by A. S. Byatt
Deryck Cooke, in his splendid study of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, I Saw the World End, shows how intelligently Wagner constructed his character, Loge, from the available sources of the myths. Wagner’s Loge is, Cooke says, the god of fire and the god of thought. The Loki of the old myths is only half a god, and possibly related to the giants and demons. It is probably a false etymology that connects the Germanic fire spirit Logi with the Loki of the Eddas, but Wagner’s Loge is both a solver of problems and the bringer of the flames that destroy the World-Ash. As a child I had always sympathised with Loki, because he was a clever outsider. When I came to write this tale I realised that Loki was interested in Chaos – his stories contain flames and waterfalls, the formless things inside which chaos theorists perceive order inside disorder. He is interested in the order in destruction and the destruction in order. If I were writing an allegory he would be the detached scientific intelligence which could either save the earth or contribute to its rapid disintegration. As it is, the world ends because neither the all too human gods, with their armies and quarrels, nor the fiery thinker know how to save it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The myths
Boyer, Régis, ed. and trans., L’Edda Poétique. (Paris: Fayard, 1992) In French; with useful scholarly essays.
Magee, Elizabeth, selec. and ed., Legends of the Ring. (London: Folio Society, 2004) This large collection includes translations of parts of the Prose Edda by Jean L. Young, and some felicitous translations of The Mythological Poems of the Elder Edda by Patricia Terry.
Sturluson, Snorri, Edda, ed. and trans. Anthony Faulkes. (London: Everyman, 1987)
Stange, Manfred, ed., Die Edda. (Wiesbaden: Marixverlag, 2004) In German; a lively version.
Wägner, W., Asgard and the Gods, adap. M.W. Macdowall, and ed. W.S.W. Anson. (London: 1880)
Writings on the myths
Armstrong, Karen, A Short History of Myth. (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2005)
Boyer, Régis, Yggdrasill. La réligion des anciens Scandinaves. (Paris: Bibliothèque historique Payot, 1981, 1992) Authoritative and imaginative.
Cooke, Deryck, I Saw the World End. A Study of Wagner’s Ring. (London: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1976) This unfortunately posthumously published and uncompleted study of Wagner’s operas is full of interesting ideas and information about the myths and Wagner’s use of them.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing. (New York: Anchor Books, 1956) Die Geburt der Tragödie was first published in Germany in 1872.
O’Donoghue, Heather, From Asgard to Valhalla. (London: I.B. Tauris and Co., 2007) Studies both the myths and later literary uses of them.
Sórensen, Villy, Ragnarok (1982), in Danish; trans. Paula Hostrup-Jessen, as The Downfall of the Gods. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)
Steinsland, Gro, Norrøn Religion. (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2005) A beautifully illustrated and interesting study which should be available in English.
Turville-Petre, E.O.G., Myth and Religion of the North Holt. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964)
Some plants and creatures
Ellis, Richard, Sea Dragons. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003)
Ellis, Richard, Encyclopedia of the Sea. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)
Gibson, Ray, Benedict Hextall and Alex Rogers, Photographic Guide to the Sea and Shore Life of Britain and North-West Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Huxley, Anthony, Plant and Planet. (London: Allen Lane, 1974); revised edition (London: Pelican, 1978)
Jones, Steve, Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise. (New York: Little, Brown, 2007)
Kurlansky, Mark, Cod. (New York: Vintage, 1999)
Mech, L. David, The Wolf: The ecology and behaviour of an endangered species. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1970, 1981)
Mech, L. David, and Luigi Boitani, eds., Wolves: Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Tudge, Colin, The Secret Life of Trees: How They Live and Why They Matter. (London: Penguin, 2006)
Warnings
Ellis, Richard, The Empty Ocean. (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2003)
Harvey, Graham, The Killing of the Countryside. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997)
Pauly, Daniel, and Jay Maclean, In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean. (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003)
Rees, Martin, Our Final Hour. (New York: Basic Books, 2003)
Roberts, Callum, The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing. (London: Octopus, 2007)
And chaos . . .
Gleick, James, Chaos: Making a New Science. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987; and various editions from then on)
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Jamie Byng for his enthusiasm for this project and Francis Bickmore for editorial wisdom and patience. And I should like to thank Norah Perkins. My friend Jenny Uglow has shared ideas and a passion for the Norse stories. I am particularly indebted to my Danish translator, Claus Bech, who gave me Villy Sørensen’s Ragnarok in both Danish and English, and shared Danish names for fish. My German translator, Melanie Walz, also helped with German versions of the myths. My agent Deborah Rogers has been wonderfully enthusiastic and helpful, and Mohsen Shah, from Rogers Coleridge and White, has kept everything in more order than seemed possible. My husband, Peter Duffy, as always, listens to problems and excitements, and adds new ideas. My daughter, Miranda Duffy, who once spent time working with wolves, told me what to read, and how wolves behaved.
