I do not know about Tolkien, because Tolkien is merely fantasy and Lord Of The Rings is not a source on Norse Mythology. The real source of Norse Mythology is the Poetic Edda, which is just another oral transmission, just like our Scriptures. But the Edda is a combination of Shruti and Smriti as known from the introduction section of Henry Adams Bellows' translation of the Poetic Edda:
Icelandic tradition, however, persisted in ascribing either this Edda
or one resembling it to Snorri's much earlier compatriot, Sæmund the
Wise (1056-1133). When, early in the seventeenth century, the learned
Arngrimur Jonsson proved to everyone's satisfaction that Snorri and
nobody else must have been responsible for the work in question, the
next thing to determine was what, if anything, Sæmund had done of the
same kind. The nature of Snorri's book gave a clue. In the
mythological stories related a number of poems were quoted, and as
these and other poems were to all appearances Snorri's chief sources
of information, it was assumed that Sæmund must have written or
compiled a verse Edda--whatever an "Edda" might be--on which Snorri's
work was largely based.
So matters stood when, in 1643, Brynjolfur Sveinsson, Bishop of
Skalholt, discovered a manuscript, clearly written as early as 1300,
containing twenty-nine poems, complete or fragmentary, and some of
them with the very lines and stanzas used by Snorri. Great was the joy
of the scholars, for here, of course, must be at least a part of the
long-sought Edda of Sæmund the Wise. Thus the good bishop promptly
labeled his find, and as Sæmund's Edda, the Elder Edda or the Poetic
Edda it has been known to this day.
Since this has no sources in written form, I will quote what my Norse occult friend practitioner had told me, when we had a coven meeting :-
".......and thus they were written down by the shamans who could visit those realms and traverse the entire Yggdrasil in a single command of their mind......."
This resembles a lot of what our Vedas are, Apaurusheya.
Another excerpt from Bellows' book reads:
There is even less agreement about the birthplace, authorship and date
of the Eddic poems themselves than about the nature of the existing
collection. Clearly the poems were the work of many different men,
living in different periods; clearly, too, most of them existed in
oral tradition for generations before they were committed to writing.
In general, the mythological poems seem strongly marked by pagan
sincerity, although efforts have been made to prove them the results
of deliberate archaizing; and as Christianity became generally
accepted throughout the Norse world early in the eleventh century, it
seems altogether likely that most of the poems dealing with the gods
definitely antedate the year 1000.
This is similar to Puranas, wherein many episodes of gods and heroes are mentioned. And the characters have a similar theme, righteous vs unrighteous. While we have races in Hindu mythology, Devas, Danavas, Asuras, Rakshasas the Norse too had their own, Aesir, Vanir, Jötunn etc.
Wikipedia, a seemingly liberal and rational site mentions :
The afterlife is a complex matter in Norse mythology. The dead may go
to the murky realm of Hel, a realm ruled over by a female being of the
same name, may be ferried away by valkyries to Odin's martial hall
Valhalla, or may be chosen by the goddess Freyja to dwell in her field
Fólkvangr. The goddess Rán may claim those that die at sea, and the
goddess Gefjon is said to be attended by virgins upon their death.
Texts also make reference to reincarnation. Time itself is presented
between cyclic and linear, and some scholars have argued that cyclic
time was the original format for the mythology. Various forms of a
cosmological creation story are provided in Icelandic sources, and
references to a future destruction and rebirth of the world - Ragnarok
- are frequently mentioned in some texts.
This is interesting.
The Ragnarok is a similar parallel to Pralaya. And the cyclic timeline is similar to Hindu concept of Yugas, although their timelines are not divided into four halves of decreasing harmony/order/righteousness (Dharma, in short). The different places of death may be similar to the destination of a person in Hinduism, according to his deeds, either going to Naraka or Chandraloka or even Vaikuntha. In Norse religion (I won't call it mythology) Odin's hall Valhalla is considered to be the highest honor one can get. And once they are reborn, they can carry out their duties in Midgard (earth) again.
For more info, refer to this site - https://gangleri.nl/articles/32/asatru-and-hinduism/
