Exploits of the Gods

Exploits of the Gods is the third episode in the Ragnarök season from Ubisoft's Echoes of History podcast series.

Description

Nestled in their kingdom of Asgard, the Norse gods watch over Midgard, the realm of men. There are numerous threats coming from the Nine Realms, starting with the giants whose taunts and provocations become more and more frequent. Fortunately, men and gods can count on Odin and his powerful son Thor to repel the attacks. And when the god of thunder brandishes his hammer Mjölnir, it's usually the start of a great adventure.

Transcript

• Gylfi: When I went to Asgard to ask the gods some questions, I must admit that they were not short of information. I was upset after my squabble with the goddess Gefjon, but everyone remained courteous. Let it not be said that Gylfi, king of Sweden, was rude to his hosts! Certainly, I had some prejudice about the arrogance of the gods, but if they are so venerated, there must be a reason. So I asked them: What feats have you accomplished to deserve such adoration?
• Lance Geiger: I'm Lance Geiger, the History Guy, and you're listening to Echoes of History: Ragnarök, a podcast inspired by the video game Assassin's Creed: Dawn of Ragnarök. How much do you know about Odin, Thor, Loki, and their companions? Do you really know them? Dive into Norse mythology alongside gods, elves, magical creatures, dwarves, and giants, a fantastic universe that guided the destiny of the valiant Vikings as much as it inspired the greatest authors. Episode three, exploits of the gods. In Norse mythology, relations between the giants and the gods are far from good. The inhabitants of Asgard are still paying the consequences of the original crime against the giant Ymir, whose body was used by Odin and his brothers to create the universe, and the prophecy of Ragnarök has put the father of all things on alert; it is the giants who will cause the ruin of Asgard. However, even among the gods, the heart has its reasons that reason ignores. Despite the threat, some gods marry or make children with giants. Annelie Jarl Ireman, a lecturer in Norse studies at the University of Caen.
• Annelie Ireman: It may seem paradoxical, but it's actually about balance. In this world, there has to be a balance between good and evil, and the gods are there to maintain order in the face of ever-present dark and unpredictable forces. And these forces in mythology are embodied mainly by giants. The gods created Midgard to protect themselves from the hostile giants, but actually, they weren't all hostile, and the giants are not entirely evil in the same way that the gods are not entirely good, because the gods are complex and ambiguous. They're heroes, yes, but it's not black and white. It's not "the gods are good and the giants are bad", in fact, the giants are not so different from the gods after all.
• Lance Geiger: Among these surprising relationships, Thor, despite being married to the goddess Sif, has two sons with the giantess Járnsaxa: Magni, the god of strength, and Móði, the god of courage. As for Njörðr, the god of the sea and the giantess Skaði, they are happy parents of the twins Freyr and Freyja. Even Loki, the god of discord, succumbs to the charms of the powerful Angrboða. Together, they have three monstrous children: Hel, the goddess of the dead; Fenrir, the terrifying wolf; and Jörmungandr, a gigantic serpent. All three will have a dark and essential role in the continuation of the story. The fact remains that, even if the gods like to make love, they like war even more. Putting aside these few similarities, most of the time, the gods of Asgard and the giants of Jotunheim hate each other. Odin can count on himself and his best warriors to fight the giants and try to contain them, with the almighty Thor on the front line.
• Eric Lacey: The Thor that we see in popular media has so much in common with the old Norse Thor.
• Lance Geiger: Eric Lacy, lecturer in Language and Literature at the University of Winchester.
• Eric Lacey: He's regarded today as a hero of the people, somebody who goes out of his way to save everybody, to put his own life at stake, to deal with cosmic threats. And there must, there must have been something of this even for the average farmer in medieval Iceland, because so many farms in Norway, in Iceland, in Sweden are named after Thor. So, they're commemorating their land to him, they're saying, "This is the god that we want to most pay attention to us in our day-to-day life."
• Lance Geiger: It must be said that there's no shortage of provocations and duels, starting the day when Hrungnir, the strongest of the ice giants, challenges Odin to a horse race. The father of all things has come to Jotunheim riding Sleipnir, his fantastic eight-legged horse with a grey coat, through the air and over the sea. Impressed, Hrungnir praises this unique beast to Odin. Arrogant by nature, the powerful god can't help but add to his boastings. He eventually allows himself some mockery about Gullfaxi, the giant's mount. However, it is also an incredible horse capable of spinning like the wind in the airs and on water, and endowed with the splendid golden mane. Furious at these mockeries, Hrungnir rushes after Odin, but very quickly, the father of the gods pulls ahead. After a while, the giant finds himself without, wanting it inside the ramparts of Asgard, in the mouth of the enemy. However, to his great surprise, Odin kindly offers him hospitality. The giant, probably exhausted by all these emotions, abuses alcoholic drinks and does not control his words anymore. He says that he will take over Valhalla, kill all the gods, and take Freyja, the goddess of fertility, and Sif as his wives. Thor's wife in the hands of a giant?! The god of thunder, mad with rage, appears in a flash and challenges Hrungnir to a duel.
• Eric Lacey: Where he differs from the Thor that we see in popular media today, is that he really, really had a very narrow set of enemies that he was really set out to combat. And that narrow set of enemies were the enemies of the gods. Incidentally, they could be the enemies of mankind, so the giants are examples of this. So we get Thor going out of his way to crush giants with his hammer, we see him going out of his way to destroy giants whenever the gods are in trouble. Thor is very simple in many ways: Thor sees a giant, Thor goes out to kill a giant.
• Lance Geiger: Thor and Hrungnir come out of the palace where the festivities are taking place and take up arms. Hrungnir's a formidable opponent. In addition to his size, he has the particularity of having a heart and head made of stone. He's armed with a large whetstone and a huge shield. Thor and Hrungnir rush towards each other. The giant throws his whetstone at Thor with all his strength and it hits him in the face. The god collapses, but before falling, he has time to send Mjölnir flying towards the head of the opponent. The hammer smashes the skull of the giant, who is killed on the spot, but his body falls heavily on Thor who is now trapped, unable to free himself. Distraught, the gods run to him, but none of them can help him. Then Magni, Thor's son, quietly arrives. To everyone's surprise, the little three-year-old manages to lift the giant's inert body and save his father. To thank him for this feat, Thor, moved, offers his son Hrungnir's mount. As you can see among the gods, we learn at a very young age to fight against the giants, and this emphasis on violence and mythology is only a reflection of life in the Middle Ages in Scandinavia.
• Gísli Sigurdson: This is a violent culture, so every man is for himself, has to protect himself and, uh, his family and, uh, his neighbors.
• Lance Geiger: Gísli Sigurdson, teacher-researcher at the Árni Magnússon Institute in Reykjavik.
• Gísli Sigurdson: So there's no state central authority that will take care of that for you. So it's built-in in the culture that, uh, you have to be the, your own protectors and your own executor. Even though you have rules of law and and gatherings where people convene and make decisions that are based on common oral law, there's no one to make sure that the judgment is is executed except for yourself.
• Lance Geiger: But there is a better story. One day, Thor, his servants Þjálfi and Röskva, and Loki decide to visit the giants. While walking through a dark forest, they find shelter for the night in an abandoned house. The next morning, they are awakened by tremors. The house is moving! Well, the house is in fact the glove of a giant named Skrýmir, and the shaking was caused by his snoring. The giant is surprisingly sympathetic and offers to walk with them for a while. During a break, he even allows them to help themselves to his bag of provisions, but Thor, despite his strength, can't untie the knot that closes the bag. Sensing a trick, the god of thunder doesn't take long to act. While Skrýmir is asleep, Thor hits him on the head with a hammer—enough to crack anyone's skull—but the giant wakes up and casually asks if a leaf has fallen on his head. Thor is stunned. He waits for Skrýmir to go back to sleep and hits him again, then once more, but it's no use. Skrýmir is once again unharmed and doesn't notice anything. The next day, Thor, Loki, Þjálfi, and Röskva leave the giant and go on their way. They finally arrive in Utgard, the fortress of the giants, where they are welcomed by King Utgard-Loki. This colossal giant openly mocks the small size of the four companions. Thor, whose exploits are praised everywhere, is mocked as a frail little man?! To test them, the giant submits his guests to a series of challenges. Loki is the first to take the challenge and claims that he can eat faster than any man. The giant Logi appears before him, and despite all his efforts, the god of discord does not manage to match him; the giant seems to burn everything he swallows. As for Þjálfi, he opts for a speed challenge. He races against Hugi, but the giant is much faster than the young boy. Finally, it's Thor's turn. The god first boasts that he is the best drinker there is, but during his test he is unable to drink a whole horn in three sips. Vexed, he then chooses to prove his strength. Utgard-Loki asked him to lift his cat to get popular with the children in the castle. Thor barely manages to lift one of the cat's paws. With his ego wounded, the protector of Asgard asked to prove his worth in a fight. The king of the giants brings Elli, his old nurse. Thor tries his best to show off his strength, but the old woman doesn't even flinch, and when her turn comes, the giantess easily immobilizes the god and even obliges him to put a knee to the ground. Humiliated, Thor, Loki, Þjálfi, and Röskva leave Utgard with their heads down. Could it be that the giants are already overpowering the gods? Utgard-Loki accompanies them, and once outside the fortress walls, the king of the giants and master of illusions reveals that he has played a trick on them. It was Skrýmir. Disguised, he came to meet the gods to observe them, and what he saw frightened him. Thor's hammer blows did not actually hit him, but the impacts shaped three, deep valleys in the landscape. Faced with such power, he decided to trick the gods. Skrýmir reveals to them that during the food contest, Loki failed not against a simple giant but against fire itself. Þjálfi, for his part, ran against thought, but even the fastest of creatures cannot go faster than a spirit. Finally, if Thor did not succeed in emptying the horn, it's because it was directly connected to the sea. He drank so much, however, that his long gulps caused the first tides. Under the guise of this harmless cat was in fact hidden the snake Jörmungandr, which was uncoiling as Thor tried in vain to lift it, and the old woman was the embodiment of old age, from which not even the most powerful of gods can escape. This apparent humiliation had in fact demonstrated the unparalleled strength of the people of Asgard and terrified all the giants who witnessed the ordeal.
• Eric Lacey: And there isn't always a moral with old Norse myths, sometimes they are just mirrors and reflections of reality. But if there is a moral to be taken away from this, then that moral is that even the greatest deeds might not be perceived at the time to be great deeds. When you're too close to the picture, you can't always see how brilliant that accomplishment is, but when you step back and you view it more objectively, then you can see the size of these accomplishments.
• Lance Geiger: Loki and Thor can be proud of themselves. This is neither the first, nor the last, time they challenge giants side-by-side. By friendship or by naïveté, perhaps, Thor often follows Loki in his peregrinations, and if the god of discord can be a solid ally for the god of thunder, it also happens that he gets him in serious trouble, like the time when Loki decided to cut off the beautiful Sif's hair. This nasty trick provoked the anger of Thor. To redeem himself, Loki went to beg the dwarves to make new hair for the goddess. The dwarves did a good job, because since that day, Sif has beautiful golden hair.
• Eric Lacey: Loki seems to show some, uh, influence from Christianity. Now, he's odd, because he probably was just a flawed god like everybody else to begin with, and then becomes more and more evil because of this Christian influence. And some of the most memorable stories from Norse mythology involve, uh, Loki and Thor a little bit like a buddy cop movie, like good cop, bad cop. They seem to have had partners-in-crime sort of vibe, where they go on adventures together, and then later on we get them much more at each other's necks.
• Lance Geiger: But sometimes Loki's tricks are much more serious. Captured by the giant Geirröðr while he was spying on him to pass the time, Loki does not hesitate to promise to deliver Thor without his hammer and his power belt to get out of trouble. Safe to say that the fight between Geirröðr and Thor seems off to a bad start for the god of thunder. Fortunately, the protector of Asgard is warned of the danger in time and manages to kill the giant, but a question begins to rise: is Loki really trustworthy? Ragnarök still threatens Asgard and Loki will play a key role. It remains to be seen which side he's on.
• Gylfi: There's no denying that this Thor is impressive. Even though he learned a valuable lesson with this Skrýmir, I am fascinated by him. The hammer, the lightning, and that strength, damn it! I understand why our proud warriors invoke him at every turn before battles, but still, if I were Thor, I would be wary of Loki. He seems devious.
• Lance Geiger: Thank you for listening to Echoes of History: Ragnarök, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by Paradiso Media.

Cast

(By order of appearance, host indicated with italics)

• James Brack as Gylfi
  • David Sighicelli (French)
  • Mark Bremer (German)
• Lance Geiger as himself
  • Benjamin Brillaud (French)
  • Marios Gavrilis (German)
• Prof. Gísli Sigurdson as himself
• Prof. Eric Lacey as himself
• Prof. Annelie Jarl Ireman as herself

Gallery

• File:ECHOES OF HISTORY - RAGNARÖK EP 3 - Exploits of the gods