Obviously this contains spoilers.

When you get to Sovngarde, you can see it. The bridge leading to the Hall of Valor is a whale skeleton.
I was wondering why. What's the significance of a whale in relation to Shor? The only mention of whales I could find is in the book "http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Dragon_War", which desrcibes that during the Merethic Era, the Nords worshipped the divines as animals. Among those 9 (!) is the whale. Could it be they thought of Shor as a whale? If so, who do you think the other animals represent?

There's also the snow-whale from the Seven Fights, if that's any help.

My hasty guess:

hawk - Kyne
wolf - Arkay
snake - Dibella
moth - Stendarr
owl - Julianos
whale - Shor
bear - Mara
fox - Zenithar
dragon - Auri-El / Akatosh / Alduin

Jhunal is the Moth. One of his hermetic orders went south and became the Temple of the Ancestor Moth.

I was thinking that the snake was Shor.

I'm definitely seeing what Willie is saying, but I'm a bit curious about your reasoning, Fiore. Is it some sort of serpent in the garden thing?

It's out-of-game, but I just assumed the 'whale-bone bridge' was a phonic (if terrifyingly bad-ass) play on 'rainbow bridge' since Sovngarde is essentially Valhalla. Seriously though, that would have been one hellaciously frightening cetacean.

/end unhelpful commentary.

I know there's a connection drawn between Lorkhan and the serpent somewhere (I believe in relation to the Serpent constellation), but don't have time to find it at the moment. The Light and the Dark also places a dichotomy between bird and serpent, with the serpent being the padomaic entity, thus creating a loose relation to Lorkhan there as well...

That just blew my mind.


But Kyne is Shor's wife...
I think the wall murals might be the key to figuring things out.

I'm not making much of those in the art book. Perhaps those in game provide more information.

All murals from the hall of stories art book have the same pattern. A decoration on top. Left a dead King being carried by three man in robes each holding a staff and are accompanied by a single dog. Right a dead Queen carried by three woman. In the middle person that is thematically related to the top mural.

1. On top a boat with 4 persons inside. Three are rowing. One of them is throwing a spear at a giant whale. The man in the center is wearing a horned hood and is holding two spears and has a necklaces of bones. In the background there is water (the sea) and high cliffs. My first impression is hunter.

2. On the top is a Dragon. The man has a halo of flames, these seem to be originating from two small daggers in his hands. His clothing has lots of folds as if they are scales. The overall aesthetic says Dragon Priest.

3. On top is a head which has two braids that look like serpents going of to the left and right. The man himself is wearing a head cover that looks like a cobra. He has serpents crowling around his arms and waste. Left and right are two stacked stone towers with more serpents. A minature man is standing on the bottom stone fighting a serpents.

4. On top a moth with it's wings spread out. The woman is standing in front of what might be a tree. Moths are flying up from her hands.

5. On top a fox, flanked by bushes/shrubs. The man is holding two weapons. They could be the lower jaw of some animal attached to a leg bone. He also appears to be wearing a fox mask.

6. On top a wolf, flanked by pine tree branches. The man is holding two staffs with on top what appears to be the skull of a large canine (wolf?) Above his head is a skull with branches growing from the eye sockets, on the left branch sits a bird (crow like).

7. On top an Eagle as seen when looking up against it's attack. Th woman underneath has a halo of feathers and her clothes contain feathers too. She's also dropping two things vaguely star like.

8, On top an Owl as seen when looking up against it's attack. Flanked by a star and cresent moon on both sides. The man has a halo of wings and the bottom cresent of the moon floating over his head. Left and right eagles are flying from three stars to one.

Ones we can pretty much say we know for sure:

Dragon - Akatosh (/insert time-dragon deity of choice)

Hawk- Kyne(areth), due to dialogue from the early Thu'umites linking Sister Hawk to their Thu'um


Things we don't know for sure, but that make sense:

Moth- Julianos (Moth priests, and the fact that there is a reference somewhere to cults worshiping Julianos as the keepers of the Elder Scrolls)


Up in the air:

Wolf- MW guessed Arkay; I'm not quite sure why

Snake - MW guessed Dibella (is it bad that I think belly-dancers?), Fiore guessed Lorkhan/Shor; although the Redguard notion of Lorkhan as a piece of the "hungry serpent" or some such means that I could see it going either way

Whale - Shor, although the only connection seems to be that there's a whale-bone bridge to his Hall... in my limited understanding, this might mean that he likes to kill whales, but my symbolism's a little rusty

Owl - No idea (Stendarr needs a home, though, and isn't he the "Wise Ruler"?)

Bear - Mara (I can see agreeing with MW on this one; nothing's scarier than a mamma bear)

Fox - Zenithar (MW's guess), and I would almost guess Lorkhan, before realizing that the Nords don't see Lorkhan as a trickster, but as a great warlord, so the Merchant God as a Wiley Fox fits my understanding better; Zenithar could also go Snake, trading places with Dibella (sixy vixens, anybody?)




Also, we might be misunderstanding the traditional (way way waaaaaaaay traditional) Nord pantheon. They might have their Trinimac-anologue floating around with one of the animals, or Tsun and/or Stuhn as one of them (didn't one of MK's more recent pieces link Tsun with Trinimac?).

Acestor Moths so that's Arkay.

Owl, wisdom, so Julianos but I don't know if that applies to Skyrim.

I was thinking that Arkay might be the wolf mostly out of the idea that wolves are more connected to death than, say, foxes are.

Reducing Proweler's descriptions to simple animal + gender pairings yields:
1. Wale + Dude
2. Dragon + Dude
3. Serpent + Dude
4. Moth + Woman
5. Fox + Man
6. Wolf + Man
7. Eagle + Woman
8. Owl + Man

Assuming that the bear is paired with a female, that gives the right gender balance for the nine divines, though the gender of gods is less than important. If we bow to conventional genders, then the moth can't be Julianos, and would probably be Dibella, which is weird.

WOW. That clears so much for me O: I never understood any of those symbols in all of those crypts! Thought all those animals were just random O:

Can Lorkhan be a whale because he 'swims' in the same 'sea' (Nirn/Plane(t)) as all of the other 'fish' (Aedra) do but not one of them? :3 Or maybe he swims in the same 'sea' (Oblivion) as all of the other 'fish' (Daedra) do (he has Sovengarde, which is possibly a Daedric realm), but still not one of them?


I'm pretty sure Dibella is the snake - well yesterday in English Class we looked at a poem where a snake symbolized a beautiful woman

I believe the Fox should be Arkay... or more accurately Orkey Wasn't he the one to trick the Nords into living less?

Isn't Zenithar Tsun? or even if Tsun and Zenithar are not the same, won't Tsun come instead of Zenithar?
Tsun died while defending Shor... BUT... none of those animals can defend a whale O:



Nerevarine anyone? Probably not... but is he connected with any Aedric gods?
Zenithar gave Nerevarine his gauntlets... probably not connected though :S

Here are the pictures of them:

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6048/hallmuralwolf01.jpg, http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/6804/hallmuralwhale01.jpg, http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/7597/hallmuralsnake01.jpg, http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2007/hallmuralowl01.jpg, http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3705/hallmuralhawk01.jpg, http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/7898/hallmuralmoth01.jpg, http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/479/hallmuralfox01.jpg, http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5441/hallmuraldragon01.jpg, http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/7042/hallmuralbear01.jpg.

The symbols on the right side appear above them in the game.

Uhh, I'm pretty sure the wolf is a female.

And thanks Lady N.

My original thoughts were:

Bear - Arkay (dead branches, skulls)
Dragon - Auriel (fiery dragon)
Fox - Shor-as-trickster-hero???
Hawk - Kynareth
Moth - Dibella
Owl - Jullianos
Snake- Alduin/Shor-as-the-enantiomorph???
Whale - Tsun/Stun??? Shor-as-promethean-culture-hero???
Wolf - Azura (phased moons)

I don't think that they have to match up with the eight divines. The Eight are an Aldmeri invention co-opted by Alessia, after all.

Don't have time to comment in more detail or reply to ya'll's suggestions. Just throwing the above out there.

But why would the nords praise/use symbolism of Azura or Auriel? Haha High Elves and Dunmer/Chimer... could the Nords hate any race more than these two?

And I thought Arkay who originally was Orkey would be the fox as he was the trickster in Nord Mythology :S
But then why would Shor be the Bear? Well that I do not know, but maybe it has some connection with his relationship with Kyne? (Protector of the Wilds etc.?)
So this really doesn't make sense and you're probably correct

How would the moths be connected with Dibbela? :S

Also I think the Dragon is Alduin, not Auriel - the guy in the dragon picture is a Dragon Priest (who worshipped Alduin, not Auriel, no?) :S

Here's my guess:

Snake: Shor (mostly for the Redguard connection with Sep)
Dragon: Akatosh/Alduin (obviously)
Bear: Zenithar/Tsun (the badass god of badassery that always wins, and to me that just screams "bear")
Fox: Arkay/Orkey (the Nords see him as a trickster god, and the Fox is the quinissential trickster god in every mythology, ever)
Hawk: Kynareth/Kyne (as others have already argued)
Owl: Julianos/Jhunal (god of wisdom, appearing as a wise old man and/or owl, both of which are associated with wisdom. Seems pretty open and shut to me)

Wolf and the Moth are Dibella and Mara, though it's unclear which is which.
Unless the Moth is actually a Butterfly, in which case Dibella makes sense.

That just leaves Stendarr/Stuhn as the Whale, though I can't see any concievable reason for why he'd be a whale, or any animal for that matter.

Ok now this is a list I agree with!

The wolf might very well be Mara? you know, you and your wife (or vice versa) become a 'pack'?

Moths... well... they might be connected with creativity? (OK found this: http://www.insects.org/ced4/butterfly_symbols.html) A lot of it is about beauty and stuff... so.... Dibella

About the whale... it symbolizes a rite of passage into the Hall of Valour I guess... only the strong and honourable can go in (no?), a whale doesn't die without a battle? it's strong and big? no idea really :S

Well, for one, you don't have to praise your gods. Christianity acknowledges the Devil without ever worshiping him. Similarly, the Nords have an antagonistic dragon deity. I chose to call him Auriel because he's the enslaving, 'evil' dragon god, rather than the time-destroyer. Semantics, really. As for Azura, she's hardly an exclusively elven deity. Herma Mora features in Nordic myths canonically.


Textures have it as "moth," as does the lore. When I first saw the image in the previews I thought Alessia, who would parallel Mara as the mother figure.

Some thoughts:

Whale: Tsun/Zenithar as the whale. An important clue is that he guards the Whale-bone bridge in Sovngarde, his own corpse (he died defending Shor from foreign gods). And, however coincidentally, he is mentioned dragging Dibella back to a "whale-skin tent" in Shor, Son of Shor. Whales also embody the qualities of endurance of the Strong God.

Snake: This one's tough. I originally thought "Shor" because of the Space God's previous connections to the serpent iconography. But looking at the mural, the individual seems somewhat sinister, and I don't think the Nords would portray Shor as such. Instead, I took inspiration from the coiling snakes and drew a connection to the "coiling circle" of Arkay. The snake, in the real world, is closely associated in many cultures with immortality, good health, and the cycle of life. Now I won't completely back away from the Shor comparison, I think the Orkey comparison is strong enough to argue for.

I imagined the whale as Arkay - the whale is quite literally the path to the Hall of Valor, as Arkay is the shepard of the dead. He's also the "caretaker of the Far Shores" in the Yokudan pantheon, though I admit that relation to the whale is a bit of a stretch even if the whale is the only sea creature in the bunch. You definitely make good points for Tsun.

Yea but Arkay is not in the Nordic pantheon... Arkay in the Nordic pantheon is Orkey - a a trickster God who tricked all the Nords into loosing their 'immortality' or 'Mer life span" (not sure, how long does an Elf live?).


WOAA Mini revelation - Orkey reminds me of the Lorkhan O:
There is always a trickster god that tricked someone into becoming mortal O: or live much less than usual (6 years :celebration:)

I thought someone in Skyrim made a direct comparison to the Nine Divines, though?

In any case, regarding your second point, I'd like to point out that Tu'whacca, the Arkay of the Yokudan pantheon, is also known as "The Tricky God" for no readily apparent reason. Even more interesting is Alduin's similarities to Arkay, in terms of the mortal cycle, and Alduin and Orkey's apparent close alliance in the Nord mythos. And if I'm right about him being the serpent, snake-serpent-wyrm-dragon are closely anologous in many pre-scientific cultures. Then you have to remember the Space God's traditional connection to serpents as well...