Worldbuilding MCU!Asgard

As a fan of the MCU, I am often annoyed that we don't get to know more about Asgard, Jotunheim and the Nine Realms because I'm a writer and a nerd. So I decided to fill in the blanks myself.

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Will we hear your thoughts on the history of Asgard now that Ragnarok revealed some juicy bits?

So, long story short: I burned out entirely on this project, successive disappointing MCU films destroyed the foundations of the obsession that made it possible, my history degree ended with me burned out on academic writing, and I got a new all-consuming hobby (tabletop games). Do not expect any new content on this blog. The archive remains up, please browse the tag page for specifics, but not even Ragnarok will reinvigorate it.

However, because I can’t resist:

Ragnarok was an incredible film. I simultaneously loathed and adored it. The thing I liked the most about it was the worldbuilding. I spent most of this blog working around the nonsensical fact that Asgard looked like an imperialist power, quacked like an imperialist power, and yet the films spent a lot of time going ‘TOTES NOT AN IMPERIALIST POWER YOU GUYS.’ And then Waititi came along and said, nope. Definitely a duck. It’s an imperialist power.

And I love that. It makes things make sense. It chimes with the things I’ve been saying about hegemony and historiography and so on, and it’s an incredibly insightful commentary on the real world. (I wish it had been built up and foreshadowed more but that’s a problem of the medium.) Taika Waititi is a better commentator on empire than I am, especially now.

Not only that, but Ragnarok made a serious effort to marry the aesthetics of Thor 1 and Thor 2 - which you may remember me labouring over! - in a way that respected both.

So my statement with regards to this blog and Thor Ragnarok is that the film said enough. I don’t need to.

I do have a very serious bone to pick with its treatment of the characters, both in terms of characterisation and the ignominious booting/erasing from the narrative of several faves, but that is off topic for this blog. (I also wish that the Casket of Ancient Winters had been respected as a cultural artefact of a conquered culture rather than dismissed as ‘weak’ but. you know.)

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Heimdall sees/hears all; even for a species with minds adapted to live thousands of years, that’s a lot. Ten trillion souls, their chatter, their worlds; wherever he turns his gaze, his ears, it is open to him. It’s a lot for a mind to hold.

Asgardians appear to be able to talk to people of all worlds, intelligibly. I have theorised that this is a form of externalised telepathy, connected to their light/illusion-magic and the way they have of interacting invisibly with their technological surroundings.

In the library, there is an image of Yggdrasill, made of stardust, the tree of the cosmos as seen in the credits of Thor written small, but with galaxies hung in its branches.

Heimdall is capable of sending messages very quickly, quicker than would be possible on foot/horseback.

What if that image of the tree is in fact a projection of the cosmos as Heimdall perceives it, broadcast from his helmet? Indeed more than a projection; this is how he stores his understanding, his comprehension necessarily bigger than his brain. He does, after all, take his helmet off to talk treason to Thor (though not to Sif and co, but then he seemed to welcome the confrontation with Loki) Through this he can call attention to danger to those watching, or issue commands, summons, though it seems he cannot explain through it.

I have long wondered how that tree worked; this may be a possible explanation.

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I really like your site and how you write about concepts that weren't sufficiently explained in the MCU. Maybe you can help me decide on an issue regarding Heimdall. Does he see everything in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, or 'just' the stuff that goes on in the Nine Realms linked by Yggdrasill? I'd really prefer it to be the latter, but I can't find anything in the MCU that makes a clear statement in favor of one or the other. What do you think?

There is no absolutely definitive statement to be made here, I think. However, the most interesting line regarding this is ‘from here I can see nine realms and ten trillion souls.’ This appears to indicate he can see nine realms alone. However. (and please correct my maths if I'm wrong)

(around) Ten trillion souls can mean either one million million (1,000,000,000,000) or one million million million (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) depending on whether Asgard is a long or short scale measurer. (The filmmakers probably intended short scale because most English speaking countries do that.) However, if this is divided by 9, that means an average of 111,111,111,111.1111 souls on each realm.

Okay, so far so good. What does he mean by soul, though? Is it just ‘people’? Or is it all organisms?

Let’s look at populations. Earth has over 7,000,000,000 people and uncountable numbers of other organisms. If we assume he means people, this is two whole figures less than that average. Earth is populous compared to most/all realms we have seen so far; Asgard is a dwarf planet that does not appear to have massively high population density. Jotunheim is strongly implied to be that sort of devastated wasteland all acrosss itself. Svartalfheim appears deserted unless a shipful of dark elves (maximum population is in the low thousands, I have estimated; maximum population before the shown battle with Asgard, perhaps tens of thousands) lands there. Vanaheim, well, the bit we see of it has low population density. On very few of the openings onto other realms are there signs of inhabitation.

Basically; ten trillion, even if we assume short scale, even if we remember this is likely to be an estimate, is waaaay too many souls for the people of the Nine. (I think; the first draft of the post argued the exact opposite but I’m pretty sure I have it right now.) Now, it may be that Heimdall identifies other creatures in the Nine as having souls, though I would say that the figure is too low for every living creature. We have no evidence that Asgard deals with peoples who are not the dominant humanoid species on their realm, but it’s possible; however, on Earth, many of the more likely candidates have fairly low populations. It’s possible that the growth of a soul could occur in enough species to push the figure up, though, although it would have to be pushed beyond the average to make up for the fairly sparsely populated and fauna’d worlds elsewhere.

The easier explanation is that he can see beyond the Nine, I’m afraid. However, it’s significant that he still only mentions nine. It’s possible that all realms are somewhere on the boughs of Yggdrasill, and it is Asgardian convention to refer to all of them as the Nine despite only the Nine being subject to the Convergence or Asgard. Or simply that the others aren’t generally dignified with the name of ‘realm.’

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Other relevent things; Heimdall did not see Loki. He appears unaware of Thanos. He did not notice the uncloaked dark elf ships before the Convergence. However, Sif and Volstagg could and did visit the Collector, whose base is in Knowhere (which is apparently his line's private feifdom essentially)

Things Heimdall has not spotted in the outer realms can easily be explained by ‘this guy has a universe to watch and he’s doing it on behalf of a polity interested in nine realms in particular, and he still only has two eyes and time moves as fast for him as anyone.’

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TL;DR I think the evidence supports him being able to see anything, Anon. HOWEVER. If you need him not to be able to see things for a fic, here’s a post-script to do as you wish with, though remember he can also hear -

We do not know about his viewpoint. The one definite Heimdall-POV shot we get is definitely from above. There is another ambiguous one that is ground-level and indoors, but it may not be properly Heimdall-POV. People have pointed out that he is presumably able to see a planet from all angles to be able to see what goes on (this may link with Yggdrasill, in that a planet needs a certain level of connection with it for him to be able to do that), and perhaps then rather than invariably looking ‘down,’ he can look at an angle and so see things at ground level. This would mean that if you placed walls and a roof to interrupt all tangents along Earth’s surface, or went underground, you could thwart him. It’s striking in this respect that his POV look down into the centre of the SHIELD compound in Thor is into the centre of a square set of open-roofed ‘walls,’ and that his view is then cut off by the canopy, whereas the ambiguous shot of Jane that may be from his point of view is in her glass-walled laboratory.

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A message for Heimdall!Anon; I am working on your question, the answer is a monster, but I cannot publish before tomorrow because I have to check one detail from Guardians of the Galaxy, which I have not seen since summer and will not see again till late tonight.

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A reminder that this blog is open for questions!

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fostertheory replied to your post:

I’m intrigued by the thought that the script writers may have gravitated to this way of relating the history of Asgard *because* of the way Earth history traditionally is told.

This is technically off topic, but also, historiography. I think they probably meant to invoke the heroic saga - a word that, after all, originates in the Norse. Partly it's a 'let's make this instantly narratively gripping to a non-historian audience,' and partly I think it is that, that invocation of that history, that form.

There's a lot to think about with regards to why the scriptwriters chose to represent it this way, and I can't say how intentional parallels with the concept of the 'just war,' with the USA's history of armed interventionism wearing the cloak of morality and saviourness and so on are. But it's interesting, certainly. There's the narrative justification - audiences are meant to sympathise with Thor, and view jotuns as enemies - dark elves even more so, since they are not dupes of a greater villain in the story proper rather than the prologue. Asgard is to be accepted as justified, Odin as wise, even if there is room for critique - though Thor 2 thoroughly failed us in showing the blood in the walls of Asgard.

fostertheory replied to your post:

I had taken Frigga’s use of the word “creature” as a way of talking boldly, an attempt at intimidation, in the run-up to the fight with Malekith.

Oh, it is - but why that particular word? The choice of insults and intimidation is always revealing. She felt that 'creature' was a fitting word to use in that circumstance, a fitting way to convey his inferiority to him - that comes from somewhere. And partnered with the other instances of the use of 'creature' for dark elves, and for the marauders, it's suggestive.

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In the second film, the audience is given a chance to compare this account to a different one, one read by Odin from a book about the events of his father’s time due to their immediate relevence. (Due to the film’s incoherent structure, it is unclear whether the prologue is part of this history or not, but I will include his narration, though not the visual accompaniment.) In this scene, he relates his father’s conquest of the omnicidal dark elves to his adult son and the woman who currently has the elves’ superweapon inside her life force. What he is saying is not actually what appears on the page; while the book’s shape indicates a similar history to that [LECTURER] mentioned on Earth, of the shape being that you get when you make parchment of animal skin, this is fairly obviously a magical book that he is interacting with rather than reading.

Some interesting things emerge. Again, it is history as narrative, both on the page and in his words. Again, in both cases, it is clearly biased towards the Asgardian point of view. The version on the page, in fact, revisits Asgard as the shining beacon; thinly disguised in badly-transliterated futhark are the words, ‘the light that radiated from Asgard.’

There is no way to assess the truth of his story, given that almost all of the dark elf backstory comes through his point of view, and the similarities of the story to that of the first film imply that there are probably some narrative conventions being used. Several phrases of the opening narration echo the Thor lesson precisely, for example, and there is again the spectre of the just war looming as the enemy poses a terrible threat to one world or all. As a result, unknown are both the intentions of the Jotuns in attacking Midgard, and the reality of the dark elves’ threat. Each is simply a vanquished threat, rightfully crushed in the service of peace.

In both cases, Asgard intervened as a protector, a superior force with a right to act unilaterally and decisively. Their innate nobility and valiance – an interesting parallel to the spell placed upon Thor’s hammer, ‘whosoever holds of this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor’ – and the righteousness of their cause ensured their victory, even at a cost. The enemy lacks logic to their actions, and are driven by a desire to spread war and destruction across the Nine Realms or universe.

In all Asgardian accounts, other peoples are not accorded equality. In the Thor: The Dark World prologue, the ‘creatures’ [dark elves] are contrasted with ‘the noble armies of Asgard.’ Later in this film, the Queen of Asgard terms a dark elf, ‘creature,’ echoing this and the words of two Asgardian warriors attempting to contain a prison break, and in Thor the Jotuns/frost giants are persistently referred to as monsters, as Loki refers to another dark elf. Midgardians are consistently seen as helpless, childlike, simple and in need of protection.

Asgard’s discipline of history, then, at least that which is consulted at the highest levels of governance, bears the marks of an elitist, martial culture. Historical recording is narrative and appears troped, and Asgard in all cases occupies the same role; that of the noble bringer of light. (It should, however, be mentioned that it is probable that such a casting could be meant to impress children and offworlders in both cases; this itself says something, since both situations could have benefitted from accurate information.) Unlike on Earth, where various social movements and academic trends have been causing disciplinary cross-pollination and wider focus on more issues in history, top-level Asgardian history focuses on its kings’ exploits in war in a way that has more in common with the heroic saga than the modern Earthly historical work.

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The medium of film is a difficult one to portray the practice of history in. Given more to visual extravaganza and aural exposition, there is not much space to sit down with a list of primary sources and a stack of books and critically evaluate the lot onscreen. However, histories are still important in fiction, and especially need elaborating on in the case of constructed worlds whose history is not known to the majority of their audience. In the Thor thread of the MCU,  the history of Asgard is the spectre that haunts all of the characters and drives the plot, especially in the two Thor-led films. As a result, both films feature scenes which have the purpose of establishing the history of Asgard, and it is these scenes and what they illuminate about Asgardian historiography in relation to Earth’s practice of it as studied on this course that I will be discussing in this review.

In the original Thor film, the history scene takes the form of a lesson that Odin is teaching his sons. He tells the past as a story, a narrative of his defence of Midgard from the threat of the ‘frost giants,’  his thorough defeat of said people, and ends on a note of triumph about Asgard’s position as ‘a beacon of hope… that brought peace to the universe.’ It is almost certain that ‘frost giants’ is not the phrase that they would use for themselves, since no people thinks that they themselves are giant; other characters refer to them as Jotuns, which may or may not be the preferred terminology. It is never made clear, because they are never given a sufficient voice to clarify it.

Clearly, Odin’s account is not neutral; there is no attempt to be objective, and it is fairly clear that this is not a post-objectivity version in which the impossibility of objectivity is grappled with and acknowledged. Odin is telling his own actions, and using them as a lesson and propaganda. When the film cuts to the boys’ adulthood, it is apparent that this is the only version of events they have heard. Politically, this is history as propaganda, a history written by the victor and deployed to legitimise his position as someone who claims authority and kingship over all Nine Realms.

The account has a lot in common with traditional Earth history. As the first session of this term discussed, traditional history focussed on wars and kings, often based on eyewitness accounts. Odin’s account, like traditional accounts of war, focusses only on the fighting; there is no mention of how the troops were raised, how they were paid or deployed, or the social/economic/etc effects of the ‘great wars’ on Asgard, Jotunheim or any of the other realms. Since Odin is instructing his young sons on kingship, it appears that a similar situation to early modern monarchs often omitting finance from their calculations entirely, expecting the money to simply be there, may prevail in Asgard.[1] Ordinary soldiers are mentioned despite the fact that it is predominantly a history of great men, but only in passing.

[1] F. Tallett, War and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1495-1715 (London, 1992; 2003 e-library edition), pp. 172-3.

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A long, long time ago, I promised you the essay on Asgardian historiography that I actually did for my actual history course.

Tonight and tomorrow night, I will be publishing it in expanded form. (It's a two-parter post because it's long.) Enjoy!

Some context below the cut;

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Some small things about the dark elves;

The maximum number of what I call 'blades' (that is, the small ships) that we see on screen at one time is five. In the battle at Steinngard [Gladsheim] they lose one to Heimdall, one to the shield, one to the throne room, and I am fairly sure that one blows up under Asgardian fire - in which case, the one that Malekith and Algrim hitch a ride back on is the last. Now, they might have more stashed away in that large ship, but they certainly aren't deployed against Midgard, when ploughing swathes through Greenwich would definitely distract Jane and get her off their backs.

As for the large ships, we see seven falling, though there may be a few more; the max figure is 21, but it's likely that some of those were shown in more than one shot. One ship survives.

(As for how big these ships are and how many are on them, I haven't been able to calculate; they are towering even in London, but I'm not sure their human capacity is very large. The total dark elf population before the last Convergence was likely only a few thousands, though.)

Malekith, in short, sacrifices about 88% of an already very small dark elf population against Asgard at the last Convergence, for no clear reason, and then loses 60-80% of his military - and we don't see any other dark elves at all.

[I am so out of the habit of trying to explain rather than rage and rework; this is clearly a fault with the film, but that's not what this blog points out.]

Why? All their talk of sacrifice implies that they aren't expecting to be reunited in the beyond of the universe. Their population is tiny, and whether such a group would provide a viable base for the rebuilding of a species is in doubt - and yet Malekith throws lives away.

There are actually a couple of possibilities. Malekith is always pretty... free with the lives of others, but at least he's not actively inconsistent. One, that the dark elves trapped in this universe are a tiny group of a far larger species, and Malekith feels that his own survival to rejoin the whole is more important than theirs (and Algrim agrees with him.)

Two, that inside the ship is genetic material from a far larger group of dark elves, and their biotechnology is sufficient that they can rebuilt their population from a far larger genetic base than that among the actual survivors.

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A reminder to send in your questions, folks, if there is anything that is bothering you worldbuilding-wise, or that you're interested in regarding any of the MCU Nine Realms. This blog is probably going to be primarily question-driven from now on, so do drive it!

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llaevateinn said:

Hi! I love your worldbuilding, it's very inspiring! Regarding Jotnar, i wanted to ask whether you think it's possible that at least some varieties hibernate? Maybe that didn't used to be necessary, but after the war and without the Casket their resources dwindled, so they could use a technique like the one Laufey used on that beast in Thor 1, freezing themselves in. Or something else? :)

I certainly think that jotnar are capable of freezing themselves in like the ice monster, but whether they would do so to hibernate is another matter. I don't know. There is no evidence one way or another, though I will say they don't appear to build up fat reserves, so might have a nutrition probem (or we only see them in 'fat depleted' mode). I also feel like it might be... politically problematic, in the days when they were players on the interrealm scale, but that's not an objection that holds much water.

Tl;dr this is one of the things that I can't get at within the scope of this blog. Personally, I would not write it like that, but that's me.

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Anonymous said:

This isn't a question so much is a thought, but I've noticed something I don't quite agree with. "We have basically no canon evidence to go on, for female servants." while I do agree that in the final cut of the movie, we don't see them, I do think that there is one in the scenes that did not make it in. In the deleted seen with Fandral preening and asking women to play with his sword I would draw attention to the woman in the middle, the one with a shawl who is holding a tray and goblet.

Thank you!

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iseulttoinjury replied to your post “silvergryphon said: Hey Kestor, long time no see! Here’s a...”

they could also have fish that are, for various reasons, inefficient/not worth it to catch/prepare. they could live in too-deep or dangerous water, and/or don't cook well or taste terrible.

This is also a possibility, and perhaps the most obvious one, so thank you!

[exploringmcuasgard]

reachexceedinggrasp replied to your post: vitruvian23 said: Have you dealt wi...

The problem with this otherwise plausible theory is always that Odin would never have named his adopted son after any figure analogous with the mythic Loki.

This is very true, and I had not considered it, thank you.

However, I don't think it universally applies to all conceptions of Norse Loki. A caveat here that I am talking about our world's Norse lore, and while we can assume that the MCU's is broadly similar, we also know it to be non-identical. There is the business of Norse Loki and Odin being blood brothers in at least one source, there is also a theory that back in the mists of time Loki and Odin were aspects of the same entity, and there is the source problem where many of the things we associate with the Norse lore may have been inserted during Christianisation, and there is a possibility that Loki got on the wrong side of Christian recorders (who in many cases wanted to vindicate their ancestors as having followed a religion that was 'looking towards' Christianity, as having seen an imperfect glimpse of the ultimate truth) wanting a devil-figure/a Jesus-figure in Baldr and an apocalypse.

Plus, of course, who knows how corrupted any of these stories became once they got to Earth in the MCU, haha...

I do not favour one explanation or another; these are just a series of considerations so that people can make up their own minds.

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vitruvian23 said:

Have you dealt with the date issue in the first movie, viz the date given for Odin's intervention against the Frost Giants on Midgard (when Thor was still a kid) being after the point we find archaeological and documentary evidence for Thor being worshipped as a god by Teutonic peoples?

I have thought about it; I do not know whether I have investigated it properly.

Firstly, it bears mentioning that Asgardians have probably been on Earth longer ago than the jotunn invasion.

Here is my language of asgard tag. Some of the material in it is relevent; here is the particular post in which I posit one of the more out-there possibilities. (it was posted long before Thor 2, and notably, it doesn't explain how names that don't exist in the Norse lore are represented.) The overall language is more upheld than disproven by the way the dark elves speak their own language away from the Asgardians, but English around them.

Unfortunately, all theories about language are somewhat scrambled by Guardians of the Galaxy, in which a whole galaxy of aliens (and one American Earthling) appear to be speaking English. However, there is a substantial time gap between 'speech we know is English' and 'talking with aliens,' so it is perfectly probable that the language in GotG would not be English if it were real, but has been rendered as such for the cinema.

One possibility that many have suggested is that Thor is named after the Thor of Norse lore. There are two possibilities. Firstly, that Thor was an Asgardian who the Norse people encountered, and who provided the blueprint for Norse!Thor; our Thor was named after him, inherited his weapon and apparently plenty else. Secondly, that Thor is an Asgardian deity, perhaps an ancestor deity (see religion of asgard for my posts about possible Asgardian ancestor worship), that the Norse people absorbed into their pantheon. We have evidence of something like that happening, in these two exchanges;

Thor: And Volstagg, to delicacies so succulent you thought you'd died and gone to Valhalla?

Loki: See you in Hel, monster!

Besides, the Norse people have apparently got the names of the Nine Realms from the Asgardians. So Thor could perhaps be named after an old Asgardian ancestor-deity. (Theism in Asgard, though, is a big topic, and I'm not sure that ancestor-deity is a concept that fits with how I see their ancestor worship. They certainly understand the concept of a god, but more as something that one can pretend to be than that one worships.)

So there are a couple of theories.

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silvergryphon said:

Hey Kestor, long time no see! Here's a discussion question- why do we not see fish or seafood in any of the scenes of tables at the palace? You would think, with the obvious seafaring cultural motif they have with the boats everywhere, and the way the city and palace are like right on the ocean, there would be some sort of seafood. Fandral doesn't even include fish on the list of things Volstagg chowed down on! So why the lack of seafood?

I don't know.

Some theories;

Life in Asgardian seas is precarious. With that force of water going over the rim, anything free-floating could be swept over (this also applies to Asgardian ships, but their cultural prevalence suggests that they manage this). As a result, most life in Asgardian seas anchors itself fairly firmly, and they may have only small numbers of fish species - fish can swim against the current, but their young could easily be swept away, so it may be that all or most Asgardian fish lay eggs inland even if they live mostly in the seas, like salmon. Asgard is also fairly small, and likely has small fish stocks anyway. Overfishing, or a fear of overfishing, could be a problem.

On the other side of such an ecological possibility, the seas might be overflowing with fish, to the extent that fish is considered a poor man's lunch, and thus not fit for the tables of the rich and mighty that we see in the film.

Other cultural factors could be in play, but these are what I can think of straight away. As always, I am well aware that my biology is shaky.