Norse Mythology Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which god stood as the watchman of the Aesir at the end of the rainbow bridge, needing less sleep than a bird, able to see a hundred leagues by day or night and to hear wool grow on a sheep and grass grow in the ground?

Question 2

What is the name of the fortified home of the Aesir, high above the world of humans and reached across the rainbow bridge, containing the halls of the individual gods, among them Odin's hall of the slain?

Question 3

Which cunning, shape-shifting figure lived among the Aesir as a companion and blood-brother of the Allfather, helping the gods out of trouble as often as he landed them in it, and fathering, on a giantess, a wolf, a serpent and the ruler of the dead?

Question 4

What is the name for the second family of Norse gods, associated with fertility, prosperity, the sea and the practice of magic, whose members included the sea god and his twin children, the god and goddess of plenty?

Question 5

What is the name of the pair of dwarf brothers who, on Loki's challenge and with his head as the stake, forged three of the gods' greatest treasures: a self-multiplying gold ring, a golden boar, and the thunder god's hammer?

Question 6

What is the name of the primordial realm of fire, heat and molten rock in the south, guarded at its border by the fire giant Surtr with his flaming sword, whose sparks the gods used to make the sun, moon and stars?

Question 7

What is the Norse name for the foretold end of the world, a chain of catastrophes in which the gods and their monstrous enemies destroy one another, the sun is swallowed, the stars go out and the earth sinks burning into the sea?

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About Norse Mythology

The Norse myths come down to us mostly through two Icelandic books written after the conversion to Christianity: an anonymous collection of older poems, the Poetic Edda, and a poets' handbook by Snorri Sturluson around 1220, the Prose Edda, backed up by skaldic verse and the sagas. This quiz draws on all of them for eighty questions. Each describes a god, a giant, a creature, a place, an object or a source, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains the story, the family connections and how the name still shows up today, not least in the days of our week. Where the two Eddas disagree, and they often do, the more widely told version is used and the difference is noted; names are given in the forms most familiar to English readers, with the accented spellings set aside. This is a mythology without a fixed scripture: it survived as poetry and story, kept changing, and was written down only after the culture that believed it had become Christian.

The first pack is the main gods and the frame of the cosmos: Odin, Thor, Loki, Frigg, Freyja and Frey, Baldr, Tyr, Heimdall, Njord and Idunn; the two divine families, the Aesir and the Vanir; the world tree Yggdrasil; Asgard, Midgard and Valhalla; the three Norns who spin fate; Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir; and Ragnarok, the end that is also a beginning.

The second pack fills in the rest of the pantheon and the wider cast. The monstrous children of Loki, the wolf Fenrir and the world serpent; the first giant Ymir, from whose body the world was made, and the fire giant Surtr, who will unmake it; Hel, who rules the ordinary dead. Lesser gods and goddesses, Sif, Skadi, Vidar, Vali, Bragi, Forseti, Ull, Gefjon, Sigyn. The great giants of the tales, Thrym who stole the hammer, Hrungnir of the stone heart, Utgard-Loki of the illusions, Thjazi who took Idunn. The treasures, Mjolnir, Gungnir, Draupnir, Gleipnir, and the mead of poetry, with the dwarf smiths who made them. And the heroic legend of Sigurd, Fafnir and the cursed ring, along with the valkyries.

The third pack is the nine realms and the sources: the fiery Muspelheim and icy Niflheim on either side of the primordial void Ginnungagap; the rainbow bridge Bifrost; Jotunheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Vanaheim and Freyja's field Folkvangr; the Prose and Poetic Eddas and the key poems Voluspa and Havamal; the runes and how Odin won them; Fimbulwinter and the einherjar; the magic called seidr and the sacrifice called a blot; the war between the Aesir and the Vanir; and the four gods hiding in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Because a captioned picture usually gives the answer away, images are used only where they do not, and everything has been checked against the standard editions of the sources.