This prolific and popular fabulist retells the legends he first
loved. As an English boy, Neil Gaiman took inspiration from stories set in the
Northern lands. He credits Roger Lancelyn Green and Kevin Crossley-Holland for
their compilations of its lore. What Gaiman contributes to this short shelf, beyond name recognition,
is wit and verve. His Norse Mythology compiles brisk
chapters revealing a cosmology's creation, and the fulminations and
machinations of its gods until its destruction.
We retain few sources about this venerable treasure-trove.
Gaiman's brief introduction surmises: "It is, perhaps, as if the only
tales of the gods and demigods of Greece and Rome that had survived were of the
deeds of Theseus and Hercules." Similar to the 85% of classical literature
lost, a fraction of the Northern corpus survives. From these fragments, Gaiman
in everyday language which children and adults will both enjoy invigorates a
wise and worthy chronicle of exploits, often tricks, schemes and brawls.
"I was surprised, when I finished the stories and read them
as a sequence, to find that they felt like a journey, from the ice and the fire
that the universe begins in to the fire and the ice that end the world."
Gaiman's admission prefaces an exciting episode of the dawn of his frozen
setting. Inside Ymir's skull, readers see the how the Norse sky shines as
stars, as sparks "that flew from the fires of Muspell." Clouds pass
as the remnants of Ymir's brains, "and who knows what thoughts they are
thinking, even now." Gaiman's simple prose allows readers to enter into a
mindset of primeval awe.
Odin's plot to build a wall may
remind audiences of another land of fire and ice, in Game of Thrones. Today's fantasists as fans and writers
turn to George R.R. Martin as they long have to his predecessor J.R.R. Tolkien,
whose scholarship and passion for the sagas enriched his mythology. Trolls and
giants, elves and the dead, humans and dwarfs and demons loom large in Norse
Mythology too. Action does not falter in Gaiman's performance (also issued as
an audiobook). This collection flows, caught up in primal energy. As a towering
figure takes on Thor, the narrative suddenly veers to his rival's perspective.
"The mountain giant saw the hammer getting rapidly bigger as it came
hurtling toward him, and then he saw nothing else, not ever again. A piddling
pair outwitted flail in a rowboat "like a couple of bearded lobsters."
Such imagery and control show Gaiman's affection for his material.
Frey from Odin's throne looks out over the four points of the world. "And
then he looked to the north and saw the thing that was missing in his
life." Echoes of oral tradition linger on the page. Drama and love enter,
and then tragedy.
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