"Ah, what a lovely maid it is!"
Thor Dressed Up Like A Bride, Elmer Boyd Smith (1902)
Thor Dressed Up Like A Bride, Elmer Boyd Smith (1902)
- The Lay of Thrym. All of it. Mjölnir is stolen by the frost giant Thrym, who demands Freyja's hand in marriage as a ransom. Heimdall gets an idea for how to solve this. His solution? Get Thor to pose as Freyja. So, Thor and Loki travel to Jotunheim for the wedding, and it falls to Loki to explain the blushing bride's odd behaviour. 'Freyja' devours a whole ox? She's been so excited about her wedding, she hasn't eaten in a week. Her eyes are filled with fire? It's fine - she hasn't slept in a week either. Thrym demands his men to bring Mjölnir in to bless the bride, but this is too much for Thor and he seizes his hammer... and kills everyone in the room, but by the moral standards of the Aesir it's OK to do that if they're giants. Even better, it is never stated in the Poetic Edda that Thor sheds his disguise beforehand, so one must picture a huge, hairy man beating people up in a dress.
- Even better: in at least one version, it is Heimdall's idea to put Thor in drag, and Loki happily volunteers to be the bridesmaid because there is no way he is missing the show.
- Needless to say, most stories with Thor and Loki tend to be pretty funny. Just the idea that Thor, a renowned giant slayer, has a frost giant for a traveling companion and usually never gives it any thought, makes for some fun dissonance.
- There's that thing about Thor kicking a dwarf into his brother's pyre.
- Especially since it comes right the hell out of nowhere in what is otherwise a very somber and serious scene.
- Hermod is sent to Hel to petition to have their beloved brother released back to the world of the living, for he is loved by all. Hel gives him her conditions (every thing in creation must be asked if they love Balder, and if any say no, he stays in Hel), and Hermod receives gifts from Hermod and Nanna to present to Odin as proof that he completed his mission. Per Gaiman's book, the aforementioned dwarf offered nothing but rude (unprinted) remarks and gestures.
- Balder's death-by-mistletoe can be seen as hilarious, depending on context.
- The gods making a game out of throwing things at Balder and watching them bounce off is funny as hell, too.
- It becomes signifiantly less stupid when one realises that Gesta Danorum pretty much suggests that it was a sword that killed himnote . However, Gesta Danorum Balder is hilarious because he's basically the Norse god version of Gaston.
- There's a theory that Saxo Grammaticus, the author of Gesta Danorum, had never actually seen mistletoe since it doesn't grow in Denmark and just assumed from the name (misteltān, which sounded similar enough to -teinn, an epithet used for swords) that it was a magical weapon. Icelandic sagas took this at face value (since mistletoe doesn't grow in Iceland either), and the "sword" is featured in later sagas. Talk about Lost in Translation.
- The tale of how Loki had to make Skadi laugh to compensate for the death of her father Thiazzi. Let's just say it's NSFW, and involves rope and a goat.
- To elaborate, he tied his junk to the goat's beard and then they had a tug of war contest.
- Then Skadi chooses her husband by picking from the assembled gods' feet. She wants Balder, and figures that the nicest-looking pair has to be his. They turn out to be Njord's.
- Njord is the god of the sea. Meaning that he most likely spends a lot of time standing kneedeep in water. So yes, he would most likely have pretty nice feet.
- The gods made a wager with an unnamed builder to build them a fortress in a specified period of time, in return for a great treasure, and the hand of Freyja, by some accounts. To get out of paying the treasure, they turn to Loki, who transformed himself into a mare, to lure away the builder's draft-horse. Long story short, Loki found himself pregnant by the draft horse, and later gave birth to Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed that Odin rode across the sky.
- The reason for the gods' wager is also pretty amusing. They had basically decided the job was too difficult and simply never got around to doing it themselves. Along comes the builder, who then offers to make it for them, with the treasure (in some accounts, the very sun and moon themselves) as his reward if he manages to get it done on schedule. The gods basically thought he was lying and agree to the bet thinking he'd never get it done on time. Then, thanks to the help of his steed, the builder looks like he might actually pull it off, causing the gods to have a massive Freak Out when he's three days away from completing the fortress. Then they blame Loki (since it was his idea to go along with the bet) and threaten to kill him unless he figures out a way to get them out of this mess.
- Some translations suggest that the builder was asking for Sol and Máni, the god and goddess, not the celestial objects. The builder was looking for a harem.
- Freyr's predicament. He gave away his sword to bang a giantess... and that left him weaponless. What does he do? Beat up people with a reindeer antler.
- Because he's...horny.
- And remember, Freyr is the god of fertility, with his most famous feature being. . . er. . . well, exactly what one would think a fertility god's most famous feature would be.
- In the stories of Ragnarok, at least one version can be read as Surtr killing Freyr with his own sword during the final battle. Freyr essentially ensures his own death to get laid.
- In Swedish folklore, one should never build on old roads because Odin's hunt might have used that road, and they're not going to change direction just because some poor schmuck decided to build his house there.
- In Neil Gaiman's telling of the story "The Treasures of the Gods", Thor wakes to discover that his wife Sif has had her hair shorn off in her sleep. His first course of action is to assume that Loki is to blame.“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, 'it is Loki’s fault.' It saves a lot of time.”
- Thor is generally presented in Gaiman's work as Dumb Muscle. Whenever he concludes something isn't Loki's fault, his next course of action is usually to track down Loki to help him figure it out. Meanwhile, in "The Binding of Loki", Kvasir very patiently walks Thor through the steps of his own Sherlock Scan, while congratulating him for being smart enough to figure it out. Thor is left very satisfied with his conclusion, but admittedly unclear of how he came to it.
- Worth noting, earlier in Gaiman's book is a whole story about how the creation and murder of Kvasir led indirectly to the creation of poetry. Many chapters later, Kvasir is helping search for Loki, with the narrator helpfully mentioning that he had been dead, but was now alive, with no further elaboration.
- The clouds are made from Ymir's brains. Talk about a brainstorm.
