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Originally Posted by Lalaith
Rune, I'd disagree that the Norse gods didn't have morals. They were certainly not as "good" as the deities of monotheistic religions. But they were definitely more benevolent and concerned with helping mankind in general than their Greek equivalents, who were only interested in specific favourites and to hell with the rest. They did their best to protect Midgard from the giants....
And of course the Valar may have been good and wise but once they'd rescued their precious little elfy-welfies from Morgoth, they were pretty apathetic about the fate of the rest of Middle-Earth's inhabitants until Earendil swanned in to shame them....
Oh and while I'm here, another bit of Norsery that occured to me - Beorn.
As Rune and Gothmog know, his name means "bear". The idea of a man turning into a bear is reminscent of the Norse superwarriors, berserkers (the name means bear-skin...)
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Well I might have been to general in my previous statement about morals, but they saw no problem in killing in order to gain riches, wisdome or vengance. You can read in Ravnkel Frejsgodes saga about how man is killed because his brother won a trial at the ting. (this brother had been gone for several years and did not even know what had happent, he was killed with no pre-warning)
The berskers is a strange thing, because no one nows for sure what they did and a lot of sources tell different storys. It seems to be clear how ever that they dressed up like animals before they whent to war. Some theories tells that they made there thralls eat poisones mushrooms, where after the beserkers drank there urin, here by gaining somthing looking to be devine powers. (not feeling pain ect.)
I will talk about the Giants and Loke in another post. . .
P.S. I use the danish names because 1) I can't remember them in english 2) it is almost the same, many times the onley thing that happens is that the E's switches to I's