son, Uranos, to produce the first divine races (the Titans). Uranos didn't like his offspring and forced them back into Ge. Ge was enraged by this and she persuaded Chronos, the youngest of her children, to castrate Uranos during the next intercourse between Ge and Uranos. Uranos died and Chronos became ruler of heaven. Chronos feared his children and so after his wife/sister, Rhea, gave birth, he ate the children. However, Rhea hid one of her children, Zeus, on an island and substituted a rock to give to Chronos. Ge raised Zeus and plotted the overthrow of Chronos. The goddess Metis gave Chronos a drink which caused him to regurgitate Zeus' brothers and sisters. Zeus and his siblings fought and defeated their father.There is not one clear story of the origin of humans. One story tells of Hephaestos sculpting Pandora, who is considered the first woman. In other stories Prometheus scuplts humans from clay models and Athena breathes life into them. DIRECT COMPARISONIn both mythologies there was a void at the beginning. In the Norse stories Gunnungagap, the void, was the eventual source of life. In the Greek creation myth, Chaos, a shapeless void, was all there was at the beginning and from him sprang all other creations. In both stories, the first gods revolted against their father or grandfather and by overthrowing him became the ruler of the worlds. In both, humanity was formed from nature rather than through descent from the gods. It is interesting that there was a great deal of detail about the formation of earth in the Norse myth and many more types of beings than just gods and humans. CONCLUSIONIn the samples I chose to illustrate, there are a number of parallels between the Greek and Norse mythologies. Some deities, for example, are very similar, even though not identical. A major difference, however, I believe, was caused by the very different environments in which the two cultures developed.The land and climate in which the Norse...
