Jared Freedman

Impact of mythology

Mythologies are stories, myths that the people of the time used to explain things

they couldn’t understand, unexplainable phenomenons and also creation myths and why

we are here. These myths have had such an impact on the world and even in things we

talk about today. You can find such things in music, movies, games, books and many

other things we do every day. Especially in our music.

Music has always been influenced by our life and tales of things from the past.

Even today there is mythology in our popular music.

One band I listen to is a Finnish band called Enisferum which is a melodic folk death

metal band, and almost all there songs are based off of Norse mythology. Every songs’

lyrics are referring to a warrior or god. Some examples of the song names are “The

Wanderer” (also a similar song with the same name by a band called Heimdall) the title

refers to Odin. Part of one verse goes like this “From enchanted woods to the freezing

north He is known at every sea and far beyond” and it’s about Another song by them

called The Guardians of fate refers to the three Norns. An example from the song is;

“Their deeds shall be heard Their legend will live forever They are the Guardians Of

Fate.” Many other bands of this genre have similar themes such as Týr, Moonsorrow, and

Wintersun. The band Iron maiden Has a great song Titled The Flight of Icarus. The single

cover art depicts Icarus on fire in the sky but it is night so it wasn’t the cause of flying to

close to the sun like in the Greek myth, but it was caused by Eddie, the mascot of Iron

Maiden, Wearing bat wings and carrying a flamethrower. The song tells about Icarus
from the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus. The story goes that a man and his son were

trapped in a labyrinth on Crete and were eventually going to be killed by the Minotaur

but they make wings out of wax and feathers and fly up and out of the maze. Daedalus

tells Icarus not to fly to close to the sun because his wings are made of wax and he will

melt them and die. Icarus got carried away and flew too close to the sun and his wings

melted and he died. Some lines in the song are; His eyes seem so glazed As he flies on

the wings of a dream, Now he knows his father betrayed Now his wings turn to ashes to

ashes his grave. Fly, on your way, like an eagle, Fly as high as the sun. I think it’s a very

good song.Many songs have allusions to ancient myths and we can hear them all the

time.

There are many, many books that have ancient mythology in them and most of

those are actually ancient mythology themselves. The book The Silmarillion by

J.R.R Tolkien is a book about the first age of middle earth (the universe in which The

Lord of The Rings takes place). Tolkien creates his own mythology for Middle-Earth.

The depth and detail in the book is incredible and it is almost like the bible of Middle-

Earth. He uses a lot of allusions from mostly Norse mythology and the style of

mythology and the stories is mostly Norse. Many of the words and names come from the

Old English and Old Norse languages and in the back of the book is a list of names of

people and places and the meaning of them because there are hundreds of names in the

book, but it also has the etymology of the word which is often from Old English and Old

Norse. There are a lot of stories about people in the book that remind me of stories about

the Greek and Norse god stories that we read in class. The Norse and Greek mythologies
greatly affect the book in that the very basics of the stories are developed from the

mythological stories.

Many movies make references to mythology in them and many movies are a re-

telling of the story sometimes with a twist like a modern adaption of the myth, and then

some movies have an allusion to a small part of the myth.

One movie I can think of is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In one

scene, Harry and his friends are trying to get to the chamber of secrets but the door is in a

room under a giant three headed dog named Fluffy. Fluffy guards the chamber of secrets

just like three headed dog Cerberus from Greek mythology that guards the underworld.

Ron plays a flute to put fluffy to sleep so they can get under his foot and open the door to

get down into the Chamber of Secrets.

In conclusion, our modern society has put references or allusions into many songs

stories and movies because they are great myths that just make al of our stories and music

more interesting.