Old Norse mythology is an elusive concept: it is the label used to describe the religious stories of the pre-Christian North, featuring such well-known gods as Odin and Thor, yet most of our data, especially in the form of narratives, has come down to us in manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Our sources are thus mainly written by Christians, a situation that makes difficult analyzing and interpreting the stories as they were narrated in oral form in the pre-Christian era. For us to overcome the implications of this situation, making comparisons at various levels becomes necessary-and just this point is what this book is about: What can we learn from comparisons with the mythologies of other cultures? What are the implications of comparisons between myths within the Old Norse corpus itself? In what ways is Old Norse mythology different from other mythologies-and in what ways is it similar? Employing the concept of 'comparison' from a range of theoretical and analytical perspectives (e.g., across media, cultures, and disciplines), the fifteen essays, written by scholars from different academic fields, that constitute this collection address these and other questions. Book jacket.