THE STORY INDEX
A growing collection of myths and legends, with their origins, variations, and sources.
Before earth or sky, a giant took shape out of melting rime, and the gods built the world from his body. Three Eddic poems know him, but only Snorri Sturluson, a Christian writing in 13th-century Iceland, tells the whole story, and parts of it are his alone.
Read story 10 min readA giant stole Thor's hammer and would give it back only for Freyja as his bride, so Thor went to the wedding in her veil. The poem survives in a single manuscript, and Snorri, who tells so many stories of Thor, never mentions it.
Read story 11 min readA hall roofed with shields, a boar eaten every day and whole again by evening, dead warriors who cut each other down for sport and then sit down to drink, and the women who choose who will die. Most of the picture comes from Snorri Sturluson, writing in Christian Iceland around 1220. The older poems do not always agree with him.
Read story 13 min readAn eagle in the crown, a dragon at the roots and a squirrel running between them: the Eddic poems give the world ash three roots and endless wounds. They also speak of nine worlds, but no medieval text says which nine.
Read story 10 min readKronos swallowed his children as they were born, until he was handed a stone in place of the youngest. That child, Zeus, grew up hidden on Crete and became the third king of heaven, though the Greeks never agreed on where he was hidden, or even on whether he was the youngest.
Read story 9 min readHe left an eye in Mímir's well, hung nine nights on a windy tree to take up the runes, and sends two ravens out over the world every day. The poem that tells of the eye never says it bought wisdom. That explanation is Snorri's.
Read story 12 min readThe wolf breaks loose, the serpent rises from the sea and Surtr's fire burns the world. Then the earth comes up green from the waves a second time. Two old poems tell it in glimpses; a Christian Icelander of the 1220s joined them into one story.
Read story 10 min readHomer's gods feast on a real mountain, snowy and many-ridged, between Thessaly and Macedonia, yet the Odyssey already pictures an Olympus that no wind, rain or snow can reach. In 1961, on one of its peaks, builders found the remains of sacrifices to Zeus.
Read story 8 min readShe came to the gods from the Vanir, taught them seiðr, drives a team of cats, weeps red gold for a husband who never returns and takes half of the slain to her own hall. The tale of how she won her necklace survives in a single Icelandic manuscript from the end of the 14th century.
Read story 10 min readA giant's son and Odin's blood-brother, Loki insults every god at a feast, fathers the wolf, the world serpent and Hel, and lies bound beneath a dripping serpent until the end of the world. There is no sign that anyone ever worshipped him.
Read story 11 min readGods and demons used a mountain as a churning stick and a serpent as the rope, and churned the ocean for amṛta, the drink of immortality. Who held the mountain up, and who drank the poison? It depends on which text you open.
Read story 6 min readThrown out of heaven, Susanoo comes down by a river in Izumo, makes a serpent with eight heads drunk and cuts it to pieces. In its tail is the sword that became one of Japan's imperial regalia. Izumo's own record of its gods never mentions the serpent.
Read story 9 min readA three-year-old who has never spoken asks the king for an iron horse, grows into a giant, routs the invaders and rides into the sky. The two oldest notices of him have no child and no horse, and the 15th-century texts arm him with a sword, not bamboo.
Read story 12 min readThe world began as an egg, and Pangu grew inside it until heaven and earth stood ninety thousand li apart. When he died, his body became the world. Yet no book names him before the third century CE, and scholars still argue over where he came from.
Read story 8 min readOdysseus helped take Troy, then spent ten more years trying to get home. Homer is precise about why: he blinded the sea god's son, and his crew ate the cattle of the Sun.
Read story 10 min readThe gods raised the wolf in their own home, then bound him with a ribbon made from a cat's footfall, a woman's beard and the roots of a rock, and Týr paid with his hand. Only Snorri Sturluson, around 1220, tells the whole story; the older poems know the hand, the fetter and the day the wolf runs free.
Read story 10 min readEvery night the sun sailed through the twelve hours of the underworld, and every night the serpent Apophis lay across its path. The spells told him he would never rise again, then ordered the same rite again for the next day.
Read story 8 min readPārvatī made a son to guard her door, and Shiva, who did not know him, cut off his head. That is the best-known answer to why Ganesha has an elephant's head. The Purāṇas give at least three others.
Read story 9 min readA river god's daughter, shut away by a king, was followed by the sunlight and laid an egg. The boy who broke out of it fled across a bridge of fish and turtles and founded Goguryeo, and the kingdom itself carved his story in stone in 414.
Read story 11 min readAn archer shot down the suns that were burning the world, and a woman stole the elixir of immortality and fled to the moon. Today they are the married couple of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The oldest texts tell two separate stories.
Read story 8 min readThe sun goddess shut herself in a cave and the world went dark, until the gods hung a mirror on a tree and a goddess danced on an upturned tub so wildly that heaven shook with laughter. Japan's two oldest books do not agree on why she hid, or on what brought her out.
Read story 9 min readTwo spirits asked a Hùng king for the same daughter. The Mountain Spirit brought his gifts first, and the Water Spirit has attacked his mountain every year since. The famous nine-tusked elephant is not in the old texts.
Read story 9 min readSeth shut his brother in a chest, Isis searched for him across the world, and Osiris became the king and judge of the dead. Yet no Egyptian text tells the whole story. The fullest telling we have is Greek.
Read story 6 min readIn the oldest account, Medusa is born a Gorgon, the only one of three sisters who can die. The beautiful girl punished by Athena arrives some seven hundred years later, in a Roman poem.
Read story 9 min read
