Neil Gaiman “Uses” Norse Myths for New Book

Early Publicity for Writer’s Next Book Shocker

♦ Peter Mann looks through the dustbin of press releases recycled as “read journalism” in the New York Times, so you don’t have to…

Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, due out in February 2017 from  WW Norton retells famous myths about the gods of Asgard. Like The Gospel of Loki by Joanne Harris, or Ragnarok by AS Byatt, or Ragnarok by Walt Simonson, or … you get the point. This is not a new idea. It was to an editor at W. W. Norton, or so a story in the New York Times tells us.

Apparently Jack Kirby is to blame. Gaiman (sorry, “The novelist Neil Gaiman”) was traumatised by The Mighty Thor when he was 7, moving on to Roger Lancelyn Green’s Myths of the Norsemen, which he read until it fell apart. When an editor at WW Norton asked if he would be interested in writing a book about Norse mythology, “Mr. Gaiman was wildly enthusiastic”. Not making this up, and obviously not pointing out that the American Gods TV show is in need of a cash-in tie-in, featuring, as it does, many of those gods.

“To get the opportunity to retell the myths and poems we have inherited from the Norse was almost too good to be true,” Gaiman says in a statement released by WW Norton. “I hope the scholarship is good, but much more than that, I hope that I have retold stories that read like the real thing: sometimes profound, sometimes funny, sometimes heroic, sometimes dark, and always inevitable.”

Norse Mythology is described as “an almost novelistic retelling of famous myths about the gods of Asgard.”  I have literally no idea what this means. Is it a novel or is it a maintenance manual? The NYT goes on to tell us that a) it will cover all the stuff you’d expect – Ice giants, yadda yadda, Loki, yadda yadda, Ragnarok, yadda yadda. This adds to Gaiman’s use of the Norse myths – as well as the aforementtioned American Gods he has a children’s book Odd and the Frost Giants, in which (spoiler alert) a young boy encounters a fox, an eagle and a bear who turn out to be Loki, Odin and Thor.

“Those Norse tales have accompanied me through pretty much everything I’ve done,” Gaiman said. “They ran like a vein of silver through Sandman, they were the bedrock of American Gods.

Featured image: Neil at his swooniest