Talk:Family trees of the Norse gods

Serious Problems: Article Should Be Redirected to List of Germanic Deities

This article has serious problems, is highly confused, and is simply conceptually wrong. Where to begin. For one, this "tree" is a result of synthesis of various sources. Second, it's stuck in a synchronic snapshot and doesn't take into account differences and variations in time and place. Third, it has no footing whatsoever in scholarship on the subject, which would reject such a construction outright. This article either needs to be approached radically differently or needs to be outright deleted. As the more developed articles on these individual deities handle these issues as they should be handled—with nuance and footing in scholarship—I motion that this article simple be redirected to List of Germanic deities. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:57, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Of course the genealogy is a matter of literature and legend, not fact, but such family trees are indeed included in scholarship on Norse mythology--see for example the works in the bibliography. Compare the articles on Family tree of the Greek gods and Family tree of the Babylonian gods. If any of these are to be merged, please use the procedure outlined at Wikipedia:Merging. Goustien (talk) 22:11, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

No merging occurred. The article was simply redirected to a page that handles this with nuance and scholarship. These trees are misleading as they can vary from source, place, and time, an issue which this article does not address. This is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

• I've nominated the article for deletion. The "family tree" as such is not a notable topic in the field of Germanic religion, because the sources vary and have gaps and even piecing them together as best one can produces a big mess of conjecture, footnotes to variant forms, and relationships that are hard to map. For example, just in Thor's family and just in Scandinavian sources, only one of his sons' mother is given, his wife Sif is the mother of Ullr, and his being a son of Odin is stated by only some sources (the Prologue to Snorri's Edda actually has him as Odin's father) and has been argued by some scholars to be a late rationalization ... The only scholarly work that I know of that treats the genealogy of the gods is Ernst Alfred Philippson's Die Genealogie der Götter in germanischer Religion, Mythologie und Theologie (1953, repr. 1980), and it can't be reduced to a family tree. I appreciate the urge to come up with a family tree, but this particular pantheon resists it, and although there are various attempts elsewhere on the net, it can only ever be original research, and the more accurate it is, the less clear it will be to the reader. The sources make this a topic best addressed in the article on the pantheon and in the articles on the particular deities. Unlike for some other pantheons, where the family relationships are established and a tabular overview is conventional. See the AfD for a shorter version of this wall of text. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Creator Restored Article

It appears the creator of this article, @Goustien:, has restored this mess from its previous status as a redirect. @Yngvadottir:, @Berig:, @Haukurth:—care to weigh in on this? :bloodofox: (talk) 02:24, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Redirecting it was a good solution; I considered reverting the recreation myself, but since I took it to AfD someone else should probably do so. The only good alternative, as I believe I said before, would be a move to Genealogy of the Norse gods and replacement of the family tree with a referenced article on scholarly thought on the topic. That would provide information on the varying theories, such as Philippson's, and on the degree of credibility of different aspects of Snorri's systematization, including the material thought to be derived from Hesiod and the material supported by kennings. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:23, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Norse mythology deserves some kind of parallel to Family tree of the Greek gods, but I understand the sources are complex and contradictory. A more nuanced article with discussion of the Prose Edda and the writings of Ernst Alfred Philippson would certainly be appropriate. Goustien (talk) 05:00, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

If we are to keep an article like this, I would recommend that we convert it to something like what Yngvadottir proposes or geneaologies, plural, focused specifically on sources. However, the complexity of these matters is already covered in our articles for individual entities. I note also that Family tree of the Greek gods is truly very bad and exactly the sort of thing we should be avoiding. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I think the singular "genealogy" is more the common name and wouldn't want it to give the appearance that the problem is competing genealogies. I can see how I'd approach and reference the bit on Snorri's systematization, and I'm pretty sure I could make a decent summary of Philippson and Rydberg; gathering refs for those sections in addition to Gunnell's 2015 "Pantheon? What Pantheon?" will presumably turn up any others I've missed, and of course there's a small mountain on Loki's parentage, including recent work. The thing is, I'm shoulder-deep in runestones and such, really shouldn't be undertaking any big Wikipedia projects even if I wasn't limiting my editing each month, and have some conflict of interest concerns, although fewer on this topic than many. I must concur that letting the diagram remain in place is a disservice and List of Germanic deities, with its noting of recorded partners and offspring plus attestations is more informative; its problem is that it's not just the Norse, and some readers will want just the Norse deities. I also have to disagree quite strongly that the Norse deities "deserve" something like what's done with the Greek; different pantheons have different situations, including different kinds of attestations. As I say, I would revert the re-establishment of the diagram, but I started the AfD. Nor do I think I'm the best person to write the article to replace it. If no one else can be found, it will start off very slowly (and use a referencing system that I can work with, not that memory-testing sfn system that pretends all books have only one publication date), and it may omit stuff I am personally most interested in. I hope someone else will do it. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 22 September 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved to Family trees of the Norse gods. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 02:41, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

---

Family tree of the Norse gods → Genealogies of the Norse gods – 'Family trees of the Nordic/Norse gods' would also work. Really up for discussion on the title but I am completely in agreement with comments made many years ago on this page that the matter is full of nuance and contradiction. I think there is merit in the page but a name change would, in addition to making more sense given that there are multiple trees presented, facilitate a proper explanation and discussion e.g. Snorri making Odin the father of basically everyone - potentially not a view of heathens at the time and before, if they'd even think of matters in the categorical manner we do. I've tried to make this as usable as I can without a major rework to remove misleading information and add notes to explain ambiguities but I think more explanation would help. Ingwina (talk) 20:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)— Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:16, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. Given that the article is solely dedicated to family tree charts, I think Family trees of the Norse gods would probably be best and I would support such a move. (This would be consistent with our host of other articles beginning with "Family tree of" or "Family trees of".) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Huwmanbeing (talk • contribs) 09:51, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why is this article classified as a stub?

Seems to meet the requirements and I'd remove it but seems like there is a reason I am missing. Chacabangaso (talk) 16:05, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

This is a list, not a stub. See the WikiProject ratings above. Dimadick (talk) 12:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)