A To Z Challenge 2023: Myth And Folk Tale In Fiction - N Is For Norse Influence

 Norse/Scandinavian folklore, myth and legend has been plundered for stories for quite some time. And I’m going to cheat a little because of a story I want to mention. 

J.R.R. Tolkien certainly loved his northern stuff. He built his own world, certainly, but it didn’t come from nowhere. His inspirations came from up north. For example, his twelve Dwarves in The Hobbit have names taken from Dwarves in Norse mythology, listed in the Old Norse Voluspa. For that matter, Gandalf’s name was also from that list.The Dwarves themselves are taken from German and Norse myth and legend. They are amazing craftsmen both in myth and Tolkien’s fiction. You might remember  the ones in that story about Loki and Sif’s hair, where they created such goodies as Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. 

Ursula K Le Guin’s story, “The Necklace”, published in the book Rocannon’s World, certainly has hints of the story of Freya’s necklace, the Brisingamen. In it, the heroine goes in search of a necklace that belonged to an ancestress, as she wants it for a dowry she couldn’t afford. She finds her way to the Claymen, the equivalent of Norse Dwarfs. They are craftsmen who had made the necklace, and help her to find her way to where it’s being kept - in a museum on another planet… another folk tale element is in it, but I’ll avoid spoilers here. You can buy it in ebook.

Joanne Harris wrote a series of novels inspired by Norse myth. Two of them, The Gospel Of Loki and The Testament of Loki, are seen from the viewpoint of the trickster god. The first-mentioned is the Norse myths as seen by Loki. In the second, Loki escapes from the Underworld via a computer game and helps a teenage girl whose body he is sharing to gain confidence, a makeover and a girlfriend. 

In this series, Ragnarok is not really the end of the world, at least not for humans. Five hundred years later - in YA novel Runemarks - civilisation is back up and running. The gods are in the underworld, mostly, but not truly dead. Odin is wandering Earth and acting as a mentor to teenage girl Maddy Smith, who was born with a runemark on her hand, which makes her an object of suspicion in her village but gives her powers. Along the way, she meets a red-haired young man who is known as the Captain; he’s Loki, who got hold of a body and is back. She has a quest… 

I bought all these in Apple Books, but you can get them in print on Amazon.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has Norse references in its sixth title, And Another Thing… written by Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series(which has fairies in it), based on notes written by Douglas Adams before his death, but never finished. The god Thor plays a fairly substantial role in it. He has a spaceship, by the way. Available at your good book websites, or get your bookshop to order a copy.

In Parke Godwin’s novel The Tower Of Beowulf (which you may have to get second-hand - see Amazon) based on the Old English poem, Grendel’s mother is a daughter of Loki. Her father, feeling sorry for her, has her brought up in a house where the mirrors show her as beautiful. In fact, she can cast an illusion, and uses it to seduce a king, who is Grendel’s father. (When you think about it, that makes Grendel the rightful king of that place).

When Loki is tied up with that snake dripping poison on him, it isn’t his wife Sigyn who comes to help him, it’s his daughter. 

It’s a lovely novel, like all Parke Godwin’s other works and worth chasing up. You can get a print copy - mostly second hand - on Amazon. It doesn’t seem to be available in ebook.

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods has a huge mix of gods from all over, but Odin is one of the main characters, along with the hero Shadow Moon’s jail cell mate, known to him as Low Key Liesmith. There is also a story among the “Coming To America” chapters in which a Norse ship arrives in America well before the eleventh century historical dates. They pray to their gods for a fair wind to get them home. A Native American wanders into their camp and they get him drunk and sacrifice him to Odin in the traditional manner, by hanging. Centuries later, when the historical Vikings arrive, three of their gods are waiting for them.

There are so many books with Norse myth in them, but I’m going to finish here with a novel that has Norsemen in it, but not myth. It is inspired by the Vinland Saga. We know that the Norse probably got to North America in the eleventh century, but not where they settled. They didn’t stay there, but it makes a great story.

The Technicolor Time Machine is by Harry Harrison. It’s a very funny time travel story in which a film studio about to go out of business as soon as they get audited on Monday get access to a time machine and take their actors and crew into the past to make a film about the Vikings settling in America. It gives them free or cheap extras and they can go into the past and film the whole thing in a week present day time. When they can’t find any Norse settlements to film in, they do it themselves with the help of a local Norse leader. You can probably guess how it works out.

Available in ebook, both in Apple Books and Kindle. Also, if you visit YouTube, there is a BBC radio play of it written by Chris Boucher, who wrote a lot of scripts for the SF series Blake’s 7 and later Star Cops.

Do you have any favourite Norse-themed fiction?