Sarah happened to have this book at the house that she picked up as a freebie from Usborne. I was in between Star Wars books and have taken a small interest in Norse mythology due to the Marvel movies, mostly Thor. I decided to give this book a try, even though it is a children's book (Amazon said for kids 5-7, which seems a bit young to me. After reading, I was thinking more like 7-10 years old.).
I read the introductory chapters that set up the realm environments, as well as the chapters on characters I'm familiar with (Thor, Loki, etc.) and familiar events such as Ragnarok. I skipped some of the chapters featuring characters not in the MCU. The book was an interesting and quick read which portrayed the characters mostly as they are portrayed in the MCU. Loki is a trickster and Thor is described as a god who likes to feast and fight. The book gave some background stories too, such as how Odin lost his eye and how Thor acquired Mjolnir.
Perhaps most interesting was the author's two page ending "Where the Norse Myths Come From". In this section she explains some of the famous texts that the myths are based on and how the stories have changed over time. However, realizing that the names of the days Wednesday (for Odin), Thursday (for Thor), and Friday (for Frigga) were derived from old translations of northern German words from the Norse Mythologies was really cool. Moving forward I will always think of Thursdays as Thunder Day for Thor.
No comments:
Post a Comment