A Brief Interlude

I'll tell you later what planet comes after Mars (not Jupiter). Today, however, I'm going to give you a book excerpt. I picked up The Last Kingdom. Being the English teacher that I am, I was unable to resist a book about the years of King Alfred the Great. The book is written by Bernard Cornwell. It might get a review here later, but for now I'm only on page 60.

Anyway, the book is historical fiction, so it is not about mythology; however, it does show a lot about how the mythological beliefs of the Danes played out in their day to day lives. The part I give you here is from the mind of a young boy who is English and Christian, but around enough people who remember the days of Woden.

Even at ten years old I understood that a god Christian should not boast of being spawned by a pagan god, but I also liked the idea of being a god's descendant and Ealdwulf often told me tales of Woden, how he had rewarded our people by giving us the land we called England, and how he had once thrown a war spear clear around the moon, and how his shield could darken the midsummer sky, and how he could reap all the corn in the world with one stroke of his great sword. I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother's stories of Culbert's miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden's worshippers cried much.