In-Depth Guide to Germanic Mythology and Folklore

---

Thor, Odin, Frigg and Baldr are familiar from modern books and films, but the surviving sources for Germanic mythology are much older, patchier and more local than pop culture makes them look.

Most of the detailed stories that people now call “Germanic mythology” survive in medieval Icelandic texts about Norse tradition. Continental Germanic evidence is far thinner: a few spells, names, inscriptions and later records. German-language folklore adds another layer, including fairy tales and regional creatures collected many centuries after Christianisation.

That means we need to keep three things separate as we go: medieval Norse literature, the smaller body of Continental Germanic evidence, and later German folklore. They are related, but they are not interchangeable.

In this guide, I’ll focus on Continental Germanic material, using Old Norse sources where they help us understand a name or tradition.

Before we get started, if you’re looking for an online German course, here’s the course I recommend: German Uncovered – Learn German Through the Power of Story, a course with a fascinating new method by my friend Olly. You can try it for free for 7 days!

Norse Mythology vs. Germanic Mythology

Germanic mythology is the broad umbrella. It covers traditions associated with Germanic-speaking peoples, including the much better documented Norse mythology of medieval Scandinavia and Iceland.

The distinction matters because the surviving record is uneven. The anonymous poems now collected as the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson’s 13th-century Prose Edda preserve a large body of Norse material. Continental sources give us glimpses rather than a matching story collection. Similar names across regions can point to related traditions, but a detailed Norse tale does not automatically tell us exactly what people in early medieval Germany believed.

The Brothers Grimm, die Brüder Grimm or die Gebrüder Grimm in German, later studied Germanic traditions as well as collecting folktales. Their work is important to the history of the subject, but it is a 19th-century scholarly reconstruction rather than a surviving pagan source.

It’s tradition in my family to receive a copy of Grimm’s fairy tales on the 10th or 11th birthday, but I wouldn’t recommend uncensored or complete editions for every child. Several publishers offer versions with milder content and easier reading levels. My own complete edition has more than 200 tales and has seen plenty of use over the years:

Fairy tales also change as people tell, edit and publish them. The Grimms revised their collection across seven editions, so even “the Grimm version” may depend on which edition you mean.

The Germanic Languages

The Germanic languages form one branch of the Indo-European language family. The living languages belong to two main branches: West Germanic includes German, English, Dutch, Frisian, Afrikaans and Yiddish, while North Germanic includes Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese. Gothic is the best documented extinct East Germanic language.

Linguists reconstruct their shared ancestor as Proto-Germanic. Nobody wrote down a full Proto-Germanic grammar for us, so its forms are reconstructed by comparing the older languages. You can see some of that family resemblance by comparing Dutch and German.

Language history can help us compare names such as Old High German Uuodan and Old Norse Óðinn. It cannot, by itself, prove that every community told the same stories about them.

Sources of Germanic Mythology and Folklore

One of the clearest Continental sources is the pair of Merseburg Charms, or Merseburger Zaubersprüche. They survive in a 10th-century manuscript and are written in Old High German alliterative verse. You can read the text and an English translation of both charms.

The first charm names the idisi and describes some binding warriors while others free them. The second tells of Phol and Uuodan riding into the woods, where Balderes volon, commonly translated as “Balder’s foal”, injures its foot. Sinthgunt and Sunna, Frija and Uolla, and finally Uuodan chant over the injury.

This short charm is precious evidence, but it leaves plenty unresolved. Scholars have debated the identity of Phol, the interpretation of Balderes, and whether Continental figures should be matched directly with later Norse deities. The text gives us the names and the healing scene; the bigger biographies are partly comparative reconstruction.

Cosmology and Germanic Myths of Creation

The famous creation story involving the cow Auðhumla comes from Snorri’s Prose Edda, not from the poem Völuspá. In Snorri’s account, cold from Niflheim and heat from Muspell meet in Ginnungagap. The melting rime produces Ymir, ancestor of the frost giants, and the cow Auðhumla.

Auðhumla feeds Ymir with four rivers of milk. She feeds herself by licking salty rime-stones, and over three days she reveals Búri from the ice. Búri’s son Borr and the giant Bölthorn’s daughter Bestla become the parents of Odin, Vili and Vé. The brothers kill Ymir and fashion the world from his body before creating the first humans, Ask and Embla. You can check the sequence in a scholarly English translation of the Uppsala Edda.

That is a medieval Icelandic account. It is useful evidence for Norse mythology, but we do not have a Continental German text preserving the same creation narrative. This is exactly where “Norse” is more precise than treating the story as a universal Germanic belief.

The Norse sources also describe Yggdrasill and the norns, figures connected with fate. For a very different tradition centred on deities, nature and spirits, have a look at our guide to Japanese folklore.

Gods, Goddesses, and Other Deities

The spellings below reflect different languages and manuscripts. The Merseburg Charms directly attest Uuodan, Frija, Uolla, Sunna, Sinthgunt, Phol, Balderes and the plural idisi. Some have clear Norse counterparts; other proposed links and roles remain debated.

Uolla (Volla)

• Old High German: Uolla or Volla
• Old Norse counterpart: Fulla
• What the sources say: the second Merseburg Charm calls Uolla the sister of Frija. In Snorri’s Norse account, Fulla is Frigg’s attendant and confidante. Those are related but different relationships, so it is safest to report both rather than blend them into one biography.

Sinthgunt

• Old High German: Sinhtgunt or Sinthgunt
• Old Norse counterpart: none securely attested
• What the source says: Sinthgunt appears only in the second Merseburg Charm, where she is Sunna’s sister and chants over the injured foal. Interpretations of her name and identity are uncertain; claims that she is the moon or a particular kind of goddess go beyond the surviving text.

Uuodan (Odin)

• Old High German: Uuodan or Wuotan
• Old Norse: Óðinn
• What the sources say: Uuodan performs the successful healing charm in the second Merseburg text. Old Norse literature gives Odin a far wider set of roles involving poetry, magic, war, death and knowledge. Those Norse stories are much fuller than the Continental evidence.

Donar (Thor)

• Old High German: Donar
• Old Norse: Þórr
• What the sources say: the Merseburg Charms do not name Donar. His Continental name appears in other evidence, including the Old Saxon baptismal vow, while Norse texts preserve the familiar stories of Thor, his hammer and his battles with giants. The English Thursday and German Donnerstag preserve related thunder-god names.

Frija (Frigg)

• Old High German: Frija or Friia
• Old Norse: Frigg
• What the sources say: Frija chants over the injured foal in the Merseburg Charm and is identified there as Uolla’s sister. Norse sources describe Frigg as Odin’s wife and Baldr’s mother. The charm itself does not give Frija those family roles.

Balder (Baldur)

• Old High German text: Balderes, in the phrase Balderes volon
• Old Norse: Baldr
• What the sources say: the usual reading of the charm is that Balder’s foal has hurt its foot, though the relationship between Balder and Phol has long been debated. Old Norse sources make Baldr a son of Odin and Frigg and tell the much fuller story of his death.

Sunna (Sol)

• Old High German: Sunna
• Old Norse: Sól
• What the sources say: the second Merseburg Charm calls Sunna the sister of Sinthgunt. Norse texts personify Sól as the sun and pair her with her brother Máni, the moon. Again, the sibling relationships differ between the sources.

Idisi (Dis)

• Old High German: idisi (plural)
• Possible Old Norse comparison: dís (singular), dísir (plural)
• What the source says: the first Merseburg Charm presents the idisi as female figures who bind, obstruct and release warriors. Comparisons with the Norse dísir or valkyries are plausible, but the short Continental text does not define them as either group.

Germanic Creatures in Folktales and Myths

German-speaking regions have their own later folklore, but these stories do not all descend from one ancient “Germanic mythology”. They are local traditions recorded at different times, and the details can vary from one village or collector to another.

Wechselbalg
Wechselbalg is the German word for a changeling. Duden defines it as a child supposedly substituted by malicious spirits or dwarfs in earlier folk belief. Historical changeling stories often reflect frightening attitudes towards illness and disability, so they should be read as folklore rather than accounts of real children.

Nachzehrer
The Nachzehrer belongs to Central European revenant folklore. In collected accounts, a corpse was believed to harm surviving relatives or spread death without necessarily leaving the grave. The details vary, and the figure is better treated as a regional family of beliefs than as a single monster with fixed powers.

Elwetritsch
The Elwetritsch is a humorous creature associated especially with the Palatinate. It is commonly imagined as a bird-like animal with odd features such as antlers or scales, and mock “hunts” for it are part of the local fun. This is regional folklore, not evidence for a pre-Christian deity or ancient pan-Germanic belief.

Nachtkrapp
Nachtkrapp, literally “night raven”, is one of several names used in German-speaking areas for a night-time bogey figure in warnings to children. Descriptions differ sharply by region, which is why a single fixed anatomy or story would be misleading.

Tatzelwurm
The Tatzelwurm is an Alpine legendary creature, often described as reptilian or cat-faced, sometimes with only two visible legs. Reports and illustrations vary, and there is no historical zoological evidence that it was a real animal. It belongs with Alpine legend rather than the surviving medieval sources for Germanic gods.

If you’d like to read one of the earliest surviving works of German heroic literature, try the Hildebrandslied. The incomplete Old High German lay survives in a 9th-century manuscript and tells of a tragic meeting between Hildebrand and his son Hadubrand.

The surviving evidence is fragmentary, which is part of what makes Germanic mythology so interesting. The names connect traditions across languages, while the differences remind us not to turn every local spell, Norse poem and later fairy tale into one neat canon.

• All About Japanese Folklore: Cool Creatures, Spirits, and Yokai from Folktales
• Dead Languages: How (and Why) to Learn a Dead Language
• Why are Speakers of Scandinavian Languages so Damn Good at English?
• Old English Writing: A History of the Old English Alphabet
• What are the Most Spoken Languages in the World?