The Complete List of Norse Gods and Goddesses

Norse mythology names dozens of gods and goddesses, but they are not one undifferentiated pantheon — they belong to two families, the Æsir and the Vanir, plus a scatter of figures who were born giants and married or fought their way into divine company. What follows is a working map of that crowd: who rules what, who is kin to whom, and where to read the fuller story of each.

Two Families Under One Sky

The gods of Norse myth split into the Æsir and the Vanir, an old division the sources never quite let readers forget. The Æsir are the gods of Asgard proper — Odin's household, the warrior-gods, the rulers of order and oath. The Vanir are older, more entangled with fertility, wealth, and the land, and after a war between the two families ended in a truce, key Vanir came to live among the Æsir as honored equals. The two names appear side by side constantly in the Poetic Edda's Völuspá and in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, and the distinction still organizes how the myths group their characters. For the full story of that division and the war that settled it, see Æsir vs Vanir.

The Chief Gods of Asgard

Odin stands over all of them — the Allfather, god of war, wisdom, poetry, and death, who traded an eye for a drink from the well of wisdom and hanged himself from the World Tree for knowledge of the runes. He rules from Asgard, gathers the noble dead into Valhalla, and sends his ravens Huginn and Muninn out over the nine worlds each day to report what they see.

Thor is Odin's son by the earth-goddess Jörð, the thunder-god who wields the hammer Mjölnir and stands as humanity's chief defender against the giants. He is the most popular god in the surviving sources by a wide margin — brawnier and more straightforward than his father, quick to anger, and utterly reliable when the world needs defending.

Týr is the god most closely tied to law and the binding oath, remembered above all for the price he paid to chain the wolf Fenrir: he placed his hand in the beast's mouth as a pledge of good faith, and lost it when the gods' promise proved false.

Heimdall stands watch at the rainbow bridge Bifröst, the sentinel of the gods whose senses are said to be sharp enough to hear grass growing. At Ragnarök he will sound the horn Gjallarhorn to announce the end, and he and Loki are fated to kill each other in the last battle.

Baldr is Odin and Frigg's beloved second son, so universally loved that his death — engineered by Loki using the one thing in creation that had never sworn not to harm him — becomes one of the great tragedies of the mythology, told fully in the death of Baldr. His blind brother Höðr is the unwitting instrument of that death, and his half-brother Váli, born for the purpose, avenges it within a day of his own birth.

Víðarr, Odin's son by the giantess Gríð, is called "the silent god," known for one destiny: at Ragnarök he will avenge his father by killing the wolf Fenrir. Bragi is the god of poetry and eloquence, married to Idunn, and welcomes newly slain heroes into Valhalla with verse. Forseti, son of Baldr and Nanna, presides over disputes and reconciles quarrels in a golden hall said to settle every case that comes before it.

Hœnir is one of the more elusive Æsir — sent to the Vanir as a hostage after the Æsir–Vanir War, oddly indecisive without Mímir beside him to advise him, and prophesied to survive Ragnarök. Mímir guards the well of wisdom beneath Yggdrasil's root and, after being killed by the Vanir, lives on as a severed head that Odin consults for counsel. Loki is trickier to place — born of giants, blood-sworn brother to Odin, and woven through nearly every major myth as both problem-solver and eventual architect of the gods' destruction; whether he counts as one of the Æsir at all is something the sources themselves seem uneasy about.

The Goddesses

Frigg is Odin's wife and the queen of Asgard, a goddess of foresight who is said to know every fate but tell no one. It is her grief that drives the myth of Baldr's death, and her hall Fensalir is where she quietly keeps her own counsel.

Freyja — technically a Vanir goddess, but so central to Asgard's story that no list is complete without her here too — is the foremost goddess of love, beauty, war, and seiðr-magic, owner of the necklace Brísingamen and the falcon cloak that lets its wearer fly. She takes half the battle-slain to her hall Fólkvangr, a right she shares with Odin.

Sif is Thor's wife, famous chiefly for her hair of spun gold, cut off by Loki in a prank that spirals into the myth of how the gods' greatest treasures — Mjölnir among them — were forged. Iðunn keeps the apples that give the gods their agelessness, and her abduction by the giant Þjazi is the crisis at the center of one of the mythology's tensest rescue stories.

Skaði is a giantess by birth who married into the Æsir after her father Þjazi was killed avenging her, choosing Njörð for a husband by his feet alone; she is a goddess of winter, skiing, and the hunt, and her marriage to a Vanir god famously fails for want of common ground between mountain and sea. Gefjon plowed the island of Zealand out of Sweden with oxen who were her own giant-born sons, and is honored as a goddess of plenty and, in some tellings, virginity. Eir is named among the goddesses as the finest of healers. Fulla is Frigg's close attendant, keeper of her mistress's chest and confidences. Nanna is Baldr's wife, whose grief is so total that she dies of it and is burned on his funeral ship. Sigyn is Loki's loyal wife, who holds a bowl over his face to catch the serpent's venom during his punishment after the death of Baldr. Jörð is the personified earth and mother of Thor. Hel rules the realm of the dishonored dead that bears her name, half living flesh and half corpse-blue, one of Loki's monstrous children by the giantess Angrboða. Gullveig, burned three times by the Æsir and three times reborn, is often identified with the sorceress Heiðr and is remembered as the spark that ignited the Æsir–Vanir War.

The Vanir

Njörðr rules the sea, seafaring, and the wealth it brings, and came to Asgard as one of the hostages who sealed the peace after the Æsir–Vanir War. His home is Nóatún, "ship-enclosure," and his brief marriage to Skaði is the mythology's clearest joke about two gods who simply cannot agree on where to live.

Freyr is Njörð's son, god of fertility, peace, and good harvests, who owns the ship Skíðblaðnir and the golden boar Gullinbursti. He falls desperately in love with the giantess Gerðr at first sight and gives away his own magic sword to win her — a bargain that costs him dearly at Ragnarök. Freyja, described above, completes the family as Njörð's daughter and Freyr's twin sister.

Minor and Notable Figures

Magni and Móði, Thor's sons, are prophesied to inherit Mjölnir after Ragnarök. Víli and Vé are Odin's brothers, present at the creation of the world and the shaping of the first man and woman, though they largely vanish from the story afterward. Kvasir, made from the mingled spittle of Æsir and Vanir at their truce, is murdered for his wisdom in the myth of the Mead of Poetry. Óðr is Freyja's husband, a wanderer whose long absences are the reason for her tears of red gold. Hermóðr is the son (in some sources, brother) of Odin who rides Sleipnir into Hel itself to plead for Baldr's return. Ullr is a shadowy but clearly once-important god of the bow, skiing, and single combat, oddly thin in the surviving myths for how often his name turns up in place-names and oaths.

Why the List Feels Incomplete

Anyone reading Snorri's Prose Edda will notice he names gods — Ullr and Gefjon among them — about whom almost no myths survive, a reminder that the tales that reached parchment in 13th-century Iceland are a fraction of what Viking-Age Scandinavians actually told and believed. Some names may represent purely regional or poetic figures; others were probably once major deities whose stories simply never got written down. The list above reflects the gods who appear with real substance in the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and the sagas — not a claim that this is everyone the Norse ever worshipped.