Originally published on September 6, 2017 on WordPress. Copyright 2021 Lady in the Blue Box Publishing, written by me, Rachel Beth Ahrens, All Rights Reserved.
It’s been such a long time since I wrote any letters to any authors lately, so I’d like to take this time to write another letter to the same author I wrote the first time… again. I know, I probably shouldn’t write anything to him a second time, but since I’ve finished listening to the Audible version of Norse Mythology, I think I should take this opportunity to ask him some questions about the whole work.
After all, I really enjoyed his latest book.
May contain spoilers. RAYOR. (Read at your own risk)
Dear Neil Gaiman,
I’m writing to you again because I’ve just finished your Audible narration of your latest book and I would like to place my praise and awesomeness upon you.
Really, you have done it again with this one. Only thing is, it really wasn’t your unique story to tell, or something that you made up yourself. This was actually a story passed through generations of cultures such as the Vikings, long before they accepted Christianity as their faith.
Yes, I did my research, and yes, I’m talking about your latest work Norse Mythology.
I loved it. If my mom read the actual book, instead of refusing to listen to the audio book when I wanted her to, she would have loved it also. My mom is infatuated with Shakespeare, poetry, Wonder Woman, some comics and comic movies, and most definitely, Thor, god of thunder.
My mom loved learning about the Norse gods, with the Vikings worshiping them as deities. So, she sort of passed that knowledge onto me. She once brought home a DVD about the Norse myths, that told the historians’ point of view on what the Vikings went through before they were converted to Christians, and later how they wove the stories of the gods, and how Thor defeated the giant serpent that also cost him his life at the time of Ragnarok.
There were also some things I didn’t know about the Norse myths that you actually covered. You said that there was a terrible fight between Loki and Heimdall at the end of all the battles. Odin died battling the wolf, Thor died fighting the serpent, and the other realms of Yggdrasil were destroyed when this fight occurred. Loki was still outraged, angry, upset, and distraught that everything was destroyed, but Heimdall, who could see everything, said that a man and a woman were safe within the tree, and they would repopulate the world.
I didn’t know Odin had to fight a wolf in order to die. I didn’t know that Heimdall and Loki fought each other to their deaths. But I did know that according to the historians and archaeologists who studied the culture of the Vikings and the Scandinavians who worshiped Odin and Thor, the ash tree where Yggdrasil used to be is where the two people emerged from to repopulate the world, and in the Christian faith, they were considered Adam and Eve leaving Eden.
Man, you’re pretty cool, dude.
But I didn’t know that Thor and Loki had children. I had no idea that Loki, in mare form, got pregnant by a horse, and then gave birth to an even more powerful horse and loved it like a son. I had no idea that when Loki did something to make Thor’s wife Sif go bald, and he had to go to the dwarves so he could make it up to his brother, and that was how Thor got his mighty hammer Mjolnir.
But what truly bothers me is the new Marvel Thor movie is coming out this year in a matter of months. It is also ironically named Ragnarok, which was the end of all things, the coming apocalypse to all of the gods of Asgard and the nine realms. But I’ve seen the trailer, and I keep thinking: why are they doing this Grandmaster and Hulk thing rather than using the Midgard serpent? Where is Nessie, the Loch Ness monster?!
I also love the fact that in your introduction, you mentioned how much you loved the Marvel comics growing up and that you looked forward to writing a fantasy involving these mythical legends passed down through the cultures of the Vikings. I also wondered about some of the stories you didn’t tell, such as some of the gods and goddesses you mentioned that didn’t have any stories for those tales had been forgotten for centuries. I’m so proud of you for mentioning them.
You did your research on all of the gods and their families, the beasts, the dwarves, the giants, and everything that was created during those times of the people north and east of England, long before they accepted Christianity as their main faith. Absolutely marvelous take on the Norse legends. Now I know which end of Odin’s mead that you have tasted for the greatest prose ever. Then again, it was the mead of poetry, not prose.
Nevertheless, I’m sure you will be welcome in the writer’s hall of Valhalla.
-The Lady in the Blue Box
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