Richard Cole

Is it possible for characters in fiction to be motivated by unique ideologies in the way that political movements are in real life? This essay considers the example of the Æsir (the dominant tribe of gods) in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. Analogies with later ideologies are offered as a way to highlight the idiosyncratic ideological brew which seems to govern the Æsir’s actions. The Æsir have the acquisitiveness, violence, and sexual neurosis of a colonial regime. They have the reactionary’s aptitude for cynical manipulation of history. They have the frailties of the modern capitalist. These comparisons are used to sketch out an ideology which is more than the sum of its comparanda: Æsirism