Sunday 9 December 2012

Viking Mythology

I have spoiled myself before Christmas and bought Gods & Heroes from Viking Mythology, second handed, from Amazon. Text by Brian Branston and (beautiful) images by Giovanni Caselli. I blogged about the book before. I intend to read it again in the upcoming weeks. As I mentioned in my first post about this book, I associate a lot Norse mythology with Christmas. So it is a fitting read. According to the back cover, it contains "28 exciting stories about the gods and heroes of the Viking world, 24 superb colour pictures specially painted for this book, 54 black and white line drawings." The stories are nicely told too. I hesitated a bit before buying it, as we have it in Chicoutimi, but then I thought this one needed a home. It once belonged to the East Sussex County Library. Funny how much it travelled and changed ownership. It is now right next to me as I am typing this.

2 comments:

Mantan Calaveras said...

I've been reading some of Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese ghost stories.

I have to say, I wish more indigenous cultures had translators as sensitive, insightful, and communicative as Hearn.

I remembering picking up "A Celtic Miscellanea" and finding it impenetrable. Very frustrating to try and eke out the cultural meaning of these traditional stories without the kind of contextual clues that Hearn gave us.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Ooooo, Vikings!