The new film of Thor is far from the first to draw on these ancient tales, and it's not hard to see why
This Friday, the film Thor, based on the Marvel comic of the same name, will hit the big screen. There can't be many people left who are unaware that the story draws its inspiration from Norse mythology, in which Thor, god of thunder, is one of the most powerful deities, but the stories of his strength and hot temper have particular resonance for me.
Growing up in Trondheim, a town founded by a Viking, with a statue in the town square to mark it, my childhood was steeped in tales of the battles and tricks of the inhabitants of Asgard, the Norse capital of the gods. I read endless stories about Thor, the man in charge of thunder and lightning. In one memorable instalment, he disguises himself as a woman in order to get his hammer, the source of all his power, back from the frost giant Thrym, who'd stolen it. In another, he grapples with the trickster Loki, a shape-shifter who can turn into a salmon, a seal, a mare or a fly whenever he wishes.
If the trailer for the film is anything to go by, the big-screen Thor will be somewhat different from the Thor of my childhood. In the film version, he's been redeployed as an outcast of the heavens sent to earth to wear t-shirts and jeans and live among humans preoccupied with fancy phones. Loki, meanwhile, seems to have been assigned the role of straight-up villain, although in the original myths he often assisted the gods.
Nor are Thor and Loki the only Scandinavian mythological creatures to inspire the film industry: Kraken has also made a star turn. In the history of oral storytelling, the giant sea monster stood as a warning of the dangers that lurk in the depths of sea. When fishermen with their hooks and lines out suddenly felt the sea becoming shallower, it was the Kraken. The only hope of escape was to row as fast as you could away from the colossal octopus. If it rose to the surface, it could flip the boat and the fishermen would be dragged to the bottom.
Why Hollywood loves a Norse mythIn his poem The Kraken (1830), the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described the monster's terrifying ability to "winnow with giant arms the slumbering green." In the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Kraken ? recreated as a data-animated sea monster under the command of Davy Jones ? tries to swallow a merchant ship.
What is it about these traditional stories that make them so suitable for the big screen? Their success, I think, is due to their imaginative explanations of natural phenomena (indoors with the thunder roaring outside, the story of a man riding across the sky with his hammer seems more exciting than the scientific explanation of hot and cool air colliding), and their inherent flexibility. The myths are an amalgamation of the oral storytelling tradition, and it's in their nature to change: when my dad told me these stories, he could never remember exactly how they went, so would freestyle the parts he couldn't recall, giving them a different twist every time. The stories' unpredictability opens them up for every generation to interpret as they wish.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/may/03/hollywood-loves-thor
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