‘This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks.’
– WILLIAM MORRIS
This book is an attempt to present the surviving myths of the Norsemen as a single narrative, from the making of the world to the vision of Ragnarok. Into the framework of the Volo-spa, the finest of all the poems of The Elder Edda and one of the oldest, I have fitted the myths contained in the rest of the ancient Norse poems, and the prose tales collected by Snorri in the two books usually known as The Prose Edda. Many of the poems have found their way into my text in almost literal translation, and much of Snorri’s narrative; gaps have been filled from Saga fragments – notably in Chapter 10 which follows The Volsunga Saga where Snorri’s synopsis is inadequate. In the stories of Odin’s wooing of Rinda and the two voyages of Thorkill the Wanderer, the rationalized versions given by Saxo Grammaticus have been restored to their mythological state, since no earlier authority survives. Scraps of ballad and folk-tale have helped to fill in small gaps – though I have been forced to skate over one or two, such as Loki’s introduction to Asgard, on the thinnest of evidence.
Norse mythology is the very antithesis of Greek from the reteller’s point of view. The wealth of literature and legend available for studying the gods of Olympus is positively embarrassing, and the problem there is one of selection. The gods of Asgard, on the other hand, remain strangely aloof: the difficulty here is to find enough about them. And when the scanty material is collected, it is still harder to fit together the incomplete jigsaw-puzzle which is all that remains to us.
Most previous retellers of the Norse myths have contented themselves with a selection of isolated stories – or else have tended to exceed the licence of invention which a reteller should be allowed. Even that classic version The Heroes of Asgard by Annie and Eliza Keary, written just over a hundred years ago (1857), spreads a gentle and romantic glamour over the stories there woven together which opens the magic casements on a very misty view of the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology and the deeds wrought in them.
Of course any version of old myths, legends, or fairy-tales must reflect the outlook of the teller of these tales – and doubtless Myths of the Norsemen is as ‘dated’ as any.
I have, however, tried to the best of my ability to keep to the spirit of the original, that air of ‘Northernness’ which is so apparent even in Vigfusson and Powell’s literal translations in their Corpus Poeticum Boreale of all the surviving poems. I have tried to vary the poetic quality of the Volo-spa with the folk-tale quality of Heimdall’s visit to Midgard or Odin’s rough and ready dealings with the Giants when intent on stealing the magic Mead, or the burlesque quality of some of Thor’s adventures, with the fate-ridden saga of Sigurd and Brynhild and the sheer epic of Baldur’s fate – one of the great tragic stories of the world.
To mould all these together into one narrative, always following my originals closely, has been an interesting experiment, and one worth making. For the great Norwegian and Icelandic Sagas of the deeds of real or half-legendary men and women were woven much in this way, and out of just such diverse material – strung together often on the thin thread of a single family’s history.
The Sagas of Midgard, whether the heroes be Gunnar or Grettir, or Sigurd himself, all end in tragedy – in the picture of the brave man struggling in vain against the powers of fate – ‘And how can man die better than facing fearful odds?’ This was the Norseman’s view of life – and the deeds and fate of the heroes of saga must have been but the earthly counterpart of the deeds of the Gods of Asgard in their struggle against the Giant forces of nature so apparent to the men of the North, and of the doom, the Ragnarok, which was to overtake them.
With this view in mind I have tried to tell the tale of Asgard and the Æsir – The Saga of Asgard, though in this new edition I have called it Myths of the Norsemen, since my original title was found to be too obscure.