Neil Gaiman Answers Mythology Questions From Twitter

I'm Neil Gaiman, author, screenwriter, storyteller.

Today, I'm here to answer your questions from Twitter,

and this is Mythology Support.

[laid back drum music]

First one, Assaph Mehr asks,

What links Viking and Greek gods and myths?

It's a lovely question,

'cause there are things that are similar,

but what really links them, I think, is people.

The Greeks told their myths to the Romans,

and the Romans took over and colonized,

and then those same Romans traveled up

and encountered the Germanic tribes

and the Norse people and traded tales of gods and heroes.

The Norse would talk about Odin,

the Romans would hear, was essentially Mercury,

which is one reason why our Wednesday

which is Odin's day, right in the middle of the week,

is mercredi in France, which is Mercury's day.

It's the same god.

Crimsonsoul21 says, If I asked nicely,

could I ride a Minotaur like a horse?

I'm English, I say mine-o-taur,

Americans say minn-o-taur, it's weird to me.

Could you ride a Minotaur like a horse,

no, obviously you could not.

You could ride a Minotaur like a man,

because you have a man body all the way up to a bull's head.

But that would mean riding around on his shoulders.

Unless you could find a Minotaur into sort of pony stuff

or you probably have to find a furry Minotaur,

like, not a furry Minotaur,

a Minotaur who was actually a furry,

would get into a horse costume,

and get down and you could ride that one.

This is getting too weird,

I'm gonna go onto a different one.

SethPrimeUrbina, and Seth, of course,

is a good Egyptian name, asks,

If Egyptians worshiped cats,

then why did Anubis have a dog head?

Here is a picture of Anubis to clarify

who we are talking about.

Technically he doesn't have a dog's head.

I believe he has a jackal's head.

I like this question.

This is one of those questions.

If Egyptians worshipped cats,

then why didn't Anubis have a dog head,

is kind of like being asked,

If people descended from monkeys,

why are they still monkeys?

The answer is because the Egyptians had lots of gods.

Originally you had the gods of the Upper Nile

and the gods of the Lower Delta,

and one set of gods were human,

and one set of gods were animals.

And at the point where Egypt became all one country,

the gods sort of incorporated each other,

and you got a lot of animal-headed humans.

From TianaMarie_, who says,

After looking up what biblical angels actually look like,

I fully understand where they warn you

not to be afraid, because WTF is that,

question mark, question mark, question mark,

question mark, question mark,

question mark, question mark.

You're right.

What do biblical angels look like?

They look like wings and eyes.

They look like wheels.

They look like flying saucers, which is kind of weird.

What they don't look like,

rather disappointingly, is Michael Sheen

and David Tennant in Good Omens.

I like the idea that they look humanlike,

because it would break our brains

to see them as they really are.

Mr. darci asks, Why is every God in Greek mythology

related to or [bleep]ing Zeus, or both?

[bleep]ing Zeus gets everywhere,

[bleep]ing Zeus is all over the place,

which means that an awful lot of people

are his descendants, one way or another.

The nice thing about gods is,

nobody ever expected you to emulate them.

They are always as much a warning as they are aspirational.

You may want to have godly powers,

but you don't wanna behave like that.

You definitely don't wanna behave like Zeus.

Inverttedit asks, What is Ragnarok essentially?

Ragnarok, essentially, is the last great battle.

Ragnarok essentially begins with everything going wrong.

The weather goes wrong, the climate goes wrong.

Winter does not end, there is famine.

There is awfulness, people are miserable,

brother fights brother, sister fights sister,

cousin fights cousin, there is a gigantic, awful civil war

amongst the people, and then it gets worse.

You get the frost giants coming out.

They're led by Surt, a fire god,

and Loki and his children,

and it is a monstrous, enormous, giant,

and pretty much final battle

that ends in everybody being dead.

I haven't even mentioned that

all of the dead Viking warriors get to come back

on an enormous ship built of the fingernails

and toenails of the dead, because that's just too weird,

but they do, and is why you should always trim your nails.

However, Ragnarok kind of has a happy ending,

because after all of the awfulness of Ragnarok

and after pretty much everybody has died,

the few people who don't die

get to look at the ruins of where Asgard was,

and everything gently starts

to grow again and to begin again.

Moli asks, Why is all German folklore

and mythology absolutely terrifying?

What was wrong with people?

I think it's something to do with the food, frankly.

It could be the cold, but it is absolutely true

that Germanic folklore is terrifying.

It's filled with adults eating children.

It's filled with famine, it's filled with nightmare.

It's filled with murder and awful things happening.

People like horror stories sometimes,

because it actually makes them feel better.

Next up, Greenboi494 has a question.

In Norse mythology, what are the most known gods?

It is good that you're asking me that question,

because I wrote Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.

And as such, I can tell you that

Odin is probably the most important.

Frigg, his wife, also well known,

Thor, very well known, gets movies made.

Loki, in the movies, Loki is Thor's brother.

In the mythology, Loki is Odin's blood brother,

not actually related, and one of the giants,

but not the big kind.

Those are probably the most known gods.

Waterdragonn asks, Why is Death

so adorable in The Sandman?

Death is so adorable in The Sandman

because I wanted to create the kind of Death

that I would like to meet when my life is over,

and I thought I would like a Death

who is practical, a Death who is sensible,

and a Death who is, above all, kind.

The mythology of Sandman is not world mythology,

I should say that.

The mythology of Sandman is the mythology

of a comic that I created, which includes in it

seven entities who are not gods, who are not worshiped,

but are essentially more powerful than gods,

because gods die when they are forgotten,

but the endless are always there,

and one of those seven is Death.

Vodam46 says, Isn't Loki already

genderfluid in Norse mythology?

Yeah, Loki cheerfully transforms

into female form and is very happy doing so.

Loki becomes a mare at one point

to while away a stallion

who is just about to finish bringing the stones

to build a wall for the gods,

and if the stallion cannot be stopped,

then the gods are gonna lose the sun,

the moon and the beautiful Freya.

Loki is told to stop them, and Loki,

in a horse form, in mare form,

she lures that stallion away,

and then turns up about a year later as Loki,

with an eight-legged foal, a little horse,

which is presented to Odin as Odin's horse.

Genderfluid as hell, absolutely.

Nathan_K20 asks, What is Pandora's box?

Well, first of all, Pandora's box isn't a box.

Pandora's box is a jar.

Zeus leads a war against the Titans,

who basically are Zeus's parents.

The gods win, they have various people on their side,

including a couple of Titans,

and their names are Prometheus and Epimetheus,

and Epimetheus is given a gift by the gods.

And the gift he is given is Pandora.

And everything's great until one day,

she, out of curiosity or for whatever reason,

smashes a jar that she has, in which

all of the things that are bad,

all of the things that make life hard,

the way that the story is sometimes told,

that remains, after all of the evils in the world

have flown out into the world, is hope.

I've never been quite sure how to interpret that,

because you can think of hope

as remaining as being this wonderful, pure, happy thing.

Or you can think of it

as the final cruelty of the gods,

as they've loosed all of these terrible things upon us,

and then just to make it little worse,

they've given us all hope.

Katttttttx asks,

Why did Icarus have to fly so close to the sun bro?

Well, it wasn't compulsory.

Actually his dad, Daedalus, explained to him

that you don't fly close to the sun.

They were escaping together

using wings that Daedalus had made,

and the wings were held together with wax.

Those of us who think that if you go up,

it's gonna get cold, would've been proved wrong

in ancient Greek mythology,

because they knew that if you flew upwards,

you would get too close to the sun,

and it would melt the wax.

And if you went too far down over the waves,

your wings would get wet.

And what actually happened was, the wings melted,

and Icarus, who aspired to go high, was drowned.

Sierralashae asks, Why Thor missing an eye, lol.

Thor not missing an eye.

You're thinking of Odin, being Thor's dad, only has one eye.

Odin is indeed missing an eye

because he traded an eye for wisdom.

Tarotmasks asks, says, Something that's interesting

to me is, how so many different cultures

have great flood myths, like, why is that?

Probably because over the years,

there have been an awful lot of floods,

and also because the great flood story

does tend to get retold.

I think one of the earliest versions

we have of it is the Babylonian,

the Assyrian version, that definitely predates Noah.

During the hundreds of thousands of years of human history,

there were many times when there were floods,

huge floods, and lots and lots of people died,

and somebody didn't, and the somebody who didn't

got to live and tell the story.

Next question is from Seliel the Shaper.

Oh, you're a Greek mythology fan?

Name the 12 labors of Hercules.

And then there is a clown face.

The 12 labors of Hercules are, killed a Nemean lion.

It is important to remember

that the Nemean lion is not the lion

that provided the lion skin that Hercules famously wore.

That was a different lion.

Killed the Hydra, the Lernaean Hydra.

Every time you cut off its head,

it grows two heads where the one that you cut off was.

Hercules is actually got a buddy to come in

and cauterize the heads as he cut them off.

Capture the Ceryneian hind.

That was a deer, it was a hind.

The Erymanthian boar, you're starting to see

an animal pattern here, and then you get a horsey one,

which isn't capture horses, it's clean the stables.

And this is the Augean stables,

the filthiest stables in the world,

and he did that rather brilliantly,

I have to say, by diverting a river.

then you've got the Stymphalian birds,

these birds that would fly down

and shit all over things and were awful

and murderous, killed them all.

The Cretan bull, got him, then we do get horses again,

and this time it is actually capturing them.

But these are Diomedes's horses, and they were man eaters.

You then have Hippolyta's belt and/or girdle,

and that one does not end well.

He's done fairly well dealing with animals,

but Hippolyta is a lady, and in order to obtain her girdle,

Hercules has to head off into the land of the Amazons.

They have a relationship.

It does not end well, definitely doesn't end well

for Hippolyta, who, if memory serves,

kills herself for love of Hercules,

which is really rather sad.

And he gets the belt.

You've got the cattle of Geryon,

and that's the original 10 labors of Hercules.

And then he gets assigned another two,

because he got help on two of them.

He has to do the golden apples of the Hesperides

and finally go to Hell and bring back Cerberus,

the three-headed dog of the underworld.

T. Holzerman, or Tholzerman, asks,

Greek mythology question.

If two demigods bone and they have a kid,

is that kid also a demigod?

No, that would be a hemi-demigod.

And obviously, if their kids have sex,

they will be semi-hemi-demigods.

And beyond that, you get into crotchets

and quavers and things.

Well, that's all the questions.

I hope you learned something.

I had a lot of fun, thank you so much.

Here's to next time. [gentle electronic music]