The great Norse soap opera

Norse myths are having a moment. Or should I say another moment; one of a long chain of moments, in fact, beginning in the primordial soup of the oral tradition of storytelling in Iceland and Scandinavia. This mythology is old; old and very tenacious. First chronicled by scholars and historians some centuries after the Christianisation of Scandinavia, it tells of the creation of the world from the flesh of a slaughtered giant; of the rise of Asgard, the stronghold of the gods, and of their struggle against the forces of evil; and it predicts the eventual death of the gods in a final battle, Ragnarók, in which all of creation will be destroyed. It also tells of the exploits of some of the most complex, entertaining, funny, flawed and, yes, human characters ever to lift a hammer in battle against the enemy.

Norse gods do not have the remoteness of the Olympian gods, the grandeur of the Greek heroes (at least in bowdlerised modern versions) or the strangeness of the Egyptian pantheon.