I still haven’t done a proper essay on Lost. Perhaps with only a clip show airing this week I’ll be able to collect and condense my thoughts. Meantime, I’ve decided to perform a little public service to viewers frustrated by the lack of Norse mythology in last week’s episode.
Anyone who bothers to check titles of upcoming episodes of Lost and is at least passingly familiar with Star Wars got a chuckle at the name “Some Like It Hoth”. (While I haven’t started actively looking titles up myself, I discover them when reading Jeff Jensen’s column on the show at the EW website [bad link] or from commenters on Nikki Stafford’s blog as we discuss.) It’s no surprise that most informed fans assumed “Hoth” was a reference to the ice planet depicted at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, which indeed it turned out to be. But a respectable handful of Lost followers either already knew or learned through research that Hoth is one of the many variations on the name of the Norse god also known as Hod or Hodr, who was tricked by Loki into killing fellow god Baldr. They were rewarded with bupkis last week.
We’ve seen hieroglyphics and other references to Egyptian culture and mythology on Lost. The Dharma Initiative is named for a central tenet in various Indian religions. Several allusions to Judeo-Christian messianism have been made, including the presence of an actual, apparently resurrected character named Christian Shephard. And the Island’s mysterious smoke creature has been referred to as Cerberus, which is the name of the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades in Greek and Roman mythology.
There must be a way to tie Lost to Norse mythology. I shall now attempt to do exactly that through free association. (Don’t knock it. Stephen Colbert makes his Oscar predictions this way [bad link], and it’s served him well.) Although the following is obviously the product of my own cultural environs, anything particularly foreign to you should be clear in context.
Ready?
