Should the Danes have the Yggdrasil World Tree as their wonder?
Yes - Keep the Yggdrasil World Tree as the Danes’ wonder
No - Change the Danes’ wonder to something else
Don’t know
0voters
The Danes added in The Viking Sagas DLC have been announced to get the “fabled Yggdrasil World Tree” as their wonder.
Yggdrasil did not exist outside of myth, and has no special connection to historic Danes or Denmark. Pagan Norse and Germanic peoples did venerate sacred trees, but the known examples (Donar’s Oak in Central Germany, the Sacred Tree at Uppsala) were located far from Denmark.
Historical Danes of the Viking Age and later built various landmarks, any of which could serve as the in-game wonder instead, to be more grounded in Danish history.
Viking Age: Any of the Trelleborg fortresses, the Jelling Monuments (two burial mounds raised over an older stone ship, with two runestones and a church), Jomsborg (semi-legendary).
High Middle Ages: Cathedrals/churches like those in Roskilde, Ribe, Kalundborg; fortifications like Absalon’s Castle, Vordingborg, Hammershus, Kärnan/Helsingborg
Renaissance: Krogen (predecessor of Kronborg), Uraniborg
How are you even supposed to build a tree? is the first thing I thought, almost all of the other wonders (except the waterfall, the tent and the ruins mostly) are actual building that could make sense to build, but how are spending resources to build a tree?
I vote “no”. Although, admittedly, it would be enough for me if they just backtracked and said “yeah, well, it’s not really Yggdrasil” or something. But it’s better to push for a “proper” wonder while we still have the chance.
What’s funny for me is that it’d be perfect for Varangians (Swedes) and I have no idea why it’s Danish instead. Sweden did have the very real Sacred Tree of Uppsala, and Varangians as mercenaries probably don’t have time nor resources to build splendorous buildings so they can settle for taking care of a local big tree.
Pretty sure it’s for campaign purposes. The same could be said for the design of the civ not being a good representation of Kalmar Union. Hopefully it will be changed at some point; wonders are rarely seen in the game.
It doesn’t actually serve any obvious campaign purposes because neither Norwegians nor Danes have any particularly well-known sacred tree like Donar’s Oak or Irminsul, to my knowledge. By comparison, the sacred tree at Uppsala is likely gonna appear in the Finehair scenario as that scenario does feature Uppsala.
And it’s not like a Wonder-like scenario editor building couldn’t have been made to represent that. Tower of London, Minaret of Jam, Quimper Cathedral, Aachen Cathedral, Arch of Constantine, Gol Gumbaz, etc. all depict Wonder like buildings of some sort.
Guys, we know that Yggdrasil is a horrible choice for Dane’s wonder, that is very clear. It’s about why the devs chose it and i have thought of two possibilities: First and imo the most likely, for campaign purposes, second possibility would be a building that stands out and harmonizes with the design of the civ, reflecting the viking age of the Danes rather than later periods. Now, I considered the second even more stupid than the first because there are better candidates for wonder even in the viking age. That’s it.
What I mean is that it’s hard to think of any possible campaign purpose for this Wonder, because the wondrous tree of this era was located in Sweden, not Denmark. Microsoft isn’t that poor that they need to recycle a campaign-only object as a Wonder of a different civ.
I think it could be another case of liberties taken in a campaign. Also, Microsoft can have enough money for anything and still provide a small budget to make DLCs, it’s not an uncommon behavior to make the most money with the least investment. But i think the wonder choice is just the result of bad criteria from the devs.
