Lögberg-Heimskringla - 14.07.2006, Síða 8

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In Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods, the main character Shadow Moon
falls in with a mysterious old
man he calls Mr. Wednesday,
a crafty, charismatic, cunning
fellow, who introduces him to
a whole host of other strangely
familiar people — the gods of
all the cultures who settled in
America. Mr. Wednesday — an
incarnation of Oðinn — has a
penchant for artful schemes and
beautiful women (particularly
those from Minnesota).
It’s easy to forget that not
too long ago, the Norse gods
were hardly a part of Western
popular culture. None of them
had the name recognition of
Hercules, Zeus or Venus. Wag-
ner notwithstanding, the old
Norse culture was something of
a different area, familiar and yet
somehow recognizable.
Ironically, that began to
change with a children’s comic
book published in the United
States in 1938.
Action Comics No. 1 fea-
tured the fi rst appearance of
Superman, who, along with
Mickey Mouse, has become
one of the most recognized
characters in the world. Jerry
Siegel, who created Superman
with Joe Schuster, has said that
he was deliberately cooking up
a character who tooks aspects
of many of the mythical strong-
men — Samson, Hercules, and
others — and rolled them into
one.
The character was popu-
lar enough to spawn an enitre
industry — that of the comic
book superhero.
Much is made today of the
so-called mythology of comic
books, and comparisons can
range from the superfi cial
(strange powers equal godhood)
to the in-depth (Superman’s ori-
gin as the archetypal immigrant
story).
However, there was another
comic-book team who took
myths very seriously, and in
large part served to bring Norse
mythology to a whole new au-
dience.
A journey into mystery
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
had worked at the precursor to
Marvel Comics in the 1930s
and ’40s. Following the Second
World War, superhero comics
declined in popularity, and ro-
mance, western and horror titles
became the norm.
However, in the fallout from
a U.S. Congressional hearing
about the perceived excesses
of comic-book stories, from the
horror titles in particular, super-
heroes came to the fore once
again. Among the many new or
revived costumed heroes was
one drawn from the Old Ice-
landic Eddas: Thor, the god of
thunder.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
brought Thor to life in an exist-
ing Marvel comic, Journey into
Mystery, in 1962. Thor has been
a major character in the Marvel
“universe” ever since, palling
around with other characters
such as Captain America, Spi-
der-Man and the Hulk. It’s easy
to disregard, then, how unusual
an idea it was to bring explicit
mythology into the “kids’ stuff”
of pop culture.
The written sources for the
Norse myths are far more scarce
than those for Greco-Roman
mythology. They are preserved
primarily in two Icelandic com-
pilations: Eddukvæði, or The
Poetic Edda; and Snorra-Edda,
the Prose Edda by Icelandic
writer, poet and historian Snorri
Sturluson. (The Poetic Edda
is sometimes called The Elder
Edda, because some of the ma-
terial may have been composed
as early as the ninth century.The
Prose Edda, written in the 12th
century, is sometimes called the
Younger Edda.) Because liter-
acy was not common in Norse
cultures prior to their contact
with Christianity, runic alpha-
bets notwithstanding, many of
the Norse myths were not writ-
ten down until the new religion
had introduced the Latin alpha-
bet.
This comparative obscurity
may have actually helped the
Norse gods, or Æsir, capture a
whole new audience in the 20th
century.
Richard Reynolds writes in
Super Heroes: A Modern My-
thology that Thor was unusu-
ally successful as a comic book
creation, compared to other
fi gures from mythology such as
Hercules, who never caught on
in American comics despite be-
ing more familiar.
Reynolds points to the art-
work of Jack Kirby as being
among the reasons for its suc-
cess, providing Asgard and
the gods with a science-fi ction
sheen that enabled them to fi t in
alongside other superheroes.
Part of it was also the expec-
tations built up by the superhero
genre itself — Superman and
Wonder Woman had already
developed decades’ worth of
their own “mythologies.” Stan
Lee had confi dence that Thor’s
mythology would not seem out
of place.
Furthermore, the very un-
familiarity of the Norse myths
made it easier for Marvel Com-
ics to seem to create them from
scratch, using elements from
the original sources, but creat-
ing new plots and settings.
Purists may howl over the
discrepancies: the Thor of the
Eddas is red-bearded, hot-
tempered, and somewhat gull-
ible. Marvel’s incarnation was
blonde, clean-shaven, and the
soul of nobility.
A further difference was
language. The Old Icelandic
that Thor speaks in the original
sources is often that of the co-
mon person, which may partly
explain why he was so popular.
Marvel’s Thor, however, came
to speak in a faux-Shakespear-
ean idiom, completely different
from any other Marvel hero.
(One common example: rath-
er than a simple “no,” Thor is
given to declaring, “I say thee
nay!”)
And for all his superhero
trappings, Marvel’s Thor has
always had strong ties to his
medieval origins. An early fea-
ture of the comic was a series
of backup stories which were
(sometimes) close retellings of
the myths.
Melding two traditions
Walter Simonson, who
wrote and drew Marvel’s Thor
in the 1980s, was also drawn to
the old stories.
Simonson was born in Ten-
nessee to parents of Norwegian
descent, and grew up in Wash-
ington, D.C. He loved read-
8 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 14 July 2006
Though their names leap out at us from the
days of the week, Norse gods were relatively
obscure until recently. Opera fi gures of Siegfried
and Brunnhild were one tentative step into this
pagan world, but it took another form of
entertainment to plunge a new generation into
the old myths: comic books. David Jón Fuller
talks with some of the perpetrators
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