Publisher's Synopsis
Dr. Wagner's excellent survey of Norse Mythology makes the origins, stories and symbolic meanings come to life. His writing style is inviting and will stimulate the imagination, as the reader is taken on a journey from the beginnings of the universe, to the abodes of the Gods to our fair earth (Midgard). The reader is carried along with Odin, Thor and Loki; Gods, Giants and Dwarves; through battles and quests and on to the final battle: Ragnarok! But more than this, Wagner pauses to touch on the symbolic nature of the stories, the natural phenomena that so often inspired the tales, and helps the reader begin to see beyond story and myth to a new way of looking at the world around us. In addition to Wagner's telling of the origins, stories, settings and identities of the characters, there are a full 35 original illustrations that to this day inspire the comic books artists and filmmakers who have revitalized the Norse stories on the big screen! From the Introduction: "The religious conceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of civilization amongst the Germanic races. If we unflinchingly follow out the traces of a common origin, in spite of the difficulties in our way, we shall often find that the gods of the heathen Asgard, and the tales about them, though apparently dissimilar, really have their basis in the customs and opinions held in the country in which they all had their birth, and that in their early stages they were more or less connected. Although in Central Asia, on the banks of the Indus, in the Land of the Pyramids, in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people have taken different forms, yet their common origin is still perceptible. We point out this connection between the stories of the gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and their importance, in order that the reader may see that it is not a magic world of erratic fancy which is opened out before him, but that, according to Germanic intuition, Life and Nature formed the basis of the existence and action of these divinities."
