was not fatally allergic to it. It was just the only thing that could harm him. I know that probably sounds like a distinction without a difference, but there is a difference. Baldr wouldn’t die from just touching mistletoe, nor would any small injury inflicted on him by mistletoe be fatal. It definitely wouldn’t work however the hell GoW portrayed it.

All of the other beings and materials in the world had pledged not to harm or kill Baldr (as I mentioned before, there’s a kind of animism present in Norse mythology) except for mistletoe. If it had been iron that didn’t take the pledge, he would not die from any exposure to iron, it just means that iron weapons would be capable of harming him the same as before while all others would just bounce off.

The mistletoe dart affected him like anything else would if it hadn’t taken the pledge. It affected him how it would before the pledge was in place. Note that the other Aesir only started chucking things at Baldr for kicks after every kind of item and animal in the world pledges not to harm him. That’s because they could’ve killed him if they did beforehand. The very fact that they went through the trouble of getting everything in the world to pledge not to kill him is proof in itself that at least some of these things could kill him in the first place.

The Norse gods just lack very many good survivability feats, or at least ones on par with their Greek counterparts. Sure, you can scale them to their strength feats if you want to – there’s no way Death Battle isn’t gonna do that – but you can do the same for the Greek gods, too. In terms of withstanding and regenerating from grievous damage, the Greeks just have more numerous showings. The best the Norse side has is Odin surviving being wounded and then hanged for nine nights and Thor getting that whetstone shard embedded in his head and living with it there afterwards. Which are both pretty decent to be fair, Zeus just scales to better and has more clear arguments for regeneration.

I know what some of you are thinking though. “Hey, what about Pan? Didn’t he die?” Well, that’s a bit of a complicated topic. If you’re not in the know, Pan is a nature god. It’s often believed that he’s the “only Greek god who died,” which has become a recurring factoid you’ll see about Greek myth online. He even got a subplot dedicated to him in the first run of Percy Jackson books, which I think probably raised the profile of the claim quite a lot.

Alright, this is going to get a little complicated, you might want to start jotting down some mental notes. Basically, the original claim of Pan being dead comes from an essay written by Plutarch in the 1st century AD. This essay is Plutarch’s attempt to explain why oracles weren’t of much use anymore, and recounts a conversation between Plutarch’s brother Lamprias and a number of other people. The conversation bounces from topic to topic, and eventually the idea of lesser gods or “daimones” being in control of oracles rather than the gods themselves is brought up. One of the participants in the conversation, Philip, argues that the lesser gods could be able to die based on a story he had heard from his grammar teacher Epitherses. Epitherses said that, while he was on a voyage to Italy on a ship with many other passengers, someone on an island the ship passed by started calling out for someone named Thamus. Thamus was an Egyptian pilot on the ship. He answers the person passing by, and he’s told to announce that “the Great Pan is dead” when they pass by a location called Palodes. Thamus does so, and they heard the voices of many people crying.

Note that the conversation in this story probably wasn’t an actual conversation that happened in real life that was then recorded by Plutarch. Instead, the conversation is more likely Plutarch’s way of tackling the debate on a topic from multiple angles, with each character in the discussion representing sides of the issue that Plutarch either thought of himself or heard in his debates in real life. The framing of “the Great Pan is dead” tale as a second-hand personal story shared by a character within the essay could mean that it was a second-hand personal story Plutarch heard from someone at some point in his life, and not an attempt to retell a traditional mythological tale. This is backed up by how this is, again, our first ever reference to the god Pan being dead in all surviving literature and artwork. Everything else that references Pan being dead comes later and can be traced directly back to this source.

Treating this particular claim from the essay as an actual solid facet of classical Greek myth is a little questionable. Not only is it a later source – which doesn’t immediately disqualify it from being accurate or anything, it just means we should treat it with a tad more scrutiny – it’s not attempting to accurately record or add on to the traditional Greek religion. It’s a theological essay attempting to break down and poke holes into certain aspects of what was believed at the time and basically reconcile contemporary science with religious beliefs. The character who tells the story about Pan being dead is attempting to argue against the belief that the minor gods were immortal, or at the least could be immortal. (Yeah, unless I’m missing something Pan is either being identified as or compared to a minor god in this source.) Using this without any scrutiny would kind of be like if I seriously used that scene where Odin gets beaten up by a priest to argue he’s actually super weak. The “voice” behind that particular scene is going in with an open agenda, and it’s unlikely reflective of any actual scene in any older myth.

Some historians also argue that this story Plutarch is relating to us was somehow all a misunderstanding. The theory goes that what the soldiers really heard was the chants of worshippers of Tammuz, a Sumerian deity that was worshipped in the area. Tammuz was believed to die yearly, and at that time he would be honored by ritual mourning. The chants they heard could’ve been “Θαμούς πανμέγας τέθνηκε,” which sounds like “Thamoús panmégas téthnēke.” That translates to “All-great Tammuz is dead,” but could also be interpreted as something like “Thamus, Great Pan is dead.” The confusion here is with the word “panmégas”, which means all-mighty, but if misheard as “pan ho mégas” could mean “Great Pan.” If you’re familiar with the use of pan as a prefix meaning “all”, then yeah, that prefix comes from Greek. One of the things you could use to back this up is that Pan is never referred to as “Great Pan” or “Pan ho mégas” anywhere in Greek tradition; the gods may have many titles and epithets, but that’s simply not one traditionally associated with Pan. This is of course assuming this was a real story that happened and not some tall tale, and keep in mind that there are plenty of historians that argue against this theory.

There’s also evidence Pan was still being worshipped after this second-hand story was related by Plutarch in his essay. In Pausanias’ Description of Greece, basically a log of the writer’s travels through Greece, he mentions going to some spots and seeing the people there still actively worshipping and sacrificing to Pan. And this trip of his happened long after Plutarch’s essay was written.

All of this to say, claiming that Pan “died” is a bit of a simplification; there’s no mythological story that recounts his death, the source of the claim is from a second-hand personal story obliquely recounted in a theological essay from the Imperial Roman period, and people were still actively worshipping Pan after that essay was written. Part of the reason the claim is so prominent today is thanks to Christians essentially “weaponizing” it against pagans during the period of history where the older religions were rejected in favor of Christianity. That’s not even getting into the Tammuz theory. There’s too much weirdness around it to use as solid proof. It also goes against the many cases of Greek immortals being… well, y’know, immortal. Using it as the deciding factor in a versus debate would be iffy, and it’s not something I see Death Battle doing.

Aside from Pan, there’s a few other examples of “immortal” Greek characters being killed that I’ve seen people bring up to try and claim Zeus could similarly be killed. The issue is that a lot of these characters just… well, it’s unlikely they’re immortal in the first place, people just assume they’re immortal.

A big one is the story where Zeus kills Apollo’s son Asclepius, and then Apollo kills the Cyclopes as revenge. People cite this as solid evidence of Greek immortals being able to die, but I have a few issues with it. One is that Asclepius, despite being known now as a god of medicine, was not actually a god in the sources where this story is recounted. He was the son of Apollo and a mortal woman – so, a demigod. Demigods die on the regular, Heracles alone has killed at least ten of them by my count, so it seems more like being part god doesn’t necessarily make you immortal. According to some sources, Asclepius was granted full godhood after his death kinda like Heracles, but at the time Zeus smited him, he was just a mortal demigod. As for the Cyclopes being killed, a fragment from the 5th century BC mythographer Pherecydes elaborates that it wasn’t the three original immortal Cyclopes that Apollo killed, but rather some of their mortal offspring. There are certainly sources where it seems that the original Cyclopes were the ones that Apollo killed, but what this fragment shows us is that even back then people realized the contradiction in the story and found that part questionable, and thus tried to think up explanations for it. 

Other examples people use are monsters, like Scylla or Chimera, who have some immortal heritage but are also shown being killed. Again, I just don’t think these characters were actually immortal to start with, considering how consistently monsters are killed off. It again seems like a similar case to the demigods, where divine parentage doesn’t always result in immortality.

Are there times when legit immortals are shown to be not so immortal? Yeah, sure, but they’re few and far between. Probably the one that leaps to mind for me is the story of Ares getting trapped in a bronze jar by giants. The story is brought up during Aphrodite’s discussion with Dione in the Iliad, where it’s said that Ares would’ve “perished” had he stayed in the jar for too long. The thing is, again, it’s far more consistent that Greek immortals are literally immortal. I have my doubts that Death Battle would put more weight on these rare, scattered scenes rather than the literally hundreds of times they’re blatantly called “deathless” or “undying.” I’ve already brought up this quote before, but looking back at DJTiki’s Heracles profile, he specifically says that they’d try to be “as lenient as possible” with how they treat Greek mythology. Being “lenient” in this case would mean going with the most common, consistent interpretation rather than trying to poke holes in it.

Of course, you can argue that Zeus’s immortality or regeneration is not so great that he could recover from Odin slicing him into deli meat with Gungnir. In some tellings, Zeus was weakened and possibly immobilized after Typhon sliced out some of his sinews, and he required help from Hermes and Aigipan to get his sinews back and keep fighting. It’s possible Odin could similarly mess up Zeus if he did enough damage. Yeah, that’s a fair argument, but the point is that Zeus will have an easier time killing Odin to begin with. (Well, at least before bringing magical powers into the question.) Odin would have to land many blows, while all Zeus needs is one good one.

I think it’s possible Death Battle would even argue that Zeus could easily bounce back from Odin dicing him up. The argument I’ve seen generally goes like this: Zeus was able to turn into a shower of gold, basically breaking down his body into many small droplets of liquid, and was able to transform back to his normal state from that. So who’s to say he couldn’t similarly reform from getting hacked to pieces? I don’t exactly know how I feel about this personally, as I think there’s some kind of false equivalency being made somewhere, but I can see Death Battle accepting that reasoning.

As for any arguments about returning after death, I think you could spin them for both. In Greek mythology, Heracles and other characters have traveled between the Earth and the Underworld on multiple occasions, so even if Odin was somehow able to kill Zeus, he could potentially just stroll out of the Underworld and continue the fight. Considering how frequently he bosses around the other gods, he’d likely have few qualms with forcing Hades to let him free.

Odin on the other hand has a few arguments. Like Zeus, he could potentially just leave the afterlife of his own volition to continue the fight. After Baldr’s death, Baldr was nearly given the chance to leave Hel if every being in the world wept for him, but was kept there because Loki (disguised as a woman) didn’t cry. After the events of Ragnarök, both Baldr and Hod (the other god who died before Ragnarök) emerge from Hel to join the remaining gods in the new world. From these examples, we know that Odin could probably find some way to get out of Hel. All of this is assuming Hel is where Odin would go after death, of course. Considering that people who die in battle generally go to Valhalla… I mean, Odin owns Valhalla, could he not just walk out the door? The other option is going to Freyja’s hall Fólkvangr, and again, Odin could probably just ask Freyja to leave or something.

The other argument for Odin would that he’d be able to revive himself using seiðr. Two different characters who are known seiðr users, Gullveig and Kotkel’s son Hallbjorn, were able to return after death. Although for Hallbjorn, that didn’t last too long.

So yeah, you could try and present these arguments if you wanted. But I don’t really think Death Battle would spend time on them, as they’ve all got pretty glaring issues.

The whole thing I described with Zeus is speculative – I only really brought it up here to provide a counterpart to the arguments for Odin. Odin being able to revive from death at all is sketchy even from a cursory glance, as he pretty conclusively died after getting eaten by Fenrir in Ragnarök and didn’t come back after. There’s no mention of him going to Valhalla, Fólkvangr, Hel, or any other afterlife, if any. And the cases of Gullveig and Hallbjorn are both a little odd. We know barely anything about Gullveig, there’s a ton of confusion and debate around her character, we don’t even know if seiðr was what she used when she repeatedly revived herself from being burnt and stabbed. Using her as the clincher again feels strange and not like something DB would do – would they really assume Odin has the abilities of a character who we, again, know next to nothing about? Hallbjorn’s resurrection is similarly vague on what the rules are and if it was literally his body or some kind of spirit or apparition. It also doesn’t last very long, no matter what exactly happened there.

It’s more likely that DB would just count the first death as a loss and not really even comment on the matter. In any case, since you can argue it for both if you really want, it kinda just “cancels out” and becomes irrelevant.

Can Zeus Even Kill Odin Though?

Yeah, that section didn’t end up being short, sorry. Alright, so, hopefully I’ve convinced you by now that the Norse gods are more killable than the Greek ones. There is, however, one argument I’ve seen come up somewhat frequently on versus sites to try and claim that Zeus has no way of killing Odin. It generally goes as such:

“Fate is an absolute force in Norse myth. Odin is prophesied to die to Fenrir during Ragnarök. Because of that, Zeus cannot kill Odin, since that would go against his fate of dying to Fenrir. Only Fenrir can kill Odin, and since Zeus is not Fenrir, he cannot kill Odin.”

Does this sound convincing to you? Maybe it does, but I don’t know, it feels like it kinda misses the point of a versus debate to me.

Like, the idea is that you’re pulling the characters out of the context of their stories and making them fight. What’s fated to happen to Odin shouldn’t matter, nor should what’s fated to happen to Zeus. Since yeah, fate is a tangible, active force in Greek myth too, and Zeus isn’t fated to die to Odin, or at all for that matter.

So what, they both can’t kill the other? Because that’s not what’s meant to happen to them in their stories? Then what’s even the point of talking about this? They’re not meant to do battle in the first place, the very idea of them fighting to the death goes against their predestined fates. It’s just a thought experiment, you don’t need to take their canonical fates into account.

It’s not like Odin’s fate of dying to Fenrir is some kind of magical ability he has. Like, there’s no point in any Norse story where Odin is about to die, but then fate intervenes Final Destination style to save him so that he can go on to die to Fenrir. That never happens. Nothing like that ever happens. He’s not immune to any attack that isn’t from this one particular wolf. And yet from how people talk about it sometimes, you’d think it’s Odin’s main power or something.

But okay, let’s go with this idea. Instead of pulling the characters out of their stories and putting them into a neutral environment where what’s fated to happen to them later doesn’t matter, let’s just say that the Greek mythologies and Norse mythologies are coexisting in one universe. We’ll also go with the idea that Zeus can’t kill Odin cause he’s not fated to do so. Then, to be fair, we’ll do the same thing for Zeus, since it’s never said anywhere that Odin is fated to kill him. Fate flows for the two exactly as it would’ve had these two universes never been conjoined.

In this situation… well, Zeus just wins by default. He can kick back in Olympus filing his nails and just wait for Odin to get eaten by Fenrir. Sure, there’s that prophecy that says he’ll be overthrown by his future son someday, but nothing indicates said future son will kill him. Zeus is immortal, remember? Uranus and Cronos were both left alive when they were overthrown, probably cause they’re immortal and can’t be killed. Even if Zeus and Odin got into a fight, neither could kill the other since they’re not fated to do so. Of course, by the logic of the people who use the “Odin can only be killed by Fenrir” argument, they would never fight or even interact in the first place, because that’s not fated to happen in their original myths.

Do you get what I mean yet by this argument “missing the point” of a versus debate? If you’re going to be a pedantic dork and say “Zeus can’t kill Odin because of fate,” you should at least take things to their logical conclusion.

WWDBD?: Comparing “Hax”

Man, I really hate the word “hax.” It just sounds so 2011, and it’s kinda embarrassing to talk about these mythological figures with battleboarding terminology. But there’s no other good blanket term for “durability-ignoring powers” aside from “durability-ignoring powers,” and that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue (or the keyboard). So “hax” it is.

Zeus and Odin share a lot of the same powers, so, I’d say most of them end up “cancelling out” because of that. By “cancel out,” I mean that it’s not an advantage either way since they both have access to that option. So sure, Odin could maybe turn Zeus into an ear of grain like he did to that little boy, or even rot him into a pile of dust like Grim Aegir nearly did to Hrolf and his allies, but Zeus could also just do the same kinds of things to him. Both of them can grant blessings, cast curses, shapeshift, transform others, potentially read or see the future, use all-seeing, create illusions, screw with other people’s minds, bind or immobilize others, cause diseases, summon animals and monsters, alter the weather, and so on.

Both also have numerous counters to the other’s powers and equipment. Here’s a basic breakdown of what I consider the major ones for each god:

• Zeus: Many of Odin’s spells are cast verbally. Several of his eighteen spells explicitly require Odin to chant to cast them, and it’s very likely some or all of the others require that too even if it’s not directly said they do. Similarly, chanting is seemingly part of casting seiðr. This is big when you consider that Zeus can remove someone’s ability to speak. With that, he could potentially wipe out a wide swath of Odin’s options, including some of the ones that defend him from Zeus’s own.
  
  Similar to how Odin could potentially redirect Zeus’s projectiles, Zeus could do the same to Odin’s. He and the other gods are consistently able to guide arrows, spears, and other thrown items through the air. If Odin tosses Gungnir at him, Zeus could easily send it flying off course. (And no, Gungnir’s supposed homing properties wouldn’t counteract this. The idea that Gungnir “always hits its target” comes from a line that can be translated multiple ways; accuracy-focused translations usually instead say it can pierce through whatever it hits. This will be expanded on later.)
  
  Additionally, Zeus has several ways of affecting someone’s mental state. He can take away people’s wits and can strike them with crippling fear. Since many of Odin’s powers are performed through some kind of active process (chanting, carving runes, banging on a drum, etcetera) or at least consciously activated, this could also be a counter to many of his abilities. Zeus could put him in a frame of mind where he either couldn’t focus to perform his spells or wouldn’t even think to use his powers in the first place.

• Odin: Zeus frequently attacks with lightning and the spreading fires it causes. Odin can manipulate weather as well, his seventh spell can quell widespread flames, and he could possibly even slow or stop Zeus’s bolts entirely with his projectile-hampering fifth spell. With all those ways to potentially counteract Zeus’s lightning, this fight won’t be as simple as Zeus just smiting him.
  
  As for Zeus’s sword, he could blunt its edge with his third spell, or if you want to argue that he could bless himself (something he’s never really shown doing) or that he should inherently be able to use any powers he can bestow onto others, he could make his body invulnerable to bladed weapons like he did to Framar or Harald Wartooth.
  
  If Zeus decides to go the Prometheus or Hera route and trap Odin in inextricable bonds, his fourth spell lets him escape from any restraints. Additionally, given his apparent ability to teleport, you could possibly even argue Odin could escape Tartarus if he was thrown there.

Those are the basics, but I’m going to go a little more in-depth on a few options to really break them down. Since I’m still arguing Death Battle would side with Zeus at this point, and Odin is generally perceived as the more “haxxy” of the two (every time I type that word I shudder), I’ll be mainly talking about Odin’s stuff here. I think a lot of it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you actually bring context into things.

Countering Magic / Removing Powers

First I’d like to address Odin’s sixth spell, which allows him to redirect curses back to the caster. I think a lot of people will try to use this to say that Zeus can’t do anything to Odin without it just being bounced back at him. I think that’s a bit tenuous.

First, I don’t think what Zeus does should be equated to the kind of Norse magic that this spell can ward off. Technically the original source only says that the spell is useful against those who “wound” Odin “using roots of the sap-filled wood,” a reference to a specific kind of Norse curse. Sure, it could be general language, but some of Odin’s other magic spells from Havamal have oddly specific uses as well – such as having both a protection spell that grants a group of people safety through battle, and another that grants an individual warrior protection. Not to mention his two, maybe three love spells which seem to have different specific uses. Extrapolating his sixth spell to reflect all other curses and magical attacks in the entire Norse magic system is already somewhat speculative, so extrapolating further and saying it would also be able to reflect the negative effects Greek gods can inflict on people – which aren’t part of the Norse magic system at all – is doubly speculative. 

Similarly, I also don’t think Zeus’s ability to remove the other Greek gods from their positions of power should necessarily be taken to mean he could similarly strip Odin of his powers. I’ve seen several people use that argument, and it just doesn’t really check out to me. He can take away the privileges of the Greek gods because he was the one to allow them those privileges in the first place. Odin learned his powers from various sources, such as how he was taught some of his spells by a relative, or how he learned the power of runes by sacrificing himself to himself. He didn’t receive them from Zeus, and most of them aren’t inherent powers he has just cause he’s a god. Do I think Zeus has ways of countering Odin’s powers? Yes. But I don’t think he could straight up remove them, in part because they’re derived from external magic systems. This is something you could probably argue over if you really wanted, but for the rest of this blog, that’s the assumption I’ll be running with.

Back to Odin’s sixth spell. We also don’t really know if it’s a constant defense or not. As I’ve emphasized repeatedly, Norse magic in general seems to involve processes. There’s no real reason we should assume this is automatic. Sure, the stanza about this spell doesn’t really mention any specific process, but it’s also just one stanza. Basically every other one of his eighteen spells from Havamal is actively casted in some way, be it through chanting, runes, or some other method – we know this either from the poem itself or from the ability’s depictions elsewhere. I think this is a case of any particular necessary process being trimmed out for poetic brevity rather than no process existing at all.

This point may not make a whole lot of sense to people who have never read historical sources of mythology, but unless they’re hyperfocused on describing the play-by-play of a particular event (like the Iliad), they tend to be very clipped and imprecise in how they present things. Instead of describing every clash in a swordfight, they’ll usually just say “so and so fought, and so and so slew so and so.” Norse poetry is also pretty strict with rhyming and form and stuff. If you want to dig into things as definitively as possible, you need to look at things in totality rather than relying on single instances of vague description.

The other example we see of a counterspell is done by Mondul in The Saga of Hrolf the Walker, and he has to carve runes into the special platform the magic users are casting their spell from to pull it off. So yeah, that pretty clearly shows there’s a process involved for counterspells. Considering there are many other examples of characters knowing the same kinds of spells Odin talks about in Havamal, and that Odin’s magic isn’t inherently different at all from the magic used by other characters, I don’t think drawing a comparison between him and Mondul is that out of the question. You could use this scene as evidence that Odin could reflect more than just that type of wood-based curse, but then you’d also have to accept that it’d involve at the very least some kind of magical process.

And let’s talk about that process for a bit. Mondul has to target the particular specialized equipment the magic users are casting their spells from, and he has to do it as they’re in the midst of casting the spell. Zeus obviously doesn’t have to build any kind of special magical platform to use his powers, and the curses the Greek gods can cast seem to take effect instantly, as soon as the god wills it to happen. You can’t target equipment someone isn’t using, and you can’t interrupt something that’s instantaneous. Even if Odin could reflect any kind of magic with a counterspell, the process he has to perform to cast that counterspell wouldn’t work against Zeus’s powers just by their inherent nature.

Now obviously the author of Havamal didn’t have The Saga of Hrolf the Walker in mind when writing his poem, as it came about later. However, both sources are based on a shared cultural understanding of how magic functioned. Remember, the Norse believed magic like seiðr was something people could actually pull off in real life, and thus depictions of magic in their stories are inspired by these cultural beliefs and practices. That’s partially how these stories manage to stay generally consistent on many facets of how these powers work and what potential uses they can have. Keep that in mind going forward when I bring up other magic users to compare to Odin, as that’s why I think those comparisons should have some weight.

Odin was able to dispel a witch’s vision-robbing sorcery in the euhemerized source Gesta Danorum, un-blinding a number of Danish men she had rendered sightless. You could maybe say he could similarly rid himself of some of the magical effects Zeus could place on him. But I’d say Zeus is a bit above the paygrade of some random witch. Odin is undoing a mortal’s magic with divine power in the scene, which may not really work against Zeus affecting him through his own divine power. I guess you could call that speculative, however. Additionally, if this a conscious action he has to take – which it certainly seems to be – then as I mentioned before, Zeus’s fear inducement or mind manipulation could be a counter to the counter, in the way that he could put Odin into a state where he wouldn’t be able to focus to remove the effect, or even think to do so to begin with.

Blunting Blades / Other Magical Defenses

Another argument I’ve seen is that Odin’s various magical defenses would basically protect him from all harm. This is, again, not really all that great of an argument. I mean, I could obviously bring up again how he explicitly gets killed in Ragnarök, but let me bring up some other issues.

First is Odin’s ability to blunt his enemy’s blades, as well as his possible ability to give himself an invulnerability to blades. What this spell does is make it so that your enemy’s weapon doesn’t cut – I don’t think it entirely robs the weapon of any impact, just dulls the edge so it’s like your enemy is hitting you with a blunt object. The description of the power in Heimskringla backs this up. If Zeus did decide to bring his harpe sword into the battle, I think getting hit by a weapon swung by a guy with infinite strength (as Death Battle would say he has) would still probably do something to you, even if the edge of the sword was blunted.

Zeus could also just beat up Odin with his bare fists if he really wanted – in Norse stories, these kinds of blade-blunting abilities are commonly overcome by just attacking the target with something that isn’t a sword or a spear. In Greek myth, the Nemean lion had a similar immunity to piercing weapons, and Heracles countered that by just strangling it to death. If Heracles could figure that out, I think Zeus could too.

Next up would be spell three hypothetically blunting magical attacks instead of just ones done with swords. This is just a theory based on how it seems illogical for a blunt object to be able to “bite” like a sword does. If you do buy the theory, then like with Odin’s sixth spell, I’m not necessarily sure it should be extrapolated to block all of Zeus’s stuff. It would likely be talking about blocking the effects of magical staffs, a particular variety of magical item seen in Norse stories.

Aside from those two points, most of the other arguments I’ve seen for Odin’s defenses involve his fate manipulation. I’ll get into that in a section or two, so we’ll leave things off here. For now, I’ll just bring up again how he explicitly gets killed in Ragnarök… I know I said I wouldn’t, but I mean, that’s a really important part of the mythology. You can’t just ignore that. Odin can very explicitly be injured and killed.

Sleep-Thorns

While going through things, I spent a lot of time thinking about sleep-thorns as a possible wincon for Odin. After all, we know that Zeus is susceptible to being forcefully put to sleep – Hypnos has done it at least twice. Death Battle would probably count permanent incapacitation as a victory.

I know some people will try and use the fact that Zeus eventually woke up both times Hypnos did that to him to claim he has a resistance, but I don’t know, I don’t really think Hypnos was ever attempting to permanently put Zeus to sleep. I think he just put him out for a set amount of time and then Zeus woke up when it wore off. There’s no real indication Hypnos was ever trying to make Zeus sleep indefinitely, just for a while as the other gods did what they wanted behind his back.

There are some ways to poke holes in the sleep-thorns argument, but I don’t know if Death Battle would go in that direction. We don’t exactly know if Odin carries them around on him at all times, or if he can just poof them into existence out of nothing, but that’s probably not an argument Death Battle would go with. They’ll just give him them regardless, that’s how they generally treat one-off items. Another argument I don’t see them going with is like, saying that Odin couldn’t penetrate Zeus’s skin with the sleep-thorn to begin with, or that Zeus’s regen would eventually push the thorn out or something. Greek gods have been wounded by mortals before, and their regen is sometimes inconsistent. There’s also the argument that Pegasus or Zeus’s eagle could pull out the thorn for him, à la Hrolf and Dulcifal, but I think Odin could put a stop to that if he wanted. You could also argue that Zeus could destroy the sleep-thorn before Odin uses it, which… actually, maybe they’ll use that one if they decide to go in-depth on this at all.

If you really want, you can get into arguing over the exact specifics of how the spell works – y’know, the whole physical versus nonphysical debate. Personally, I’m on the physical side, but there’s arguments for both. I kinda have a theory going that the sleep-thorn has to be used against people who are already sleeping. Both Queen Olof and Vilhjalm had to wait until their target was asleep to strike them with a sleep-thorn, and there’s also nothing that indicates the valkyrie Odin used a sleep-thorn against wasn’t already asleep when he struck her with one. But then you could get into the scene from Gesta Danorum where Odin seems to put some guards to sleep with magic, and then if the valkyrie was asleep, then how did she know Odin was the one to sleep-thorn her, and so on. It’s got issues, is what I’m saying.

Overall, I’m not totally sure what Death Battle would do about sleep-thorns, but I’m like 100% sure that they wouldn’t give Odin the win just because of them. There’s a chance they don’t even bring sleep-thorns up, but I dunno, I think it’s pretty likely they’ll be mentioned. It’d be a way to make things seem more fair, just to give some kind of wincon for Odin. If they do, then they’ll maybe hit us with their classic “if you ran this fight a hundred times…” bit. Sure, a few times out of a hundred Odin would choose to use a sleep-thorn and send Zeus into a potentially permanent slumber. But the majority of times, Zeus just smokes Odin before he gets the chance.

Causing Death

Heimskringla, a euhemerized source, says that Odin can use seiðr to cause men “death or disaster or disease.” I can see some people interpreting this as Odin being able to use “death hax” or whatever you’d call it, and saying that could be a potential wincon for him. I’m not too sure about this one.

First off, as I’ve been over a couple times already, seiðr is a process. Even if you interpret the line from Heimskringla as saying that Odin can just insta-kill people with death manipulation, he still needs to do some weird shit to accomplish that. At minimum he’ll need to do a chant or something, but judging from the other times we’ve had seiðr described to us, it’s entirely possible he’ll need to build a tall wooden platform to cast the magic from, or put on a dress and do a little dance while banging on a drum. This will just give Zeus an opening to kill Odin.

And second… I mean, is there any reason to assume it’d work on Zeus in the first place? The guy can’t die, he’s deathless, “āthánatos” as the Greek would put it. Even if you do buy this as instant death hax, I don’t know why you’d assume this magic would work on someone like that. There’s no real reason to.

Third, I think this is just a case of general language being used. Like, yeah, Odin can use seiðr to “cause men death,” by killing them with any of its known offensive applications. Such as casting a harmful curse, or making them sick, or summoning a storm, or whatever. If I had a gun and shot someone with it, that could be accurately described as me “causing them death.” And I’m pretty sure I don’t have death hax. “Disaster” and “disease” are both general terms, so like, there’s no reason to assume “death” isn’t being used generally in this sentence as well.

This interpretation could be supported by the actions of other seiðr practitioners. In another scene from Heimskringla, when the seiðr-wielding witch Hulð wanted to kill a guy, she didn’t just cast some kinda insta-death spell, she summoned a demon called a mare to kill him. Pretty much in every instance where a seiðr user wants someone dead, they achieve that (or attempt to achieve that) through using particular applications of the magic, like whipping up a storm or summoning a monster.

The one instance I found of what seems to be an instant death spell performed with seiðr was done by Kotkel and his family. They stood outside a man’s house and chanted all night until eventually one of his sons wandered out “into the magic” and was killed instantly by it. That’s about all the information we get, the exact specifics of this spell are described very vaguely. But still, it was avoided by just not going close to the people chanting. Assuming Odin could perform something similar on his own (speculative, as in this scene four seiðr users are working together over the course of an entire night), Zeus could avoid it by either not coming in close or just removing Odin’s ability to speak. Or, since the incantation takes time to perform, he could just kill him before the chant gets going.

Overall, I don’t find this to be a very solid wincon, as it’s kind of shaky if Odin even possesses “death hax” in the first place, and even if he does, Zeus could kill him in the time it takes to cast it, or it possibly wouldn’t even work on him. (Zeus also has some similarly vague statements you could try and spin as “death hax” if you wanted.)

Manipulating Fate

I feel like there’ll probably be a decent amount of discussion around this topic when the episode inevitably rolls around. Both characters have a somewhat inconsistent relationship with fate – they both seem to be able to control or overcome it sometimes, but then there’s also times where they explicitly cannot.

Odin, I think, banks a lot more on this than Zeus does. I mean, when you get down to it, a lot of his stuff could be interpreted as fate manipulation. His spells that he can use to allow warriors to go in and out of battle unharmed could be seen as a form of it, the instances where he seems to decide the winners and losers of battles again could be interpreted that way as well, and if you buy the norn theory in regards to seiðr, then all the weird open-ended BS that form of magic can be used to pull off could be derived from fate manipulation too.

I think that Death Battle would ultimately just mark this down as one of those factors that “evens out” because both characters can make use of it. So sure, Odin could maybe use fate manipulation to ensure that Zeus can’t harm him, but then Zeus could just overcome fate like he considered doing in the Iliad when Sarpedon was going to die. And then vice versa if Zeus decided to try and bend fate against Odin, Odin could just undo that if he wanted.

I doubt they’d try to argue that one side has better “fate hax” than the other and then use that to decide the winner. (I’m expecting pretty much everyone else to do that before the episode drops though.) Death Battle tends to go with a rule of “equal leeway.” Like okay, if you’re going to buy fate hax for Odin despite all the issues and inconsistencies, there’s no reason not to do so for Zeus as well. If you’re going to just totally ignore Odin being unable to do anything about his and the other gods’ fates in Ragnarök, there’s no reason not to also ignore the various claims of the Greek gods being unable to resist fate. If you try and be equal, they’re always going to be around the same level. At a lowball, neither can do jack about fate, at a highball, they both have control over it or could ignore it if they wanted, so it cancels out.

I also just think that it’d be kind of odd to say that Odin, a god whose inability to change his fate is a crucial element of one of the most important stories of the Norse mythology, would win this fight by… magically changing his fate. But I get that “story logic”-based arguments like that are a no-go in this hobby (something something Sephiroth something something meteor), and that Death Battle wouldn’t really think this way, so that’s again not really relevant to the final decision I’m making here. Still, using it as the clincher in either direction feels wrong, and not like something Death Battle would do.

God, I can’t believe I’m wasting this much of my precious time talking about goddamn fate hax again. I’m getting some serious Archie Sonic VS Wally West flashbacks…

And Also Some Other Things

This section is basically just a junk drawer of arguments and clarifications I didn’t think fit anywhere else. I’ll try to curb my usual rambling and lightning-round them all.

Does Gungnir negate durability / always hit its target?

Yes and no. First off, it’s one or the other, not both. The claims originate from the same Prose Edda quote being translated in different ways. Out of the five translations I found, three of them settled on “pierces good” (Faulkes, Byock, and Brodeur) and two settled on “never misses” (Anderson and Young). Other Prose Edda translations exist, but not all of them cover the section this quote is from. Again, I’m not an Old Norse expert, but I’m personally leaning more towards the former rather than the latter. It’s not just because three translations chose that interpretation rather than two, it’s more because it seems to be the interpretation preferred by more recent and accuracy-focused translations.

Let me take a second to talk about translations here. If you’re interested in reading translations of old mythological sources, there’s kinda two camps of people you’ll come across. Those in the first camp want an “experience” as close to the original as possible. These people want the translations to keep with the original meter and flavor of the text. They don’t care if extra embellishments are added in by the translator, or if exact textual details differ between the original source and the translation. To them, those are what they’re there for. They want the translation to sound good and get across the author’s intended mood and rhythm above all else, including accuracy. The second camp are those who want rigid accuracy to the source material; each line must match with one in the original with no extra flourishes. They don’t want the translator to bend the text to fit into some scheme of rhymes or alliteration or syllable count, they just want as close a 1:1 match to the original words as possible. Just, y’know, in English. The people in the first camp tend to find precisely accurate, cut-and-dry translations “boring,” as they wind up losing a lot of the original artistry and magic.

You can argue over which kind of translation makes for a better read, but for the purposes of this blog, the more cut-and-dry a translation, the better. I tried my best to research and find which translations were considered the most directly accurate for each source I used. I read a bunch of articles on the topic, and for the Prose Edda, Anthony Faulkes’ translation was generally agreed upon as the most strictly accurate one. That’s why I’m trending towards agreeing with his interpretation of the Gungnir line. The fact that the most recent translation I could locate (the one by Jesse L. Byock) also went with the “pierces good” interpretation just kinda sealed the deal for me. Byock’s translation has received some flack for cutting out a lot of stuff from the original (as in excising extended sections that could be considered boring, such as the long lists of poetic synonyms, not leaving out details from the sections he did include). From what I understand, what was there was very directly translated from the original Old Norse, so those concerns don’t really bother me.

Alright, let’s get back to battleboarding crap. Even though I think the “pierces good” interpretation is probably that one that’s closer to the original, I’m not really sure if it’s “durability negation” to be honest. Out of the different translations that favor the “pierces good” interpretation, none of them really directly say that it ignores all durability, just that it “always pierced cleanly through” or that it would “never stop in its thrust.” These could both just be ways of saying that it’s particularly sharp or well-balanced. Regardless, taking into account some of the more absurd durability feats for Greek immortals, I really don’t think Gungnir matters much at the end of the day. Even if it was the totally-unavoidable dura-negging homing attack some people think it is, Zeus could probably take getting impaled by the spear.

What about Orphism?

I talked a bit about this above. Yeah, the claims about Zeus in Orphic materials are pretty wacky, but I’m not sure if Orphic Zeus should really be used. I mean, I think using “normal” Zeus is tough enough. Orphism is kind of its own entirely separate beast from the other classic Greek stories. In the Orphic sources we still have available, Heracles is a time god analogous with Cronos and also a multi-headed primordial dragon that laid an egg which hatched into heaven and earth. That’s not very in-line with his portrayal in the vast majority of other mythological sources, to say the least.

But if you want to use Orphism, then yeah, it’s another argument for Zeus winning. In regards to whether or not Death Battle would use Orphism, well, I’m of two minds on that. On one hand, it kinda feels like something they’d either leave out or confine to a black box. On the other hand, you can argue Zeus wins without it anyways, and the thing where Zeus vores all the other gods and becomes the universe… I dunno man, I think they’d find it waaay too tempting.

When I started writing this blog, I wasn’t going to include Orphism. But then I realized that people would probably want to hear about it. Or, they’d at least bother me to no end about it if I didn’t mention it. In recent years, Death Battle has been catering more and more to the more hardcore side of the fanbase, and Orphism is pretty well-known in those circles. I can see it getting a nod for that reason.

Again, Death Battle will sometimes put their thumb on the scale when it doesn’t really affect the overall winner. They also really like making the characters out to be as strong as possible. I think they’ve realized by this point that a large section of the fanbase really gets rock hard over seeing big numbers and “cosmic” BS. And going back to how they’d probably want to show that Zeus is stronger than Herc, they could use this to do that. If they wind up thinking Zeus wins with or without Orphism, they might just choose to go all in and include it. Y’know, just to give the episode more of that “cosmic” razzle dazzle that everyone’s so goddamn horny over.

(death battle fans when the fictional character is epically strong multiverse buster)

I’m not even dissing people who are super into the cosmic stuff. Like, I get it. Big numbers and universes blowing up are cool. I just personally don’t really get all that much of a kick out of it. Maybe I’m just numb after how cosmic level matches have become the norm. Seems like every other episode and fan blog now has gotta be about characters who chuck galaxies and shit.

Wait, I saw this quote that made Odin omnipotent too!

I’ve seen this particular quote kicked around on some sites, or at least a few lines from it that talk about Odin “living throughout all ages” and “governing all things great and small.” People tend to bring it up to try and make Odin into something he isn’t. Well, I don’t really think it should be used.

It’s from the Prose Edda, near the beginning of the first section, Gylfaginning. The thing is, this particular scene claims Odin made the world on his own, which is directly contradicted later in the Prose Edda itself when the story of Odin, Vili, and Ve crafting the world together out of Ymir’s corpse is told. It’s also contradicted by the Poetic Edda, too, in the poems Voluspa, Vafthrudnismal, and Grimnismal, which is what Snorri is drawing the story from here. Odin and his brothers slaying Ymir to make the world from his body is far and away the more common creation myth, it’s referenced constantly in other sources both directly and through indirect poetic allusions. Odin “living throughout all ages” is also pretty directly contradicted by him dying in Ragnarök, which is also a common reference in other sources.

Ultimately, this seems to be a case of Christian influence coloring Snorri’s portrayal of Odin – a single, omnipotent, omnipresent deity being responsible for the creation of the world? Where could he have gotten that idea from? (I also don’t really think those lines are very good evidence for Odin being omnipotent in the first place, honestly, and they’re nothing that Zeus doesn’t have equivalents to.)

What about that Tyrfing feat?

In Odin’s durability section I mentioned a feat where, while he’s shapeshifted into a bird, he’s sliced by the magical sword Tyrfing by King Heidrek. Among its other impressive features, one claim about Tyrfing is that anybody wounded by it dies, no matter the degree of the wound, within the day. But Odin takes this cut and doesn’t seem to suffer any kind of ill-effects.

I can see some people using this to argue that Odin is immune to death or death manipulation or something. Well, the issue with that is, he explicitly dies in Ragnarök. The Ragnarök myth is a core part of the Norse mythology. I think we should take the numerous very explicit cases of Norse gods being killed (Baldr, Hod, most of them in Ragnarök) over this one weird detail from one of the less important parts of the mythos.

Plus, Heidrek only cut off some of bird-Odin’s tailfeathers. Using the actual wordage in the stories is always gonna be capricious to some degree, since they’re transcribed versions of spoken tales, but that’s not really a “wound” by definition. The point of the moment is to give a reason why hawks have short tailfeathers. Feathers are dead tissue, not living. Like, it’s on the same tier as trimming your nails or getting your hair cut. Can I sue my barber for “wounding” me? Is filing my nails self-harm cause I’m “wounding” myself? I think the overall intention of the scene is that Odin just barely avoids getting wounded by Tyrfing, and thus curses Heidrek for nearly killing him.

I don’t even really think I’m being that pedantic here… like come on. It’s not a wound. Do you really think the vikings would count that as a wound? If I pulled a viking to the modern day he’d probably agree with me here. Or disembowel me for the sacrilege of writing this post. One of those two things.

But, since I know that at least one goober is going to try and argue about this because of the whole “no matter the degree” bit, I decided to try and find a possible legal definition of what constituted a “wound” in court at the time. Yeah, you think vikings are scary? Wait ‘til you meet their lawyers. Sure enough, some Norse legal codes give us a very solid answer: it’s only a wound if it bleeds or breaks bone. The closest human equivalent to what Heidrek did, cutting off someone’s hair, does constitute a crime, but legally speaking, it’s a hundred percent not a wound. So if you want to disagree, take it up with an 11th century Icelandic judge.

Wait, I saw this universe-level feat for Thor! You didn’t mention that!

Here’s another quote I’ve seen passed around. Some people seem to think it confirms Thor as a universe buster. Well, the problem is that it isn’t from any historical source, it’s from some guy’s commentary on his personal translation of verse 24 of the Prose Edda poem Hymiskvida, or “The Lay of Hymir.” So, it really shouldn’t be used.

The author here is just relating his personal subjective interpretation of the poem, the actual verse is talking about the time Thor nearly fished up the World Serpent and caused the world to shake, a story also related in the Prose Edda. An impressive feat, but it’s kind of a reach to say he was “threatening the universe” as this random person on the Internet is saying. He’s drawing comparisons to other poems and trying to say that the imagery is similar to poems about Ragnarök, which I think is something of a stretch to use in a versus debate.

It’s based solely on poetic analysis. Like sure, I’m technically analyzing poems here too, but this guy is specifically talking about like, imagery that he personally thinks is comparable to some other poem, not even the exact same words, just comparable. “Oh, this poet rhymed bumble with stumble, and this poet rhymed fumble with tumble? Thor’s universe busting, guys!” This is about as subjective as you can get. It also seems he’s basing this idea off of the interpretation where each realm is its own universe. Which, as I’ve explained at length previously, has flaws.

So yeah, this is not an actual quote pulled from a historical source, just some random Internet poetry analysis that people started bandying about for some reason. Battleboarders, man. Or is it versus debaters now? Both names suck, honestly.

To Be Continued…

This section ended up dragging on too long (I just can’t help myself), so I decided to split off some of the more minor / niche arguments into a separate post. Since I’m expecting to get at least a couple questions worth addressing after I post the blog, and also that I’ve probably made some mistakes that’ll need correcting, I’ve decided that I’m just going to make another post after this one which includes a few more niche arguments, answers to any questions I see pop up, and corrections to any mistakes I’ve made. I’ll link it in here when it’s out.

EDIT: The extras post is out. It’s got clarifications on a few out of context quotes, some additional arguments about each god’s speed, and a couple other things. Check it out if you want more.

WWDBD?: And The Winner Is…

If you somehow can’t tell, I still think Death Battle would go with Zeus as the winner.

They would only have a few minutes at most to justify the victor in the episode. Outside of maybe a handful of black boxes, they’re not going to go into any of the more obscure esoteric stuff I’ve been bringing up – I’m expecting like, less than a third of the points I’ve brought up in this blog to be actually covered in the episode itself. I’m expecting pretty simple lines like this:

“Both gods have immense divine abilities that sometimes seem to border on nigh-omnipotence! But for that very reason, lots of things kinda just… cancel out. So we need to consider other factors to determine the winner!”

“Odin was a powerhouse to be sure, but in terms of raw strength, Zeus was on a whole nother level! (insert cosmology babble here)”

“No matter how you slice it, Odin simply doesn’t have the oomph to get past Zeus’ capital-I immortality, while on the flipside, Zeus has more than enough power to take Odin down for good!”

Is that annoying enough? I’m not sure if it’s annoying enough to be actual Wiz and Boomstick dialogue. I’m still not sure what they’d do for speed, but all the arguments I can think of would all either turn out similar enough or favor Zeus. Regardless of how fast they are, I’m guessing this’ll still be a “one kills the other far more easily” situation. They probably won’t be super specific on speed, honestly.

And yeah, I do think they’d decide that many of the two gods’ shared powers would “cancel out” in the end, basically meaning that the winner comes down moreso to their physical capabilities. This is because… well, they basically do, assuming you give both gods equal leeway, but also because three-ish minutes is simply not enough time to try and cover everything fully. They’re definitely just going to drop a couple basic lines like that in the episode instead of going super in-depth, which would require talking about some complicated historical topics.

Is there some chance they have Odin win because they go all in on fate manipulation or sleep-thorns or saying seiðr can be used for instant death hax? I guess. I’ll admit that at times in this post I kind of lapsed into my usual patterns of thinking instead of trying to break down things the way DB would. There’s like zero chance they don’t go with Odin’s sixth spell being able to reflect all curses and magical effects, even if I think you can make some decent arguments against that. Same thing with a few of the other points I brought up. They tend to be really generous with equating power systems with one another and taking vague things at face value. When I see vagueness, I tend to go with a more conservative estimate, while they tend to be more liberal in how they interpret things. The thing is, they apply those standards universally, so it’s not like it’s “unfair” or “inaccurate” or anything.

But I feel the arguments against Odin’s hax I’ve put forward are pretty good, and I think maybe they’d independently come to the same conclusions I did. Cause remember, if you’re a Death Battle employee, you’re not supposed to be reading this and letting it influence your opinions. You’re supposed to be playing a video game or riding a bike or something. You are doing that, right?

There’s a chance both characters are just like, fully maxed out to infinite boundless immeasurable everything through super highball arguments. To reiterate, DJTiki did say himself that mythology would be treated “as lenient as possible.” In that case… I feel like Zeus would still win.

Like, let’s say they dig up some super obscure Norse story that has the word “endless” somewhere in it. They use that to call the world Odin and his brothers made infinitely large, making him infinitely strong (a third of infinity is still infinity). Then, since he accomplished that in a finite amount of time, they say he’s infinitely fast as well. They already have Zeus marked as infinitely strong, so all they’d need to do there is use something like the Cronos argument to put him at infinite speed too. At that point, the two would be around even in power, around even in speed, and around even in esoteric magical BS. The deciding question would become “who’s more easy to kill?” and that would be Odin. Same deal if they instead actually ratcheted things back for Zeus and used a different model of the Greek cosmology that’s more in-line size-wise with what I laid out for the Norse one (they’re not going to do that). 

There’s literally no chance in hell that modern DB would ever call a serious fight as a draw. Even if they do decide to fudge with the stats or use highball arguments to make things look even, there’s simply no way they can just ignore how the Norse gods die in Ragnarök. It’s probably the most well known thing about Norse mythology to the general audience. (Well, the most well known thing that’s actually accurate to the myths, that is.) It’s not some obscure little factoid they can sweep under the rug or try and argue against. No matter what thumb-on-the-scale finaglery happens with strength or speed, Zeus will always have the immortality advantage, and it’s a massive one. With feats like reforming from a shower of golden rain or Typhon somehow still remaining cognizant after being burnt to ashes, you could honestly argue Odin has no way of putting down Zeus for good.

There’s also the fact that a lot of Odin’s best abilities are locked behind magical rituals he has to perform, which I know I’ve been over a couple times already, but it bears repeating. The two may be borderline identical in abilities, but Zeus can make use of his wide array of powers far more easily than Odin can. If Odin wanted to, say, sap Zeus’s power and add it to his own (as Heimskringla says he can do with seiðr), he’d have to chant an incantation while carving runes and dancing around in a dress. That’s only a slight exaggeration. Meanwhile, if Zeus wants to curse Odin in any number of ways, all he’s gotta do is… well, nothing. He just has to will it to happen.

Despite there being a lot of factors up in the air as to what Death Battle would particularly buy or decide upon, I’m still siding Zeus overall. Odin’s stuff is easy to poke holes in, and I still think there’s a pretty high chance they gloss over a lot of it since you can argue everything comes out around even ability-wise. Then it just comes down to physicals, which Zeus should take by their previously established logic, and even if you equated strength and speed, his immortality will always be inarguably better, blah blah blah, you get it at this point.

As for the black boxes, they’ll probably just use them to cover the specifics on cosmology. They know their audience. Who knows, if they don’t just go with the “nine realms = nine separate universes” interpretation, one could be used to explain the myriad flaws with that model. They’d also probably use at least one or two to go more in-depth on why Zeus and Odin’s powers would at least partially “cancel out” in the end, assuming they go that route. Or they could use them to explain why sleep-thorns or something wouldn’t be enough to give Odin the win, the issues with death hax stuff, so on and so forth.

But hey, I’m no oracle. I mean, the last time I predicted that a Greek mythological figure would beat another mythological figure in a Death Battle episode, I wasn’t exactly correct. So, maybe just call me Cassandra and ignore everything I’ve said. 

That’s enough out of me. I’m all lubed up for the “WELLL ACKSCHUALLY” comments from people who think they’re experts on mythology cause they’ve played every God of War game and watched every Overly Sarcastic Productions video. Oh boy, I just can’t wait! Those comments aren’t annoying at all! I love being lectured on something I’ve researched extensively by some guy who got all his information from Thor: Ragnarok! Man, and I really hope that they don’t cite any of the claims they make either, that just doubles the fun! At that point, the only thing that can really make it any better is if they don’t read the entire post before commenting!

Hey, if you’re interested in mythology, maybe try reading the Eddas or the works of Homer for yourself. Many of these mythological sources are available for free online, easily accessible by anyone, often with detailed footnotes to aid your understanding of the text. Check out Theoi, Perseus Digital Library, ToposText, the archives of Northvegr Foundation, germanicmythology.com, and Viking Society Web Publications for all the classic sources of Greek and Norse myth you could ever want. Hell, maybe even go out to your local library and see what they have available. And once you’re done reading, and have the quotes to back up whatever claim you want to make, that’s when you can post your “WELLL ACKSCHUALLY” comment!

Thanks for reading! And a special thanks to Sneed, Kingsly, and TMK for looking this mess over for me and giving some helpful comments. And being serious here, if you are actually genuinely interested in Greek or Norse myth, I really would suggest checking out those sites. You’ve already read over 100 pages of my inane rambling, so what’s another fifty thousand words?

Next Time…

I had a lot of ideas for what matchup I’d tackle next. Since I just covered one of the most hyped, requested, and discussed matchups in the entire community, I decided to go smaller for next time. The next blog is a short one that I already have half-complete, and I’m going to keep it secret for now. After that, well, I’m not exactly interested in announcing and committing myself to a big slate of matchups. I do these all on my own, and believe it or not, I have a life – I like to stay flexible. But, for a bit of fun, I’ve put together a poll to decide what comes after that.

That’s right, I’m doing a poll. Whatever matchup wins will be the blog after the short one I’ve got cooking. If you somehow aren’t tired of reading this shit yet, check yourself into a mental hospital out this post I made discussing the six matchups on the poll, why I like them, and how I’d approach them if they won. There’s also the option to just shill me a matchup of your own. If I get one that I really like, who knows, maybe I’ll pick it instead.

EDIT: Poll’s closed now. You can find the winner in the extras post.