Quercus Books

Guest Blog: Norse Mythology

Kevin Crossley-Holland is a poet, prize-winning children’s author and a teller of traditional tales. In this guest blog for Quercus, Kevin writes about meeting W.H. Auden, Norse cosmology and the lasting power of Norse myths…

Some people grow eager and bright-eyed; some screw up their faces. ‘The Norse myths,’ they say, ‘such a mouthful of teeth-cracking names.’

My first encounter with early north-west European literature was at Oxford – Anglo-Saxon was then part of the English course. First time round, I failed my exams, but then I was rescued by a swan. That’s another story!

After (mis-)spending much of my twenties translating Beowulf while my peers were listening to the Beatles and generally living it up, I met W. H. Auden. Crotchety apostle of the north, author with MacNeice of Letters from Iceland and translator of the eddaic poems from Old Norse. Turning his back on a little green room (at the Festival Hall) packed with the most astounding group of luminaries – Betjeman, Dionne Warwick, Gielgud, Frank Muir and Dame Edna! – the great man, dusty as ever with cigarette ash, strongly encouraged me to acquaint myself with the Norse myths, even to consider retelling them.

Never one to do things by halves, I threw over my job as editorial director of Victor Gollancz and made for Iceland. And there, I saw the astounding, frozen, fiery landscape that forms the backdrop to the myths.

‘Burning ice,’ I wrote, ‘biting flame; that is how life began.’

In stories by turns racy, ice-bright, ironic, downright funny and fearsome, the myths lay before us the nine worlds of Norse cosmology – a universe on three levels, like plates suspended one above the other, peopled by humans, gods, spirits, dark elves, giants, dwarfs, monsters and all manner of animals.

The axis of this universe is the world ash-tree Yggdrasill (another of those jaw-cracking names), which has one root embedded in each of the three levels: Asgard the world of the gods, Midgard the home of men, and Hel the realm of the dead.

Yggdrasill nourishes and sustains all creation, it suffers, it ensures continuity. Pregnant woman drink dew from its branches to ensure safe childbirth. The three goddesses of destiny sit beneath its branches and apportion human fates. And the greatest of the gods, Odin, hangs for nine nights on the tree, his side gashed with a spear (like Christ’s) as to win wisdom.

What we find in the myths are all our own hopes and passions and courage and ditherings and terrors and absurdities, embodied in their huge cast of characters and dilemmas. What happens when the giants steal the apples of youth? When magic triumphs over physical force? When the greatest threat to the gods are not the blunderbuss giants but one of their own number?

Many of the Norse myths were written down in Iceland by Snorri Sturluson in the early 13th century at a time when belief in the old gods was dying out. When I retold his brilliant versions, and published them in 1980, I hadn’t the least idea that this would become one of my longest-lived and successful books, now selling almost 10,000 copies each year.

You can put this down to the ever-increasing number of USA college courses studying traditional tale. But doesn’t it also have to do with the western world’s growing spiritual hunger, its growing interest in belief systems new and old?

Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin’s book on Norse Mythology The Penguin Book of Norse Myths is being re-issued by Penguin next year.

Norse Myth also features in his next children’s book The Viking Saga: Bracelet of Bones, which traces the epic journey of a young Viking heroine (out in April 2011).

For more information, please visit Kevin’s website.