Review : "Viking" Tales

Following Flame Tree's Celtic Myths and Tales, next I wanted a deeper exploration of Norse mythology. Unfortunately, their Viking Folk and Fairy Tales book doesn't quite fit the bill. Although it does have some Norse mythology, most of it is a collection of much later folk and fairy tales. So I'll avoid the Norse gods and concentrate on the fairy stuff here; perhaps their "Norse myths" book, which wasn't in the bookshop, will eventually satisfy my original design.

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Strictly speaking "Viking" was more an occupation than a region, but since it's become more-or-less interchangeable with "Norse" I don't really care about that. But Norse tends to imply medieval Scandinavia while many of these tales are much later, and a few are German. So the title is wrong, but there isn't really a good alternative that would be sufficiently snappy. "Germano-Nordic Fairy And Folk Tales With Some Connection To The Era Of The Vikings Which Have Varying Degrees Of The Supernatural And Wider Significance About Them" wouldn't really cut it.

I have to say that while as usual I enjoyed the introduction, when I got past the relatively short collection of older tales I was for some time disappointed. Many of these tales are incredibly tedious stories for children that I should have skipped, especially the one about the stupid child who gets stuck on a reindeer. Or the one about the honest man who gives a polar bear to a king and is duly rewarded. They're just outright boring.

Fortunately after a prolonged interlude of these dull, uneventful, normal stories the book goes back into the fairy realm. And these are more than sufficiently weird as to become hugely entertaining once again. In some ways they're even weirder than the Celtic stories : not quite as lacking in causality, but significantly more graphic and much more violent. If I doubted the Celtic stories were originally intended for children, this is even more true of the Scandinavian tales.

I'm writing this one up much later than usual, but thanks to my wonderful ReMarkable tablet, I took excessive notes. Even so, there are a few things which stuck in my head anyway.

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Probably the most obvious is the frequent use of repetition, both in the myths proper and the later folk tales. Thor goes through a whole sequence of tasks which serve to demonstrate both his own prowess (at drinking from a huge horn, and strength, by lifting a cat which is actually a giant snake in disguise – if you thought that was weird, you have no idea what's coming) and as pseudo-explanations (his drinking from the horn causes the tides). There are rarely stories in which just one thing happens. In some of the early stories, as in the Celtic tales, there are magical objects which are even unnecessarily repetitive as they serve exactly the same function.

Sometimes repetition has a more obvious use. Many of the folk takes use it as a warning : typically, the first two would-be heroes fail to follow the instructions (or to give help to someone in need) and fail miserably, sometimes fatally, while the third acts correctly and is duly rewarded. Only rarely is the pattern broken, like in the Celtic tale of Geraint, whose repeated threats to his wife climax unexpectedly into nothing. Usually the narrative is a good deal more predictable than that.

There are also plenty of variations on a theme. Sometimes this takes the form of a recycled motif : the beautiful girl who hides up a tree above a well, with plain-looking passers-by being fooled by her reflection, occurs in many stories both Celtic and Norse. Similarly the Cinderlad/Cinderella stories, featuring a hero or heroine who rises literally from playing in the ashes to unsuspected (and often totally unjustified) brilliance, are found in numerous versions in both cultures, though often with huge differences.

In other instances the stories are copied wholesale, even featuring layers of repetition. "The Last Home of the Giants" and "The Dwarf's Banquet" are essentially the same tale. The daughter of the king of the giants runs away with her (forbidden) true love. They hide in the mountains but eventually escape to an island when the Norse gods kill most of the other giants. Later, in the Christian era, another couple similarly flee their sovereign's wrath and escape to the same island, where they witness the giants resurrected for their annual festival with the dwarves. Breaking the rules, they sneakily watch, and the spell is broken so the giant princess' lover is condemned to remain a statue forever. The only difference between the two is that in the Last Home the modern couple learn their father has forgiven them and it has a relatively happy ending.

Remakes are of course nothing new but the similarities in this case are so strong that one wonders what the point was. Especially odd, and characteristic of such tales, are the dwarves, who are introduced ad hoc and play no obvious role in the proceedings whatever. Yet someone felt they were so essential that they just couldn't leave them out of the rewrite.

Repetition appears to be a key hallmark of both the earliest myths and the later stories. Modern storytelling strives to avoid this at all costs, whereas the earlier stories it's obvious, maybe even sometimes the whole point. It's also a clear similarity that makes the fairy and folk tales feel distinctly similar to the older, genuine myths. Escaping from a one-eyed giant who lives on an island is found throughout European legends. More specifically, Ashipattle features a cast of magical characters of bizarre, arbitrary abilities that distinctly resemble those in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen : in this case, one character has to weight their legs to slow them down, another has insatiable hunger so eats stones, while another quenches their alcoholism by sucking on a bung. Ashipattle himself is a Cinderlad, so these remakes and retellings borrow freely between very different genres.

Variants abound also of Snow White, of which more later, and the "Master Maid" stories, in which a hero undertakes a series of challenges in order to woo the daughter (or captive beauty) of a giant, eventually escaping by throwing a series of magical obstacles against the pursing giant who doesn't care that they fulfilled his tasks. Sometimes, as we'll see, they can be unbelievably brutal and violent. They are seldom if ever graphic in their description. Indeed, lack of physical description might well be another chacteristic common to all European myths. Nevertheless, if the details are lacking, it's clear enough that the events are sometimes bloody in the extreme.

There are of course aspects which are distinct to each culture. Being tarred is a common Nordic punishment not found at all in the Celtic tales. Extremely long noses, perhaps three feet or more, are a common (to the point of obsession) attribute of Norse witches, often used for stirring pots. While Celtic myths feature giants aplenty, they usually only have one head... whereas Norse trolls can have up to fifteen. Exactly where all those heads go is never stated, though sometimes they're similar to the Greek Hydra : all need to be cut off to kill the beast. Another distinctly Norse element is that it's always, always, always the youngest daughter of three who the would-be hero gets to wed and bed, with the other sisters often more antagonistic than helpful. Heroines, at least as the main protagonist, are rare, though "Prince Hlni" does feature a princess who rescues a prince. I can't recall any heroine with the withering put-downs of the Welsh Rhiannon.

Perhaps more interesting are the heroes. They can be pure and noble, but they can also be petulant and often downright reluctant. They whine when their promised reward is denied or delayed to them, they often start from extremely humble beginnings. Frequently they turn out to have incredible powers for no reason whatever, having been content their whole life to laze around until suddenly they decide to slay the 15-headed ogre than nobody else can match. Perhaps their greatest similarity to modern heroes is their tendency to adopt alter-egos so that they can live an otherwise normal life*. There's a similarity to Cinderella, of course, but they sometimes also have their powers bestowed on them by magic objects.

* Although why they'd want to do this is an utter mystery. At least Clark Kent has a reasonably interesting day job, whereas the lifestyles of most of the Cinderlads are frankly utterly shit.

Sometimes the protagonists aren't very nice at all. John Dietrich (not the CFO of FedEx) is an interesting character : a boy who accidentally enters fairyland and becomes an ineffective despot. He wants to leave to marry some teenage bimbo* he meets while inside, but the fairies refuse, saying that if anyone leaves before their time then the kingdom will fall. After making them whip each other (!) he eventually discovers their weakness is an aversion to the smell of toads. At which point they're allowed to leave and all is well. It appears to be a mythological explanation for the local nobility. In a few cases, the protagonist learns the error of their ways and becomes a decent chap (it's always a chap) after all, but these are rarer. 

* At times, the excessively twee descriptions of beauty and the like become unbearable, so I put my own spin on things.

At other times the whole story is just tragic. The Norse myths end in cataclysm, but The Little Match Girl is downright insufferable and pointless in its manipulation : the poor girl hallucinates, lights some matches and dies. That's it. Or the one about the old man who selfishly protects his hay for some reason. The dialogue is actually decent, but the constant build-up as to the mysterious reason he's obsessed with his hay results in a truly abysmal anti-climax of absolutely nothing.

I could go on, but I'd better try and wrap things up. Three final points. First, paganism is often treated quite respectfully : believers go to "churches" rather than a temple, and for the most part seem like relatively normal people. This view is, however, very mixed, because there are plenty of evil trolls and hideous witches as well. In one particularly bad bit of propaganda, Christianity is shown to be not so potent as the author would prefer, explicitly stating that backsliding into paganism is all too easy.

Secondly, for a lot of the weirder stories, the explanation can surely only be mushrooms. I'm serious. "Father Weatherbeard" is a bizarre mash-up of Taliesin and the "Master Maid" stories featuring animals transforming into humans left right and centre, with witches bribed with tobacco. In Minnikin, two brothers – Minnikin and King Pippin (them give themselves the stupid names) – are born who can immediately walk and talk and bugger off. They steal eyes from witches (forcing them to give up the traditional magic sword but also a collapsible voice-activated boat and the secret of brewing), rescue princesses from trolls, win treasures of clothes of different metals, and two princesses both want to marry one of these seriously weird babies. Or then there's Murmur, an ugly child who hatches from an egg, who eats 12 tonnes of porridge, murders people by the dozen, wields a 1.5-tonne club to defend the kingdom and is impervious to cannons. My notes about this one end with "something about a fat milkmaid who scares the devil away. The king won't give him his promised reward so he hurls him into space."

There are more. I could go on. But you get the idea.

The final point I want to end on is the brutality. In Katie Woodencloak, the eponymous heroine (a variant of Cinderella) escapes her evil stepmother with a talking bull. They flee through three woods made of metals, in each of which is a multi-headed giant who cries "WHO IS THIS THAT TOUCHES MY WOOD ?"*. The bull fights each of them but is so severely injured that he takes weeks to recover. Afterwards, for no particular reason, Katie hacks his head off, and it's not a clean job – she weeps throughout the whole grisly ordeal but does it anyway. In many stories such a decapitation is needed to restore the enchanted animal to its original human form, but if this is supposed to be the case here, it's hardly clear.

* You do your own joke.

The most violent tale of all, though, must surely be the deceptively-named The Twelve Wild Ducks. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A queen with a nosebleed wishes for a daughter "as white as snow and red as blood". A troll-witch grants her wish in exchange for her twelve sons, which she gives. The child is given the idiotic name of "Snow White and Rosy Red"; she is explicitly one person, not two sisters. She grows up and goes looking for her brothers, who she discovers in a Goldilocks-like sequence living as magical ducks who transform back into humans only within the confines of a forest cottage. They think about killing her, but instead decide to have her make them clothes of thistledown to free them. This is done, but she's at once abducted by a rapey king. When she gives birth, his mother is jealous, so smears blood over her lips, throws the child in a snake pit, and says that SWRR has eaten her own child (SWRR, for some reason, cannot speak to defend herself). The king believes her, but, astoundingly, says it's okay because SNWRR is clearly very sorry and won't do it again. This happens twice more, at which point the king is compelled to have her burnt at the stake. But SWRR summons the magic ducks who return themselves to human, her voice is restored and she tells the whole tail. The punishment for the wicked mother is to be put in "fast bonds between twelve unbroken steads so that each may take his share of her." SWRR's children are all somehow fine and it all ends happily ever after. Except for the king's mother, of course. Perhaps best not to dwell on that one.

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My mythology binge has by no means ended, but it is currently taking a hiatus as I read some more conventional texts. But it's the wild insanity of the stories I find so appealing. The same story can veer from something so twee it would make Lark Rise to Candleford vomit in disgust into violence that would make even HBO producers hang their heads and stare awkwardly at their feet. 

By no means are all of these stories timeless. Many of them are utterly crap, sometimes because the stories are inherently a bunch of bollocks but sometimes only because none of the symbolism makes sense any more. And yet there's enough complexity and variability of the characters, and more than enough crazed magic and sheer batshit madness, to make them endlessly fascinating. Many of the tales seem at first simplistic and daft, but the collective whole is anything but. Why do some elements reoccur so frequently ? Why must the trolls have so many heads ? What does everyone get tarred ? And should I think of the idea of an ugly baby eating 12 tonnes of porridge as comic or creepy ?

Maybe, perhaps, some of these stories were originally intended for children, but I rather doubt it. Their violence can be appalling and the morality opaque : anyone looking for a clear lesson will often go away unsuccessful. They comment on religion in a host of ways : from unsubtly denigrating paganism in crude terms and imagery, but acknowledging the reality of its beliefs; while at other times depicting it gently and with far less prejudice. Both plots and characters vary wildly in terms of their complexity, to the point that any attempt to generalise would be foolish. Ultimately, it's that extreme variation and that utter disregard for plausibility that keeps me coming back for more.