Excersus LII: Open Turnstiles, Free Love

One of the neat things about Vikings is their idea that it would be really cool to walk to the sublime dwelling place of their gods on a rainbow. But then you feel them needing to tough it up a little, and so the further story of Bifrost is that it is composed of elemental fire, air, and water, which makes it sufficiently badass, while still simultaneously pretty, for Vikings to go to Walhalla on.

Heimdall's origin story is a typically interesting one. Odin was on walkabout when he saw nine beautiful sisters and, not wanting to choose between them, wedded and bedded all of them. They then combined to jointly give birth to Heimdall. I'm not entirely sure how this worked - whether each gave birth to a part that they sewed up later, or that they basically formed Voltron so that he could come into the world in one piece. He grew to manhood almost instantly upon birth and set out to Asgard, where he was given the watch of Bifrost and the amplified senses to detect any threats to it from the Frost Giants. The comics tend to portray him as a stern and morose watchman, but in the original mythology he was clad in full white armor, a being of joy and light whose castle of Himinbiorg was a regular gathering place for gods wanting to get their drunk on. There were some morose Norse gods, and we'll meet them, but Heimdall wasn't habitually one of them.



- Count Dolby von Luckner