![]() ![]() ‘But what is it made of?’ asked Odin, fingering the fetter. The stories feature old favourites such as Thor, Odin and Freya as well as lesser known players such as the trickster god Loki, whose idea of a laugh is sneaking into his fellow god’s bedrooms at night and cutting off their wife’s hair, and whose son is a wolf so dangerous that he has to be bound with a special fetter created by dwarves: The sequence opens with the creation (the first man and woman were sweated out of the armpit of an evil frost giant) and ends with the apocalypse (Ragnarok). The universe at this time, according to the Norse worldview, consisted of nine worlds on three levels, housing variously gods, giants, people, elves, dwarves and dead ones. The myths in their current forms date from the 10th century onwards and take the form of epic poems, apparently elegantly constructed and full of rhyme and word play, written mostly in old Germanic (we’re talking pre-Christian Scandinavia and Iceland). Somewhere between a story book and a reference book, the detailed notes section is only slightly shorter than the part dedicated to the myths themselves. Kevin Crossley-Holland is a poet and translator and for this edition has apparently gone right to the source, translating and piecing together fragments of original manuscripts to attempt a complete reconstruction. ![]() ![]() ![]() There are other books on Norse Myths, but possibly none quite as thorough as this one. ![]()
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