Odin and his brothers kill the giant Ymir and use his body to fashion the nine worlds.

Odin cuts out his own eye and drops it into Mimir's well in exchange for a drink of its wisdom.

Loki cuts off the goddess Sif's golden hair, and the dwarf Brokk forges the hammer Mjolnir to appease Thor's rage.

A mysterious stranger offers to build Asgard's defensive wall in exchange for the goddess Freya and the sun and moon.

Loki transforms into a mare and lures the builder's horse away, causing the stranger to miss his deadline.

The gods discover Loki has fathered three monstrous children with the giantess Angrboda and retrieve them from her stronghold.

The gods bind Fenrir with the magical ribbon Gleipnir, and Fenrir bites off Tyr's hand in retaliation for the deception.

Thor disguises himself as a bride and travels to the giants' hall to reclaim his stolen hammer, Mjolnir.

Odin infiltrates the giant Suttung's mountain, steals the mead of poetry, and flies back to Asgard.

Thor, Loki, and Thialfi travel to Utgard and unknowingly perform impossible feats inside Utgardaloki's illusory contests.

Without Idunn's golden apples, the gods grow visibly old and force a guilty Loki to rescue the goddess from the giant Thiazi.

Frigg travels the nine worlds extracting oaths from all things never to harm her son Balder, but skips mistletoe.

Loki gives Balder's blind brother Hod a mistletoe dart to throw, and Balder falls dead before the silent crowd.

The gods capture Loki and bind him to a stone with his slain son's entrails while a serpent drips venom on him.

Ragnarok destroys the gods—Odin consumed by Fenrir, Thor killed by the serpent's venom—before the world floods and is reborn.

Norse Mythology begins with Odin and his brothers constructing the nine worlds from the slain giant Ymir's body, then breathing life into the first humans. Odin pays for wisdom with his own eye, while Loki's troublemaking leads to the dwarves forging Thor's legendary hammer, Mjolnir. Loki's monstrous children with Angrboda—Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungundr—are retrieved by the gods, but Fenrir's binding plants the seeds of bitter betrayal and future catastrophe. Thor recovers his stolen hammer by disguising himself as a bride, and Odin steals the mead of poetry from a giant, securing the gift of verse for the world. The gods' joy is shattered when Loki tricks Balder's blind brother into killing the most beloved of the Aesir, leading to Loki's capture and brutal imprisonment. Ragnarok ultimately destroys the old order, but from the ash and flood a new world rises, with Balder returned and the gods beginning the game anew.

The headline events that shape the Norse world and seal its fate.

Surtr stands at the smoldering edge of Muspell, holding his flaming sword and waiting to burn the world at Ragnarok.

Odin and his brothers fashion the first humans, Ask and Embla, from logs of ash and elm they find in Midgard.

Odin hangs himself from Yggdrasil for nine days with a spear piercing his side and discovers the power of the runes.

Unable to take Loki's head without harming his neck, the dwarf Brokk sews Loki's mouth shut as punishment instead.

Loki returns from the master builder episode accompanied by Sleipnir, an eight-legged foal he bore as a mare, and gives it to Odin.

Odin appoints Loki's daughter Hel to rule over the dead who die of disease, old age, or accident in the underworld.

The dark elf brothers Fjalar and Galar lure Kvasir to their workshop, murder him, and brew his blood into mead.

The giant Suttung seizes the mead of poetry from Fjalar and Galar as blood-price compensation for the murder of his parents.

Thialfi secretly cracks open one of Thor's goat bones against Thor's orders and becomes Thor's bondservant as penance.

Utgardaloki reveals his contests were illusions: Thor had drunk from the ocean, lifted Jormungundr, and wrestled old age itself.

Skadi arrives in Asgard armed for revenge over her father Thiazi's death and is compensated with a husband and laughter.

Frey gives his magical sword to his servant Skirnir as payment for wooing the giantess Gerd on his behalf.

Thor hooks the Midgard serpent on a fishing trip with the sea giant Hymir, but Hymir cuts the line before Thor can haul it in.

Hermod rides to Hel and learns that Balder can return to the living only if every creature in all the worlds weeps for him.

The surviving Aesir and a resurrected Balder gather at Idavoll, find golden chess pieces in the grass, and begin the game anew.

This pool captures the lesser-told moments that shape the Norse world's destiny, from Surtr's patient vigil at Muspell's edge to the making of the first humans from logs of ash and elm. Odin's self-sacrifice on Yggdrasil grants him knowledge of the runes, while the dwarves' creative punishment of Loki sets the tone for his turbulent relationship with the gods. The mead of poetry passes from the murdered Kvasir to conniving dwarves to the giant Suttung, before Odin ultimately claims it for Asgard. Thor's bond with the mortal Thialfi begins with a broken goat bone, and the pair's journey to Utgard exposes the gods' astonishing true power through the giant king's post-contest revelations. Frey's decision to give away his sword for love and Thor's near-capture of the Midgard serpent quietly foreshadow catastrophes to come. After Balder's death and the fires of Ragnarok, the surviving gods find golden chess pieces at Idavoll, signaling that the cycle of the world has simply begun again.

The moments behind the myths that quietly set the stage for disaster.

The three norns—Urd, Verandi, and Skuld—are revealed attending the well beneath Yggdrasil's root, weaving the fates of all beings.

After the Vanir gods decapitate Mimir, Odin resurrects the severed head and places it beside his sacrificed eye in the well.

Thor breaks down Loki's door and threatens to shatter every bone in his body unless Loki replaces Sif's stolen hair.

Loki challenges the dwarves Brokk and Eitri to a forging contest, secretly wagering his own head if they win.

Bound to a rock and refused release, Fenrir vows vengeance against the gods, declaring he would have been their friend.

The giant Thrym reveals he stole Mjolnir and will return it only if Freya is delivered to him as a bride.

Odin travels in disguise to the wheat fields of Baugi and strikes a deal to gain access to Suttung's stolen mead.

Odin seduces Suttung's daughter Gunnlod and secretly drains all three vats of the mead of poetry before fleeing as an eagle.

Loki, seized in a giant eagle's talons and unable to break free, promises to lure Idunn and her golden apples out of Asgard.

Frey secretly sits on Odin's high throne and catches sight of the giantess Gerd far to the north, instantly consumed by longing.

Odin travels to a grave in Jotunheim and conjures the dead Angrboda to interpret the prophetic dreams plaguing Balder.

Frigg accidentally confides to a disguised Loki that mistletoe was the one thing she never asked to swear an oath of protection.

The giantess Thokk, secretly Loki in disguise, refuses to weep for Balder, ensuring he must remain forever in Hel.

Loki insults every god at Aegir's feast, then flees and is caught by Thor hiding in the form of a salmon beneath a waterfall.

Heimdall blows the Gjallerhorn to wake the gods as Ragnarok erupts, and he and Loki deal each other fatal blows on the battlefield.

This pool traces the pivotal choices and revelations that drive Norse Mythology from its mythological foundations to the apocalypse of Ragnarok. Loki's reckless wager of his own head in a dwarves' forging contest and Fenrir's vow of vengeance after his betrayal both show how the gods repeatedly create the very enemies they fear. Odin's cunning theft of the mead of poetry from inside a giant's mountain and Loki's treacherous bargain with Thiazi demonstrate how divine self-interest plants lasting consequences throughout the nine worlds. Frey's lovesick decision to surrender his only weapon from atop Odin's stolen throne foreshadows the sacrifice that will cost him his life at Ragnarok. Loki exploits Frigg's single oversight to engineer Balder's death with a mistletoe dart, then disguises himself to ensure the beloved god remains trapped in Hel. When Heimdall's horn finally sounds, every catastrophe the gods tried to prevent converges on the plain of Vigrid, fulfilling every prophecy Odin ever dreamed.