Similarities Between Norse Religion and Ancient Greek Religion

The deeper that we explore Norse Religion and the Ancient Greek Religion, the more connections that we find. While on the surface each tradition is distinct, unique, and original, we find that significant aspects of the internal structure of the two mythologies share deep similarities.

From the Greek tales of the Moirai, Orpheus, Muses, Gigantes, and the pantheon itself, to the Norse tales of the Norns, Heimdallr, the Nine Daughters, and the Jotun — many major themes share incredible similarities. These shared cultural traits of these Indo-European peoples speaks to potential edifices of an ancient tradition that is ancestral to Indo-European people as a whole. An older mythology with roots deep into antiquity, more developed at an early age than we have fully understood, with traits that are shared by a staggering array of peoples beyond these two cultures.

• The Fact of a Pantheon of Gods
• The Nine Muses and the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán
• The Nine Mothers of Heimdallr and Orpheus
• The Norns of the Norse and the Moirai of the Greeks
• How do we explain the similarities between Norse Religion and Greek Religion?

The Fact of a Pantheon of Gods

The first great similarity — and this one is often overlooked — is the very existence of a developed Pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Even though there are differences in names, attributes, and the specifics of the traditions, at the heart of both we have a tribe of beings with a host of stories, legends, and histories around them speaking of a war among the gods, the creation of the Earth, and their interactions with humans.

Even while the house has been redecorated, refurnished, and renovated in certain areas, the bones of the house, its fundamental structure, is nearly identical.

The very fact that a pantheon existed, with similar cosmological traditions and beings in their unique cosmos, and that a genealogy of the gods is recorded, is significant in and of itself. Add to this the range of connections between the Jotnar and Gigantes, the Nine Muses and the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán, the Norns and the Fates and more — a connection between significant details laid upon a highly similar foundational structure — speaks clearly of an ancient connection between these two traditions.

The Nine Muses and the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán

The Nine Muses of Greek Mythology — Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Thalia, Polyhymnia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Urania— all of whom were the daughters of the goddess Mnemosyne and Zeus. The Muses were the personification of science and the arts, of poetry, astronomy, literature, music, and dance. This is the Greek tradition recorded by Hesiod around 600 BCE, of their oldest mentions.

The Nine Daughters of Aegir and Ran of Norse mythology are also the daughters of divine parents — the goddess Ran and the jotun Ægir — though instead of being associated with the knowledge and arts (close to the heart of the civilization of Ancient Greece) the Norse associated them with the waves of the sea. For perhaps thousands of years the people of the north remembered the Nine Daughters each time they spoke of the waves.

While the traditions themselves are different (different names and associations, and little known besides this and their parentage in both cultures) the fact remains that we have a group of Nine goddesses. Each are of divine parentage of the highest order (Ægir and Ran, Zeus and Mnemosyne) associated with a central aspect of their respective cultures, and that these Nine were sisters.

The Nine Mothers of Heimdallr and Orpheus

Building on the connection between the Nine Daughters and the Nine Muses, both Norse Religion and Greek Religion have another major deity attached to the Nine.

In the Norse tradition we have the legend of the Nine Mothers of Heimdallr. Many scholars believe that the Nine Mothers are the same as the Nine Daughters — even though the names that have survived are different — largely because of the likelihood of these Nine goddesses, all sisters in both cases (and in the case of the Nine Muses) being connected.

In the Greek tradition, the legendary musician Orpheus, one of the only figures in all of world mythology to have returned from the dead, is sometimes said to have been the son of one of the Nine Muses, and in other traditions, the Muses raised Orpheus and helped him to develop his musical skill. The Greeks themselves viewed Orpheus as an historical person — most of the ancient scholars agreeing, with the exception of Aristotle — though ancient, well into the second, perhaps the third millennium BCE.

In both cases we have nine divine women, daughters of great gods and goddesses, sisters associated with a central aspect of culture, and who are also attached to a younger god of their people. we have a collection of In Norse mythology there is also the reference to the Nine Mothers of the god Heimdallr and the nine mothers of Orpheus, the ancient musician of great renown. Orpheus was

The Norns and the Fates

The last connection that I will mention in this introduction is that between the Norns and the Morai — the Fates of the Norse and the Greeks, respectively.

In Norse Mythology the Norns are three goddesses, Jotun, powerful daughters of the Jotnar responsible for shaping the fates of humanity. At the foot of the great tree Yggdrasil they sit, weaving the fates of mankind. It is said that when the Norns arrived from Jotunheimr, the golden age of the gods came to an end.

In the traditions of the ancient Greeks, these beings are known as the Moirai, who ensured that every being in the Universe lived out their destiny as it was written. Neither the gods nor mortals were exempt from this universal law. The three Moirai were known as the sisters Clotho (“the spinner”), Lachesis (“the allotter”), and Atropos (“the inevitable/death”). The fate of a being was likened to thread spun from a spindle, from the moment of their birth to death. In Rome they were known as the Parcae.

In English, the Moirai are the better known as the Fates as they moved through Europe from three principle sources: the Norns of the Norse, the Moirai of the Greeks, and the Parcae of the Romans. However, their initial existence within each of these cultures suggests that this tradition is ancient, tracing back to the Indo-European culture before they branched off from one another and became the Greeks, Norse, Romans, and others.

How do we explain the similarities between Norse Religion and Greek Religion?

To explain the similarities between Norse Religion and Greek Religion, we need to dive into the connection between the ancestors of the ancient Norse and the Ancient Greeks themselves. Our understanding of the picture changes dramatically when we consider the fact there is already an established ethnic, linguistic, and therefore ancient cultural link between the Norse and the Greeks. Both of these groups are Indo-European people ethnically and linguistically, farmers and agriculturalists from the Middle East who branched off from one another at some point as they migrated from Western Asia into Europe. The Old Norse, Old German, Ancient Greek, Celtic, Iranian and Vedic languages are all of the same language family, connecting the people, and the roots of their traditions.

On the one hand, certain shared elements in their mythology could potentially be attributed to transmission by contact. Their borders were only separated by about 1700 km, so it remains possible that there was contact at some time during Ancient History (3000–500 BCE). There could have been peripheral contact on a small scale, especially if peoples like the Phoenician sailors had made it all the way to the British Isles during this time, as there is evidence that they did.

There are legends of northern peoples in Greek and Roman times, such as the Hyperboreans, although these tales themselves tell of how slight the contact was as they are regarded as almost mythical beings. And for this many details and central themes to be transmitted in such a casual fashion? Furthermore, the Celtic People and Germanic tribes (both Indo-European peoples) were between the Greeks and the ancestors of the Norse, and Celtic Mythology shares similarities and differences with Greek Mythology that differ from those between the Norse and Greeks. Therefore cultural contact through the Celtic people and other Germanic tribes (like the ancestors of the Norse once themselves were) seems slightly less likely.

We also have to consider the alternative that the shared traditions represent a truly deep layer of Indo-European myth in existence prior to the Greek-Norse branch during the Indo-European migrations. The arguments for this are subtle, somewhat technical, and sometimes tenuous, delicate. We can reduce this argument down to the idea that these traditions of Norse Religion and Greek Religion have the appearance of great age, and extensive local evolution in isolation.

The difference between the associations of the Nine Muses with science and the arts, compared with the association of the Nine Daughters with the waves of the sea, gives the impression that each culture already had the Nine from their ancestors, with the associations growing around them like vines over a sculpture. Morphing the appearance of that culture over centuries as they developed and evolved independently in isolation. The Nine Daughters became the waves, while the Nine Muses presided over the knowledge and arts so precious to the illustrious civilization of Ancient Greece.

In the case of the Norns–Moirai–Parcae — known more commonly as the Fates today — it is already accepted that these beings represent a deeper layer of Indo-European myth, which is why they exist in each of these different cultures, and many more across the region. I believe we are underestimating the true extent of the ancient Indo-European mythology, the Ancestral Tradition, and the stage of development that it was actually at even before Ancient History into Prehistory, since we literally have to go back that far to trace back the migrations of the Indo-European people. We have evidence of the arrival of Neolithic farmers from the Near East to Ireland around 4500 BCE, the arrival of the Stone Axe culture to northern Europe around 2800 BCE, the rise of the Minoans on Crete around 3000 BCE, and the Mycenaean Greeks on the mainland around 2000 BCE. This gives us the major pieces for a potential timeline of a shared tradition.

It is with these types of connections between the Norse Religion and Ancient Greek Religion that we can better narrow down first the content of the Ancestral Tradition, and second the age of the tradition. The degree of similarity in certain traditions and in the pillars — central themes — of Norse and Greek cosmology speaks of an old connection between the two culture. The distinct nature of these traditions further accentuates this connection because, in spite of potential common origins, their incredibly distinct nature indicates a long time for the traditions (and cultures) to develop apart, to diverge from one another in general.

If there were two distinct traditions originally, it is unlikely that the pillars of their religion, cosmology, and mythology would line up so well. In this case, we might still have many shared details through transmission by cultural contact, but they would be like similar colourful murals on the surface of two houses with completely different structural designs. What we see here are surprisingly similar structures that seem to have evolved to become completely different over time. Names changed, the general imagery developed on a unique path, while many pillars, themes, and a number of traditions remained the same. According to Snorri Sturluson writing in the 13th century when he compiled the Prose Edda — one of two central texts from which we know Norse Mythology — spoke of a tradition that the Norse were the descendants of the refugees from the Greek city of Troy, after it fell at the hands of Achilles and Agamemnon. The Romans, interestingly, have the same belief in their origin. How much truth their is to either belief is uncertain, but what I am saying is that the connection between the Greeks and the Norse is not a new idea.

All of these similarities come together to indicate (along with linguistic and genetic information) the ancient ties between the Norse and the Greeks. While further research is required to resolve the details into true clarity, the fact remains that a connection is almost certain. How far does that connection go backwards in time? Where did it begin? When did the Norse and Greeks break off from one another, and did they do so as separate waves of migrations over time from a single people? What we can say is that these pieces of evidence are further confirmation for the existence of an Ancestral Tradition, and also suggest its advanced stage of development when these people separated.