Norse Mythology or The End of the World As We Know It

When I was about 10 my family acquired a book of the retelling of myths for children. It had some nifty illustrations, as I remember, but I liked the stories even more. The ones that made the biggest impression were the Norse myths, with Loki, Odin, Thor and Freya, although the only plot I remember was how Balder was killed by a mistletoe dart.

Neil Gaiman's version was published a couple of years ago, and for reasons I've more or less forgotten, I put it on the reading list for one of my book groups. The book is quite unlike what we usually read, so I wasn't surprised when something less than the usual crowd showed up. But the discussion was animated, and most of the participants said they ended up enjoying the book, in spite of their initial hesitation.

Much of what was said turned on the difference between the morals of the stories: unlike the great monotheistic religions, there is no hope of salvation in the Norse world. What gets you ahead is strength, wiliness, and perhaps a perverse sense of humour. All of these characteristics might have been good for survival in the difficult times of battling tribes, horrendous cold, pounding storms and never-distant hunger. But in the end there is little hope: the twilight of the gods is not far away, the world will be wiped clean, there is no individual salvation.

Pretty bleak stuff, made all the more pertinent because our comfortable world seems to be running headlong toward an end which no one will survive. Gaiman says he hopes that 80 years from now someone will dust off his re-telling of the stories, find them dated, and recast them in the idiom of that time. To that I say: lets hope there will be people like us 80 years from now....