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Mythology is at the heart of Neil Gaiman’s work.
He’s even expounded on it in hisnonfiction, penning an essay on the topic.
Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why put a fresh spin on these myths?
NEIL GAIMAN:Mythologies tell us about being human.
They are glorious, they are timeless.
They need to be retold.
I’m saying, “Here are the stories.
I have polished them, and I am now handing them to the world.”
How did you decide which ones to include?
Initially, when I started off it was going, “This one is fun.
That one has to be in there.
you’re able to’t leave that one out.”
As it carried on, it started to form a shape and a pattern.
TheProse Eddaand the poems in thePoetic Edda[a collection of old Norse poems] were where I went.
They were my inspiration.
They were my reference.
They were my touchstones when I was building this.
Why did you give the talesespecially the dialoguea current-day spin?
I wanted the dialogue to feel contemporary.
So I thought, “let’s make them talk as if they exist right now.”
When you’re retelling stories, you’re retelling them for your people.
What’s the value of retelling myths like these?
There are things that mythology tells us about being human.
And Ragnarok, the end times, which we’re heading towards, feel incredibly relevant.
You build up to the Ragnarok, but you also show us what happens immediately after.
Was that why you wanted to end on a new beginning?
But then it ends with hope.
Was that part of what you were considering when giving these stories that shape?
The importance and the stress, and the sequencing of the stories is often mine.
So I thought, “I’ll put that story there.
That’s where it belongs.”
And then you become, very quickly, something else.
And you have a darker side, and it’s that darker side that is so fascinating."
You’ve featured Odin and Loki in your own books.
So when you were writing this one, did you feel like you already knew them?
I love both of them.
And writing this book I discovered that I loved Thor too.
It’s been interesting because the characters have been weaving their way through my fiction now for 30 years.
you’re free to actually learn, “This is the stuff that Neil made up.
Here is the real stuff.”
Did you learn anything new about all these characters that you hadn’t considered before?
I learned so much.
You’re no longer thinking of them in big broad general terms.
The stories are no longer things you just kind of know.
Now, you are down there in the minutiae of what happened.
Which bits of this do I use?
I actually like this bit better over here, but I like this bit over here."
You get down and dirty.
Secrets that remain unrevealed.
And we’re told nobody knows what he whispered.
Somebody in my signing line last night asked, “What do you think about that?”
I said, “I think it’s a wonderful thing.”
They said, “Why didn’t you make something up?”
You also acknowledge in the book that there are gaps in what we know about Norse mythology.
The gaps that we have primarily are gaps in women’s stories.
They are stories of the goddess of love, the goddess of vows.
There’s one goddess who was the doctor of the gods.
How cool is that?
We don’t have any stories about her. "
It’s easy to think art can be a distraction.
I don’t think it is.
It’s a lifeline.
We have to keep dialogue and empathy.
Norse Mythologyis currently available for purchase in bookstores.
