The Northern Thing and Me

   My first contact with the myths of my Scandinavian heritage was my maternal grandmother telling me a story about seeing a tomtegubbe on her father's farm in Närpes, Finland. She was a Swede Finn who spent several of her teenage years in Finland and my maternal grandfather was Norwegian and Danish and grew up in Sweden.
   
   The D'aulaires' Book of Norse Myths (originally called The Book of Gods and Giants) was the next, and still most effecting, exposure to the stories my ancestors. (True story - A few hours after I wrote the preceding sentence I went to a bookstore in Kutztown, PA and my wife pointed out a hardcover copy of the book and said Do you want to get it?". She didn't know I'd been writing about it and is pretty discouraging of me buying anymore physical books. I kind of had to buy it at that point.)

   The first, and still most appealing, part of the book are the illustrations. The D'aulaires' vivid lithographs are the bedrock of my mental images of the Norse myths. I read this book before I read a Thor comic. Let me tell you, when I did my disappointment was intense. I'm a huge Jack Kirby fan, but, c'mon, do I really have to tell you which is cooler?

     They have a great simplicity that sends a shot straight to my Norse monkey brain. The majesty of Odin, the fury of Thor, and the canniness of Loki are shown to perfection in this book. I can smell the ozone from the lightning crackling off Mjolnir and I can hear Tanngrisnir's and Tanngnjóstr's hooves cracking the stones under their hooves in the picture of Thor. A northern chill runs through even the loveliest pictures in the book.

   The book's stories, adapted from the Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, have the right mix of fairy tale magic and mythic power to sweep away any kid susceptible to the power of Story and I was definitely (still am) one of those. The tales range from the gigantic-in-scope creation and destruction of the world to the smaller events like Skaði's unfortunate marriage to Njörðr. Thor and Loki's escapades are still funny.  The death of Balder and refusal of Thokk (Loki in disguise) to weep for him continues to move me.  Awe, epic courage and horror are all present in the Norse legends and they filled me with wonder.

   As an adult I've tried to fix on what it is that still draws me to the Norse myths instead of the Greek or any others, say, Egyptian or Babylonian. Once I read the D'aulaires' book I was always bummed out that the books my English teachers gave me with myths in them always skewed to the Greek stories. Something in the Norse stories grabs me a way no other culture's myths have.

 The first part, is the simple "coolness" of the stories. Odin kills a giant big enough to build the world out of, gives up his eye and later hangs himself to gain knowledge, and rides across the sky on an eight-legged horse. That's just pure awesome smothered in more awesome. Even though Zeus fought the Titans he just seems like a cheap Lothario in a dress flinging around lightning bolts.  Add world-circumferencing serpents, scheming Jotuns and ships made from dead mens' nails and it just awesome slathered in AWESOME!  I'm still a fanboy and these things sing (often in very loud heavy metal stylings) to me.

   The second part is the deeper nature of the myths; the world is a dark and

inimical place and no one gets out the other side, and yet, the heroes and gods

stand tall. I was a nerdy kid and I'm still a fairly nerdy guy. My opportunities for acts of heroism were and are pretty limited. Heroic refusal to submit to despair is even more appealing than just facing monsters (though they do that too).
   I'm also drawn to the mist hidden fjords and dark pine forests of the sagas. Sunlight rarely pierces these myths and the unceasing chill that blankets the North never lifts. I find myself moved by this world. Perhaps because it matches so many of my grandparents' recollections of their homelands, it calls me.
   A few years ago I travelled through Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota. If you don't know, let me tell you, it's filled with Scandinavians. One town had fifteen different Lutheran churches. The only Scandinavians I grew up with were my immediate family. Most of Staten Island's Swedes and many of its Norwegians had left for New Jersey by the time I was growing up. And in the middle of Bemidji, Minnesota I felt like I was home. It was a very strange sensation. My point is, if being surrounded by people I have only some distant geographic connection with evoked that reaction in me, why shouldn't my ancestors' myths have a similar reaction?

   So that's my long-winded, rambling take on the Norse myths and why I like them. I'd love to hear other folk's take on these stories or what myths capture their imagination. If anybody's a writer, do they have any noticeable influence on what your write?  Let me know.