Fictitious Metals From Norse Mythology?

I seem to remember it's not so much about the metal, but who's forging it. Lots of stuff about the powers of those folks. And I think dwarves factor in there, somewhere.

Sadly, I actually read Neil Gaiman's book on these folks recently, which I say not to imply I know what I'm talking about, but to laugh at how little I remember specifics. That and those D'Aulaires myth books from my childhood encompasses most of my knowledge, sorry.

Google finds too many hits about "Viking metal", which is apparently a musical sub-genre.

If your plot would like one, I'd encourage inventing one, ala Tolkien's mithril from Lord of the Rings.

One of the things about the metals mentioned in Old Norse sagas, as well as in Old English, Old Irish and Medieval Welsh, is that sometimes it's not clear what specific element is involved; they have names that translated literally are things like white bronze or black silver or green gold (these are just a few).

So what I would do is either follow Tolkien's path and create a new mineral/element or a new process (which Tolkien also did "Forged in the fires of Mount Doom") used in forging / crafting the object.

The Norse didn't have mythical metals, they had mythical artifacts. In some cases, a sword is described as forged by giants or some god, if that counts. Keep in mind that many myths, Norse or otherwise, simply were misunderstood or unknown science. Others were generationally migrated to different areas. Many are simply tales that were passed down for many years, thousands in some cases, and altered through time as the stories were retold.

Norse mythology has been referred to as gods versus giants with men as either sufferers or benefactors, depending on the tale. You might want to look at norse-mythology.net as a source. There's also a guy (gal?) who writes Norse mythology books, McCoy is the name I think (been a while).

I guess it depends on your story as to what you need to write but if you take a current metal commonly used and roll it back a thousand years you may find what you need.

Jeff

Isn't titanium found in Scandinavia? Or am I misremembering?
If it is, you could look at that as a basis for inventing a mythical metal.
Titanium extraction is pretty distinct from metals like gold, silver, or copper iirc. It's not in mines, it's on shores. It's been several years since I researched it, though, so please take everything I'm saying with a big grain of salt.

rosehips said:

Isn't titanium found in Scandinavia? Or am I misremembering?
If it is, you could look at that as a basis for inventing a mythical metal.
Titanium extraction is pretty distinct from metals like gold, silver, or copper iirc. It's not in mines, it's on shores. It's been several years since I researched it, though, so please take everything I'm saying with a big grain of salt.

Click to expand...

The production of Titanium metal would be a long way beyond Viking era capabilities, there's a reason why it wasn't isolated pure until 1875 http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Titanium.html