Most people think that Vikings and Norse mythology is all about killing. But is that really true? In part 34 of "The Gylfaginning" in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, we see with the wolf Fenrir that the gods very easily could have saved their own lives because at Ragnarök the wolf was destined to kill all the gods. Instead, they decided to tie the wolf on an island because the wolf’s blood would defile their land. There is more to the gods and Vikings than killing. They cared if the wolf’s blood defiled their land. Instead, they decided to give their own future lives to keep their ground holy.
People thinking that the Vikings and Norse mythology are all about killing are making generalizations. Cultural generalizations should be avoided because it usually makes us get the wrong idea about the people who we are generalizing about. For example, people who heard about Christians and the Lord’s Supper first thought that all Christians were cannibals because they saw “drink the blood and eat the body of Christ” as cannibalism. We know this is incorrect because we grew up around this culture and studied it more, but we do the same things with the Vikings because we don’t know much about their culture except for people killing one another.
We need to study the Vikings before we begin to generalize about their culture. This can easily be overlooked, then the only thing we see in the Norse culture is Thor bashing everyone’s heads. We need to walk a mile in their chain mail before we generalize about Norse culture.
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