COMMONSCUT

Commons Cut Stories

Myths and Legends

Greek, Norse, Arthurian and other ancient stories creators still borrow.

Greek, Norse and Arthurian stories that writers still borrow, and the modern myths that grew up around them. Did Vikings wear horned helmets? Was Pandora's box a box? Is Santa really Odin?

Each story follows the paper trail back to the oldest source we can find and says where the trail stops.

6 stories

  • Dec 17, 1874: Wagner's letter asking Carl Emil Doepler to design the Ring costumes (152nd anniversary).

    How Vikings Got Their Horns

    The horned Viking helmet comes from an 1876 opera wardrobe. Before that, illustrators gave Vikings wings, and the composer's own wife said the new costumes looked like "Indian chiefs."

  • Dec 23, 2026

    Is Santa Really Odin?

    Santa's sleigh team went from one reindeer to eight in two years, 1821 to 1823, in two New York publications. Odin's eight-legged horse is 600 years older and an ocean away, and no document connects the two.

  • Dec 24, 2026

    The Mistletoe Kiss Myth

    The usual Christmas explainer says the mistletoe kiss comes from a Norse myth in which the goddess Frigg brings her son back to life and promises a kiss to anyone under the plant. In the 13th-century Icelandic account, the mistletoe is the dart that kills Baldr, and he stays dead.

  • Jan 1, 2027

    The New Year Poem With No Title

    England's great Christmas-to-New-Year poem has no title in its only manuscript. Catalogers in 1696 and 1802 lumped it in with a religious dream poem, and the name we use today comes from Frederic Madden, who printed it "for the first time" in 1839.

  • Valentine's Day 2027.

    Valentine’s Day Starts With Chaucer

    Every February, explainers trace Valentine's Day to a Roman fertility festival and to a martyred priest who signed a love note "From your Valentine." The earliest text that ties St. Valentine's Day to choosing a mate is a Chaucer poem about birds from the 1380s. And what is often called the oldest surviving English valentine letter, from 1477, was written by a young woman worrying about her dowry.

  • Pandora Never Had a Box

    In the oldest version of the myth, Pandora opens a pithos, the big earthenware jar Greek farmers stored grain and wine in. The "box" comes from a Latin retelling by Erasmus, some 2,000 years later.

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from Half-In Productions