When Thor assumes Modi abandoned Magni or discovered that he fled from the battle, he nearly beats Modi to death for this. They consider dying outside of battle, i.e old age, disease, etc, to be dishonourable and outright disgraceful. Defiant to the End: They believe dying in battle is honourable and glorious.Blood Knight: They love a good fight and encouraged mortals to die with honour and glory in order to be placed in Valhalla to fight for Odin.Odin also used Baldur as a pawn to get revenge on Freya for "betraying" him all those years ago, and Odin only sees his family as assets to rule over the nine realms.īaldur: And here I thought my family was fucked up. Modi was abused being the unfavorite child of Thor and was brutalised by his own father, Thor, for letting Magni die. Big, Screwed-Up Family: Baldur implies that the whole family is this way.Attack on One Is an Attack on All: They aren't happy when someone attacks one of their own.He caused Niflheim to fall into ruin because he believed Ivaldi's technology would be a threat to Asgard and the Asgardians caused the Alfheim war because they were too lazy to organise the light elves and dark elves. Assimilation Plot: Odin believes that he should be the only one to contain the knowledge and goes as far as to kill anyone who might pose a threat to his rule.So only time will tell if the Norse gods are really as bad as the Greek ones. But even then, how far this goes is pretty ambiguous, as so far most of what we know about them is told from the perspective of their enemies or people who don't like them. This is actually Justified in-universe, as this take on the mythology follows a Written by the Winners theme, wherein the gods make themselves out to be significantly more heroic than they actually are. Here however they are warmongering tyrants with genocidal tendencies who are either ignorant of mortals or outright treat them as livestock.
Even though the morality and mindset of the ancient Norse people were different than ours, their gods were mostly on the side of humanity. Adaptational Villainy: While we don't see much of the Vanir save for Freya, the Aesir are hit heavy with this.