Book learnin'

Two posts in one day. Had some catching up to do!

My first book of 6 for my IDGAF initiation is Norse Mythology by John Lindow.

I'm not quite halfway through. It's slow going. It's a very dry, scholarly book. After a 45 page introductory section, everything is in alphabetical order: deities and figures from the mythology, events, places, etc. There is a fair bit of overlap, and some sections with overlapping info seem to be verbatim repeated from multiple places.

I am enjoying how much I am learning; Norse mythology was probably one for the "least versed in" category for me. Before I was approached by one of the Norse gods and started learning in earnest, I more or less knew that Thor had a hammer, Odin had a horse with too many legs, and Loki caused shit to go down. There was something about a giant serpent, and a big tree, and Ragnarok is the end of the world.  For a mythology/archaeology nerd, pretty sad really.

I should mention though, if you're looking for pagan-specific information, this is not a good book to grab. The book states directly, in the introduction, that this is a book of myths, not religion. Everything is in a historical context. There's a lot of focus on the historical side of the mythology, the skalds and poets who left most of it behind, the various scholarly interpretations of translations and references and kennings; and a lot of the information contradicts--because it does. There is no reference to modern pagan practice or Asatru that I've come across yet. If you're looking for information on working with the Norse gods, and not so much on the mythology itself,  again, probably not a book for you. It is good for a newbie to the mythology however, because I am starting to understand things now, and can recognize various deities and the stories associated with them. Reading reviews, a lot of people sum up my thoughts pretty well: this is more of an encyclopedia or textbook, than a collection of narratives.

I read this after reading a very short book with a lot of the actual stories in it: Norse Mythology: Great Stories from the Eddas and I would recommend doing the same--pair this book up with another book with the actual stories, laid out as stories rather than an encyclopaedia. I think I'm following it better for at least having had a brief intro to the "characters" I'm now reading about.

I'm pretty confident I will not be done this book by next week, because reading it isn't as easy as I'd like, but if I go a bit late on finishing, I'll just pick a somewhat lighter book for next month to give my brain a rest.