the sad face of bigotry

It's always a shame when what could potentially be a very good subject matter or idea turns out to be marred by the ugly side of human nature. In my point of view there is no room for emotional bias in the world of academia. A research is published and facts are presented and - like my old teacher Murry Hope was fond of doing- if need be personal views are then presented in separate chapter at the end of the publication and most certainly unrelated to the research facts. But I digress, here is the story.

I first spotted this book at the gift shop in the British Museum following the Viking exhibition and was rather intrigued by it as the subject of the evolution of myth and it's continued life through mutation in modern culture is one that interests me greatly.

The book is well rounded in it's approach and the first couple of chapters alone are worth the purchase if nothing else for the richness in analysis and depth of information provided on multiple sources of Norse myth. The bibliography is staggering and well worth having. The tone of the book is approachable and carries on well without stagnating. I am however given the impression further on in the book that it may have been adapted from lecture papers given over a semester or something along those lines - I will get back to this later.

Alas, what I said on the previous paragraph is truer than you may imagine. The book is worth for the first couple of chapters alone... or just for those.
We are immediately told that those pesky pagans were very silly in believing any of those myths and that the advent of Christianity is to be thanked for teaching the savages how to write and thus salvaging their oral tradition in a more permanent manner. There is also the allusion made multiple times that a good portion of the myths were actually inspired by the Christian tradition and incorporated albeit in a 'pagan' way into the original narrative which, we are given to understand, despite being rich was rather crude. 

Now here we come back to what I said about the lecture papers. Whilst I appreciate repetition for the sake of memory, if you read a book as a scholarly subject keeping notes for further reference it becomes rather, maybe annoying is too strong a word but definitely boring to have the whole story of the saga reminded each time.

The part that annoyed me the most however was the last two chapters were all stops are pulled and paganism is equated constantly and consistently with white supremacy - yes, the Third Reich did that but we have moved on and though we should not forget what happened in the Second World War I find the fact that racism and paganism go hand in hand in the author's opinion quite offensive. In addition to this the author seems to not have done a lot of research in some of the subjects she touches.
She states that (quote:) "[...] Theosophy and white supremacy were made for each other [...]". I have never been a Theosophist and do not care much for its tenets but this seems rather harsh. But worse is the author's extremely poor knowledge of aspects of modern society - her description of the evil metallists, apparently one of them is in jail for murder - oh and if you're wondering "metallists" are those silly pagans that play 'black metal' and praise death and Satan - her words not mine. I was half expecting to read about how playing some records backwards will invoke the devil in the guise of a goat right in my living room. That whole chapter brings to mind an old lady describing young kids and their foolish and dangerous trends to her friends from church over a tea party. And as mentioned before by another reviewer I found a terrible faux pas saying (quote:) "[...] Marvel's The mighty Thor, published by DC Comics [...]" - come on lady do some research before you publish.
As if all this was not enough we are again reminded of the connection between Norse mythology and white supremacy - by now wearing really thin - and how each and every person that ever wrote anything even remotely related to Norse myth did it because they even subconsciously claim a connection to the Aryan Norsemen. Here we are given the example of Neil Gaiman who was inspired to write American Gods after a trip to Iceland.... yes lady, as an artist I can confirm this is how inspiration works! Strangely enough the author here decides to point out that Neil Gaiman is in fact of Jewish origin... I fail to see the point of this exercise. Why are we being told this piece of information and what bearing does one's descend have?
In the same chapter the author draws  some very interesting comparisons between original Norse material and the Lord Of The Rings. What could have constituted a very interesting book of its own accord is unfortunately again spoiled but the exorbitant amount of times our attention is drawn to the fact - and multitude of proof cited-  that J.R.R. Tolkin did in fact despise white supremacy and Wagner's use of the original source material.

I am not trying to undermine in any way the very serious issue of racial -and non- discrimination. I agree with Selassie and Marley in the fact that the colour of a person's skin should be of no more significance than the colour of a person's eyes, but I do find that considering the subject mater the issue is outside the scope of the research and it is presented in such a way as to make it annoying.

All in all I have to say the book started very well but I wish I had stoppered reading after the third chapter. I could have done without the bigotry and the upset it caused. I prefer authors that leave the judgement and personal opinions for separate chapter as opposed to intertwining it constantly with their prose.