Tales from the Norse Legends

These are ten times more imaginative, terrifying and exciting than Greek mythology – though, admittedly, my enthusiasm may stem from the fact that until now I knew practically nothing about the Edda or the Norse gods, except that our days of the week are named after them. To call this a talking book is to describe Lewis Hamilton as a Sunday motorist. It’s a full-scale production, the sort of entertainment you feel you should book seats for. It’s partly the music – Naxos are expert at choosing exactly the right music. The moment you hear those first crashing, thunderous chords of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, followed by Benjamin Soames’s hushed, reverential announcement – ‘The Creation of the Universe’ – you know you’re in for a major 2001: A Space Odyssey kind of experience. As for the legends, they’re the stuff of nightmare. From the regions of fire and ice, Muspelheim and Niflheim, emerge the gods (good) and the giants (bad), constantly at loggerheads and preparing for the final showdown, Ragnarök. Odin, king of the gods, breathing life into ash and elm driftwood and creating man and woman; Loki, the treacherous god, whose children from his union with an ogress include a wolf and a serpent; Thor, with his great hammer that always comes back to him like a boomerang; the Berserkers, warriors who get so psyched up in battle they can’t distinguish between friend and foe. Compared to this lot, the folk on Mt Olympus are suburban.

Sue Arnold, The Guardian, 21 June 2008