Norse Myths Volume 2

Six of the most compelling figures in the Norse mythological tradition. Six complete novels. One volume.

Sigurd — He reforged his father's sword and killed the dragon Fafnir and bathed in the blood and understood the birds and rode through the wall of fire and woke the Valkyrie Brynhild and pledged himself to her. Then he drank a potion and forgot all of it and married someone else. When he remembered it was too late. He was the greatest hero of the Norse tradition and he was destroyed not by a dragon but by forgetting.

The Norns — Three sisters sit at the base of Yggdrasil beside the well of Urd. Urd spins the thread of every life. Verdandi measures it. Skuld cuts it. They water the world tree every morning. Even Odin cannot change what they weave. They are not impassive. They feel every thread. The shortest threads are the most personally significant of all their responsibilities. They have already woven Ragnarok. They are already spinning the threads of the world that comes after.

Fenrir — He was born a wolf and raised in Asgard fed by Tyr when no other Aesir would approach him. He grew too large for their comfort. They bound him with Gleipnir through deception. He bit off Tyr's hand because the hand had been offered as the price of deception and the deception had been confirmed. He waits on the island with a sword in his jaws and rivers running from his open mouth. He is not a monster. He is a wolf the Aesir made monstrous through fear.

Hel — She was cast into Niflheim by Odin when she was a child and she made it a realm. She is half living and half dead. She receives the ordinary dead — the sick and the old and those who die in their beds — with equal seriousness. Most of the dead come to her. Baldur arrived and she set a fair condition for his release. Everything wept. Loki refused. She kept Baldur. She honored the condition she had set.

Frigg — She knew the fates of all beings in the nine worlds and she told no one. She knew Baldur's fate from the moment of his birth. She traveled to every corner of existence to extract oaths from everything that could harm him. She spoke honestly to a disguised Loki and told him about the mistletoe. Baldur died. She continued. She is the most knowing of all possible mothers and the knowing did not save her son.

Skadi — Her father was killed by the Aesir. She put on her armor and took her weapons and marched to Asgard alone to demand compensation. They made her laugh. They placed her father's eyes among the stars. She chose a husband by his feet and got the sea god instead of the one she wanted. She tried the marriage. It did not work. She dissolved it and went home to the mountains. She is home. The mountains are white. The hunt continues.

Six complete works of literary mythology fiction from I. Ioakim's Norse Myths series.