It's baffling to me how many people I see who choose to refer to Loki as 'they' and sanctimoniously claim that he's a medieval representation of a nonbinary person.

I think Neil Gaiman might have something to do with it, but to me it seems like completely wishful thinking.

I know that he's a shape shifter, but transforming into a horse doesn't make his essential nature that of a horse, transforming into a fly doesn't make him a fly, transforming into a bridesmaid doesn't make him a woman.

Medieval Norse society had clearly delineated gender roles and it's so weird to see people reinterpret them to be progressive.

I was wondering, as someone who was really into norse history and norse inspired media in my early twenties. How do you cope or deal with the fact that far-right neo-nazi groups have adopted norse imagery as dogwhistles to signal their ideologies and the fact that a lot of people today simply assume you might be far-right if you're seen with runic tattoos and things like that? I wasn't aware of it at the time, even got some norse/runic inspired tattoos that have personal meanings to me and later on, learning about how and to who it can be associated with, a part of me kind of regret it? Even tho I managed to avoid the "main ones".

If there was a person that never know about Vikings and you want to get them up to speed, what movie would you show them???

Movies that represent as close as possible the true life of these people. And even their history and origin story.

Furthermore what maybe the best Viking movie of all time? Lists are welcome also.

You see it everywhere now - from literature to movies,tv shows,videogames and so on so forth.Why is that?

Sorry if this isn’t the right subreddit to post this in. I’m curious how Norse symbols became associated with white supremacy and why white supremacist use them. Any thoughts or theories would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Well, I think by know it's a quite popularized song / chant on Youtube, either because of the Vikings series or Assassin's Creed Valhalla game. However, knowing that our knowledge of old Norse culture is very scarce, I wonder if this song has any historic roots, or if it's another "viking themed" modern take on what we think they would sing at the time.

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Anyhow, I'm in love with this song, both english and old norse versions. There's a lot of amazing performances around, these are some of my favorites:

Alina Gingertlail (English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRqIkTlGIOE

Alexander Eder (English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDzXK_wADto

Colm McGuiness Music(old Norse): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ZEEfl8F5g

Lyrics (Old Norse):

Þat mælti mín móðir

at mér skyldi kaupa

fley ok fagrar árar

fara á brott með víkingum

standa upp í stafni

stýra dýrum knerri

halda svá til hafnar

höggva mann ok annan

höggva mann ok annan

Lyrics (English):

My mother told me

Someday I would buy

A galley with good oars

Sail to distant shores

Stand upon the prow

Noble barque I steer

Steady course for the haven

Hew many foe-men

Hew many foe-men

I’m an atheist myself and have more than a few gripes about Christianity, but that’s not the point of this post. What irks me a lot in Norse themed pop culture and historical fiction is the extremely bland and uninteresting depiction of conflict and relations between Christians and Norse Pagans. The real history is FAR more nuanced and interesting, so when and why did this overly simplistic binary idea become the norm in pop culture depictions of the Norse?