Monday, November 19, 2012

Skiing to Glory

Question: Where did you find the story of Sinmora killing Ullr on Ragnarök displayed on your Pantheons subpage? The only mention of her I knew was guarding Laevateinn (Svipdagsmal). Are there any more stories on her?

Ooh, I'm sorry, our bad. There is no mythical story of Sinmore killing Uller and Skadi; rather, that's something that actually happened in our chronicle, kicking off Ragnarok with a prophesied doom, a rather dramatic fight scene and the meteoric destruction of most of the Californian coast. We included it in his god page because there's precious little out there about him, and because it was written a few years ago when we first set this site up and only our players were using it. It's "canon" for the Better Next Time and Skeins of Fate games, but not from any mythological source.

We totally didn't realize it was still there, or we would have removed it - sorry! Please don't get confused; there ain't no prophecy of Uller's death at Sinmore's hands, so nobody has to get all anxious over their favorite frosty god. Uller actually goes completely unmentioned in the Ragnarok prophecies, so Storytellers are free to do whatever they like with him when the ol' Goetterdaemerung hits.

We've removed the offending pseudo-myth and replaced it with Uller's only legitimate mythic story - that of his brief sojourn as king of the Aesir. Sinmore, alas, really does have no role in myth other than as the guardian of Laevateinn.

2 comments:

  1. Questioner here, thank you for the clarification! It is especially interesting for me, as I didn't know the story of Uller's kingship either (I must admit that I got to frustrated with Snorri to read the Prose Edda as thoroughly as I should have before asking such probing questions). However I would really like to read up on it. Could you please tell which Edda it is from?

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    Replies
    1. No problem, and sorry again for the confusion. :)

      The story of Uller's kingship is actually not in the Eddas; it's from crochety old Saxo Grammaticus and can be found in the third chapter of his Gesta Danorum. Saxo's a euhemerizing old bastard and much of his work shows a clear Christian bias, but aside from the Eddas he's practically the only other good source of ancient Norse myth we have. He's also the source from which we draw the stories of Baldur's and Hod's feud over Nanna and Frigg's relentless punking of her husband.

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