The Nine Worlds:

Asgard: Home of the Gods.

Vanaheim: World of primal water. Also where lesser Gods live.

Alfheim: Home of light elves and good spirits. A world of light and air.

Jotunheim: A world of storms.

Muspelheim: The home of killer giants. A world of primal fire.

Hel: The Underworld, ruled by Hella.

Svartalheim: A subterranean world.

Niflheim: The Shadow World.

Midgard: The home of Humans.

Balder -
The God of peace, light and beauty. The son of Frigg and Odin. The husband of Nanna.

Bergelmir -
The father of all frost giants.

Bestla -
The wife of Bor. Mother to Ve, Vili and Odin. A Giantess.

Bor -
Father of Odin, Vili and Ve. Husband of Bestla and the son of Buri.

Bragi -
Husband of Idun and a God of poetry.

Buri -
Father of Bor. The first God.

Dag (Dagr) -
Son of Nott and Delling. Half brother of Jord and Aud. The God of the daytime.

Dellinger (Delling) -
Father of Dag. A God of the dawn.

Forseti -
Son of Nanna and Balder. A God of justice and truth.

Frey (Freyr) -
Son of Njord and Skadi and twin brother of Freya. Husband of Gerd. A God of fertility, the sun and prosperity. King of the light elves.

Freya (Freyja) -
Daughter of Njord and Skadi, twin sister of Frey. Wife of Odr. A Goddess of fertility, love and battle.

Frigga (Frigg)-
The wife of Odin. Goddess of married love and motherhood.

Heimdall -
Another God of dawn and also the guardian of Asgard.

Hel (Hela) -
Queen of Niflheim (the underworld) and a Goddess of death.

Idun -
Wife of Braggi. A Goddess of spring and youth.

Jord -
An earth Goddess.

Loki -
Husband of Sigyn. An Ettin (Elemental) of fire and mischief.

Mani -
A Moon God.

Nanna -
Mother of Forseti and wife of Balder.

Niord (Njord) -
A God of the sea, wealth, commerce and the summer.

Norns -
The three Norse Goddesses of destiny (Urd, Verdande and Skuld). Maintainers of the World Tree, Yggdrasil.

Nott -
Mother of Aud (by Naglfari), Jord (by Annar) and Dag (by Dellinger). A Goddess of the night.

Odin (Wodan, Wotan) -
God of wisdom war and poetry. Husband of Frigg.

Skadi -
Wife of Niord. A Goddess of winter.

Thor -
Husband of Sif. A God of thunder, war and farming.

Tyr -
Son of Odin. A God of war and justice.

Uller (Ullr) -
Son of Sif. A God of the hunt.

Vali -
Son of Odin. A God of revenge.

Ve -
Brother of Vili and Odin. A God of creation.

Vidar -
Son of Odin. Another God of revenge.

Vili -
Brother of Odin and Ve. Another God of creation.


Resources used are listed in 'Useful Links'

Best two books for Norse Mythology are the two Eddas.
These are the priamry sources for Norse Mythiology, and definately worth getting if you wish to understand the Norse Gods and Cosmos.

The Younger or Prose Edda contains a lot of the tales intermixed with mythological poetry.
An odd style at times (is actually a Poets guide to the metaphors used in Old Norse poetry), and not laid out as neatly as a reference book would be, but still a good read.
[Anthony Faulkes version is a good translation.]

The Elder or Poetic Edda is a collection of mythological poetry ranging from stories of the gods to the legendary heroes such as Sigurd the dragonslayer - the original Ring cycle.
[Lee Hollander's version isn't bad given how hard Old Norse poetry is to translate and still be vaugely poetical]

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Cheers
Stuntie

Here is a text that I wrote about Freyja a while back.

Goddess: Freyja
Pantheon: The Norse Gods
Goddess of: Love, lust, sex, fertility, war, protection, magic.

Freyja is a beautiful goddess of love, fertility and sex. She is also a goddess of lust and war. She is often evoked during spells and rituals that have to do with love, fertility and sex. She is female beauty embodied; filled with female and sexual energy. She is a very powerful goddess, and is said to have been a great warrior as well.

Freyja has a fascination with beautiful jewelry and has a necklace called the Brísingarmen. The Brísingarmen was made by the Brísingar, a family of dwarves. She saw the necklace and asked them if she could have it. The lore says that they told her that she could have it, if she spent one night with each one of them. This she did, and got the necklace.
When Óðinn found out what she did, he ordered Loki to steal the necklace from her, which he did. Freyja found out that Óðinn was behind the disappearing of the necklace and eventually got it back from him.


Freyja wearing the Brísingarmen

She helps with childbirth and fertility of both people and nature. She travelled in a carriage pulled by two cats. Cats are a representation of mystery and magic; and Freyja was indeed a powerful sorceress of great magical skills. She is the protector of feminine magic, as well as the protector of the human race.


Freyja in her carriage

When Freyja cries, her tears fall down on Earth and the sea. When they hit Earth, they turn into gold, and when they hit the sea, they turn into amber. This is a representation of the great fertility she brings the earth.

Although Freyja is a beautiful goddess of love, one must never ignore the dark side of her. Freyja's manipulative powers are great. She has many lovers, both gods and mortal kings, and often slept with men that were already married. As a mistress of lust and deception, she should not be used in magic involving fidelity or marriage. Also a goddess of war, some sources say that she was the chief of the Valkyries (the valkyries were in charge of bringing the noble dead warriors to the realm of the Gods). This represents Freyja's close relation with war and death, which is a side of her that should never be ignored.

what about valhalla, where warriors that died in battle go? isnt that part of norse mythology?

It is a part of Norse mythology, but it isn't one of the Nine Worlds. Its more of a heaven for warriors who died in battle.

This isn't strictly true. A 'heaven' implies that it is a separate realm (or located elsewhere, or in a more liminal space), and it is not.

Valhalla is a place within one of the nine worlds.

Specifically, Valhalla is Odin's Hall, located in Asgard, and more specifically located in a larger meeting hall known as Glaðsheimr.

So Valhalla is not a 'world' so to speak, but just simply a place or hall, within one of the greater worlds in the Norse mythos.

Odin.. God of wisdom.. war.. and POETRY... Remix.. God of Hip Hop! Odin is my kinda god. I love Norse Mythology too

I guess Ice Cube is him in disguise.

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Along The River: My paganism blog

now i love norse mythology and ive read alot of the stories and poems but can anybody tell me when it was that loki decided that he hated balder so much that he wanted him dead. i cant quite remember i think ive read so much im crossing stories over...

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confucius says=everything has its beauty but not everyone see's it.

Loki was jealous that everyone and everything loved Baldr and not him, so sought to defy Frigg's efforts to keep him from harm. I think you might be talking about the story where Hodr killed Baldr unknowingly due to Loki putting the mistletoe in his hand to toss at him (some say he even guided/aimed it) while they were all celebrating his invincibility.

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Moderator of: Herbs.

I'm happy to help with any questions!

Loki, I believe, gets a rather bad rap. Some of it is deserved, but much of it isn't. He's not Aesir, but was accepted by Odin as his bloodbrother, and then was later imprisoned and tortured for eternity by the Aesir after Odin turned two of his son's into rabid wolves and set them to kill one another. That was in retaliation for his slaying of Baldur, which was really the worst that Loki ever did. If you read his mythology, he aided the Aesir FAR more than he harmed them, and he is singularly responsible for saving their hides and more than one occasion. In his last showdown with the Aesir, he throws that in their faces and forces them to face all their hypocrisy and selfishness and immorality. But, being the largely arrogant, superior race that they are, they refuse to take responsibility for any of their actions and have him bound and tortured instead (and actually Skadi, who is a Jotun, not an Aesir, also joined in the torture as revenge against Loki for breaking her heart). I'm not saying that the Aesir are inherently 'bad' or immoral, just that they aren't all fluff and light and goodness, and they certainly aren't innocent.

As far as Baldur goes... the whole reason that Frigga made such an effort to keep him from harm is because Baldur had a prophetic dream of his own death. He dreamed that he would die and was afraid, so his mother attempted to make him invincible. Then Loki came along and orchestrated his death. No one knows exactly why, and given that Loki had pretty much done all of the Aesir's dirty work for them and was still reviled and ridiculed by them, maybe it was simple jealousy. But given that he was personally responsible for a number of crucial twists of fate and consistently put himself in dangerous and degrading situations in order to help a race that was at war with his own and who so obviously disliked him, perhaps he is just an agent of Wyrd and was enforcing the pattern that the Nornir had laid out for Baldur? If the Nornir had decided that Baldur should die, then Baldur had to die. Not even the gods can go against the Wyrd that they weave. Maybe this was just one last task that Loki had to carry out in his lifetime of doing other god's dirty work for them. And he's paying for it for eternity. I don't think he'd have been stupid enough to have killed Baldur out of simple hatred or jealousy when he must have known that the Aesir would retaliate. Loki is smart and cunning. I don't think we can accuse him of being stupid or not being able to see the consequences of his actions.

I was thinking about this last night actually, and have often wondered why Loki stuck around. (my own human nature would have lead me to flee, but Jotun and human are two different things. lol )

I'm not really sure what a blood-brother pact entailed to them or even when or why they made it, but Loki was always there when they needed him, perhaps this is part of that pact. (?) He always helped when it was asked for, but yet wasn't welcome in a Hall that had Aesir, Vanir as well as Jotun all drinking and toasting to accomplishments. I don't really know what accomplishments they were drinking to, but loads of their (Aesir) accomplishments were in part due to Loki's cunning, and the fact that he was willing (perhaps fated or the blood pact that he made with Odin) to help.

I also wondered if Loki hadn't orchestrated Baldr's death, if he would even be coming back after Ragnarok. Which, like you say Rae'ya, might have been what the Norns had fated and the only way for that to happen is if Baldur and Hodr 'didn't' die in Ragnarok but before hand; and possibly if they had died in battle would they not just simply go right back home (Asgard)?

Eh, I've got loads of questions/personal points of view I'd love to talk about simply because research has just lead to more questions and a real sense of confusion as to why some are seen as 'good' and others seen as 'bad' or unapproachable. I definitely agree with you though Rae'ya in that Loki is far away from being stupid and unable to foresee consequences of his actions, and that the Aesir aren't all fluff and innocence.

edit*~ Northvegr.org has a nice 7 page essay on Loki and Odin's relationship. Here's a link to it if any are interested. Pretty awesome site.

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Moderator of: Herbs.

I'm happy to help with any questions!

Well, you could think about this: Loki only appears in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturlusson (a Christian Monk from XIth century, that's two hundred years after the Christian conversion of Iceland, his homeland and the last Norse country that converts to Christianity), the Lokasenna from the Poetic Edda (a little younger and with a similar origin than the Snorri's Edda) and on the Lokatáttur, and XVIIIth century poem from the Faroe Islands where he is the hero. Some scholars think that Loki is an invention from Snorri, who needs a bad guy Luciferian-type to opposite the Gods and Goddesses and a Christiphied brilliant and beautiful hero like Baldur. If we go to earlier records, like Gesta Danorum from the Christian scholar Saxo Grammaticus, we have a very different story about Baldur's death. On Saxo's text, Baldur was not the bright and noble palladin type that he is on Snorri's tale. He is a fierce warrior married with a very beautiful woman. His brother was in love with this woman too, and killed Baldur stabbing him on the back for the love of this woman.
It's very interesting think about all these stories and compare them with older ones (Saxo is a good source for it, but there are others like Bede).

I have a theory about the blood brother pact, which is kind of way out there lol. Because I've not seen any specific mention of why they became blood brothers either, or why Loki is so loyal to the Aesir despite everything. And I had wondered about this. I've not read the actual Eddas though, so maybe the info is in there somewhere *shrugs*

But anyway... Odin was one of the sons of Bestla the Jotuness, and Bor the random new man that arrived one day before the Nine Worlds were created. His brothers were Vili and Ve. The youngest was Ve, who by some accounts and UPG, had flame red hair, was a mischievous thing, shared a nature with fire and flame, and was destined to be the salvation of his kin while also sometimes being their undoing. He was also known as Lodurr. The middle son was Vili, aka Hoenir, and Odin was the eldest. The three go on to kill Ymir and divide up is body, enabling the creation of the Nine Worlds. They also create humans, and Odin goes on to become the All Father and king of the Aesir, while Hoenir is his brother and ends up a hostage to the Vanir, though gets sent back again with Mimir's severed head.

But Ve drops out of the Lore and you don't see further mention of him as far as I know.

And once Loki becomes Odin's blood brother, he, Odin and Hoenir are nigh inseparable, travel together, get into mischief together, and are generally as brothers. There's also some speculation that Lodurr is another name for Loki.

Now Loki obviously is the son of Laufey (who is variously an Island etin or a Tree/Earth etin) and Farbauti (who is a storm etin of the Iron Wood), and god-son of Surt the Fire Etin (who is the oldest Jotun in existence). Most evidence and UPG supports this theory and I tend to believe it too.

BUT, I also wonder if the similarities between Loki and Ve/Lodurr might not indicate that Loki is the reincarnation of Ve? Ve disappears, and instead we have Loki arriving, forming an inexplicable bond with Odin and Hoenir, and going on to become both the salvation and destruction of the Aesir, his 'kin' through his bloodbond with Odin and marriage to Sigyn.

It's pure speculation, and it just hit me one day while I was reading a UPG account of the birth and blessing of Odin, Vili and Ve. And I've not read anyone else putting forth the same idea. But that's my (controversial) theory anyway. lol Though I'm sure Asatrur and Heathens everywhere would heartily disagree lmao