Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman

There’s no mistaking a Neil Gaiman book. His stories are fantastical, whimsical, and tend to have a specific hue — dark, but not grim — and are committed to exploring the supernatural on a human scale.

In this personal, engaging take on epic Norse myths, he uses all his storytelling tricks to breathe fresh life into timeless tales.

Reading mythology can sometimes be like hearing a recap of someone else’s dreams. It’s fantastical, but it’s not a good narrative. The causality is wonkus. And maybe there’s a parable somewhere, but you’ll have to dig deep for the patience to find it.

There’s a tiny bit of that in this book at the start. The first few entries tell the story of the origins of the world. There’s Yggdrasil — the tree at the center of existence — with nine worlds in its branches. We meet Odin and learn the tragic story of his losing an eye to gain the gift of wisdom. At just a few pages each, these are mostly scene-setting bits.

Then the book hits its stride and settles into a delightful read. There’s the mighty Thor and his unyielding hammer, scheming Loki and his nefarious hijinks — and a brief (engaging) treatise on why we have poetry. We read about the end times — oh, Ragnarok! — and the renewal after. The gods are petty and tempestuous, quickly roused to anger and jealousy, vindictive, and, yet, somehow still funny.

Gaiman re-tunes these old stories for a modern audience. He writes good dialogue, throws in motive, and makes the characters sing a bit more. All of the stories beg to be read out loud, if not performed.

Some scholars have sneered at this book. They seem to thump their ancient tomes and say, That’s not the real myth! Which — honestly, is amusing. These are stories. We have fragments of the old myths, passed down through the generations — and Gaiman took those raw materials to tell a better story. That’s how myths work.

If you’re looking for an academic approach to Norse mythology, then yes, this book may be overreaching. But for most of us, this is a slew of well-told stories about the Norse gods. It’s charming. It’s fun! It has a strong sense of a storyteller sitting around a fire in a Viking village — just as stories are meant to be told.

There were things Thor did when something went wrong. The first thing he did was ask himself if what had happened was Loki’s fault. Thor pondered. He did not believe that even Loki would have dared to steal his hammer. So he did the next thing he did when something went wrong, and he went to ask Loki for advice. — Neil Gaiman

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