Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This vivid and atmospheric retelling of the Nordic myth of Ragnarok - Twilight, or more accurately translated, Judgement of the Gods - is a delight for any reader who relishes the power of myth.
This is of course the story of the reckless, fallible Gods of Valhalla - Thor with his thunder and bluster, Tyr the one-armed Hunter, beautiful Baldur, long-haired Sif, Frigg the passionately grieving mother, wise, maimed Odin who for all his foreknowledge cannot forestall his pantheon's demise, and or course Loki the fiery trickster who with his monstrous, Giant-born children wreaks havoc amongst them all. A S Byatt cleverly interweaves flashbacks to her childhood self, evacuated in wartime to the countryside and finding solace in reading and re-reading Dr W Wagner's 'Asgard And The Gods'. This is a clever device which allows the author to reflect and comment upon the fearful events so vividly described (eg the binding of the wolf Fenris, the journey to the domain of Hel, Queen of the Dead) with the psychological plasticity of an innocent child who accepts the myth for what it is - a commentary upon the true Nature of Things.
The 'thin child' greatly prefers the loud, passionate Gods of the Norse pantheon to the pale, insipid 'Gentle Jesus' of her Sunday School lessons - a guilty preference I can wholeheartedly endorse, because as a child I too was drawn into the world of Gods and Goddesses (in my case, the classical Pantheon of ancient Greece and Rome).
I really appreciated the autobiographical Afterword, in which Byatt ponders the meaning and function of myth, and compares her childhood self to the God-struck subject of W F Turner's poem 'Romance' ("Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, they had stolen my soul away"): 'I recognised that state of mind, that other world', she says. 'The words in my head were not Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, but Ginnungagap, Yggdrasil and Ragnarok'. Again, I can completely identify, well remembering the thrill that would course through my veins whenever I read or heard the names Aphrodite, Zeus, or Athena.
There are, of course, so many parallels between the myths of differing cultures, as is only to be expected when touching upon the Nature of Things: the sacrificed God, the grieving mother determined to retrieve her child from the Underworld, the wily trickster, the warrior maiden, are all universal. So although the Norse Gods are not my Pantheon, I felt quite at home in their company and I share Byatt's calm acceptance that since 'homo homini Deus est', the Gods of Valhalla share humanity's 'lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed ... and a biologically built-in short-sightedness', even in the face of their own demise. An apt reflection on the situation we find ourselves in right now ...



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