Game of Thrones - Season four

John Snow can't wait!


 

The Ragnarok Riddle (Gåten Ragnarok)

Last night I went to the cinema to see Gåten Ragnarok (The Ragnarok Riddle or just Ragnarok), a new Norwegian action-adventure film inspired by Viking mythology and history.

In the film, Sigurd is an archaeologist and researcher at the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo, the capital of Norway. He works hard to reveal the mysteries connected to the very rich Oseberg burial finds, dug up during excavations back in 1904. His hard work has partly to do with the death of his wife, and his two children suffer because of his long working days.

Coming nowhere with his research and about to loose his job, Sigurd gets a breakthrough when a friend turns up with a rune stone he has found in the far north of Norway, in Finnmark. Combined with a broach from the Oseberg finds, a riddle written on the slab can be solved, but it only points to new riddles. The writings suggest that Queen Åsa, who was buried in the Oseberg ship, had been travelling up in the far north, and the runes point to a certain lake with a small island, called Odin's eye, deep into Finnmark wilderness.

Caught in A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones

So much is said and written about A Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire that I will tell about my reading of the books. I thought I'd never heard about George R.R. Martin when I first read about HBO's TV series on the Web. This was in autumn 2011, and in USA the first season of A Game of Thrones was over, but in Norway, where I live, it hadn't started. When I discovered that all of the four books in A Song of Ice and Fire were among the best-sellers on Amazon, and that fans anxiously awaited A Dance with Dragons, I got curious and bought the four-book bundle for Amazon Kindle for $13.49.

And that was it. I felt ambushed, caught in a trap and imprisoned, with no way of escaping. A Song of Ice and Fire has so many fascinating and complex characters, so many parallel and intertwined plots, so many places and customs, and so much action that I was totally caught. I have never had such a captivating reading experience in my life.

Where did Tolkien find the ring?

The magic-heroic sagas written on the remote medieval island of Iceland are still inspiring artists, writers, TV-producers, and film-makers. The last couple of weeks I have reviewed three of the Old Icelandic legendary sagas.

Beowulf and Sigurd the dragon slayer

Once more I have read Beowulf by Seaumus Heaney, a very good reinterpretation of the Old English poem. Unlike many readers of the old story who are preoccupied with Grendel, the monster, I am most fascinated by the description of the dragon and the final underground fight in which both the serpent and Beowulf dies. What intrigues me with the poem’s depiction of the battle is the important part played by Wiglaf, Beowulf’s brave and loyal retainer. He stood the ground when the other followers fled at the sight of the flame-spitting dragon, and without Wiglaf Beowulf would never been able to kill the ravaging “sky-plague”, the burner of homesteads and humans. If you google or browse the Internet in search of pictures of the famous fight, you will very seldom see Wiglaf play any part in the slaying of the dragon.