‘Raw myth’ – Ragnarök by AS Byatt

Ragnarök is the latest in Canongate’s now long-running Myths series, in which they’ve asked a bunch of high-profile writers to rewrite or represent a myth of their choice; AS Byatt has chosen the Norse myth of Ragnarök because of her childhood experience of reading Asgard and the Gods. Unlike, however, several other contributors to the series (Ali Smith, Milton Hatoum), Byatt hasn’t ‘novelised’ her myth; instead she’s stuck to what she calls, in her Afterword, ‘raw myth’ – a way of telling that ‘preserves its distance and difference’. That difference is one of narrative structure; rather than repackaging the Norse tales into a tied-up, resolved story, she’s maintained the chaotic, looping feel of the old tales – tales that, she says, aren’t really narratives at all, but simply ways of ‘making things comprehensible and meaningful in human terms.’ So she’s introduced a framing device, the ‘thin child in wartime’, who absorbs and delights in the Ragnarök myth while she waits for her father to return from the WWII campaign in North Africa. The reader than imbibes these stories (that aren’t really stories) about Odin and Loki, Jörmungandr, Hel, Baldur and more, alongside the thin child – and the child’s own circumstances (war, uncertainty, destruction of the natural world) alert both the child herself, and the contemporary reader, to the fact that the Ragnarök myth, which is concerned with the end of all things, isn’t at all irrelevant to our own world. In Ragnarök, then, Byatt has presented us with a series of ‘encounters with the incomprehensible’ – not a novel, not a collection of short stories, but a swirling maelstrom of incident and accident that’s terrible and beautiful and utterly compelling to read.

With all that in mind, then, I’m not going to give a précis of the plot, because there isn’t much of one – or, at least, what plot there is (creation, ruin), is vastly secondary to the way it’s told. And the way it’s told is rich and layered and fantastic. If you’ve read John Gardner’s Grendel or Heaney’s translation of Beowulf – or, of course, Byatt’s other works – you’ll maybe have an idea of what to expect. It’s epic and visceral and closer to poetry than prose. Byatt might, in fidelity to mythic tradition, eschew plot and characterisation, but she luxuriates in language and description – whether it’s the rampant fields and hedgerows of the thin child’s war-time home (‘vetches and lady’s bedstraw’), the horrors of the ship Naglfar, (‘the horny aftermath of dead men’s nails’), the sea-growth of the underwater kelp forests (‘sea-tangles, tangleweeds, oarweeds, sea-girdles, horsetail kelps, devil’s aprons’) or Loki’s curious experimentations (‘A sacrificed man was a cross, a simplified tree. A lung, a brain, was complexity run wild’), not a single word is misplaced or ill-considered. Also, my copy is a paperback proof, but the hardback (and, presumably, the paperback to follow) will be littered with illustrations, which, if they’re to do any justice to the sumptuous prose, ought to be gorgeous.

Any Cop? Yes, yes, yes. (Unless, of course, all you’re looking for is unadorned plot.) Ragnarök’s heightened world – cruel and violent and sumptuous and thrilling – will sweep you away for an epic and, I’ll venture, an unforgettable, afternoon (it’s a mere 154 pages without Byatt’s appended note). Plus it’s an amazing introduction to Norse mythology and a worthy addition to Canongate’s series – and, I reckon, would make a very welcome treat in anybody’s Christmas stocking.

Valerie O’Riordan