Norse Mythology

The Norse culture believed in and honored many different supernatural beings or gods or goddesses on a daily basis.   For example, when help was needed for a husband and a wife to conceive or birth a child, or to work out problems that they were having in their marriage or to make the land and the sea produce more food, they would call upon the Goddess Freya.   She was the Goddess of Abundance and Fertility.   If there was a drought or a flood, they would call upon Thor, the God of Thunder and one of the most powerful gods, to either bring the rain or stop the rain in order to help the food grow because he was known as the one who held the thunder and lightning.   If a man from the Norse culture was going to war or going to a battle, he would call upon the God Tyr, who was the God of War, and ask him for help to be courageous and heroic in battle.   Finally, if there was a legal problem that needed to be settled, people in the Norse culture would call upon the God Forseti, because he was the God of Justice.
Family life in the Norse culture was based upon many different families, and their servants, if they had servants, living together in the same house and working their land together.   It was common for somewhere between ten and twenty people to all be living together.   The life expectancy of people who lived during this time was only twenty years old and almost half of the population was made up of children who were under the age of fifteen.   It was very rare for a mother and a father to see their own children marry.   It was very, very rare for a mother and a father to ever meet their first grandchild and it almost never happened for three generations, all from the same family, to all still be alive.   Most women would give birth to at least seven children during her lifetime and most of the time, only two or three of those children would be alive at the same time.   “Marriage was a business arrangement between the family of the bride and the family of the groom.   It...