Loke and Thor and Odin and...

[oneiriad]

You know, I love the Nordic Mythology. The old gods and all that. Seriously, I love them. It's an old love - I grew up reading Erik Menneskesøn and the old Valhalla comics - probably where I got it.

I guess I am a sort of purist in my approach to the myths, though. Back when I was little some television channel used to send these old sort-of-animated series with Marvel heroes. One was about Thor. And I never liked that one - kept asking myself embarrasing questions like why was he a blond when Thor was a redhead? Where was the stone in his forehead? Why did he have a longshafted hammer when it is a point in one myth that Mjølner has a short handle? And why did he keep 'courting' the secretary when Thor is a happily married man - sorry, god? (Wait, male gods and human women, except for some reason I seem to remember objections to the pairing from other gods - which makes even less sense - oh well, never mind, what did I expect from an American reinterpretation?)

Anyway, don't get me wrong. I like retellings - as long as they are intelligent and does not simply display ignorance (which is partly why I have been so annoyed about last year's Christmas calendar - I mean, can I please have my Nordic gods without a strong garnish of Christianity? Please? None of this "forgiveness" nonsense.)

Still, the myths are good. Sneaky and clever gods, fights, arguments, insults aplenty, incest, mpreg (well, sort of), crossdressing, monsters, all that. Reading the Edda is lots of fun, even if most of the translations into Danish have a tendency to be old-fashioned Danish. Sometimes I have wondered if it might not be easier to simply learn Old Norse...

Anyway, am currently reading the Poetic Edda, and - despite all the good stuff, it annoys me. Mostly it irritates me that the Vikings - whatever else they were - never did manage to have a culture with a strong focus on writing. As it is, the myths were written down late - once Christianity had had time to influence the oral traditions (Balder, god of light, brotherly betrayel, returning after the end of the world - any takers?). And Christians preserved the myths. But also, when you read the Edda, you get hints - tantalizing hints - about stories that must have existed, yet we do not have them. For instance, in Lokasenna, Odin mentions that Loke once spent eight years as a woman and had children during that time - but where is the story? It's frustrating. Very frustrating.