Norse Mythology

I had first envisioned pink and blue sort of shapes floating up from the bottom of the page toward the abstract windings and when I started actually drawing them, I started to see people in them. In the shapes. I saw old, tired, hunched-over people. And I drew them in and colored them. They remind me of some of the characters from the old Norse myths.

These 3 siblings (of monsters I think.) One was a serpent that was so long, it circled the Earth. Another was an old hag type of woman with long stringy hair and was bald on top (from the illustrations that I remember in the Norse Mythology book I had when I was a child.) And the other was a fierce wolf that had these monstrously strong jaws. The stronger you tried the fight the jaws, the easier it would be for the wolf to snap apart and break the bindings you would use to try and tie its mouth shut.

I remember that Odin, I think (one of the main Norse Gods, one of the good ones) went and each of the creatures were disguised somehow. And there were contests. And of course, he and his men were full of themselves and thought they could win.

One of the men tried to lift a cat's paw. It was an enormous cat and the strong burly man-God only managed to lift the paw a tiny bit.

The other had to try and wrestle a person. He failed.

The other (maybe this was Odin? I don't remember.) had to drain his goblet of its content of mead. And try as he might, the cup never seemed to empty.

After the men had failed the challenges, the guffawing members of the winning side told them why they had failed.

The cat turned out to be the snake, the giant snake that circled around the world. They were impressed that he was able to lift him at all.

The wrestler turned out to be Time. (Or time and death or something.) And no one can win the fight against that. Everyone eventually dies. There is no Immortality.

The cup turned out to be connected to the ocean. The entire ocean! So it was always constantly re-filling. They were laughing at how much salt water he really drank.

There was another story with that wolf I had mentioned. So Odin (I think) went to see the Elves (I think) and they told him how to defeat the wolf.

They gave made and gave him a delicate-looking ribbon. He was like, "What the heck? How can THIS hold the wolf?" But they assured him it would work and so he went to see the wolf.

So he went to the forest where the wolf lived and challenged the wolf. "If I can muzzle you, I win." or whatever it was that he really said in the story. And the wolf saw the thin weak-looking ribbon and was like, "Ha! Alright, go ahead and try." So he did. And the Elven-made (hey, maybe it was Goblins, I wonder.) ribbon actually held! Very tight in fact. Whenever the wolf struggled, it became even tighter.

And then I think the wolf became so enraged that he bit the guy's arm off.

I think my memory's falty because I just said he was muzzled and then bit the guy's arm off. Hmmm. If only I could find that book!

Gosh, I remember I used to be SO into mythologies. Greek and Norse. Well, Greek mainly, because we learned it in school. The Norse was because my dad had bought me the book. I think it was one of those Scholastic books that you ordered from the pamphlet.

I also really liked fantasy genre books. I absolutely loved the Wizard of Oz series. I was enchanted with the idea of magic.