Bullet Points Comparing Norse Mythos & Mormonism

 

• Odin and Frigg are the very similar in nature and function to the Mormon Heavenly Parents, especially the original Mormon doctrine of Brigham Young, Orson Hyde, and John Taylor, that Adam is our Father-God and Eve (His Wife) is our Goddess Mother. Just as Adam and Eve are a divine King and Queen and as Gods procreated humanity, so too Odin and Frigg are also King and Queen and also procreate.

• The Book of Mormon character named Ammon as a Viking-like warrior replaces the Pauline pacifistic-ideal as the new model for theosis.

• Captain Moroni is presented as warrior archetype as well, with Captain Moroni mirroring General George Washington; as well as Thor-like energy. Rather than the ideal of being a Pauline pacifist martyr (and/or pillar saint/stylite), we read of  Moroni's military genius by Deseret News (July 27, 1996). Book of Mormon: Alma 43:45-47, has Captain Moroni defending his people and loved ones from harm in a military defense context, yet emphasizing the principle of defending one's family and friends: "And ... they did come to battle against the Nephites; and the Nephites did defend themselves in their cities, and the people of the Nephites did slay many of the Lamanites... and thus the Nephites did go to battle against the Lamanites to defend their wives, and their children, and their houses." Compare Doctrine & Covenants 98:16 that speaks about standing your ground and defending others and emphasizes the importance of defending the innocent. "Therefore, I, the Lord, command you, and I give unto you a promise, that you shall defend your families even unto bloodshed."

According to this article, the post-Pauline new "mouthpiece" of God in the 1800s (D&C 1:38; 21:5), the Anglo-American Joseph Smith,  "originally restrained the Saints from using violence in self-defense, he rescinded that counsel when the persecutions became more severe. (The Words of Joseph Smith, p. 225.) The Nauvoo Legion, with General Joseph Smith at its head, along with legendary gun toters like Porter Rockwell and the Danites, demonstrate that early Mormons became theologically comfortable with wielding guns in their defense. Joseph Smith even taught that it was sometimes necessary for men to take up arms because of their religious obligation to defend their families:

It may be that the Saints will have to beat their ploughs into swords, for it will not do for men to sit down patiently and see their children destroyed. (HC 6:365.)

 

There is one principle which is eternal; it is the duty of all men to protect their lives and the lives of the household, whenever necessity requires, and no power has a right to forbid it, should the last extreme arrive, but I anticipate no such extreme, but caution is the parent of safety. (HC 6:605.)

Or my personal favorite quote by Joseph Smith on the subject:

Peace be still, bury the hatchet and the sword, the sound of war is dreadful in my ear. [But] any man who will not fight for his wife and children is a coward and a bastard. (An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, p. 298.)"

• The ideal of virgin martyrs, and the Pauline "better not to touch a woman" ideal (and the Mathean eunuch ideal), is all overturned in origional Mormonism beginning with D&C 49 and then with D&C 132; for, according to Joseph Smith, acquiring celestial polygamist wives, as “talents”, are a civilizational investment in one's own Anglo-Nordic genetic lineage in the 1800s -- in order to "raise up seed" and enter the highest degree of Heaven and be able to expand one's lineage (male seed) and become enlarged with one's own cosmic Kingdom (see D&C 132) -- mirrors Viking Kings who also practiced polygamy and kingdom building; and gained entrance into the highest degree of their heaven (Valhalla) through being a warrior and dying bravely on the battlefield. So that in both religions, a form of masculine vitality and valor is that which gains one exaltation in the heavens.

• Degrees of glory: from The Children of Ash and Elm chapter 1, “... the divine world of Asgard holds a single hall, Valhalla, actually a Victorian misspelling of valhol, home of Odin and famous worldwide today as Viking heaven. The destination of the worthy dead and synonymous with the Norse afterlife itself. However the myths are clear that Valhol was only one of many such residences as each of the major Gods lived on their own estate; these would have been understood as a main hall and surrounding huts, farms, stables for the household and the animals. God-sized reflections of the manners of the elites in midgard.” What the Norse saw as heroic valor earning you residence in an estate among the Gods, 19th century Mormonism presented as gaining "talents" (wives) earned you a procreative cleslestial-body among the embodied Gods who continue to reproduce eternally.