Pantheon Myths
The Story of VIDAR
I have always been drawn to great heroes stories. Not just any kind, specifically the ones about the underdog: the boy who grows up disadvantaged, living quietly in some small corner of the world unaware that the whole arc of his life is about to be set in motion.
Most of the role-playing games I loved growing up started exactly there: an orphan in a forgotten village, an inkling of a father’s greatness, and a long and arduous journey of trials and challenges that strips the hero down into something essential before reshaping him into something great.
Star Wars followed the same formula, as did most of the fantasy novels I burned through as a kid. When I eventually discovered Joseph Campbell’s work on the hero’s journey, it felt less like a new idea and more like a name finally given to something I had instinctively understood.
There was something powerful in that narrative that spoke directly to me, in how I saw myself, or what I imagined for myself in escaping the mundane of this world for something far more fantastical.
It also relates to a very common human experience: that you are more than your circumstances suggest, that the life you are living is somehow a preparation for something larger, and that the hardship you experience is not random but purposeful.
It’s no accident that this story appears in virtually every culture on earth, in every era of recorded history. It maps onto something real about how people experience growing up, journey through self-discovery, and eventually come into themselves.
This figure became my archetype, the one that resonated most with me, and the one I sought after over and over in every medium I consumed.
But for all the hero stories I loved, the one that hit me hardest wasn’t one I went looking for. It found me in a college classroom, in a Norse mythology course I signed up for purely to satisfy a religious studies requirement. The figure that captivated me wasn’t even a name I had ever heard before; most people still haven’t.
His name was VIDAR, and the story of why he was born, what he was destined for, and what he ultimately did is the most extraordinary hero story I’ve ever encountered.
It struck such a chord in me that I built my entire mythic fantasy series, Pantheon, around him.
But to understand Vidar, we must start with the world he was born into. While many of us think we know Norse mythology — it has grown enormously popular over the last decade with Thor in film, Kratos in video games, and Magnus Chase in books — none of the modern adaptations capture the actual essence of the mythos.
For the philosophy and moral weight of the Norse worlds comes not from the glorification of its gods or the might of its heroes, but from a crime, an original sin so dastardly it was considered one of the worst offenses in ancient Scandinavia.
Before anything existed in Norse myth, there was only the void. From the void spun realms of fire and ice, and through their contact emerged Ymir, a primordial figure who could reproduce alone, seeding the first race of beings from his own body, the jotuns.
Alongside him, a primordial cow — generally associated with creation goddesses from around the world — licked the first man out of salt, Buri. His son, Borr, mated with a granddaughter of Ymir, giving birth to Woden (Odin) and his brothers, Willi (Vili) and We (Ve).
For no apparent reason other than a cosmic necessity to create a new world order, the three brothers killed their great grandfather, Ymir, and hacked his body up to construct the cosmos. But the killing carried a weight that the myth never lets you forget.
In Norse society, slaying a blood relative was amongst the worst possible crimes — frændr-morð, kin-slaying — and unlike other killings, it could not be settled with wergild, the standard payment of blood compensation. Instead, it demanded outlawry, making the killer legally killable and fair game for anyone seeking retribution.
Odin built the entire world on an act that made him permanently marked, and the jotuns, descendants of Ymir, never forgot it.
Odin knew this because he could see the shape of the future. He knew that Fenrir — the great wolf and son of Loki, a jotun himself — would one day kill him. In some ways, we can sympathize with the jotuns for their constant attacks on Asgard and their attempts on Odin’s life; they were merely acting on what they were entitled to, satisfying a blood debt that predated any of them.
Odin should have understood this, just as he should have understood that Ragnarök, the end of the world, was a certainty, not a possibility. But instead of simply accepting his fate for the crime he committed, he frantically tried to avoid it.
He sacrificed an eye to drink from the well of cosmic wisdom. He hung himself from Yggdrasil for nine days to earn the secrets of the runes. He consulted seers, raised armies of the heroic dead, and gathered every advantage he could think of, all to outmaneuver a fate he had already foreseen and could not change.
There is something odd, almost comical, about the god of wisdom spending an age trying to outsmart his own prophecy, and the Norse myths are quietly aware of this irony. But the pivot comes when Baldr — Odin’s beloved son, the most radiant of the gods — is killed. Only then does Odin finally understand that Ragnarök is not something he can prevent.
So what does Odin do next, now that he knows the end is coming? Something marvelous and sneaky, as only Odin would. He hatches a backup plan, a fail-safe, something to ensure that his line and his people will continue to thrive, long after he’s gone. He sires a son whose sole purpose is to avenge him after he is killed at Ragnarök, and to lead the remaining gods in a new golden age.
That son is Vidar.
The first thing that struck me about Vidar was not just his monumental destiny, but how little we know of him from the myths. He is described as immensely powerful, second only to Thor in strength, but there is no mention of how he obtained it. Was he born this way? Did he train relentlessly, quietly building toward a moment only he knew was coming? Did he seek out artifacts to amplify what he had, the way Thor relied on his gauntlets and belt? The myths don’t say.
He is also often called the Silent God, though whether that silence was contemplative or a deliberate vow of preparation, we are never told. The myths give us the destination but nothing of the journey.
Unlike most other heroes, Vidar was not an orphan who discovered his destiny. He was a being who was given his destiny at the moment of his birth, existing specifically to do one enormous and terrible thing, and spending his entire life preparing for it. I kept coming back to what that actually meant for someone to carry.
How do you live inside a purpose that size? Is there room for joy, for doubt, for anything ordinary, when the shape of your life has already been decided? And did he ever think about Fenrir, his fated enemy, who was himself simply the consequence of a blood debt that predated them both?
Vidar wasn’t the firstborn, he was the younger son, like me. But he was still his father’s chosen successor, the one meant to carry everything forward. I saw something in that.
My father was a great man, self-made, from humble origins to a successful career decorated with degrees, respected by everyone who knew him. His friends tell me they still pray for him every day for the way he helped them while he was alive. He left behind a strong legacy of action and community that is still felt and remembered today.
I’ve tried living up to that legacy, knowing I can’t replicate him. I can take the parts that are true to me and carry them forward, but I have to make this my own. And I’ve also come to understand that he was flawed, deeply flawed, as all humans are, and that those flaws live in me and in our family. I have to reckon with them, understand them, and do the work of not passing them forward, because of my siblings, I am the strongest reflection of him, physically and emotionally. So I feel the weight of that most directly.
The son must often come to terms with the father, and must carry, or sometimes correct, the legacy the father leaves behind. Joseph Campbell understood this. So, I believe, did whoever first told the story of Vidar.
In doing so, the boy becomes a man, moving from adolescence to maturity, replacing the flawed father, cleansing away his sins, and becoming something better than what came before. Vidar is not alone in this task. We see this same cycle play out across pantheons from around the world: Osiris and Horus in Egypt; Zeus and Apollo in Greece; Enki and Marduk in Mesopotamia; Balor and Lugh amongst the Celts.
In each tradition, the son does not simply inherit the father’s world, he redeems it. But Vidar is unique because he does not just stumble into his destiny, he is proscribed it from the moment of his birth.
There is something in that I have never stopped thinking about.
When I finally started building PANTHEON, Vidar was always going to be at the center of it. Not as a silent figure at the margins of myth, but as a fully realized character: a boy who makes choices; a teenager who lives, loves, and laughs; a warrior who learns to fight; a son who quarrels with his father; a figure who fears, doubts, and hesitates; a young man who decides to step into his fate instead of letting destiny control his outcome.
Vidar has been with me for a long time. If you’ve read his myths, you know his ending, but what is the satisfaction of knowing an ending without experiencing the journey of becoming?
Pantheon: The Elemental Artifact — the start of Vidar’s story — is now available at www.pantheonmyths.com.