Pagan, Shinto & Spiritual Book Reviews April 2017

Last updated on: April 27, 2017 at 9:53 pm by Megan Manson

Pagan, Shinto & Spiritual Book Reviews April 2017 2017-04-27T21:53:44+00:00 Megan Manson

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This month, two recent adaptations of the Norse myths by two bestselling authors go head-to-head: Joanne M Harris’ 2014 novel The Gospel of Loki, and Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, published earlier this year.

But which book will get Read Of The Month?

The full list of this month’s reviews is as follows….

Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
Joanne M Harris, The Gospel of Loki
Takeshi Mitsuhashi, Zero kara hajimeru jinja to matsuri nyumon
Philip West, The Old Ones in the Old Book: Pagan Roots of The Hebrew Old Testament

Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2017)

I’m a big Neil Gaiman fan but for some reason I’ve never quite enjoyed his writings inspired by world mythology (American Gods, Anansi Boys etc.) as much as his other works. I therefore wasn’t sure what I’d think of his latest book, Norse Mythology, in which he explores the stories and figures of Norse belief.

I was delighted to find that Norse Mythology is quite different from his other mythology-inspired works. Whereas American Gods and Anansi Boys are a modern tales using old gods in contemporary surroundings, Norse Mythology is, quite simply, a straightforward retelling of some of the most well-known and beloved of Norse tales – from the birth of the worlds and the gods, to the many conflicts between the gods and the giants (and among the gods themselves), to the final end of existence at Ragnarok.

It must have been tempting for Gaiman to apply his wonderful imagination to the original Norse stories and embellish them with his own ideas. But surprisingly, Gaiman has chosen to leave them more or less preserved, without any twists or gimmicks. What you do get is the stories told with grace and grandeur. In Gaiman’s prose, the stories convey the wonder, atmosphere and wisdom that one might imagine the Vikings felt when they listened to the myths narrated by a storyteller.

You get the feeling that Norse Mythology is a labour of love for Gaiman – that the original stories are so important to him that he wanted to showcase them as they are, rather than use them as material for his own creation. And for the most part, I’m glad; I think this is a better book than American Gods or Anansi Boys. And I’m sure that most others who love the Norse myths will agree.

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