Asgard On Earth

After Asgard burned, after the great golden kingdom vanished in light and fire, the surviving Asgardians found themselves on a long quiet journey through space, looking for a new place to call home.

They thought about many planets. They thought about going back to one of the Nine Realms. They thought about wandering forever.

In the end, they chose a small green country on the cool blue Earth.

They chose Norway.

There was a small fishing village on the rugged coast — a place called Tønsberg, with red-painted houses on grey stone hills, and small wooden boats bobbing in the harbor. The villagers were quiet people who had lived simply for many centuries. They drank coffee. They mended nets. They watched the sea.

One ordinary morning, the people of Tønsberg woke up to find an enormous spaceship hovering above their bay, and a great golden-haired Asgardian standing at the front, asking very politely if his people might rent some land.

That was the beginning of New Asgard.

The early years were hard.

For the Asgardians, who had lived for thousands of years in palaces of gold and on roads paved with starlight, the transition to a small Norwegian fishing village was the strangest thing that had ever happened to them. Imagine learning to live in a one-story house when you have spent your life in a tower. Imagine learning to fish for cod when you used to feast at the All-Father's table. Imagine going to a Norwegian grocery store and trying to find the right kind of milk when your previous diet had been mead and roasted boar.

There was much grumbling. There was much confusion. The Warriors of Asgard learned, with great patience, how to use a microwave.

Then came Thanos.

The Snap took half of New Asgard with it, just as it took half of every place in the universe. Friends. Spouses. Children. Many of the Asgardians who had survived Ragnarok did not survive the Snap.

The five years that followed were the saddest in Thor's long life.

He retreated into himself. He stopped shaving. He stopped exercising. He gained weight. He drank too much beer. He spent his days in his little house with his roommates Korg and Miek, playing video games and yelling at internet strangers and refusing to be a king or a god or much of anything at all.

He blamed himself for the Snap. He whispered, over and over, the words that haunted him most. "I should have gone for the head." (Because in his final battle with Thanos, he had aimed his great axe Stormbreaker at the Titan's chest, when he could have ended everything with one swing at the neck. The Snap had been his failure, he thought, and only his.)

He grieved. He hid. He stopped being Thor.

In the meantime, the rest of New Asgard did not stop. Could not stop.

A surly, brilliant former warrior named Valkyrie stepped up to do what Thor could not. She became the steady hand. She organized the village. She made sure the food was distributed. She negotiated trade deals with Norway. She made sure the kids — the children of Asgard, now growing up on Earth — had a school to attend and a future to grow into.

New Asgard began, very slowly, to thrive.

Norwegian tourists started coming. Curious humans wanted to see the gods who lived in the fishing village. New Asgard became, of all the surprising things, a popular tourist destination. Visitors could walk down its narrow streets and see Asgardian warriors having coffee at small bakeries, and try Asgardian-style mead at the local pub, and watch ancient ceremonies on important holidays.

The Asgardians contributed back. They used their advanced technology to give the town clean sustainable energy. They acted as a small specialized defense force for the region. They opened a school where Asgardian customs were taught alongside Norwegian ones, so the children of both worlds could learn from each other.

When Thor at last came back to himself — when the Avengers gathered to reverse the Snap, and Thor was needed once again — he was astonished to see what his people had built without him. They had not waited for him to feel ready. They had simply gotten on with the hard work of living.

After the great battle that ended Thanos for good, Thor came home to New Asgard. He stood on a hill overlooking the village, watching the smoke rise from the chimneys, listening to the distant laughter of children, smelling fish stew on the wind.

He made a quiet, important decision.

He walked down the hill to Valkyrie's small office, and he placed his crown gently on the desk in front of her.

"You should be king," he said. "King of Asgard."

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. "I'm not a king."

"Yes you are," Thor said simply. "You have been for years. I am only making it official."

Valkyrie became the ruler of New Asgard. Thor went off to join the Guardians of the Galaxy and discover what he wanted to be when he was no longer a king. The Asgardians flourished. The village grew. The story continued.

Today, if you visit Tønsberg in Norway, you can stand on the small stone pier and look out at New Asgard, where the gods of the old world have made themselves into neighbors of the new one. You can buy a postcard. You can taste the famous Asgardian honey cakes. You can shake hands with a thousand-year-old warrior who will smile and ask you how your day is going.

New Asgard taught Thor — and everyone watching — that home is not a place. Home is the people you stand beside.

The golden palaces are gone.

But the song of Asgard plays on, in a small fishing village by a cold blue sea, in the laughter of children who are gods and humans both, in the steady patient courage of a people who refused to disappear.

Asgard lives.