JOTUN: As Beutiful as Valhalla Itself

I never questioned before why Norse mythology is by and far my favorite mythos.
I attributed it to my fascination with apocalyptic events, and Ragnarok is the pinnacle of
such things, or how Thor is one of my favorite Marvel heroes. When we were told we
could write these blogs on anything tangentially relevant, I knew one of my blogs would
have to be on the game JOTUN. As I replayed Jotun to take notes on its incredibly detail
of its source material, however, I had an epiphany and it became clear why I love Norse
mythology so much. Rather than draw up any comparisons, the most efficient way to explain
JOTUN would be to summarize the game.

The game starts with an Icelandic woman’s narration. I should mention now that this game
also made me REALLY want to learn to speak Icelandic because this game makes it sound
gorgeous with all the narration in the game being in Icelandic modeled after Old Norse.
The narrator is the woman drowning, who wakes up in Jotunheim afterwards, in awe of
Yggdrasil stretching high above her. It is soon explained that she is a shield maiden named
Thora, daughter of her village’s chief and named after Thor when her birth was accompanied
by 9 days of intense thunder. Another voice begins narrating about the trials of gods and
how it is Thora’s choice to undertake them. While not explicitly stated at the start, the game
intentionally gives away the identity of the voice; Wells of Mimir act as restoration points
for both health and power uses, and when you first use one the voice describes it as
“[the well] for which I sacrificed my eye.” Yes, it’s Odin himself, and he plays a pivotal
role in the game’s conclusion that I will not spoil, but can assure you is glorious.
The game then settles in to its main formula: there are several areas with a mostly linear
order of progression, but each area has multiple sub areas to be attempted in any order.
Thora must acquire the mystic rune in each sub area to form the passage to that section’s
Jotun. Each area also has an Apple of Ithunn that permanently increases you maximum
health, as well as a monument to a god who will grant you a new power. The game does
not put these directly in your path, however, and some of them are surprisingly easy to
miss entirely. The gods who give you powers are not restricted to the most famous ones,
but rather are chosen based on how important they are to Norse culture. Loki and Thor
are obvious candidates who provide a doppelganger ability and astral hammer, but the
first power you obtain is the healing of Frigg, Asgard’s queen. The second power
(one I completely missed my first time played) is Heimdall’s shield.

As you travel through the nine realms the detail becomes ever more stunning and I lost track of how many times I legitimately stopped playing for a couple of minutes just to take in the gorgeous visuals that put even AAA games to shame. There are countless details that show the how dedicated the game is to its mythological roots. The hub world is Ginnungagap itself, where a pair of ravens perch on whatever exit leads to the next area required to progress. In the second area, Nidavellir, the first part has you riding down the neverending roots of Ygrdrassil with a massive depiction of Nidhoggr gnawing on the world tree’s roots. In the second part should you reach the heart of the dwarves workshop Thora will elaborate on the roles their smithwork plays in the lives of the Aesir. In Nifleheim at the serpent’s lake one can see the ominous if not downright terrifying of silhouette of Jormungandr below the surface of the lake. Every Jotun represents a corrupted version of their rune, such as how Jera, meaning harvest, is an overgrowth of toxic spores and thorny vines. One of my personal favorite touches is that instead of gathering parts of a magic seal or keys and the like, the way Thora breaks magic barriers is by gathering the nearby Disir to open the way for her.

Everything I’ve talked about thus far isn’t even past the halfway point of the game, and it
only escalates from here as the game becomes an intense exploration of the depths of the
most hostile realms, culminating in Thora proving herself worthy of Valhalla. Which brings
me to my concluding point. Before i played Jotun i only thought of Norse myth as really badass.
It is badass, but Jotun showed me that it’s also breathtaking in its sheer wonder;
the beauty of the game reflects the depth of its source material. To compare, Greek
myths were always interesting but rarely ever breathtaking in any depiction.
Judaism and Kabbalah are filled to the brim with fascinating creatures and tales,
but again there’s little beauty and mostly wrathful and misanthropic tales of man’s folly.
Jotun showed me that Norse myth is beautiful for this exact reason.
Rather than focus on gods punishing mortals, Norse myth is so entertaining because
it’s about gods leading the way for mortals rather than trying to control them.
Old Norse culture didn’t centralize the idea of a wrathful overseer or damnation;
they portrayed gods as beings with their own existence not necessarily intertwined with
mortals, and mortals could fight valiantly for a chance to live in eternal glory alongside them.
It’s a system about rewarding those who prove themselves rather than punishing those
who don’t conform. For that reason it is both incredibly badass and beautiful beyond words.

Tusk and Spinal: Warrior and Viking

When the fighting game series Killer Instinct got rebooted in 2013, everything changed for the better. The character who was changed the most was Spinal, who went from a comically frail skeleton experiment gone wrong to a Swedish ghost pirate doomed to walk among the living via a curse cast by another fighter. Many people think that the Norse representative of the series is the heroic Tusk. In truth, Spinal is not only anther Norse representative, but one that specifically fills in the gaps left by Tusk. The reboot turned Tusk into an immortal guardian who purposefully styled himself after norse culture when he took a liking to their ways.

What has become to me as I’ve read various sagas is that “Viking” and “Nordic Warrior” are two different things. Warriors are men of honor and loyalty who fight for kings and such, while Vikings are raiders who live as outlaws to all but other vikings. Spinal is a Viking, and Tusk is a Nordic warrior. Tusk has the typical Aryan look of pale skin, blonde hair, and turquoise eyes (sometimes entirely blue, other times more so green). He wields a great-sword reminiscent of Icelandic crusaders and named blades such as Balmung. Tusk’s stage is Icehaven, which is a blatant expy of Icelandic shores with a frozen viking ship decorating the background. Spinal’s stage, in contrast, is Shipwreck Shore, a shipwreck in the Caribbean (probably to highlight the fact that despite in most aspects being Swedish, Spinal’s curse is Babylonian) that resembles a nightmarish rendition of Tusk’s stage.

Spinal on the surface seems unrelated to Tusk or vikings, but it takes little digging to unearth the connection. Spinal’s condition is very similar to the draugr of Norse myth rather than a generic undead skeleton. He possess supernatural strength and cursing abilities, he is a fully corporeal corpse (his flesh has simply rotted away due to having been animated since the time of ancient Babylon) as opposed to any sort of specter. The most obvious and decisive evidence, however, is Spinal’s theme in the reboot: “Warlord,” one of many excellent compositions by Mick Gordon. The lyrics to the song are Scandinavian chants that incorporate old Norse terminology into traditional Swedish. The translation portrays Spinal as a pagan war deity deserving of all titles including some exclusively used by old Norse culture.

Tusk and Spinal are explicitly stated to be enemies, which is more than a little fitting. Tusk is an immortal warrior who follows Norse traditions and follows their way of life. Spinal is an undead viking raider whose ship was wrecked and he was cursed to forever walk the earth. For all his malevolence, however, Spinal is not a being of pure evil. His malice is born out of his curse; he has plenty of personality that shows a sadistically jovial warrior who lives for battle much like a Berserk. Speaking of Berserks, Tusk’s rage mode is quite literally a berserker rage. Spinal is outright stated in his story bio to be nothing more than a mischief maker at heart and this is portrayed through how he seldom takes the side of the main villains of the series such as Fulgore and other Ultratech combatants.

Tusk is honor, loyalty, order, faith, and life. Spinal is chaos, bloodlust, pagan, undead, and maniacal. Both Tusk and Spinal represent the Nordic warrior; they each represent an extreme of the spectrum. Spinal is the pagan Viking raider, and Tusk is the crusading honor-bound warrior who serves a higher power to keep order and tradition. It’s entirely possible the yin-yang relationship between the two was unintentional. The game refers to Spinal as a pirate raider and Tusk as a Viking, but Spinal’s theme shows that at least some of those working on the game understand the connection. All of that being said, Spinal is easily my favorite character on the Killer Instinct roster. If not for reading the sagas of Njal, Egil, and Grettir, I never would’ve realized that he was more than a simple skeletal pirate, and much of Tusk’s nods to old Norse culture would’ve been lost on me.

Odin vs. Women: Warcraft Edition

  I would like to talk about the representation of Norse mythology within popular media, specifically about the character Odyn inte in the MMO World of Warcraft. In this interpretation of the character, his origins and backstory are very different, but his personality and primary motivation (to prevent/prepare for the end of the world) are still the same. As part of his plan to stop the apocalypse, he decides to create a flying fortress known as the Halls of Valor (Valhalla). He accomplishes this with the aid of a sorceress, his adopted daughter Helya. His next step is to figure out how to recruit his immortal army. Like the original Odin, Odyn is constantly in search of new knowledge, and he decides to take this opportunity to learn more about the nature of death. Odyn decides to create a task force of damned souls who do not fully exist in either the realm of the living or the dead, so that they can carry the spirits of the fallen to the Halls of Valor. Helya objects to this, and threatens to crash the Halls into the ground if he does not change his mind. Odyn immediately kills her and turns her into the first of the Val'kyr and uses magic to bind her to his will.

Odyn

  Helya does eventually manage to break free along with many other Val’kyr, and traps Odyn and his army inside the Halls. She then creates her own realm Helheim underwater, and dedicates the next few thousand years to murdering heroes and claiming their souls so that Odyn can’t have them. According to the Poetic Edda, Brunhild was imprisoned by Odin for killing his champion, and it seems that the main cause of his anger with women is that they make decisions and interfere with his plans. What is really interesting to me is that Helya incorporates aspects from a few different Norse goddesses, and all of them compete with Odin over control of the afterlife. Most obvious is the comparison to Hel, a death goddess who has dominion over those who die dishonorably, usually from sickness or old age. Like the Val’kyr, she is half dead and half alive. Next is Freyja/Freya, who receives half of the souls from battlefields, while the other half go to Odin. According to some sources, she is also the queen of the Valkyries, which fits with Helya being the original and most powerful Valkyrie. “Helya” also appears to be combination of “Hel” and “Freya”. Finally, Helya’s design and visual theme are mostly likely based off of Ran, a sea goddess who is associated with drowning. Ran carries a net which she uses to drag sailors into the water.

Helya

  After Helya’s rebellion, Odyn attempts to rewrite history by claiming that she was turned into a monster by her own magic, and then begged to work as a Valkyrie as part of her atonement.  At some point, a new Val’kyr queen shows up, named Eyir. Where she came from is currently unknown, but she is entirely loyal to Odyn and serves as a kind of proxy for him as the head of a religion which revolves around training shield-maidens to willingly become Val’kyr. She goes along with Odyn’s plans, including an assassination attempt on a woman named Sigryn, whom Odyn does not want to become the future queen of her people. This is based on a prophecy that she will either save her people or doom them forever, and he is unwilling to take that chance. She survives, and becomes ruler. There are a lot of similarities with Hela from Thor: Ragnarok. After helping to establish the kingdom, both become a threat to it and are imprisoned in some way. “Proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it.” – Hela, Thor: Ragnarok. 

The Halls of Valor

Bonus: Black Hymdall

https://wow.gamepedia.com/The_Legend_of_Odyn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A1n

Thou's Beliefs art Mine, and Mine are Thou

Religion and mythology are found across the world and differs vastly from location to location. Norse mythology originates in Scandinavia, Tarot originates from the mixing of Jewish and Egyptian beliefs, and Shintoism originates in Japan. All three of these regions are separated by vast distances, but the “Shin Megami Tensei” (SMT) series of video games and its tarot themed spin off “Persona” show how Norse mythology overlaps with both ancient western and eastern culture in its teachings and beliefs and how certain values are present in all beliefs. The SMT series is a long running franchise about fighting with and against deities and demons of all cultures, where almost every game has a moral based Chaotic, Neutral, and Lawful route. From Hinduism to Aborigines, everything is represented. Across all SMT games, the Norse gods are among the strongest beings in the games. Three, Surt, Norn, and Loki, epitomize the overlap between cultures through the immense amount of symbolism packed into every aspect of the SMT franchise.

Loki was the first ever antagonist of the series, being the main antagonist of “Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei” which was the first book in a trilogy that serves as the source material for the SMT franchise. Loki was the first antagonist and first ever demon to appear in the series. Even in the video games where Loki is not plot relevant, he usually has a notable role. In the Persona games Loki is a powerful Fool arcana persona; in fact, in Persona 4 he is the ultimate Fool arcana persona. In Tarot readings, the Fool arcana represents unpredictability, tricksters and explorers, and the idea of unlimited potential. Loki fits this well as he helps the gods as much as hurts them and is the one to set into motion the events of Ragnarök. In Persona 3 his nature as a trickster and unpredictable is reflected by his ability to act as the most powerful “Jack of all trades” in the game as he is able to learn the all most powerful elemental spells and physical spells, barring unique skills. In Persona 4 his skillset more reflects his connection to Hel and he specializes in ice magic, being the only persona able to use the Nifleheim, the most powerful ice spell in the series. In Persona 3 he can use a combination attack with Susano-o, the trickster storm god of Japanese mythology. The popular belief is that Loki is blood brothers with Thor due to things such as comic adaptations and the like, but Persona specifically details Loki as Blood Brothers with Odin. Similar to how Loki is somewhat of an outcast among Norse gods and sentenced to lower realms, Susano-o was banished from the realm of the gods after one too many insulting pranks. Both embody the Fool arcana’s trickery, wandering, and potential for both salvation and Armageddon.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, yet the very next arcana after the Fool, is Surt/Surtr of the Magician arcana. In his first appearance, Surt is a boss, one of the most powerful bosses in fact, in the neutral and lawful story routes, but an ally in the chaotic route; in most if not all his portrayals in the series Surt’s role as a destroyer is the most highlighted quality. In one of the games Surt is encountered regularly in the tower of Kagutsuchi, who is the fire god and destroyer of Japanese mythology who parallels Surt to a T and even has a similar role in Persona Arena that Surt had in SMT. In Persona 3 you can fuse him with what is called a nihil weapon to create his sword Laevateinn. In Persona 3 and 4 he is the only persona to learn Ragnarök, the ultimate fire attack. In Persona 3 he is also the ultimate persona of the magician arcana. The magician arcana represents imagination, creativity, potential, beginnings, and power; it’s very fitting for one of the beings who created all things such as Surt. In Persona 4 the character corresponding to the Magician arcana has Susano-o as his ultimate persona. Persona 4’s version of Susano-o highlights his immense power and life bringing abilities that saved the earth from the serpent Yamata-No-Orochi. Yes, that IS quite similar to Jormungandr, isn’t it?

The last of the three best examples is Norn. While the norns are a species in Norse mythology, the entire species is personified by a single being in SMT. Norn plays a major role in one of the many stories of “SMT: Strange Journey,” where Yggdrasill has been corrupted with malevolence. By helping three Dis sisters, Dis being the goddess of fate in Norse mythology, fuse into Norn, Norn creates a time paradox loop where Yggdrasill is forever prevented form causing havoc and the Norn watches over it, similar to how the norns of Norse mythology live under the tree itself. Norn is always the ultimate persona of the fortune arcana, which represents luck and fate. In almost every game she appears in, Norn is created by fusing the three Fates of Greek Mythology, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. In Persona 3 she wields the ultimate wind skill Phanta Rei, although in Persona 4 that was given to Odin to give him mastery of wind in order to make him more separate from Thor’s abilities. Norn represents more than just fate; the wheel of fortune is specifically about destinies intertwining with one another. There are many cases of three norns being depicted together; one might assume it represents the past, present, and future and leave it at that. Things are complicated, however, by the fact that old Norse mythology does not use future tense. The third norn of the trinity represents what a person SHOULD do, not what they will do.

The tarot cards are meant to represent all aspects of life, but even when they are so inclusive it’s still notable how may beings in other religions represent a single arcana perfectly. Loki and Susano-o of the Fool arcana are both tricksters who represent the potential to shape the future of both gods and mortals forever. Surt and Kagutshuchi of the Magician arcana are lords of flame who harbor potential for bringing life or destroying it completely. Norn and the Fates are near identical in their roles of their respective mythologies and embody the Fortune arcana. The conflict over religious belief is an eternal one that has perpetuated throughout humanity’s history, but in a scenario like the SMT and Persona games, where all religions and belief systems are portrayed alongside one another, one can see undeniable similarities. The way all the deities and demons are categorized with a tarot arcana system allows an easy analysis of how religions inherently associate certain concepts with one another. SMT is a series that has always been plagued by accusations of being heretical, satanic, etc. Perhaps people are simply afraid of it for making them consider that there is plenty of common ground among seemingly dissociated religions. If Judaism, Old Norse, and Shintoism can be so inherently similar, there’s no reason to assume the same can’t be said of a great many other religions.