Skrymers Glove

The Aseir and the Yetten are at war in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Aseir are fighting to keep their technological advantage. They have sent an expedition to Earth to convey experiments with the Fyrkat device to obtain the ability to move between planets through wormholes. During a Yetten attack, the expeditions command ship, Svalinn, is shot down with Thor and his friend, Loke in it. They crash land in the Baltic Sea (hence the inspiration from the ocean x team) and as they cannot get in contact with the rest of the expedition, who have evacuated, they set out to secure two important objects from Fyrkat, so that the new technology does not fall in enemy hands. When arriving at Fyrkat, they engage the Yetten and rescue two earth children, Tjalfe and his sister Røskva, but Loke disappears immidiately and shortly after the Yetten obducts Røskva and Tjalfe. Even though evidence points towards someone from the crew being a spy for the Yetten, Thor is determined to find Loke, Røskva and Tjalfe and a crazy rescue attempt begins in the dangerous black hole cluster, Skrymers Glove. But how can Thor know for sure that Loke is not the traitor and how will they manage to get through the fields of extreme gravity without being crushed in both space and time?

Expected Publishing date: 15th of January 2013

Asgard Saga - Odin the Creator released!

The most amazing thing just happened. I finished the first part of Asgard Saga much earlier than I expected and it is already available at Smashwords.com:

It is priced at $2.99 
     - "Hey! Didn´t you promise it would be only $0.99?"


Yes, I did, and I will keep my promise, of course. That´s why I generated a coupon for it to be used at Smashwords.com only. Go to the book´s page at  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/148001  and punch in this code before going to payment: DT64W


That´s it! You´re set to read! Enjoy!

Norse myth narrative

Writing the Asgard Saga is no less than a real treat to me. Not only do I love the stories, but working with them in a more modern narrative form is very rewarding. These stories have been handed down from generation to generation and were not written down before some time in the early 13th century after the chance from Heathen religion to Christianity. This brings a challenge differing from, say the Christian or Jewish texts.


The Jewish tradition is different from the Viking tradition, because the storytelling of the latter wasn´t a "to-the-letter" handing down. The base line was more important than telling the stories exactly in the same way, whereas the Jewish tradition demanded the handing down of myth and stories to be told word for word. This means that the stories from the Bible are very accurate. They are told in the original languages almost exactly as they were told 500, 1000 or even 5000 years ago.

The Norse myths aren´t this accurate and in time some of the stories have changed some of their meaning. For instance, there is some doubt as to weither Odin and Frey were married or not.

The most important thing, however, is that I want to make as good a balance as possible between telling the stories in such a way that the characters come alive, but still honors the original stories. This is a difficult task, mostly due to the narrative tradition of Norse Mythology, where the characters are flat, meaning that they lean towards action rather than the characters´ mindsets and characteristics behind the action.

This is their strength, but it also makes it difficult to describe who these characters really are. For instance, the stories do not reveal Odin as having a devious mind, but his actions are either devious or he is not aware of the results of his actions. Of course, the stories tell little by little that he IS devious, but you have to read quite a few of the myths to catch that.

That´s why I really enjoy writing my interpretation of these myths. It´s a challenge to bring the stories to life and give my readers a good reading experience without being unfaithful to the messages of the myths.

I am very much looking forward to getting feedback from all you people out there, just waiting for the first volume to come out and as a treat, I want to share with you the cover for the book. It´s not entirely finished yet and it may look somewhat different when I publish, but this is what I´ve got so far:

I hope, you´ve enjoyed reading my blog posts on the Norse Mythology and I can assure you, that I´m not even close to being finished with it yet. There will be more to come.

Do you like the cover?

Feel free to comment, even if you really, really hate the cover!

Norse Mythology re-re-visited

As I´m digging into the mythology behind my viking heritage, I have come to realize that my knowlegde and memory is somewhat lacking. The result is that some of my earlier posts on the subject contain errors. That´s why I´ve decided to re-re-visit Norse Mythology in a new post. Of course, I could´ve chosen to just edit these earlier posts, but instead I feel it would be better to leave these posts as is (except for inserting the fact that they are a bit off) to show the development in my studies.


Another important thing is that when you read the stories I intend to include in my upcoming Asgard Saga, please keep in mind that they are fiction. The base line is coming from some of the original sources, but the stories have been modernized in the sense that the character desription is deeper than in the original stories.


The reason is that storytelling has changed through time. In the early Viking Age, character description was flat and brief, showing only the most nescessary elements of a person. Today we tend to describe feelings and landscapes more detailed. For the stories to be entertaining as well as informative, I try to keep a balance between action and being true to the original storyline. Hopefully you will find that I´ve been succesful in doing so.


Back to the re-re-visitation!


Norse Mythology is rather complex and even more so than I first realized. Some of the errors I´ve made in my previous posts are derived from this notion. I could choose to correct my mistakes point by point, but the complexity of the whole thing made me realize that re-posting and re-explaining would probably be the better option, so here we go:


The gods´ family tree


To define which supernatural entities in Norse Mythology are to be considered gods is not an easy task. Truth be told, we can only guess how the Vikings saw it. Probably they didn´t feel the urge to make such definitions, as this kind of approach is more bound to the monotheologic religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In the late 1800´s and in the beginning of the 1900´s most scholars chose to approach Norse Mythology by directly comparing it to Greek and Roman mythology. That approach makes Freyr the Norse equivalent to the Greek god of virility, Priapos and Odin the aquivalent to Zeus.


While I´m not a scholar and therefore do not have the authority to enter this discussion, I would much rather refrain from defining who is to be thought of as a god and who is merely a supernatural entity such as elves or unicorns. In the following I will there fore use the word gods when talking about Vanes, Ases and Yetten. I still don´t know what to do with some of their off spring, though...


In the world of the gods there are three family trees woven into eachother in various combinations. These are:

• Vanes
• Ases
• Yetten

The Vanes and the Ases have been at war with eachother, but peace has been established between them.


Probably as part of the truce, some Vanes now live in Asgard and possibly some Ases live in Vanaheim. However, Vanaheim is still a bit of a mystery to me. There might be sources telling more about Vanaheim, but for now I imagine Vanaheim is not placed in either Asgard, Midgard or Utgard. If you know, please feel free to make a comment correcting me beneath the post.


The peace and trusting interaction between Ases and Vanes leave the Yetten as mortal enemies of both families and although the myths usually side with the Ases (and Vanes, who mostly play a minor part in the myths) against the Yetten, it cannot be interpreted in terms of good or evil. The Yetten aren´t percieved as evil. They are percieved as enemies of the Ases (and Vanes)


So, after this (short, hopefully) introduction to family matters of the Norse Mythology, I´m looking forward to hear your comments.

Was this informative?

Do you find Norse Mythology interesting?

Did you find any flaws in my post?

Comment and correct beneath

Oh, almost forgot: my next post, hopefully published tomorrow, will be about the massive influence of Norse Mythology to YOUR everyday life - every single week you are connected to Norse Mythology, believe it or not. Chances are, you will be in for quite the surprise...