Norse Mythology and Christology

 When I was young, I loved Norse mythology; it occurred in a fascinating world of gods and giants and men and dwarves. Thus, not long after getting my Kindle, I downloaded a collection of Norse tales for free, but I'd never gotten around to reading them. So, they'd sat in my 'read next' collection for a long time. Since I haven't had anything else that I felt like starting in the last week or so, I've been wandering my way through the tales of Asgard and Midgard and Jotunheim again; it has been fun reading both familiar and unfamiliar tales.

 A friend recently commented to me that given the nature of these sorts of ancients myths and the intelligence of the tellers, we should probably accept such mythologies in the non-serious, enjoyable way they appear to be written, not as the 'religious' texts of the ancients. They seem much more like our modern superhero tales, which also incidentally include Thor and his hammer.

 Anyways, tonight, I came across the quote below,

Two only went on another way—Odin, the Eldest of the Gods, and Loki the Mischievous. 

Loki and Odin laid aside all that they had kept of the divine power and the divine strength. They were going into the World of Men, and they would be as men merely.

- Colum, Padraic. The Children of Odin The Book of Northern Myths (p. 69). 

 For those who think in terms of Jesus' kenosis, his self-emptying or making himself nothing, this is an interesting literary event. Loki and Odin have their own version of emptying themselves of their deity. Yet, they went as 'men merely'; Jesus came as 'the Messiah, the Son of God,' no longer grasping his divinity but not merely a man. It would be of some interest to know the age of these tales which Colum published in 1920.

 Also, incidentally, in this same tale, "The Dwarf's Hoard, and the Curse that it Brought," is an account of a ring of power with runes on it, rather reminiscent of Tolkien, though this story obviously long preceded his.