Mark R. Vickers's Blog, page 3

On Valkyries and the Reality of Female Viking Warriors

In the movie Thor: Ragnarok, Tessa Lynn Thompson wonderfully plays the role of a former valkyrie known as Scrapper 142. Although I didn’t realize it until researching this blog, the character is based on a Marvel superhero (unimaginatively) named Valkyrie.

Then I discovered that Valkyrie is also named Brunnhilde, who is obviously based on the famed character out of Norse legend. Of course, a version of Brynhildr also shows up in The Tollkeeper, so I was once again intrigued by the sheer staying power of this legendary character.

Around the same time, I read about how archaeologists recently discovered that a 10th-century Viking grave containing high-quality weapons (indicating the grave contained a great warrior) was that of a woman. Not so surprisingly, that announcement was met with skepticism in some quarters: “when researchers announced in 2017 that the warrior was actually female, they received a lot of pushback—surely the archaeologists had made some mistake? Perhaps they tested the wrong body?”

Yeah, no. Get over it, boys, the legend of Brynhildr and valkyries were modeled on real women who, in turn, were probably inspired by those same legends. This is how myth works: partly based on certain truths, it inspires a chain of connecting narratives that then reinforce beliefs and actions, continuing to shape reality itself.

Myth still works this way, of course, whether it comes in the form of fiction, religion, political ideology or social media memes. We can no more escape it than the air we breath. And, that air contains, like it or not, the mythic realities of women who could seriously swing a sword or hoist a spear back in the Viking heyday.

The post On Valkyries and the Reality of Female Viking Warriors appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Thinking About Ratatoskr and the Spirit of Our Age

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Ratatoskr, the squirrel who lives in the mythic Tree of Life known as Yggdrasil. In Norse mythology, it’s Loki who gets top billing as the primary trickster figure, and surely Loki plays that role in many tales. But, unlike most tricksters, Loki also plays the role of the ultimate villain, a god who edges from being a trickster to being a nihilistic, revenge-addled, cosmos-ending sociopath.

Ratatoskr, by contrast, is more of a classic trickster: that is, a wily character who uses some sort of secret knowledge to play tricks, disobey rules, and wreak some anarchy on his community. Sometimes tricksters are heroes, sometimes not, but they’re always shaking things up.

Ratatoskr’s Name

Appearing in both the Prose and the Poetic Eddas, Ratatoskr is a traveling fool. In fact, one theory about his name is that it means “the traveling tusk,” since oskr is usually seen as meaning “tusk” and rata- may derive from rati– or “the traveller.”

Another theory is that rata- represents Old English word ræt, which means “rat.” This makes me think of how my father always referred to squirrels as “bushy-tailed rats,” a pretty common insult where I grew up.

But apparently most scholars seem to have accepted that his name means something more like “drill-tooth” or “bore-tooth.”

Ratatoskr’s Job

Ratatoskr’s job is to carry messages back and forth, up and down, among those living among the branches of Yggdrasil. “The most regular subscribers to his messaging service are the wise eagle who sits at the top of Yggdrasil, and the hungry dragon, Nidhoggr, who lies coiled among the tree’s roots,” reports Mythology.net. “Ratatoskr relishes the chance to ferry an insult between these two mighty beasts, and by doing so, he is continually stirring the animosity between them.”

In short, he is a kind of pre-Internet troll, causing trouble wherever he can for the sheer fun of it.

Ratatoskr’s Inspiration

One of the reasons for my fascination with Ratatoskr is my own experience with squirrels, a large family of which lives among the oak trees in my neighborhood. Squirrels are notorious for making noisy complaints. There’s one that sits on our fence and gives it’s rattling/snorting/high-pitched alarm call whenever it sees one of our cats or even a human (e.g., me).

Those alarms seem pretty rude given the fact that we started putting out birdseed on the weekends so that the squirrels wouldn’t suffer too much after Hurricane Irma blew through here and knocked down most of their not-yet-ripe acorn supplies. (This is a tradition my wife has continued since, even though I complain that the squirrels have a bumper crop of acorns this year. She just likes to watch them eating alongside the doves and blue jays, a little peaceable kingdom of freeloaders.)

Not only does our fence-sitting squirrel raise its obstreperous alarm call for long minutes that feel like hours, but it has also been known to turn its back to me and flick its tale up and down, which I imagine is a kind of warning but gives the strong impression of an insult: “Bite me, Human!”

So, it makes sense that the Norse would have ascribed abusive behavior to squirrels, assuming the red squirrels of Europe have the same bad manners as the gray ones in North America.

Ratatoskr’s Powers

With their multitude of tail signals and verbal warnings, it’s no wonder Ratatoskr is seen as a kind of ill-willed messenger, but think of all this implies in terms of the Norse legend: speed, dexterity, cunning. He has an ability to convince and manipulate as well as incredible access to all parts of the Great Tree, from the crown to the roots. He’s not just a messenger, but a kind of electrical energy running up and down the Tree of Life.

Jacob Grimm, one of the famed Brothers Grimm, suggested that, rather than having nefarious intent, Ratatoskr may be helping to maintain the balance and harmony of Yggdrasil by allowing its two antipodes to communicate. And I do suppose that if our inner angels and demons were unable to communicate, we’d all wind up in Jekyll-and-Hyde nightmares.

Ratatoskr’s Mythical Counterpart

One interesting aspect of Ratatoskr is that he has a mythological counterpart in some Native American traditions. In Wabanaki folklore, there’s the squirrel named Mikew, or maybe it’s Miko, Meeko, Mikoa, Mihkoa, Mihku, or Mihkuw. Anyway, the legend is that he was once as big as a bear but the culture hero Glooscap decided he was dangerous to people and so shrank him to his current size. Despite the shrinkage, he retains his lousy temper and his reputation as a busybody and troublemaker.

Ratatoskr in Our Modern Lives

Although Ratatoskr is a minor Norse character, he is particularly relevant to our own age. He seems to be everywhere, scampering and chattering on endless social media, noisily warning and insulting and dividing. In fact, he encapsulatea our zeitgeist. For better or worse, the spirit of Ratatoskr lives on.

Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/peter-trimming/6583159839/

The post Thinking About Ratatoskr and the Spirit of Our Age appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Defining Mythology While Ranting Against Merriam-Webster

I hate Merriam-Webster’s definitions of mythology. The first one is “an allegorical narrative.” That’s straight-out idiocy. Mythologies are virtually never allegories, which are stories in which characters, things and events stand for specific but abstract ideas. Orwell’s Animal Farm is pretty close to a modern day allegory, but more classic examples are The Faerie Queene or Pilgrim’s Progress.

Whomever wrote that definition may have mistaken myth for allegory because some mythic characters some to represent natural phenomena or ideas. For example, Helios is often viewed as the personification of the Sun. However, the sun god that gets most of the press in Greek and Roman tales is Apollo, who is a much more complex character. He may be associated with the sun but he’s also identified with music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, light and knowledge. And, aside from those associations, here’s a three-dimensional character who doesn’t necessarily symbolize or stand-in for anything but himself.

Okay, so if allegory is such a terrible definition, what’s better? Merriam-Webster’s second definition includes this: “the myths dealing with the gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular people.”

Meh. It’s certainly better than “allegorical narrative,” and it does point to what people commonly assume are myths, but it ignores and even obfuscates the fact that myths tend tend to start off as religions. That is, they are human narratives intended to explain the world to ourselves and help guide our thoughts and actions. Only after religions die, or at least lose the majority believers, do they become myths.

In a lot of cases, whether a story is a religion or a myth depends entirely on your belief system. For example, are the stories found in Vedic literature Hindu mythologies or aspects of Hinduism itself?

So, if Merriam-Webster has such crappy definitions of mythology, what’s a better one? The famed mythologist Joseph Campbell said myth was
“the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” Yeah, well, that’s so highfalutin that it’s almost impossible to derive any meaning from it.

I think mythology is something much more basic: it’s the narratives that give, or have given, people their systems of belief. In other words, myths are the stories we tell ourselves about how the cosmos works, what it means, and our own places within it.

So, scientific narratives and interpretations are today’s myths. Many of us accept the “big bang” or “dark energy” as scientific facts, but they may turn out to be nonsense or, at least, deeply mistaken. They’re the best stories we have right now, given the evidence at hand. All the debate about climate change is an example is a narrative that is viewed as false by some and a scientific fact by others. Either way, though, it’s a narrative used to describe what’s happening in the world.

Some myths probably get close to the truth of what’s happening in the universe (or multiverse, depending on your narrative), but they’re all about explaining the world and our lives to ourselves.

Therefore, in a very real sense, myths are the cultural and cognitive waters in which we all, without exception, swim. We have family myths, personal myths, political myths, scientific myths, etc.

In certain contexts, we tend to use the word “myth” to be synonymous with “false,” but this belies a more important point: that mythologies are all we have. There are no direct lines to The Truth. The best we can do is tell ourselves stories (aka, narratives or myths) about how things works and hope those they get as close to some ultimate truth as they can.

Image: Le Rapt d'Europe ("The Abduction of Europa," 1750) by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

The post Defining Mythology While Ranting Against Merriam-Webster appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Defining Mythology

I hate Merriam-Webster’s definitions of mythology. The first one is “an allegorical narrative.” That’s straight-out idiocy. Mythologies are virtually never allegories, which are stories in which characters, things and events stand for specific but abstract ideas. Orwell’s Animal Farm is pretty close to a modern day allegory, but more classic examples are The Faerie Queene or Pilgrim’s Progress.

Whomever wrote that definition may have mistaken myth for allegory because some mythic characters some to represent natural phenomena or ideas. For example, Helios is often viewed as the personification of the Sun. However, the sun god that gets most of the press in Greek and Roman tales is Apollo, who is a much more complex character. He may be associated with the sun but he’s also identified with music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, light and knowledge. And, aside from those associations, here’s a three-dimensional character who doesn’t necessarily symbolize or stand-in for anything but himself.

Okay, so if allegory is such a terrible definition, what’s better? Merriam-Webster’s second definition includes this: “the myths dealing with the gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular people.”

Meh. It’s certainly better than “allegorical narrative,” and it does point to what people commonly assume are myths, but it ignores and even obfuscates the fact that myths tend tend to start off as religions. That is, they are human narratives intended to explain the world to ourselves and help guide our thoughts and actions. Only after religions die, or at least lose the majority believers, do they become myths.

In a lot of cases, whether a story is a religion or a myth depends entirely on your belief system. For example, are the stories found in Vedic literature Hindu mythologies or aspects of Hinduism itself?

So, if Merriam-Webster has such crappy definitions of mythology, what’s a better one? The famed mythologist Joseph Campbell said myth was
“the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” Yeah, well, that’s so highfalutin that it’s almost impossible to derive any meaning from it.

I think mythology is something much more basic: it’s the narratives that give, or have given, people their systems of belief. In other words, myths are the stories we tell ourselves about how the cosmos works, what it means, and our own places within it.

So, scientific narratives and interpretations are today’s myths. Many of us accept the “big bang” or “dark energy” as scientific facts, but they may turn out to be nonsense or, at least, deeply mistaken. They’re the best stories we have right now, given the evidence at hand. All the debate about climate change is an example is a narrative that is viewed as false by some and a scientific fact by others. Either way, though, it’s a narrative used to describe what’s happening in the world.

Some myths probably get close to the truth of what’s happening in the universe (or multiverse, depending on your narrative), but they’re all about explaining the world and our lives to ourselves.

Therefore, in a very real sense, myths are the cultural and cognitive waters in which we all, without exception, swim. We have family myths, personal myths, political myths, scientific myths, etc.

In certain contexts, we tend to use the word “myth” to be synonymous with “false,” but this belies a more important point: that mythologies are all we have. There are no direct lines to The Truth. The best we can do is tell ourselves stories (aka, narratives or myths) about how things works and hope those they get as close to some ultimate truth as they can.

Image: Le Rapt d'Europe ("The Abduction of Europa," 1750) by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

The post Defining Mythology appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Reimagining the Gods in Homeric and Eddic Fan Fiction

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. The other day I stumbled onto an episode called “Reimagining the Gods” on Eric Molinsky’s podcast Imaginary Worlds. It features an interview with Miller, in which she speaks a bit about her career and her two novels, the most recent of which is Circe.

Aside from Neil Gaiman, with his books American Gods and Anansi Boys, Miller is probably the best known writer of mythic fiction at the moment. What’s interesting are the distinctions between the type of mythic fiction written by Miller and Gaiman.

Miller is a classics scholar who has managed to cross that difficult-to-traverse bridge between fantasy and literary fiction. She doesn’t set her books in the present, as do many writers of urban or paranormal fantasy. That fact, along with elegance of her prose, allows readers whom seldom stray from the path of literary fiction to justify their embrace of Miller’s books.

Gaiman is, by contrast, viewed as less of a literary writer and more of a “straight fantasy” author. Just as Miller draws from Greek myth, Gaiman’s American Gods draws from Norse myth, but he extends those myths into the contemporary era, which means his novels tend to be classified as contemporary or urban fantasy.

This tension seems inherent in the genre of mythic fiction. Is it literature or fantasy, art or entertainment, creative or derivative? This tension is nicely captured in a comment by a former boyfriend of Miller who teased that she was writing “Homeric fan fiction.”

In the podcast, she says he has since apologized, but I actually like the term. In a sense, all mythic fiction is a kind of fan fiction. Sure, the tales and storytellers are potentially thousands of years old, but there’s the same urge to carry a beloved tale forward.

And why not? This is how myth worked in the first place. These stories do not, and probably never did, belong to one person. They belonged to a society of people, and then they belonged to humanity itself.

Miller states that she was terrified that other classicists would see her work as somehow blasphemous, daring to rewrite Homer. However, she found that they were, in fact, supportive. “What I kind of realized,” she said, “which is what I should have realized earlier if I’d been thinking about it, is that these stories have been retold from the very first.”

And we’re still adding to these myths today. No just Miller and Gaiman, but all the writers and artists who work on myth-referencing comic books, movies, games, statues, tapestries and more. They are all a kind of fan fiction, some of it good and some awful, that grows and flourishes like corals building their homes on the skeletons of their long-lead and yet ever-present forebears.

Myths shape, extend and entwine, filling one artistic niche after another, becoming an immense conceptual sculpture that extends throughout human space-time, one that none of us simple, short-lived creatures will ever grasp in its entirety. Which is fine, as long as we can appreciate the dazzling bits available to us and maybe, just maybe, add our own motes of color and shape now and again.

Image: Dionysus with satyrs. Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter, Cabinet des Médailles

The post Reimagining the Gods in Homeric and Eddic Fan Fiction appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Reimagining the Gods

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. The other day I stumbled onto an episode called “Reimagining the Gods” on Eric Molinsky’s podcast Imaginary Worlds. It features an interview with Miller, in which she speaks a bit about her career and her two novels, the most recent of which is Circe.

Aside from Neil Gaiman, with his books American Gods and Anansi Boys, Miller is probably the best known writer of mythic fiction at the moment. What’s interesting are the distinctions between the type of mythic fiction written by Miller and Gaiman.

Miller is a classics scholar who has managed to cross that difficult-to-traverse bridge between fantasy and literary fiction. She doesn’t set her books in the present, as do many writers of urban or paranormal fantasy. That fact, along with elegance of her prose, allows readers whom seldom stray from the path of literary fiction to justify their embrace of Miller’s books.

Gaiman is, by contrast, viewed as less of a literary writer and more of a “straight fantasy” author. Just as Miller draws from Greek myth, Gaiman’s American Gods draws from Norse myth, but he extends those myths into the contemporary era, which means his novels tend to be classified as contemporary or urban fantasy.

This tension seems inherent in the genre of mythic fiction. Is it literature or fantasy, art or entertainment, creative or derivative? This tension is nicely captured in a comment by a former boyfriend of Miller who teased that she was writing “Homeric fan fiction.”

In the podcast, she says he has since apologized, but I actually like the term. In a sense, all mythic fiction is a kind of fan fiction. Sure, the tales and storytellers are potentially thousands of years old, but there’s the same urge to carry a beloved tale forward.

And why not? This is how myth worked in the first place. These stories do not, and probably never did, belong to one person. They belonged to a society of people, and then they belonged to humanity itself.

Miller states that she was terrified that other classicists would see her work as somehow blasphemous, daring to rewrite Homer. However, she found that they were, in fact, supportive. “What I kind of realized,” she said, “which is what I should have realized earlier if I’d been thinking about it, is that these stories have been retold from the very first.”

And we’re still adding to these myths today. No just Miller and Gaiman, but all the writers and artists who work on myth-referencing comic books, movies, games, statues, tapestries and more. They are all a kind of fan fiction, some of it good and some awful, that grows and flourishes like corals building their homes on the skeletons of their long-lead and yet ever-present forebears.

Myths shape, extend and entwine, filling one artistic niche after another, becoming an immense conceptual sculpture that extends throughout human space-time, one that none of us simple, short-lived creatures will ever grasp in its entirety. Which is fine, as long as we can appreciate the dazzling bits available to us and maybe, just maybe, add our own motes of color and shape now and again.

Image: Dionysus with satyrs. Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter, Cabinet des Médailles

The post Reimagining the Gods appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Reimagining the Gods #MythicFictionMonday

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. The other day I stumbled onto an episode called “Reimagining the Gods” on Eric Molinsky’s podcast Imaginary Worlds. It features an interview with Miller, in which she speaks a bit about her career and her two novels, the most recent of which is Circe.

Aside from Neil Gaiman, with his books American Gods and Anansi Boys, Miller is probably the best known writer of mythic fiction at the moment. What’s interesting are the distinctions between the type of mythic fiction written by Miller and Gaiman.

Miller is a classics scholar who has managed to cross that difficult-to-traverse bridge between fantasy and literary fiction. She doesn’t set her books in the present, as do many writers of urban or paranormal fantasy. That fact, along with elegance of her prose, allows readers whom seldom stray from the path of literary fiction to justify their embrace of Miller’s books.

Gaiman is, by contrast, viewed as less of a literary writer and more of a “straight fantasy” author. Just as Miller draws from Greek myth, Gaiman’s American Gods draws from Norse myth, but he extends those myths into the contemporary era, which means his novels tend to be classified as contemporary or urban fantasy.

This tension seems inherent in the genre of mythic fiction. Is it literature or fantasy, art or entertainment, creative or derivative? This tension is nicely captured in a comment by a former boyfriend of Miller who teased that she was writing “Homeric fan fiction.”

In the podcast, she says he has since apologized, but I actually like the term. In a sense, all mythic fiction is a kind of fan fiction. Sure, the tales and storytellers are potentially thousands of years old, but there’s the same urge to carry a beloved tale forward.

And why not? This is how myth worked in the first place. These stories do not, and probably never did, belong to one person. They belonged to a society of people, and then they belonged to humanity itself.

Miller states that she was terrified that other classicists would see her work as somehow blasphemous, daring to rewrite Homer. However, she found that they were, in fact, supportive. “What I kind of realized,” she said, “which is what I should have realized earlier if I’d been thinking about it, is that these stories have been retold from the very first.”

And we’re still adding to these myths today. No just Miller and Gaiman, but all the writers and artists who work on myth-referencing comic books, movies, games, statues, tapestries and more. They are all a kind of fan fiction, some of it good and some awful, that grows and flourishes like corals building their homes on the skeletons of their long-lead and yet ever-present forebears.

Myths shape, extend and entwine, filling one artistic niche after another, becoming an immense conceptual sculpture that extends throughout human space-time, one that none of us simple, short-lived creatures will ever grasp in its entirety. Which is fine, as long as we can appreciate the dazzling bits available to us and maybe, just maybe, add our own motes of color and shape now and again.

Image: Dionysus with satyrs. Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter, Cabinet des Médailles

The post Reimagining the Gods #MythicFictionMonday appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Reimagining the Gods #MythicFictionMonday

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. The other day I stumbled onto an episode called “Reimagining the Gods” on Eric Molinsky’s podcast Imaginary Worlds. It features an interview with Miller, in which she speaks a bit about her career and her two novels, the most recent of which is Circe.

Aside from Neil Gaiman, with his books American Gods and Anansi Boys, Miller is probably the best known writer of mythic fiction at the moment. What’s interesting are the distinctions between the type of mythic fiction written by Miller and Gaiman.

Miller is a classics scholar who has managed to cross that difficult-to-traverse bridge between fantasy and literary fiction. She doesn’t set her books in the present, as do many writers of urban or paranormal fantasy. That fact, along with elegance of her prose, allows readers whom seldom stray from the path of literary fiction to justify their embrace of Miller’s books.

Gaiman is, by contrast, viewed as less of a literary writer and more of a “straight fantasy” writer. Just as Miller draws from Greek myth, Gaiman’s American Gods draws from Norse myth, but he extends those myths into the contemporary era, which means his novels tend to be classified as contemporary fantasy.

This tension seems inherent in the genre of mythic fiction. Is it literature or fantasy, art or entertainment, creative or derivative? This tension is nicely captured in a comment by a former boyfriend of Miller who teased that she was writing “Homeric fan fiction.”

In the podcast, she says he has since apologized, but I actually like the term. In a sense, all mythic fiction is a kind of fan fiction. Sure, the tales and storytellers are potentially thousands of years old, but there’s the same urge to carry a beloved tale forward.

And why not? This is how myth worked in the first place. These stories do not, and probably never did, belong to one person. They belonged to a society of people, and then they belonged to humanity itself.

Miller states that she was terrified that other classicists would see her work as somehow blasphemous, daring to rewrite Homer. However, she found that they were, in fact, supportive. “What I kind of realized,” she said, “which is what I should have realized earlier if I’d been thinking about it, is that these stories have been retold from the very first.”

And we’re still adding to these myths today. No just Miller and Gaiman, but all the writers and artists who work on myth-referencing comic books, movies, games, statues, tapestries and more. They are all a kind of fan fiction, some of it good and some awful, that grows and flourishes like corals building their homes on the skeletons of their long-lead and yet ever-present forebears.

Myths shape, extend and entwine, filling one artistic niche after another, becoming an immense conceptual sculpture that extends throughout human space-time, one that none of us simple, short-lived creatures will ever grasp in its entirety. Which is fine, as long as I can appreciate the dazzling bits available to me and maybe, just maybe, add my own motes of color and shape now and again.

Image: Dionysus with satyrs. Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter, Cabinet des Médailles

The post Reimagining the Gods #MythicFictionMonday appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

A Short List of Lists of a Little Known Genre

I’m in the process of reading The Golem and the Jinni, which I’m enjoying but which just can’t be rushed. In lieu of writing about it, I’m providing links to a number of lists of mythic fiction.

The one seems most prominent is the list created by the Journal of Mythic Arts, which stopped publication in 2008. Although the list is not, in theory, being continually updated, I noted that The Golem and the Jinni is on it, even though it was published in 2013. So it may be more up-to-date than the original page would leave us to believe:

>>A Mythic Fiction Reading List

Another version of the list, which is provided as a book list challenge, can be found here.

But there are other lists out there as well, including these on Goodreads:

>>Must-read Mythic Fiction Novels

>>Popular Mythic Fiction Books

>>The Beast Within

>>The Trickster

>>Fantasy Novels Based in Native American Myth

>>Endicott’s Fairy Tales List

If you’re familiar with other good lists out there, please let me know!

The post A Short List of Lists of a Little Known Genre appeared first on The Tollkeeper.

Lists of Mythic Fiction

I’m in the process of reading The Golem and the Jinni, which I’m enjoying but which just can’t be rushed. In lieu of writing about it, I’m providing links to a number of lists of mythic fiction.

The one seems most prominent is the list created by the Journal of Mythic Arts, which stopped publication in 2008. Although the list is not, in theory, being continually updated, I noted that The Golem and the Jinni is on it, even though it was published in 2013. So it may be more up-to-date than the original page would leave us to believe:

>>A Mythic Fiction Reading List

Another version of the list, which is provided as a book list challenge, can be found here.

But there are other lists out there as well, including these on Goodreads:

>>Must-read Mythic Fiction Novels

>>Popular Mythic Fiction Books

>>The Beast Within

>>The Trickster

>>Fantasy Novels Based in Native American Myth

>>Endicott’s Fairy Tales List

If you’re familiar with other good lists out there, please let me know!

The post Lists of Mythic Fiction appeared first on The Tollkeeper.