NorsePlay Reviews: Coursera's Old Norse Mythology in the Sources.

While NorsePlay has no doubts about its expertise in the Norse Lore and its research & expository credentials by holding & applying its double degree in Journalism & Creative Writing here weekly, we felt it wouldn't hurt to add to our CV by swooping up a certification from Coursera's course on Old Norse Mythology in the Sources as taught by the celebrated Dr Mathias Nordvig, Nordic Studies Professor at University Colorado Boulder. That, and we wanted to review it.

Mathias and I have traded a few emails regarding my Map Of Midgard Project, and I consider him an online acquaintance. Mathias is unquestionably stellar as a public disseminator of information via YouTube, co-host of the irascibly fun Nordic Mythology Podcast, his own blog, and as a leading academic contributor to the new Pre-Christian Religions of the North (2020 CE) reference set, so I'm much less reviewing him as opposed to the Coursera format. We're lucky to have someone of Mathias' caliber bother making an online course for public consumption, and his effort in doing so says a lot about him in terms of deeding well. 

Old Norse Mythology in the Sources is scheduled out as four weeks, and costs $50 for the certificate (it's actually free if you don't want the certification, but why wouldn't you?). There's some internal contradicting course time estimates, the front page citing a rapid 6 hours time (!), but 9.5 hours on the internal course page, though none of that matters as the course is self-paced and if you needed more than the scheduled four weeks, you can totally move that timeline further out if needed. My own learner's page timer says I took about 20 hours total as I mined the information pretty hard & repeatedly to get the most out of it for myself, for which I only needed 10 days, not the scheduled month (but everyone's mileage is going to vary depending on personal learning styles and what one comes to the table already knowing). Plus there's the opportunity to earn a gold honors "cord" stripe on your certificate if you write a short paper (~200 words) for anonymous peer review by three other learners and in turn comment & score four of those peers' papers, which I accomplished:

[Honors achievement unlocked!]

The contents are presented as a series of powerpoint slideshow videos with voiceovers and an accompanying transcript of the lecture running below. A broader critique of standard higher education is its inability to compete with other media, plus the added financial burden of having to pay for other required classes that usually aren't relevant to your specific degree program. With Coursera you're getting something more private classroom-style traditional lecture & notetaking focused, but without the pain of finding campus parking and being spared from having to listen to the banal questions of so-called peers. I truly did enjoy the pairing of the actual medieval manuscripts' title/section pages on slides to the lectures that they were about, quality photos of the archaeological relics, and the Norse Romantic period illustrations by Danish artist Lorenz Frølich, which visually bonds the information with the subject itself in the head of the learner.

[Óðinn Throws his Spear at the Vanir Host by Lorenz Frølich (1895 CE).]

The weeks are divided into historic & literary & material sources (week 1), Eddic poetry (week 2), and additional sources within & beyond the above (week 3), with the fourth week being the final exam and the optional honors assignment.

Multiple choice tests end each week, small pop quizzes in that same format end week two & three's lectures, and the final's an aggregate of many previous questions. There's an 80% to pass required, which means you really have to seriously focus and take good notes for all the tests.

Coursera was unclear about the tests being open note, so I presumed they weren't (though after I'd finished the class Mathias later replied open notes was okay), and found myself at first stymied on the first test by its questions about specific dates for literature & artifacts in terms of years & centuries, but once I knew I would be asked time-related questions, I allowed for that while studying.

Given the above, I would've liked a visual timeline of both writings and artifacts to further provide those relational contexts to learning those even easier by seeing them, and I think this is more restricted by the slideshow lecture format, which is a conventional box Coursera could obviously think their way outside of given other available options of internet graphical presentation.

During the course there were certain Norse Lore points I hadn't heard, which is the priceless thing I live for, and a few I disagreed with based on what I already knew, but there aren't page citations attached to the lectures. While I totally trust Mathias as presenting what he believes to be the best material and valid viewpoint, it's always good to homework things for one's own critical thinking and conclusions. There is a discussion forum attached to the course, but it's for learner-to-learner questions/observations and mutual aid.

As a small point, there was a reversely worded test question about Odin's exile in Gesta Danorum which used the word "to" instead of "from", which drew incorrect responses and negative feedback in the class forums. Okay though since you can retake the three section tests and the final over after a 24-hour wait time, and as many times as you need to. That amount of grading forgiveness is certainly more than I was ever extended at university, so the two small question errors in the tests, and a couple mistranscriptions, can be equally forgiven. And in terms of paid education you're getting what's easily a $300+ course for $50, so just roll with it since you can always go back for a do-over.

A big criticism I have with Coursera's site is that there's no built-in way to download your notes. Sure, you can scroll and then screenshot your three weeks worth of lecture excerpts you've possibly added personal annotations to (I certainly added them), but that's much more work than it needs to be, plus forgoes the ease of having an actual searchable text-based document if you wanted to go back to reference it in the future.

One missed opportunity, given Mathias' specialty in Norse Mythology as it relates to volcanism, I had hoped for a deep-dive section of him holding forth on the geographic & environmental presence of lava-spewing behemoths having influence on the sources' inclusion of fire giants and the burning cataclysm of Ragnarök, but I might guess he keeps those unique cards closer to his chest for in-person graduate courses and peer-reviewed journal publications. 

My specific takeaway: I've learned a lot of finer granulations in terms of evaluating the sources. The course focused me more on the contexts of creation and authoring of the manuscripts themselves, offering details on whether a poem was older or younger, how that might fit motif-wise in temporal/influential relation to other works, if the prologue/epilogue/interjections were originally concurrent or later addended to the source and possibly why, and proposed ideas about other motivations for their style or telling. With the material culture, I was given more of a timeline to look at to see what came first with artifacts that depict narrative and figures in the myths as the Arch-Heathens presented them.

Given the required rote learning of specifics for exams, and the introduction of larger concepts that interdisciplarily span the fields of linguistics, literary/manuscript studies, and archaeology, Mathias' course is an intermediate 301/310 level compared to Jackson Crawford's 101/201 beginning level The Great Courses offering. So if you're looking for a more formal class structure and an exceptional professionally vetted instructor to learn Norse Lore from, NorsePlay confidently recommends Old Norse Mythology in the Sources as a firsthand honors graduate, so go get yourself one of these:

[Yes, you have to go print one yourself, and no, they don't send you an honor cord.]

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Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.