by Anthony Perconti
in Issue 94, November 2019
For me, reading a book by Neil Gaiman is like having an old friend, whom you haven’t seen in a long while, over for dinner and drinks. Time has elapsed since you last socialized, but as old companions, you pick up exactly where you left off, and are all the better for it at the evenings conclusion. Growing up as a comic book fan in the 1980’s, his transformative Sandman series dazzled a whole generation of readers (myself included) as to what the medium was capable of. At the completion of that masterwork, Gaiman made the move into traditional prose fiction. Here too, he made his mark as a highly inventive, modern fantasist. His credentials are too numerous to list here; suffice it to say that Gaiman is a restless storyteller. An author with manifold interests, whose opinions on said topics are informative as well as entertaining. In relation to this point, in 2017, Gaiman released Norse Mythology. This book is a retelling of these antique myths for a modern, 21st Century audience. And like an object manufactured in the forges of Svartalfheim, it contains pure magic.
In recounting these tales, Gaiman takes a respectful approach to the subject matter and the source material. They are derived exclusively from the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda. He does not play fast and loose neither with the setting nor in making his own writerly additions. Gaiman plays fair with these myths.
His scope is the entirety of the Norse cosmology detailing the creation (and pre-creation) of the Nine Worlds, until the inevitable end of all things, known as Ragnarok. Given the immense cosmological scale of this myth cycle, Gaiman counterpoints this vast expanse of time by lensing the focus of the narrative through three primary Aesir gods; Odin, Thor and the double dealing Loki. The stories in Norse Mythology are defined primarily by the interplay between these three deities, with other members of the pantheon acting as supporting players (although in all fairness, Freya steals many of the scenes that she is featured in).
Gaiman portrays the cosmos of The Nine Worlds as simultaneously familiar, yet quite alien to our modern sensibilities. It is a setting rich in marvels, not to mention a healthy amount of bizarre spectacle as well. “Look up into the sky: you are looking at the inside of Ymir’s skull. The stars you see at night, the planets, all the comets and the shooting stars, these are the sparks that flew from the fires of Muspell. And the clouds you see by day? These were once Ymir’s brains, and who knows what thoughts they are thinking, even now.” Within these pages, you will find such wonders as a world wall hewn form the eyelashes of a (dead) celestial titan, the cosmic tree, Yggdrasil, that interlinks the nine realms, a warship comprised entirely from the fingernails of the dead, a gossipy messenger squirrel that travels between the worlds, a god of wisdom, brought into being through the intermingled saliva of the Aesir and the Vanir, the monstrous offspring of Loki and Angrboda and of course more frost giants, ogres, dark elves, fire demons and enchanted weapons than you can shake a stick at.
Gaiman assigns his deities distinct personality traits; red bearded Thor is certainly brave and mighty, but is also a dimwit. Freya is hot tempered who does not suffer fools (i.e. Loki and Thor) lightly. Odin is ever cunning and quite the equivocator, while Loki, the god of grifters is always working every available angle, ever playing both ends against the middle. “Loki’s green eyes flashed with anger and with admiration, for he loved a good trick as much as he hated being fooled.”It’s pretty obvious that Gaiman loves writing this trickster god, he gets some of the wittiest lines of dialog. Next to Odin and perhaps Freya, he is the most complex, and certainly, the most morally ambiguous of the lot. The characters speech patterns in this novel are a far cry from the purple prose found in those old Stan Lee and Jack Kirby The Mighty Thor comics. These gods speak like you and I, in the modern idiom. “Impressive, said Thor. “Good job!” This edition of Norse Mythology is akin to a brand new coat of paint on the house you grew up in; familiarly comfortable while at the same time seeming fresh and vibrant.
Even at the destruction point of the Norse cosmos, Gaiman peppers in a small glimmer of hope for the future. Fimbulwinter will not last forever. Life will take root and flourish again after Ragnarok. As Heimdall tells Loki as they lay dying, “There is no end. It is simply the end of old times…”Once the cosmic reset button has been pressed, a new cycle can commence. Like the Borgesian concept of circular time, echoes of the past ripple out into the infinite, eventually folding back onto itself, completing a circuit. Or as Gaiman states so elegantly on the final page of the story, “And the game begins anew.”
Norse Mythology (Amazon Link)
https://www.amazon.com/Norse-Mythology-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0393356183/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1573659770&sr=1-3
Neil Gaiman’s Website
https://neilgaiman.com/
©November 2019, Anthony Perconti
Anthony Perconti‘s lives and works in the hinterlands of New Jersey with his wife and kids. He enjoys good stories across many different genres and mediums. His reviews appear frequently in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.