About

Seiðr Loom is a free reference to Norse mythology that keeps the medieval sources in view. Its pages explain who the gods, giants and heroes are and what happens to them, and every statement about the myths points to the stanza or chapter it comes from, in translations hosted here in full.

Seiðr was a kind of Norse magic, associated with Freyja and practised by seeresses; in the Eddas the Norns lay down the lives of men and, in one poem, fasten the threads of a hero's fate. The name is a nod to both: the site tries to show the threads of the stories and where they come from.

What is here

• 224 pages on gods, giants, dwarves, creatures, worlds, places, objects, ideas and heroes, each with its key passages, its Old Norse name and how to say it, its family with sources, and a count of where it is named in the Eddas.
• 31 myths retold in plain English, with citations at every step and the variants the sources give.
• The Poetic Edda (1564 numbered stanzas) and the Prose Edda's Prologue, Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál, with the translators' notes.
• An interactive family tree, a diagram of the nine worlds, a "who said this?" quiz, a stanza of the day and a pronunciation guide.

How it is made

The methodology page lists the sources and licences, explains how quotations are checked against the hosted texts on every build, compares the family relations with Wikidata, and records where the medieval sources contradict one another. The pages were written with the help of AI tools and checked against the texts; the site is rebuilt weekly.

The site has no advertising, sets no cookies and uses no trackers; see privacy.