The Age Of Odin

Forty-Nine

Soon there was just me left, and Heimdall. I went and checked on him. He was sitting in the doorway of his guardhouse and looked better than he had a few minutes earlier. Starting to recover from the effort of blowing the Gjallarhorn, which was now back hanging on the wall.

"All right?"

Heimdall gave a weary nod. "In a way, I'm relieved," he said. "Ragnarok has begun. Finally it's begun. The onus of knowing that it was coming, knowing that one day it would fall to me to announce it — this sat heavily upon my shoulders. But now the moment has come and gone, and I feel… uplifted. How strange."

"It's not so strange. Nothing worse than the wait before an action. You're dreading what's ahead and you're glad when it all finally goes off."

"True."

"So what happens next? What's the order of play? When do the actual hostilities commence? Any idea?"

Heimdall shrugged. "Loki will marshal his forces and attack at some point in the near future. I'm listening out for it even now. As soon as I detect enemy activity, however faint and remote it is, I will raise the alarm. As yet, I've heard nothing untoward."

"Well, he's only just left, hasn't he? Let's give the bloke a chance to get his act together. You're sure you're going to be okay?"

"I think so."

I said goodnight and made my way back along the drive towards the castle and the cabins beyond. Bed beckoned. Some kip was definitely in order. There wouldn't be much of it in the days ahead, I imagined.

Along the way I caught up with Bragi, who was straggling behind the rest of the Aesir. He was a slow walker, the head-down, trudging type. I fell in step.

"Few days back, that thing about the poem…" I said to him. "Sorry about that. I shouldn't have slagged you off."

He gave a not-to-worry shrug. "I have a thick skin, Gid, as a poet must. How else can he survive the jeers and insults that sometimes greet his work? If there's anyone whose feelings you should be concerned about, it's Loki. You were unwise to antagonise him, you know. He is not one to be trifled with."

"Who was trifling? I meant to kill the fucker stone dead. How was I supposed to know a bullet in the chest would only piss him off?"

"Perhaps no one anticipated you would take such precipitous action."

"Even so, it's like there's a bunch of rules here I don't understand, probably because nobody's seen fit to tell me what they are. I mean, you're gods, but you're not immortal, but you can't die 'til the time comes for you to die. Have I got that right?"

"More or less."

"Well, how does that make sense?"

"It makes sense if you stop thinking of us as deities as such."

"And what do I think of you as instead?"

Bragi frowned deeply, looking inward. "Odin would explain this far better than I."

"Have a go."

"We are… myths. Do you understand what I mean by that?"

"Stories."

"If you like. Bigger than that, but yes, basically stories. We are created things, fabrications, and we're aware of it. We know full well where and how we originated. We are incarnations of the tales that the Norsemen told around fires on long, cold nights, the sagas that entertained them and enlightened them and helped keep the dark at bay. We were given form and substance by oral tradition, licked into shape by it just as the first Aesir were themselves licked into shape by the cow Audhumla from the salty rim of the Ginnungagap. The storytellers assigned us our personalities and patterns of behaviour in order to help their people understand the universe and their own environment. Vikings were all about fighting with their neighbours or trading with them. No wonder, then, that the storytellers dreamed up a cosmos in which gods are engaged in constant border disputes with their enemies and rely on certain allied races to supply goods they can't manufacture themselves. Through us, our tales, our deeds and feuds, the Norsemen affirmed and justified their place in the grand scheme of things."

"This is nuts," I said. "You're saying you know you're not real?"

"Not at all," he replied. "We're real. The storytellers' imaginations made us real — as real to every member of their audience as the person sitting beside them. Granted, they bestowed us with power, made us capable of superhuman feats. A bit of exaggeration there. Poetic licence. But real all the same. Our squabbles, our rivalries, our passions — nothing about us, deep down, was unintelligible or 'godlike' to the Norsemen. To them we were ordinary people with a few added extras. Gods made in mankind's image. I expect this is hard for a modern, rationalist mortal like you to comprehend."

"Yes. No. Maybe a little. Not being funny, but TV soap operas — you know what those are?"

Bragi smiled lopsidedly through his lush beard. "I've heard of them."

"Not a fan myself, but my ex is. She follows a couple of them religiously. To her, the characters are like people she knows. I mean, she's not retarded. She knows it's just actors working from a script. But on some level I think she believes the characters exist. While they're onscreen, at any rate. That's why viewers, millions of them, get so absorbed in the shows and watch them week in, week out. Waste of time if you ask me, but if it makes them happy…"

"It's life, but a heightened version of it."

"Yeah."

He waved an index finger in the air. "And so are we. And we, too, have certain plotlines we must follow. Our lives, and deaths, have already been dictated and mapped out by the storytellers long ago, and preserved for posterity in the Eddas. We know how things are going to turn out for us. We all have predetermined roles to play and destinies to fulfil."

"But that's…" I groped for the right phrasing. "Isn't that, well, a bit depressing? You're called gods but you're actually — no offence — puppets."

"'Puppets' is putting it too strongly. It makes us sound as though we lack free will. We have free will. We merely choose to act in the manner that's been established for us beforehand. Take Thor. He couldn't bring himself to befriend a jotun if he tried. But that's fine, because he has no great desire to befriend a jotun. He's happy to want to bash in the brains of every one of them he meets. So there's no inner conflict there, no angst. We all accept who we are and what is expected of us."

"Hell of a way to live."

"But what's the alternative? Not to live?"

"When you put it like that…"

"It's difficult to grasp, I appreciate," Bragi said, "but we Aesir have these existences that have been bestowed upon us, full of extraordinary events and lasting longer, far longer, than any mortal's — so why not make the most of them? Enjoy them, rather than moan about the few modest limitations that have been imposed on them? For most of us, it's not something we allow ourselves to be troubled by. Only Odin seems to take it hard. He alone feels woe over our lot and frets about it. Thinks too much, that's his problem. Wisdom takes its toll. But the rest of us, we're content to cherish and relish what we have."

"And now it's all coming to an end."

"Without wishing to sound too fatalistic, what must be, must be. All tales reach a climax. At some point the bard must tire and say 'enough.' What good is a story without a finish?"

"Soaps never bloody finish," I said. "They just grind on and on. But that's the nature of them."

"Indeed. They give the illusion of progress without offering any form of resolution. Somewhat like a mortal life."

"Except mortal lives do have a resolution, if you can call it that. They all end eventually."

"And maybe that's the crucial difference between a mortal and a god — between you, Gid, and me. I am a living story, an element of a larger overarching narrative. My tale has been told over and over in the past. Doubtless it will continue to be told over and over in the future. Maybe that is immortality: to recur and recur. Even now, perhaps someone is writing or speaking about me, putting words into my mouth, generating afresh the essence that is Bragi, bard of Asgard and enshriner of the doings of the Einherjar. I am embedded deep in the Midgardian psyche, below the surface but ever present. All the Aesir and Vanir are. We survive within you from age to age, as ideas, stories, archetypes. And every time we are remembered, every time our saga is retold, we are re-created whole and live out a brand new lifespan."

"You reckon?"

"Why not? If gods are fictions, then we are brought to life wherever there is a bard by a hearthside or, if you prefer, a writer at a desk. They think of us, therefore we are."

"Shit…" My head was starting to throb. It was a lot to take in. Who'd have thought school dropout Gid Coxall would be standing discussing this kind of metaphysical bobbins with Asgard's very own poet in residence, while waiting for the end of the world to start?

We'd arrived at the castle.

"Well, here's where our paths divide," Bragi said. "Goodnight, Gid."

He walked off one way. I walked off the other, only to stop after a few paces and turn and call out: "This does work out okay, doesn't it? Ragnarok? There's a happy ending?"

"For some, yes. For others, no."

"But ultimately the good guys win, the bad guys lose. Yeah?"

"It's a work in progress," Bragi said after a moment, then added slyly: "Aren't we all?"

And that was as much as I could get out of him on that subject.

Bloody creative types.