Tyr the Norse God of Justice, Sacrifice, and Honor

hello my name is jacob and i'm a norse pagan and today i'm going to talk about the norse god tear something that i know a lot of people have been asking for a very long time but it is something that i really wanted to be prepared for because i don't know that much about t or at least i didn't before starting to do this research just simply because i haven't really had any tear experiences and i've been observing others in the community that have but as always this is a god week which means i'm going to have two episodes about here today we're going to be talking about the raw facts of what we know about tier from the ettas and what we know maybe from history or from artifacts so i'm going to be sharing with you all that i could find in my research hopefully it'll give you a good starting point to begin your practice or at least give you some more information now where i'm filming today is kind of interesting so i'm at a civil war fort here in um boonsboro like near richmond kentucky so i was looking for the best place to film about here and since he is a god of war i wanted to do something that had to do with war and so i was looking for civil war forts or things like that originally i was going to do fort boonsboro if that's closed and so then i found this random civil war fort sign on the side of the road and now i'm here and i have no idea what to expect so i'm gonna begin climbing this hill and talking about tear along the way and maybe learning a little bit about the civil war so let's go ahead and begin this journey [Music] [Music] hello [Music] so i'm sure most of you coming into this video already know about tyr and fenrir it's the most popular and well-known tear story there is and really one of the juiciest stories we have as far as information but just because it's the most popular and well-known doesn't mean it's actually the story we get the most information so i really want to start with the stories you might not know just simply because i think that's why you're watching this video in the first place so the story i want to start with is actually high mosquito which is a lesser known story as far as tear i don't hear people talking about it very often and we get a lot of information from it as well so this is the story of tear and thor traveling to tears home to tears father's place to steal a cauldron to brew beer because it's the best of all cauldrons the biggest of all cauldrons and so this is an interesting story because we have tear and thor traveling together um there is an interesting amount of information you get here and information i don't hear people talking about so i have taken notes as you can tell um i've taken these from the poetic edda and then the prose edda when we get to those stories as well i find it easier just to write these down that way i'm not just reading the poetic edit to you so as far as the information that i wrote down that i find the most interesting and what i think will build a better image of tear is first off tears father is hymir who's a wise giant who owns the deepest cauldron to brew beer tears says that he and thor can steal the cauldron with a few tricks interesting uh tears grandmother is described as ugly with 900 heads we see that in stanza eight so i do my best in these series um to not give you what that makes me think but it is interesting i've never heard someone talk about tears grandmother having 900 heads pioneer is described as a very large giant who can shake glaciers with his step so here we have an example of a yoten being large which we see them kind of change sizes based on the story so here we have an example of a large yoten it does mention that tyr's mother who i couldn't find the name of it is just mentioned that she was hymir's concubine so we can surmise that she is most likely a yoten as well so tear is yoten or at the very least half yodan or three-quarter yoten which is not surprising because many of the gods are actually descended from ryotan as well even though tyr's one of the main characters of this story he's kind of forgotten about in the stanzas 12 to 32 where this is given to thor on his fishing trip with highmeer where he captures the midgard serpent with an aux's head we have this very famous thor story whereas with tyr he's kind of just left on the side and he isn't brought up until the very end of the story and even then the only thing that is said about tier is that he could not lift the cauldron once they won it from jaimir because uh thor broke pioneer's cup onto his stubborn head um so tyr tries to pick up the cauldron and actually fails which is interesting because he is the war god you know i would imagine that he's quite strong but i guess thor is the stronger god i suppose is what we learned from this story because thor easily picks it up and they begin to walk away and as they're walking away from jaime's lands that they turn back and see that haimir is running at them um with an army of yoton who are described as lava giants so we can't say for certain if jaimir is a lava giant but we can see here that um at least he has an army of lava giants so this is making me sit in here thinking like is tyr like part fire yotan maybe it's a possibility against something that i found interesting dive into the story that i don't hear people talking about very often so what have we learned from him skiva hemiskiva we have learned that tear's father is hymir um his concubine is tyr's mother haimir is described as jaime the wise but he's also a very large giant a very large yoton um gets into the fishing contest with thor loses um comes back after thor and tyr with his lava yoton um and then is killed by thor um you know very quickly in like three lines it's like and then thor killed them so not a lot about tear but enough information that it makes you wonder you know this is not information that people talk about very often [Music] the next poem i want to talk about within the poetic edda is locus cena which is a poem of course that we get a lot of small bits of information about various deities because loki basically insults everybody basically the way tyr comes into this is he defends freyr because loki is obviously insulting him and he's like freyr's one of the best of all deities he's the kindest the most beautiful the strongest so tyr does defend freyr in this situation um and then we have loki of course insulting tyr mostly about losing his hands in the binding of fenrir now stanza 38 is interesting because we see loki taunt here about something that we typically know him for at least in a positive god aspect and that's his ability to settle disputes but loki actually says that tyr is unable to settle disputes and is ineffective at being a peacemaker now this could be in reference to fenrir obviously loki is hurt about the fact that his son is bound and says basically was tyr's fault so maybe this is a way you can kind of look at this but that's kind of up to you but it is interesting that loki insults his inability to settle disputes which will reference something that we recently read in the prose edda moving forward here very soon so that's kind of all we get from lokasena we get tier defending freyr which is interesting and then we get loki insulting tyr about his inability to settle disputes and then of course there is a back and forth between tyr and loki about the binding of fenrir loki says ha you lost a hand to my son and then tears like well your son's bound forever so that's gotta suck too basically um so not a lot there but it is interesting little back and forth back when i was just a simple viewer of youtube videos i don't think i ever respected the amount of work that goes into getting some shots i mean the fact that you're seeing drone footage in this means it was a success now if you're not that means i lost the drone but hauling this five six pound drone up this mountain with all my camera gear while filming while hiking while remembering research it's a lot of work so if you like the content and what i do for this channel here at the wisdom of odin please think about liking and subscribing but if you really want to go that extra step think about donating to patreon there's a link down below and basically it just ensures the fact that i'm able to do this still two videos roughly every single week i'm able to do this research go to places like this oh man i need to stop recording these segments while going uphill but seriously if you like the content here it would make my day if you went down below and thought about donating there and i do have lots of benefits there including the patreon discord i have the early access videos and live streams one of which is happening tomorrow at the time of me filming this so thank you so much if you're able to support me there and thank you so much for watching these videos and i hope you're enjoying this video on tear and now hopefully i'm almost at the top of this hill so this next story is actually my favorite story that i found in this research because it came from a section that i don't normally look into when it comes to the poetic edda so this actually comes from the story of sigrfu mall again apologies because i don't speak old norse but i'm trying my best this is the story of sigurd reviving a valkyrie who was being punished by odin for failing him and choosing the wrong battle the wrong victory uh the wrong people to win a battle and the valkyrie's name is sigrifida fifa and she basically teaches sigurds spells um you know ways to win war and it's kind of like a mini havamal um so the one section that was really interesting i'm just going to read to you you should carve victory runes if you want to have victory carve some on the hilt of your sword carve some on the middle of the blade also some elsewhere on the sword and name tear twice so the reason i find this so interesting is because we see rune magic being used which is not something we see in the stories all the time and it's something that i've always struggled with in my personal runic practice but the idea of chanting tears named twice tiwas tiwas or tear to activate these runes shows that there was magic to these runes and a belief in the magic as well and so i find this section to be one of the most potent because it shows a real world connection with tyr it shows a real world usage and a connection with victory like if you want victory carve tiwas into your weapons carve tiwas into what you use to achieve victory and then chant tears named twice so this is probably to me one of the most exciting pieces of evidence that you can actually base a practice off of and the whole mythos of binding a valkyrie that failed odin and then releasing her by giving her a gift as well i mean this is a really cool story and then the magic she teaches as well is just really exciting and is really important for people following and wanting to connect more with tear [Music] all right i've officially reached the top of this small hill and wasn't that bad of a hike and what i have been given is a cannon um so this is all that remains i mean i don't think this is original either but this is all that remains of the fort itself there is this earthen structure kind of all the way around it if you can see that that's what really remains of this but still kind of a cool hike you know i feel like it's it is a good place to be talking about tier is an old civil war for a place that used to have some form of military standing so now we've actually finished the poetic edda as far as the information that i could find and now it is time to talk about the pros etta so the pros out of does have quite a bit of information i do want to go ahead and start with information as far as the description that snory gives of tier this comes from pages 24 and 25 of my addition there is also an as called tyr he is the bravest and most valiant and he has great power over victory in battles it is good for men of action to pray to him there is a saying that a man is t valiant who surpasses other men and does not hesitate he was so clever that a man who is clever is said to be t wise so again this information seems to come mostly from the poetic edda which is where snorri got a lot of his resources and he expanded upon um i do also want to go ahead and mention the other small bits of information that pros edit before we get to the true meat and potatoes which is the binding of figures story on snorri's recounting of the tale of ragnarok we mention we see mentioning that he says that tear is killed by garm the dog of hell the hound of hell again interesting we see hounds being prevalent thing within tear but i don't have this in my poetic edda it might be in another edition but i have actually never seen mentioning of who kills tear at ragnarok besides within the prose edda so interesting that uh snorri knew that account and then on page 64 part of skaldskarper mall which is basically the section on how to do scalding verse snorri lists victory tier hang tier and cargo tier as other names for odin so we see tyr being used as a reference to possibly deity or god or like powerful one or something like that is what i the research i could find which is you know not something that is uncommon it's not saying that odin is tear tears odin it's just something that the name tear is synonymous with other things within the old norse language on page 76 nori also lists other names for tear within skull scarpa mall and he listed as one-handed as feeder of the wolf battle god and son of odin the son of odin one is interesting i haven't seen that reference as well now maybe it's because odin is the all-father the father of all deities in a way but what we know from the poetic edda is that haimir is actually the father of tears so he would be the son of haimir but again just more information i wanted to share with you so now here we are to the actual binding of fenrir so the reason that i've held this off to the end of the video is because this is probably the thing that i found hardest so i actually had a conversation with people in my discord community that is available through patreon i was trying to really see how people understand here and how people understand the binding of fenrir so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read it to you as it is written in the prose edda and then i want to hear your opinion on this story down below and i'm going to share with you why this is such an interesting point for for tear veneration into your knowledge it is one proof of his bravery that when the ac were luring fenris wolf so as to get him to fetter glapener on him he did not trust them that they would let him go until they placed tears hand in the wolf's mouth as a pledge and when the ac refused to let him go then he bit it off the hand at the place now called the wolf's joint the wrist and he has one and now he is one-handed is and he is not considered a promoter of settlements between people not considered and then later we have mentionings of when fenrir first arrived in asgard when the gods first took fenrir as a prisoner the aesir brought up the wolf at home and it was only tyr who had the courage to approach the wolf and give it food and when the god saw how much it was growing each day and all prophecies foretold that it was the destin to cause harm then the acer adopted this plan and they made it a strong fetter which they called ley ding and brought to the wolf and so they have they create multiple uh ways to bind him to fail and they finally have gleipner and then tears mentioned when they finally tried to put it on fenrir as well so fenrir does speak which is interesting that we see fenrir you know a very monstrous creature um actually have a conversation not something we actually see from like the world serpent at all so the wolf said if you bind me so that i am unable to release myself then you will be standing by in such a way that i should have to wait a long time before i got any help from you i am reluctant to have this band put on me but rather than that you question my courage let someone put his hand in my mouth as a pledge that it is done in good faith but all the a seer looked at each other and found themselves in a dilemma and all refused to off their hand until tyr put forward his right hand and put in the wolf's mouth and now when the wolf kicked and the band grew harder and the harder he struggled the tougher became the band then they all laughed except for tyr who lost his hand and there you go that is the binding of finry according to my every man at a version of the prose edda so the reason that i find this conversation difficult is because when i first read this again i want to know what you hear when you hear this story down below but what i'm finding out is that a lot of people are filling in the blanks with what they want from this story so i try to keep my personal viewpoints away from the norse god series as much as possible so here is the line for you you know i have read you the information but what i read in that information what i saw is that tyr is a god of bravery and courage and that only the only reason that he put his hand in finra's mouth is because no other god had the bravery to do so and he had the bravery as it says in the very first section describing this event it said it is one proof of his bravery when this happened when he put his hand in the wolf's mouth so what i'm finding from the conversation i was having within our discord community is that people see this finn rear story as an act of compassion an act of helping someone who was being mistreated but that is not what i am seeing from the text i am seeing this story as an act of bravery because tyr is the god of war he is a god of courage now again i know this is not going to be universal because many people see this relationship between tyr and fenrir uh as one of compassion as one of maybe even love because he saw fenrir as his you know as his duty as his oath because what what it seems like is people who read the fact that he approached fenrir and fed him as a showing of love and compassion but what i see it as is only an act of bravery because all the other gods were scared to do so again i'm really trying to walk this line here because i i built this channel i'm basically saying look i'm just sharing with you the information you take that information for what you will but it is times like these that i feel like i do need to draw a slight line in the sand and basically say look we might be viewing this god in the wrong way and you know i never want to tell someone they're wrong and i never want to go to someone and say your beliefs are not true about tear i'm sorry you have personal experiences with tyr that you know serpent navigate what i'm trying to tell you right now but what i'm saying from a historical perspective it appears that tyr was not a god of justice and law that he was a god simply a bravery courage and war and victory um so the information i have to back this up as well it comes from the fact that the romans saw tier as an equivalent to mars and what we see happen to mars is very similar to what we see happen here because one thing you may also know that i also found in this research is that tyr was a much more prevalent god and more of the bronze age the pre-viking age and that he eventually lost favor and was kind of replaced by odin as the chief god of war this is also something that happened to mars during the early days of rome's rise they had mars as their war god he was seen as more ruthless as more barbaric and basically the god that got things done he was the the true god of war but then as rome became more civilized as rome became more about commercialism became more about building the empire instead of expanding it through war they replaced mars with minerva which was seen more as a strategic war god and i would argue that this was very true for the germanic people as well and maybe it's something they adopted from rome or vice versa but we see tyr as more of the war victory god and perhaps was more prominent in an earlier era but then as we got closer to the era where we have written information about deities odin was more prominent that time because at that time during the viking age um scandinavia and the areas that worshipped these deities were becoming more civilized and so odin may have replaced here as more of a strategic war god okay so i'm not used to making arguments on this channel but again i hope this is enough information to perhaps even just alter your perspective or look at tyr in a different way because again the information that we're seeing we have mentioning that tyr is not considered a good god for negotiation and peacemaking we have loki referencing this as well that loki says he is not good at settling arguments um we see him wanting to play tricks on jaimir to steal the cauldron he is from possibly a fire giant and then we have the victory runes as well back in the idea that he was really used as as the martial god the war god to achieve victory and then of course in the prose edda we have the repeated reference to tear being of bravery and courage so that is my argument so please let me know down below what you think of this because again it seems to be a different perspective that i have not heard before and is what i saw doing this research and i want to know your perspective down below i'm you know i don't want to say i'm 100 right on this everyone has a different perspective and again everyone has different personal experiences with tear but again it's one of the reasons i was kind of afraid to make this video because i knew i was going to have to probably step outside of my comfort zone and maybe you know argue for a point that i see within the story of tyr so if i haven't completely lost you with my argument i do have a little bit more information from you and that comes in the form of artifacts and so the first one and the most prominent that i found is this gold bractiate which we see other references of and they recently found that dig site in denmark which had even more of these and there is one that references a figure that most likely is tear because we see a figure with his hand being bit by a wolf now it doesn't say directly on there this is tyr or tiwas but it does look pretty much like this story and i can't imagine this being any other deity so it seems like most people accept this as tear and representation of him and this was found in sweden so the other interesting bit of information doesn't exactly reference tear but it references mars and it was found near hadrian's wall um within the british isles and there is an engraving which is a prayer to the war gods for victory and that exact thing comes from the alias alias a gay the aliasia god gay the alcia gay so again apologies i'll put all the information right here because i'm not pronouncing that correctly um but it says to the god mars and to um aliasing better and feminine and the divine spirit of the emperor the german tribesmen from tujantis willingly and deservedly fulfill their vow so we can't say for certain if this is a reference to tyr but it is a clearly a german person saying that they you know are honoring a war god or they had a vow to a war god and they call it mars but to a germanic person if they came from an actual germanic village most likely it was tyr and they're just calling it mars because of the roman influence again just an interesting little factoid i want to make sure i shared with you so that is actually all i have for this video on the information we have with tyr again i'm not saying this is all the information and if you know more and you know stories that i didn't find here please put them down below because i want to learn more and i want other people to learn more as well so this is a little bit different than most north god videos i have made because i have made kind of an argument here um and i maybe you agree with it maybe you don't um there's gonna be several different ways people view this story and i just personally view this story as an act of bravery and bravery alone so thank you so much for joining me for this video this slight adventure on top of this hill i hope i haven't completely lost you and otherwise please make sure you check out the second episode which comes out on friday which is going to be talking about how we honor tyr today so thank you all very much and until the hall skull [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 25,594

Keywords: pagan, Paganism, Norse Paganism, Norse, Norse myth, Norse mythology, asatru, Viking, Vikings, heathen, heathenry, books, list, Odin, Thor, Freya, gods, old gods, religion, wicca, Wiccan, shaman, Nordic, yule, winter, holidays, offering, sacrifice, heilung, ritual, Norse paganism for beginners, norse pagan ritual, Norse Pagan Religion, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin, tyr, tyr god of war, norse gods tyr, the real tyr, tyr mythology, god tyr, tyr god, Fenrir, binding of Fenrir, god weeks, god of war tyr

Id: dsB7S3qwQMM

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021