Collection Sheet

Name of Collector: Jennifer Ulm, student, Columbus State Community College

Type of Folklore:
The majority of the folklore collected in this project is firmly in the realm of oral myths. Though much of it has been collected in a material form (i.e. books), the stories were originally communicated orally within the Norse culture. According to Jan Harold Brunvand in The Study of American Folklore 4th Edition, myths "deal with the activities of gods and demigods, the creation of the world and its inhabitants, and the origins of religious rituals," a description which fits the stories in their original form perfectly.
There is some expression of these stories in material form, such as jewelry, but this is based on the oral tradition.

Informant, Place, and Date of Collection:
The majority of my information was gathered from September 2012 to November 2012 from books acquired both online and in physical form, using Barnes & Noble's Nook store for ebooks and Half Price Books, the Book Loft, and the Grandview Heights Public Library for physical copies.

The Exact Text, Custom, or Object:
As with much other pre-Christian European mythology (apart from the Greeks and Romans), much of the original folklore of the Norse people was paved over by Christianity. The Norse myths did not suffer quite as bad as many Celtic and Germanic people in large part thanks to 13th-century historian Snorri Sturluson, who collected them in a work called the Prose Edda. Another work, the Poetic Edda, is an anonymous collection of minstrel songs and poems on the same topic, most of which likely formed the basis for the Prose Edda. The primary difference between the two is evident in their names: The Prose Edda is primarily written in prose and the Poetic Edda is primarily a work of alliterative verse.

The primary modern works I've drawn from are Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson Vol. 1, a collection of Thor comics from the 1980s written and drawn by the creator who had the most impact on the characters since Lee and Kirby and introduced the Dark Elves from Norse mythology to the Marvel Comics universe, the 2011 movie Thor based on this same interpretation of these mythical characters, the Sandman graphic novel Season of Mists written by Neil Gaiman, in which the title character must deal with, among others, the Norse gods over the ownership of Hell, and Gaiman's prose novel American Gods, in which American interpretations of Odin, Loki, and Balder play significant roles.

Context:
For the most part my study was a solitary affair done on gradually cooling evenings with fantasy-inspired music playing in the background. I am often terrible at things that require me to leave my apartment.

I've been researching pagan religion as part of my own spiritual growth, as I've gone from being an atheist to a devout agnostic (which I define as being absolutely certain that you have no idea) to allowing myself to accept that spirituality that doesn't obsess over who people are sleeping with is something that I might need in my life. I'm drawn to the idea of ancestral religions, and as my heritage is primarily Norse and Celtic I've become very interested in who and what those peoples traditionally worshiped. Also I'm a huge comic book nerd.

Analysis:
Among writers there's a popular saying that "There are no new stories." The idea is that, with all of human history behind us, all facets of the human condition have been touched on at one time or another in stories. All that can be hoped for by an author is to come up with a new take on an existing story.

One way to do that is to take characters from existing folklore and mythology and explore them with a fresh, modern eye. This also helps communicate that folklore to new generations that might have never heard of it if not for seeing it reinterpreted in their local comic shop. So much pagan lore has been lost due to Christianity's jealousy that any form of preservation is welcome.