Go ahead and roll your eyes at me, but in your experience how accurate was lord of the rings in style and substance when it comes to Norse mythology.
Do the elves, dwarves, Odin/Gandalf types and other Gods act similar?
I am the dude who interviewed a real Jedi so nobody is rolling their eyes at you dude.
As for accurate meh, its inspired and certain names and other things are inspired but accuracy there is none. Its a fantasy film it was never intended to be accurate, it was inspired 
Thats interesting you said the im a big lord of the rings fan since the my grandparents gave me the old catoon trilogy of it, and the more i thaught of it Gandalf the wondering wizard whos my favorite character in the series somehow really resembles Odin very symbolicly in a way:)
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He is inspired by Odin but with a lot of other stuff thrown in there.
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Llaurentieu–I’m going to take a crack at this, because I am a huge LOTR fan, and have been all of my life. NOt only that, I have worked the dieties from that mythos in the past. I am guessing from your answer, Asbjorn, that you haven’t read the books (which is fine), but for those of us who love Middle Earth, the movies are absolute trash compared to JRR Tolkien’s writing. 
A little history: Tolkien wrote LOTR to give the Anglo-Saxons a mythology. Most of the Anglo-Saxon mythos has been lost. Unlike the Norse mythos, which has a lot of written record, there are only hints on the Anglo-Saxon belief systems. A perfect example is Eastre. She’s mentioned once by The Venerable Bede. That’s it. Everything else we have on her is conjecture. So, what historians can guess about Anglo-Saxon mythology has to be deduced by going back to German and Norse myths. So, what good ol’ JRR decided to do, was go back to create a plausible ‘proto’ mythology, that all of the Northern current (only he didn’t call it that, because they didn’t use words like that back then, plus he wasn’t a sorcerer) might have derived from. Of course, JRR was also a staunch Catholic, so you definitely see how that influenced his myths. Tolkien was not only inspired by the Germanic myths, he actively went back to try and unify them to give his people (The English) a series of myths that belonged to them, separate from the Germans (remember, he fought in WWI, the Germans were not his friends). He was professor of linguistics, with the Germanic languages being his specialty, so he knew his stuff.
I will have disagree wholeheartedly with Asbjorn on the accuracy–I think that Tolkien’s redition of the beings in LOTR is acutely accurate with those beings that they are derived from in the Northern Current. The movie, for those who have not read the books, does a really rotten job of portraying the people and races in the books accurately. In the three novels that make up the trilogy, the elves are alfar all the way, the dwarves are as svartalfar as you can get, the ents are landvaettir, and the hobbits are hausalf/brownies/kobolds/etc. If you’d like me to go into more detail, please let me know, because I write an entire book about each of these races and how they correspond to the Norse mythos/current.
But–let us go to the crown jewel of Tolkien’s mythology–The Ainundale. I fell in love with this book the first time I read it. What Tolkien tried to do with this work, was take the Germanic gods and boil them down to their essence, where they might have ‘come’ from. Obviously it is not historically accurate, and one can definitely see a lot of Christianity thrown in. (But then, there are agruments about whether Lif and Lifrarthisir are Christianized additions to the Norse myths or not. So, one could historically argue that that there is less Christianization than we think, or that there is more.) It is historically accepted that Freya, who only occurs in Norse Mythology, and not the rest of the Germanic children of the original mythos, is a fracture from Frigge. In fact, her name in Anglo Saxon is is pronounced Free-ya. Freya, itself, is the colloquial word for lady…so it could very well be that Frigge was referred to a Freya Frigge (Lady Frigg). Tolkien tried to go back and put all these splinters back together.
So, a possible thought process would be something like: Odhinn, Woden, Wotan, Godan were the ‘same’ god (though not really, they’re all a little different). Who was the dude who was the original? What was he like? So he looked through all the myths about this guy, and put together what might have been what the orignal guy was like. Now, one aspect of Odin which is present in all Germanic myths is ‘The Wanderer’. This is one way that he presents himself to human beings on Midgard (which translates literally as Middle Garden, or Middle Earth, because we’re in the middle of the world tree, and all other worlds flow to us). In his mythos, all of the ‘other’ words also flowed to Middle Earth. It was the place to be. But I digress. So, this wandering aspect of Odin was present in all renditions of his myths, so Tolkien surmised that was part of the original aspect of this diety. For that aspect, he created Gandalf for his story.
Now, for those who have read LOTR, we know that Gandalf is not the fluffy bunny that the movies make him (yes, compared to the books, that wizard is a softy). For those who have read The Silmarillion, we know that Gandalf, when he wasn’t just in his guise of the Grey Pilgrim, kicked ethereal ass. I would discribe the Gandalf we see in the books, as “The Elf from the North” (which is what his name translates as), as an Odinic current, a little current within the Norse current. He is Vegtam the Wanderer, as opposed to Odin The All-Father. Gandalf is very much Vegtam with a different name.
I’ll stop here, because I would, honestly, go on for pages, and I know this is probably way more than you asked for!
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Wow Audsynn, thank you so much for taking the time to type that - you’ve just sorted my summer reading I think! 
I’ve been mining my own “origins” so to speak, books like Moon Of Gomrath that inspired me with some very English magickal ideas as a small kid, and books like The Golden Bough, this sounds like it may be - well, not the same vein exactly, but definitely in the same big ballpark. Maybe? lol!
I tried reading LotR a few times before (I was much younger) and never really go into it, but that was a while ago, my dad hated it for some reason so that probably also soured me on the idea, and you’ve definitely made me want to dive in with a kind of fresh mind.
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Besides the influence of Norse Mythologies in the Lord of The Rings trilogy, there’s a lot of influence from the Finnish poem Kalevala. This Finnish poem goes back some 2000 years through oral tradition, and got it’s first print as late as 1835. This is well known by Tolkienologists - yes, that’s an actual profession - that the author had a massive fascination of Finland as a country, and of it’s Pagan roots.
The Norse Mythologies, on the other hand, was also rooted and cemented through oral traditions in a similar way as the Finnish Kalevala poem, but it spread overseas when they were pillaging and raping their way through the shores of Europe and Middle East.
Being a Scandinavian, and from Sweden with roots from Finland as well, I find both mythologies as an important heritage to dig into.
Edit:
There’s a huge misconception of what countries that’s a part of Scandinavia and the Nordic Countries.
Linguistically, Scandinavia is basically Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
The Nordic Countries basically adds Iceland and Finland. You could also add Greenland, since it’s politically controlled by Denmark.
And Kalevala, just like the Norse Mythology, is an independent mythology in it’s own right.
Thanks!
I’d heard of it, obviously, and dipped into translations online, but this might help with context.
i always loved Tolkien’s work, but i wrote it all off as fantasy… altough highly evocative!
while delving ever deeply into the mysteries, the layers of fantasy peeled off, all except one thing, which stayed deeply with me.
in Silmarillion, when evil god Mordok wanted to destroy the elven trees of light, he couldn’t do it himself… so he asked for help…
now, who could he ask for help? he was against all other gods, and he could not ask the allfather Illutavar for help…
so he turned to monstruous gargantuan spider Ungoliant, which lived deep within the earth. altough he was strongest of all the gods, Mordok was extremely careful in dealing with Ungoliant. she was not his minion. no one knew what is she. and there were others like her.
so, Tolkien also knew that on the other side of everything, there lie ancient monsters, unconnected to gods, unbound by conditions…
Ungoliant devoured the trees, radiating unlight.
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[quote=“bahamuthat, post:9, topic:9523”]in Silmarillion, when evil god Mordok wanted to destroy the elven trees of light, he couldn’t do it himself… so he asked for help…
now, who could he ask for help? he was against all other gods, and he could not ask the allfather Illutavar for help…
so he turned to monstruous gargantuan spider Ungoliant, which lived deep within the earth. altough he was strongest of all the gods, Mordok was extremely careful in dealing with Ungoliant. she was not his minion. no one knew what is she. and there were others like her.
so, Tolkien also knew that on the other side of everything, there lie ancient monsters, unconnected to gods, unbound by conditions…
Ungoliant devoured the trees, radiating unlight.[/quote]
I love this part! And then, as Ungoliant sucked the life from the trees of light, Morgoth fled, for he was afraid. Then, Nienna the gray lady, who is filled with compassion and helps the souls of the Strangers, men, who are not bound to the Earth, onto their ships to sail to the allfather Illuvator (which means allfather, by the way) to go where no one knows, knelt by the husks of the trees and cried tears of pity on them. They flowered one more time, one with a silver bloom, and the other a golden blossom. Two ainur took each one, and placed it in a chariot to ride across the sky, so all the cosmos was alight. The silver one, carried by a spirit of water, became the moon, and the golden one, carried by a spirit of fire (the same type of being as the balrog in the LOTR storyline), became the sun. At the first sunrise, the second children of Illuvator awoke, Men, and the world was forever changed.
I’m glad you mentioned this, because he probably felt this was closer to the original myths than anything else. He loved the Kalevala…in fact, he lifted names and stories directly out of it without changing them!
I would actually recommend The Silimarillion, as opposed the The Lord of the Ring Trilogy. It reads much more like a mythology text, and wasn’t intended for a popular audience. Most of what we’re talking about is found in that narrative. It’s almost Biblical in its tone.
But woman, if you don’t like it, don’t read it! There are too many good books out there to waste your time on ones that don’t strike you.
Sauron is amazing. that is all.
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If you think Sauron is amazing, you have to check out Morgoth, his ‘lord’. He learned everything he knew from him. (Sauron was one of the maiar of Morgoth, who was one of the fifteen Valar, the strongest of all of the children of Illuvatar, the creator).
If you think Sauron is amazing, you have to check out Morgoth, his ‘lord’. He learned everything he knew from him. (Sauron was one of the maiar of Morgoth, who was one of the fifteen Valar, the strongest of all of the children of Illuvatar, the creator).[/quote]
Sounds like a fun guy to talk too.
If you think Sauron is amazing, you have to check out Morgoth, his ‘lord’. He learned everything he knew from him. (Sauron was one of the maiar of Morgoth, who was one of the fifteen Valar, the strongest of all of the children of Illuvatar, the creator).[/quote]
Sounds like a fun guy to talk too.[/quote]
Do it, man, and tell us what happens!