Interview with M. D. Lachlan (Wolfsangel), Part Three

Click here for Part Two of the interview.

KS - In another Wolfsangel scene, Vali prays, "Lord Loki, prince of lies, friend to man, let me endure. Let me endure." Despite the beliefs of some neo-pagans today, there is actually no historical evidence of there ever having been a cult of Loki. Recently, a producer for the History Channel got very short with me when I pointed this out, as he’d already planned an episode around the idea of Loki’s supposed worshipers.

Loki by Carl Emil Doepler (1882)

Near the midpoint of the book, you write that "Vali was not religious but for a heartbeat he realized the truth of the gods of his people. Every one was a god of death – of war: Freya, goddess of fertility and war; Thor, god of thunder and war; Freyr, god of pleasure and prosperity but battle bold. Only Loki was not a fighter. Only Loki stood at the sides and laughed, a laughter more deadly to the self-important gods than any sword or spear. No wonder they had chained him." In Norse myth, Frey gives away his mystic sword for interracial love. Balder, Bragi, Idunn, Njord, Idunn, Sif and others have no connection to war – and Loki famously taunts them for it.

Vali later says that "Loki is an enemy of the gods, not of people. When did you ever hear of him acting against men? He kills giants, he kills gods, but men he helps or leaves alone." Thor is, of course, the giant-killer of myth. Loki’s involvement in the murder of Balder is portrayed in the Edda as unequivocally evil. Placing your book after death of Balder and binding of Loki means that – in mythic time – it’s after Loki has become a wholly wicked creature. His next step is to destroy the world and kill all of humanity (save for one lucky couple).

In The Star-Crossed Stone, Kenneth J. McNamara writes of the pentagram: "turn it upside down and the black dogs of hell are unleashed, symbolizing, at least from the nineteenth century onward, evil and the devil." After thousands of years of use of the pentagram as a positive symbol, we have the Late Romantic era to thank for its unshakeable association with Satanism and, eventually, heavy metal of the 1980s. Recently, there seems to be a similar – if reverse – process at work on Loki. Despite being a clearly evil figure by the end of the mythic timeline, there is a trend to make him a sympathetic character. Is this part of a Western focus on anti-heroes and villains as being intrinsically more interesting than simple heroes? What does it say about the values of our contemporary culture?

McNamara's The Star-Crossed Stone

ML - People have been doing this for years. I mentioned Don Quixote, but I could easily chime in with Richard III, the figure of the malcontent in Elizabethan drama, Tom Jones, Becky Sharpe, Moll Flanders, Sam Spade – Robin Hood, for goodness sake! However, we are at a point in history where it is difficult to find a traditional Roy-Rogers-style hero. The growth of the anti-hero says nothing negative about us at all. It just says that we enjoy moral complexity and won’t settle for simple categories of good and evil. I’m not sure "anti-hero" is even a meaningful phrase any more. "Complex hero" is less snappy but more descriptive.

Actually, I think it’s only partly true that we want greater complexity from our literature. We’ve seen a huge growth in the anti-hero but not a corresponding growth in the anti-villain, at least not in genre fiction. Modern films and books still bristle with straightforwardly horrible villains who almost appear in a puff of smoke with a thunderclap. Not every depiction of a villain is so straightforward, and moral complexity has been introduced into the figure – Hannibal Lecter springs to mind, although I’d argue he’s actually an extreme form of anti-hero, as is Dexter and Tony Soprano. But the traditional villain is in much better shape than the traditional hero. Hollywood still usually characterizes its antagonists as in some way intrinsically bad (and often British!), not simply misguided or acting from legitimate but competing interests to the hero.

Tony Soprano with Viking beard

In both Wolfsangel and Fenrir, I have complex villains. However, when I wrote Lord of Slaughter – third in this series and out next year – I decided to come up with one who is a little more down-the-line evil. It was quite good fun writing a no-holds-barred nasty piece of work.

I was thinking of the main Norse gods when I wrote that speech for Vali. I wouldn’t read too much into Loki’s taunts – he also taunts Thor for hiding in battle, something that has no corroboration in other stories. Also Eldir, a serving man at the home of the gods, says of the Norse gods who are drinking in a hall: "Of their weapons they talk, and their might in war." He, unlike Loki, is not associated with lies so we may trust his word better. All the gods you mention are in the hall that Eldir is referring to. Loki is outside it when the action begins.

You are correct – there is no evidence for any worship of Loki. However, I don’t think it unusual that people at odds with their society – and Vali is in some ways that, a figure who is thinking beyond the constraints of his upbringing – should identify with marginal figures from the myths. Again, I’m not making an academic point or trying to suggest that Vali is even in a cult of Loki; it’s an interpretation that just feels right. Also, remember in the story that Vali is Loki’s son. It’s the consciousness of that that’s dawning on him.

Vali by Carl Emil Doepler (1882)

The notion of Loki as a hero is interesting. Again, I didn’t think of him as that. As far as I recalled, I was being true to the myth to make him antipathetic to the gods but friendly to men.

My Loki hates heroism and finds heroes boring, self-centred egotists. Loki is not straightforwardly heroic, but he is outwardly sympathetic to ordinary humans. I’ve hunted for the story where I formed this impression and can’t find it. Perhaps you will know it – he basically helps two islanders outwit a giant, I recall.

KS - Despite the book’s final scene – in which Loki gives his own spin on Christian mythology – your version of Loki seems grounded in a Judeo-Christian worldview. Early on in the novel, he describes Odin's quest for knowledge: "He would eat the world! . . . He would know it all, devour every mystery until the whole of creation came at his call. He’s mad, you know. He drank so deeply of the knowledge well but the waters splashed on that burning hunger and boiled all his brains. Yet still he wants to know, ever more, ever more." Although this echoes the refrain from the Eddic poem Völuspá ("Would you know more, or what?"), the idea that the quest for knowledge is a dangerous thing comes straight from the Book of Genesis. Near the end of the novel, knowledge of the runes brings "insight and unhappiness." I understand your portrayal of Odin as battle-mad, but why did you choose to portray Odin’s quest for knowledge – such a fundamental part of his character – in this negative light?

Odin at Mimir's Well of Knowledge by Emil Doepler (1905)

ML - A quote from Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One") from the Poetic Edda:

A measure of wisdom each man shall have
But never too much let him know
For the wise man’s heart is seldom happy
If wisdom too great he has won.

It’s right there in the source text, along with "Let no man the fate before him see / For so is he freest from sorrow." The runes bring unhappiness because they reveal the truth of the human place in the schemes of the gods.

This doesn’t invalidate your point of view about the quest for knowledge being a fundamental part of Odin’s character and, in some ways, a very positive one. It just shows there are different strands within the Eddas and, as a creative writer, I feel free to pick up the ones I like and discard the ones I don’t.

Odin, Wisdom-Seeking Wanderer
by Arthur Rackham (1911)

I would accept that Loki views knowledge as a dangerous thing, but this predates Christianity. Pandora’s Box springs to mind and the myth of Prometheus. Also the idea that mystic knowledge is privileged and should be treated with great care, accessible to only a few, is central to many religions – from that of shamans through the medieval Catholic church right up to modern Masonic cults. It is Christian, but not exclusively so.

The association of knowledge with unhappiness comes out of my conception of magic – that it involves a descent into madness. At other points in Wolfsangel, knowledge is seen as very desirable. Vali wishes he had a Christian scribe to help him out and longs to learn to read. Also, remember that it’s Loki who’s describing Odin’s quest. He doesn’t like him. Loki is seen as a figure who celebrates the ordinary sensual pleasures – it’s enough for him to enjoy the light of a spring morning. He doesn’t need to know where it comes from or why it seems to glitter. So his quest for knowledge is only negative if you believe Loki and see the state of magic-induced madness as a bad thing.

KS - Odin’s self-sacrifice on the World Tree to gain mystic knowledge – which he then shares with humanity – is often compared to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the benefit of his human followers. In your book, Odin is portrayed as completely selfish, and Loki becomes the Christ figure as you foreground his binding and suffering. When Loki appears next to Vali in battle against the Danish invaders, Vali asks, “Are you with us?” Loki touches his arm and says, “I have been with you since the beginning.” Not quite “it was then that I carried you,” but we’re definitely leaving Trickster Land and getting into Christlike “friend and protector” territory. Why did you decide to portray Loki in this fashion?

"It was then that I carried you" - Footprints now available on a coffee mug

ML - He’s Vali’s father and has appeared to reassure him. I hope there isn’t a parallel with the "it was then that I carried you" story. I find the Bible evocative, inspiring and frightening. The footprints story has always struck me as a piece of unbearable latter-day schmaltz! I remember hearing it for the first time as a kid and having difficulty keeping my dinner down.

Loki is clearly an interesting figure in Norse myth and one who doesn’t behave particularly consistently. He is capable of being helpful to the gods, of being mildly mischievous and of being murderous. Again, I approached this as a creative writer, not an academic. I didn’t particularly plan for Loki to appear – he came with Saitada. She was not a planned character but only came into the book when I realised Authun needed someone to feed the babies on his trip to the Troll Wall. So I put them with their mother. Then she kind of took over.

The Troll Wall is a difficult climb (even without carrying babies)

I knew the twins were Loki’s children, so I needed to account for how a slave girl came to lie down with a god. That’s when Loki appeared. He’s not Christlike when he seduces Saitada. My mental model for him was John Hurt playing Caligula in the BBC series I, Claudius. He’s not Christlike – he is governed by extremes of emotion and is a little deranged himself.

John Hurt's Caligula enjoys cross-dressing as much as Loki does!

We have one view of Odin in Wolfsangel, and it’s a view that lasts the first three books. However, there is a large development planned in Book IV that shows another view of Odin. Is there a possibility Loki might have been lying? Or – more consistent with my Loki – speaking truths that he knows people will misinterpret?

KS - In the last few years, neo-pagans have looked to Loki as a positive role model, especially for gay and transgendered individuals. I understand the impulse, but the Loki of Norse myth very clearly progresses from Trickster to Destroyer of Worlds. You have said that "Ragnarök is not the end of the world, as the Edda make clear. It’s the end of the old gods, and a time of great trial for the world, but the world survives and new, kinder gods take over." This seems to posit Loki as an agent of positive change, yet the Eddas clearly portray him as an evil figure who brings about the death of Balder – "the wisest of the [gods], and the fairest-spoken and most gracious" – and whose actions indiscriminately kill gods and humans and drown the world. How do you read, for example, Snorri’s statement that Loki is "the Æsir’s calumniator and originator of deceits and the disgrace of all gods and men"?

Loki helps Hoder kill Balder by Carl Emil Doepler (1882)

ML - It’s an interpretation. I’m not presenting a paper on Norse myth, I’m offering a view. What happens when you write is that the characters take on a life of their own. The Edda has its view of Loki, I have mine. Now I know that sounds enormously arrogant, but Snorri is doing what I am doing – changing the form in which the myths are rendered. These are part of a spoken tradition. Snorri is writing them down and, in doing so, inevitably changing them. OK, he’s nearer to the source material, but that doesn’t mean we have to take his word as inviolable – not as creative writers anyway. It would be different if you were coming at the text as an academic.

Also, the world renews after the gods are gone – Loki’s actions make the place better – unless you read the last couple of verses of Völuspá. So it’s a telling of a story from a different point of view.

I still perform as a stand up comedian, and the spoken discipline is entirely different to the written. Things that work well in written form die on stage, and stage jokes often don’t quite cut the mustard on the page. So I think it likely that these myths were told in many different ways down the years and, in the case of skilled storytellers, adapted on the hoof. If the storyteller senses the audience are enjoying Loki, he will elaborate a bit more. If they’re bored by him, he’ll dismiss him and move on. Snorri gets a snapshot of the myth and – as it’s all we have – then that’s what we must go on when making our judgments. But you can’t regard it as canonical in the same way you would a novel.

Snorri Sturluson - creative writer or academic?

Odin brings war into the world. With his death it disappears. Now, you can view that as a bad thing if you like, but I interpret it as a good one. And, yes, it does entail me ignoring certain statements of Snorri’s, but that’s fundamental to the nature of storytelling, and it’s been that way ever since people began telling stories. As I’ve compared myself to a Nobel Prize winner, I may as well compare myself to Shakespeare. If you look at what he does with Macbeth, for instance, he entirely ignores the actual history and turns Macbeth from a reasonable real ruler into a monstrous fictitious one. I don’t think it works as a criticism to say, "But, Shakey, baby, you haven’t got it right." No, but it’s rather irrelevant to the drama Shakespeare created.

KS - The names of your characters all resonate with allusion. In a seeming editorial oversight that perhaps refers to an earlier version of the character’s name, Authun is called Authwi at one point – from the Icelandic auðui (“wealth”). This seems to underscore the emptiness of this haunted king’s physical treasure and power. Near the end of the novel, Authun’s battle with the werewolf occurs in a chapter entitled “The Battle in the Hoard Cave” – an echo of Beowulf’s struggle with the Night Flyer. Authun’s wife is Yrsa, named for the Icelandic saga character who is both sister and mother of the hero Hrólf Kraki – a man with a name that itself references the wolf. Adisla’s mother (“a noted healer”) is Disa, from dís (“lady,” “woman”) – but also associated with dísir (“goddesses”). Bragi is named for the poet of the gods, and he – like a courtly skald – tries to instill young Vali with a love of tradition, history and Viking manliness. This creates a deeper current beneath the surface of the text for those familiar with Norse myth and legend. Did you create characters and then search for meaningful names, or did the names suggest the characters?

Beowulf vs Dragon in DC Comics (1975)

ML - The answer is "neither." Again, I have to say that I approach this stuff as a creative writer, not an academic. So I pick names I like. The correspondences – particularly those of Disa and Bragi – did strike me at the time I thought of them but only as an afterthought. Academics tend to want the creative process to be mechanical – an identifiable train of cogs that can be traced back to the power source of myth. They assume that because something refers to something else, it was intentional. Sometimes that’s true, but in this case, it isn’t.

Authwi is a typo in the Pyr version – my typo, but a typo nevertheless. I could say, then, that you’re simply wrong to deduce the correspondences that you do. However, the correspondence seems too strong - Authwi is pretty much a direct rendering of auðui – for there to be nothing at all in what you say. So I would say that the allusions you’ve identified are both accidental and revealing. I don’t think there’s a contradiction in that.

As I’ve said, the creative process is a mysterious and weird thing, and I’m convinced it comes from a different part of the brain to the one requiring rational thought. There really is very little similarity in the way academics construct their arguments and how writers produce their stories. There is not always a trail of footprints back to the text. Some things appear from thin air – or at least appear to. I’m prepared to accept that these correspondences are correct and that – as I am someone who has been immersed in the myth for many years – they hopped out of my brain. But they had nothing to do with planning, forethought or deliberate allusion. Maybe, as you say, it is Odin working through me – though I can’t think he’d approve of me too much!

Paradoxically, "Creative Writing" is now an academic subject!

I’m not mining the myth like an academic would mine a text for references to support their central idea. It’s much more haphazard and organic. What is remarkable is that, when you proceed in this way, you can come up with some remarkable allusions that you never actually intended and in such a number that would make you believe it couldn’t be just coincidence. Spooky stuff, eh?

The exception here is Vali. Vali comes from the following passage: "Now Loki was taken truceless, and was brought with them into a certain cave. Thereupon they took three flat stones, and set them on edge and drilled a hole in each stone. Then were taken Loki's sons, Váli and Nari or Narfi; the Æsir changed Váli into the form of a wolf, and he tore asunder Narfi his brother. And the Æsir took his entrails and bound Loki with them over the three stones: one stands under his shoulders, the second under his loins, the third under his boughs; and those bonds were turned to iron."

Loki in Chains (1880)

Again, I’m not looking for direct correspondences in the myth, but this was where the idea of two brothers bound to a destructive destiny came from, and it was appealing one turned into a wolf. Originally, Feileg was called Narfi. Unfortunately, to the British ear that name is comic. It either conjures up NAAFI – which used to be the notoriously foul army catering service – or the word "naff," so it had to go.

It was only as the story was written that I saw that the werewolf transformation would be related to the Fenris wolf and therefore a threat to Odin rather than to Loki.

There is no process of logic to this. I think sometimes logic can be the enemy of creative thought. I could have said, "but the myth says he must kill his brother and bind Loki." But I’m rendering the spirit rather than the letter of the myth and I have no problem with that.

KS - The mother of Vali and Feilig is named Badb, after the Celtic goddess associated with the raven, the wolf and “fury” – all very Odinic. She changes her name to Saitada, the name of a goddess known only from one engraved altar stone in Northumberland, England. Despite a lack of sources, British historian R. G. Collingwood theorized in 1908 that she may have been the "lady of grief." Associating your tragic character with grief is very understandable, but why did you link the consort of Loki with Badb, who seems more simpatico with the Raven God than with the Trickster?

Badb by Elizabeth Caffey (2011)

ML - I agree. She was originally thought of as an incarnation of Odin. However, as the story wrote itself, it became more obvious she was an incarnation of Loki himself. That emerged at the moment I wrote Loki’s line to Saitada:

"My name is Misery. Do you want to know a secret?"
"I do."
"Yours is too."

She emerged at that moment. I may be misquoting a bit there, but the gist is correct.

I changed her function but not her name. However, it may turn out that Loki wasn’t right about her in later books and that the Trickster has himself been tricked. Or it may not.

KS - There is a complicated character in the novel named Veles Libor. He’s an Obotrite, which sounds like a creature from the first seasons of Star Trek, but is actually a member of a Slavic tribe that lived in what is now northern Germany. Veles was a Slavic god with Odinic qualities, and your character is both wise and treacherous. Did you intend for his name to literally mean “Odin Liberated”?

Note: Star Trek's Tellarites do not appear in Wolfsangel

ML - Veles the Slav god has Odinic qualities, but Loki-like ones too in that he’s the enemy of the central god of the Slav pantheon. He’s also a shapeshifter and a mischievous figure. Again, I just thought of the name and liked it, although its connotations did strike me.

I didn’t intend a correspondence between him and Odin, but it did occur me that there might be one. I’m not an academic, so I don’t have to tie up these loose ends. I thought it was an interesting possibility he might be an incarnation of Odin or Loki, but I didn’t feel the need to nail that down for myself or the reader. One of the interesting things you can do in a novel is let things float.

Veles the God by Viktor Križanovskij

Veles has a more direct and less mystical role too. He is a member of the coming merchant class – the people who will eventually become the rulers and powerbrokers of the world, an echo of the future. There is a small victory for trade over heroism – at least for a time – in the book. Veles is also a member of an oppressed minority and exposes Vali’s naivety in thinking that he would have forgotten the injustices he has suffered enough to be Vali’s friend. Veles hates the people he serves, but he is clever enough to disguise that. He’s a pragmatist rather than an evil figure, and I think there’s nothing wrong with the way he treats Vali. After all, Vali’s people have burned his home town, enslaved him and dragged him halfway across the world. Would he not naturally want revenge on them, given the chance?

Click here for Part Four of the interview.

Interview with M. D. Lachlan (Wolfsangel), Part Two

Click here for Part One of the interview.

KS - The novel is full of wonderful realistic touches. Authun a white-haired old man at age thirty-five, underscoring that life in the Viking age was nasty, brutish and short. Historical realism features prominently, as well. One example alludes to actual gender relations of the pre-Christian era: "Disa had divorced her husband and, since he was heavy with his fists, the assembly had voted that she be allowed to keep his farm." I’m very curious about your research process – mythological, literary and historical. Do you start with a historical concept – say, the use of the shield wall – and then build a scene around it? Do you write a scene and then look for facts to give it a realistic touch? How does research relate to the creative process?

M. D. Lachlan (a.k.a. Mark Barrowcliffe)

ML - I have a background in wargaming and have read a lot of military history in this period. I think my first contact with berserkers came in a book called Skirmish Wargaming by Donald Featherstone when I was around 11 – shortly before I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. My characters in D&D were often berserkers (pre-dated the barbarian character class and so much cooler). Even then I was interested to get stuff right, so I did a lot of reading about Vikings and Norse myth. So this mythology and history has been a large part of my imaginative life for many years. There’s plenty of stuff that I don’t need to research because I just know it.

Featherstone's Skirmish Wargaming

The shield wall, for instance, is something I was very familiar with. What I didn’t know was what it was like to be in one. For this reason, I used research material from battle reenactors. I think they have a lot of valuable stuff, because they try to recreate the fighting styles and lives of the Vikings and therefore encounter similar problems and emerge, you would presume, with similar – or at least plausible – solutions.

There actually isn’t that much evidence for the use of a shield wall as a Viking tactic in this early period. There is evidence for its use soon after, though, so I thought I was justified in using it. You also have to use your common sense. OK, some people in the line have formed a shield wall before, some haven’t. What does that do to the organization of the wall? Also, my experience of being in football (soccer) crowds when the police are herding you made me realize how difficult it might be in such a press to actually draw or use a weapon. The old exit to the Arsenal ground at Highbury or the old Chelsea Stamford Bridge (a good Viking association there!) were narrow funnels at points, and you literally couldn’t get your hand to your head to scratch your ear sometimes.

Reenactors who haven't quite mastered the shield wall

My research process is to read a lot of background stuff, making occasional notes if something strikes me as particularly interesting. I’ll read three or four good, authoritative books on the subject. In fact, for Wolfsangel, I read more than that, including revisiting the Eddas and the sagas. Then I write. As I write, I might encounter a question that needs answering. If I can’t find the answer immediately (five or six minutes), I don’t worry about it and write on. Then I address the missing information when I’ve finished the book. It’s always the really little things that are difficult to discover – how extensive was the deck on an early Viking longship? Even though East and West Norse were intelligible to each other, would accent have proved a problem? If you think this is unlikely, listen to this version of someone speaking Geordie – a British dialect that bears a lot of traces of Old English. He’s speaking your language and this is not a particularly extreme form of the accent.

On the deck of the recreated Viking ship Íslendingur (built 1996)

KS - You have said that "writing is an oddly magical process. It’s something that I don’t know where it comes from, and – when it’s going well – it literally feels like I’m the first reader of it. I don’t feel that the intellectual side of my brain has much input into it . . . When I’m writing, it genuinely feels like it comes from a place that is beyond the influence of my conscious thought." This reminds me of Robert E. Howard’s description of writing the Conan stories: "The man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen – or rather, off my typewriter – almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred." I’ve often experienced this phenomenon when composing music. My best pieces have popped fully-formed into my head, and I feel that I’m just transcribing them – that I didn’t consciously create them, but that I’m hearing them from “somewhere else.” Isn’t this experiential event what the ancient Norse called "Odin"? I mean, don’t you think that they experienced the same creative rush – and its subjective experience as something coming from outside the conscious mind – and attributed it to the god who possesses, who inspires, who brings frenzy?

Robert E. Howard's room in Cross Plains, Texas

ML - I think you’re right. I’m always wary of sounding like a lunatic in interviews on this subject. I don’t think the creative impulse comes from outside but that’s certainly how it feels. This is why I have difficulty answering some of your questions where you ask exactly where certain things originated and I feel almost that the best reply I can give is, "Er, somewhere."

There have been many names for this experience throughout history. The most common, of course, comes from Greek (rather than Norse ) culture in the shape of the Muses. The Muse visits the writer at his desk – or the musician or the dancer – and grants them their art. And sometimes, even for the best artists, the Muse simply fails to turn up.

Hesiod Listening to the Inspirations of the Muse by Aman-Jean (circa 1890)

KS - You write that "Authun was a Volsung, a direct descendant of the gods and was a vessel for their powers," but that the "battle-fond poet [Odin] felt threatened by his fierce descendant and had cursed Authun to sire only female children. He could not risk him producing an even mightier son." This is the exact opposite of the relationship between Odin/Wotan and the Volsung family in Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen, in which the god manipulates events specifically to create the mightiest human warrior possible. In Norse myth, Odin wants to gather the greatest human warriors to build his army for the final battle with the forces of chaos at Ragnarök. Why did you decide to flip this relationship between Odin and his descendants on its head?

ML - Again, I can’t claim premeditation. It just seemed right, seemed to fit with the feel of Norse mythology and of my story. To talk of "decision" in creative writing misses the essential nature of the process. I did not decide. I just wrote it. The decision, I suppose, came in the editing, when I decided to leave those words in. You’re right, though – the sentiment seems more Roman or Greek than Viking. I suppose it does tie in with Odin’s treacherous nature, however, and partly explains it.

KS - Describing the Fenris Wolf, you write that “the tale said the wolf would lie there until the twilight of the gods – Ragnarok – when it would break its bonds and kill the All-Father Odin. It would usher in a new age, ruled by beautiful, just, fair spirits, not the corrupt, battle-mad, vengeful, and deceitful gods they called the Aesir, of which Odin was the chief.” You’ve written that "you might argue these [Snorri’s works] are examples of the new religion denigrating the old by turning its gods into men, but the whole body of Norse myth is written by Christians. Our only view of the old religions comes through the writings of Christian scholars." So, are you reverse-engineering the Edda by purposefully flipping the roles of the major characters? Do you think it’s possible to give the Eddas a postmodern reading that makes Odin the villain and Fenris the hero?

The Binding of Fenris by Dorothy Hardy (circa 1909)

ML - It’s possible. Fenris gets treated pretty badly. He hasn’t actually bitten anyone by the time he gets tied up and seems quite a civil sort of wolf. I tend to do that by instinct, to look at things backwards. As I say, I don’t really deal in heroes or villains – at least not in this story. It’s just a matter of seeing the various interests of the competing characters. The gods want to live, they’ve restrained Fenrir because of that. That doesn’t make them evil, it makes them pragmatic. The wolf wants to kill them. Again, that doesn’t make him evil – it’s an understandable reaction to being tricked and trapped. It’s possible to have a story where everyone is acting correctly according to their morals and for them still to be in opposition with each other.

KS - You repeatedly refer to Odin as insane, which seems more Germanic than Scandinavian. The German Wodan is rage and fury personified as he drives the Furious Host through terrifying winter skies. The Scandinavian Odin is the god of wisdom who outwits wise giants in riddle contests, brings poetic inspiration to humankind, gives ecstatic wisdom performances. In some Eddic tales – especially as Bölverk (“evil-doer”) – he does heartless and wicked things, yet he seems more cold and calculating than insane. Your version goes against high-profile interpretations of the last 200 years, including Wagner’s devious Wotan, Tolkien’s wise Gandalf and Branagh’s Old Testament Odin. However, I must admit that the vision of Odin that Loki gives Saitada in Wolfsangel does seem psychologically right in portraying the mythic god who stirs battle in the world: "The expression on the man’s face was terrible. Saitada had seen it before. It was the look men wore at cock fights or when cheering two dogs to rip into each other, the look the smith’s friends had worn as they’d held her down – a look of delight in violence and lust for more." Do you really see the mythic Odin as such a wholly negative character, or did you simplify his complexities for plot purposes?

The Wild Hunt / Furious Host by Emil Doepler (1905)

ML - My Odin is just one aspect of the mythic Odin, but my interpretation is justified by looking at his names. Bale-worker, Gallows-burden, Raven-friend, Ghost King (not sure about the translation on that one), Frenzied One, Deceiver, Lord of the Hanged, Ruler of Treachery, Slain God. I wouldn’t call him negative. I’d say that he is unguessable, alien, godly, mystic and inhuman. One of the central horrors of Wolfsangel is that the characters are trapped in the schemes of a god whose mind is too alien for them to grasp.

I happily admit that I’ve conflated Wodan with Odin and brought out one side of him. I did so for dramatic purposes. Magic to me – and Odin is king of magic – is a scary, unpredictable, unknowable force that can easily turn on its practitioners. It’s also very akin to madness. It was lodged in my head that Odin was god of magic, madness and poetry (among other things), and I admit I didn’t check the source material on that. I still think it’s an interpretation that stands up, but I would concede that the insane nature of the god, while there in Norse myth, isn’t to the fore.

Odin by Carl Emil Doepler (1882)

I wanted a god that was appropriate to my idea of magic – something won by great privation and self-sacrifice and also something that is very dangerous for the practitioner. This comes from a variety of sources but primarily from Odin’s sacrifice of his eye at Mimir’s well and his hanging on the tree. It’s a matter of feel, really, and my Odin felt right both in respect to the myths, to the names he’s given in the sagas and the Edda, and to what we know of some of his actions. I’m not pretending to offer a mythologically-complete version of Odin, just a dramatic and plausible interpretation. And he’s certainly more true to the myth than the Thor film version – a peace-loving patriarch!

So, in short, there was no conscious decision to set my Odin against anyone else’s. There was just the desire to make the god consistent with the idea of magic in the book and to draw in certain other elements that aren’t strictly Norse but do chime with the god’s Germanic counterpart – such as the bog bodies. If I had a symbol for my idea of magic it would be the bog bodies. There are lots of explanations for how they got there but, in my interpretation in Wolfsangel, they are magical practitioners indulging in extreme rituals that go wrong.

Tollund Man - possibly sacrificed in a bog (circa 300 BCE)

KS - At one point in the novel, the character Vali decides that "one day he would drink Odin’s blood, tear that god down and make him pay for his corpse lust." Although Norse myth has many instances of Odin’s ambivalence and untrustworthiness, he is also the chief god in the Eddas, provides the gnomic wisdom of Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One"), brings life to humanity, and gives wisdom, poetry, runes, and so on. Doesn’t this use of Odin as villain forward the contemporary fantasy trope of focusing on auxiliary characters as protagonists and questioning central figures? Prominent examples of this trend include John Gardner’s Grendel (1971), Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1983) and Gregory McGuire’s Wicked (1995). There is a real postmodern delight in taking the side of the underdog or villain of the piece. Is Western society so jaded that we can’t get any pleasure from C. C. Beck’s Captain Marvel, but must always insist on Frank Miller’s Dark Knight? Are we in such a dark place as a culture?

ML - I would accept that, in some ways, Wolfsangel is a postmodern narrative, but I’m not sure it is in the way you seem to imply or in a way that would be accepted by postmodernists. It is postmodern in the sense that it doesn’t have sharply drawn villains and heroes, and there isn’t an immediate apparent overarching concept of good and evil. People fight for their own interests, which are seen as culturally-determined rather than absolutes of good and evil.

The Dark Knight and the Big Red Cheese

However, that’s as far as it goes. I think there is a definite value system in Wolfsangel which is modern but not postmodern. It’s certainly not Viking, though the characters themselves display Viking ways of thinking – with the exception of Vali who is characterized as a very progressive individual. Wolfsangel is not relativist. It upholds the values of humanity and almost of the mundane. It champions ordinariness against heroic action while – in a way that is either postmodern, ironic or hypocritical, depending on your view – centering the narrative almost exclusively on heroic action.

Vali wants to be a farmer, not a hero; Feileg wants to be a man, not a half-wolf. The gods are not the central focus in Wolfsangel – the people are. It’s a human story and the humans in it are, on the whole, flawed but decent people.

In pitting the humans against dark and strange gods, I hope that my story moves away from the "scarred hero" cliché (which surely reached its nadir in the Nicholas Cage remake of The Wicker Man, but don’t get me started). In this way, Wolfsangel isn’t a postmodern story at all; it’s nearer to an old fashioned tragedy – starcrossed lovers finding themselves challenged and torn apart by a merciless and cruel world. It has more in common with Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago than it does The Dark Knight Returns. Notice how I effortlessly compare myself to an author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nicholas Cage in The Wicker Man (2006)

Odin is not a villain. He is the enemy of one of the central characters, true, but I don’t think that equates quite to "villain." And remember that Odin is in the story in many forms, and, like every other character in it, he’s seeking primarily to protect himself or what he holds dear.

Spider-Man, God of Thunder

If you want to equate the story to a comic book, I’d say it’s not near to Captain Marvel or Frank Miller. Although it’s vastly different in tone, it’s closer to Spider-Man. There you have a human hero who is forced to come to terms with the reality of what he is and to try to retain the vestiges of a normal life the best he can. He is neither a paragon of heroic virtue nor psychological damage. If I had to come down in one camp or the other, Captain Marvel or the Dark Knight, I’d say the book is nearer to Marvel. The character of Feileg, in particular, is straightforwardly heroic. Yes, he’s suffered, but that makes him a realistic character rather than a postmodern cipher for alienation and the collapse of meaning. In fact, Feileg is anything but alienated, and he sees his life as full of meaning. Vali’s entire journey is a quest to hold on to meaning and to reaffirm it.

Bradley's The Mists of Avalon

I loved The Mists of Avalon when I read it (although I’m convinced I read it in 1981 – seems I couldn’t have), and I do think it’s interesting to approach some stories sideways. We always like a new view on things. You don’t need to go as far as to call it postmodern. A better word is, perhaps, "novel." The novel has always undermined things and turned them around from its very foundations. When the novel takes on myth, it inevitably alters and skews it to its own ends. No one called Don Quixote postmodern, but it took an existing form – the heroic romance – and turned it on its head. That was written in 1605 and, as such, is a seminal moment in the creation of the modern novel. So the "Frank Miller" impulse has been with us from the start, and if we’re in a dark place as a culture, we’ve been in it for a long time.

Click here for Part Three of the interview.

Interview with M. D. Lachlan (Wolfsangel), Part One

Set in the Viking Age, British author M. D. Lachlan's novel Wolfsangel is the first book in an important new historical fantasy series. Lachlan uses Norse myth in a brilliantly imaginative way that is at once traditional and radical. Unlike the myth-inspired yet newly-created characters in The Lord of the Rings, several figures in Wolfsangel come straight from the Eddas and sagas – including Odin, Loki, berserkers and werewolves. However, Lachlan's portrayal of their actions and his interpretations of their motivations are anything but orthodox. Through a heady mixture of research and inspiration, Lachlan has created a polyphonic work that is both allusive enough to engage readers with a knowledge of Norse myth and elusive enough to create a page-turner reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's best.

Cover to Wolfsangel

As Mark Barrowcliffe (his real name), Lachlan has published Girlfriend 44, Infidelity for First-Time Fathers, Lucky Dog and Mr. Wrong. His 2007 book The Elfish Gene chronicled a youth obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. Fenrir, the sequel to Wolfsangel, is due to be published by Pyr in the United States in October.

In the first part of what he has called "the most involved interview I've ever had in my life," Lachlan discusses his influences, the nature of writing historical fiction, kitsch in the fantasy genre and Viking cosmetic dentistry.

KS - The series of novels that begins with Wolfsangel will, according to the publisher, "spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history." I imagine a series that starts in the Viking Age as historical fantasy, moves through various eras and genres like steampunk and alternate history, and ends up in the far future with a hard SF novel. Is your series going to have this large of a scope?

ML - Only to the present day. I’d be a lousy SF writer. Fantasy is in my blood, SF isn’t. I like SF, but I dreamed of dragons and swordfights as a kid, not spaceships and lasers. I will be going forward in time for as long as the series proves popular. It will end up in the Victiorian era, should I and the series last that long, but I will be avoiding steampunk tropes. This is for two reasons – the first is that I’ve never read a steampunk novel so wouldn’t know how to reproduce their tropes if I tried. The second is that – as with SF – you need to have a real love for something to make it work. My love is for real history, so I would try to engage with the Victorian period by making my story as realistic as possible – the fantasy elements aside. I have some ideas, but I won’t go into them here.

When fantasy engages with Victoriana, then it tends to do so in a fairly limited way, from what I’ve seen. Steampunk has quite a narrow focus, from what I understand of it. The Victorian era has a huge scope, and I’d hope to explore some of that. The novel I’ve admired the most that’s set in that period is Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. It explores some of the big fractures in Victorian society. I must read [William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's] The Difference Engine, though. I’ve been meaning to get around to it for years.

Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White

The WWII story is written and currently in two forms. The most likely form to emerge is a detective story. However, it will depend on my books selling very well, as publishers might fight shy of publishing something that has moved so far away from the original.

KS - The idea of a series that takes the characters over a great span of time and literary styles probably found its apotheosis in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, which was published over a thirteen year period (1946-1959) and evolves from Gothic fantasy to a sort of Kerouackian Bildungsroman. Was Peake someone that influenced you as a writer?

ML - No. I’ve tried several times to get through Gormenghast and never managed it. This sounds dreadfully philistine, but the story doesn’t present itself quickly enough for me. I find the detail that Peake puts into his work can be grueling. He’s clearly a very important writer, and I’m sure that I write to an extent in his shadow without ever having read him all the way through. I was a big [Michael] Moorcock fan, and Moorcock has influenced my work. Peake’s an enormous influence on Moorcock, so inevitably on me too.

One of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast manuscripts

I will try Peake again one day, but I think life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy – no matter how much you might be able to admire them.

KS - The great realism of your novel – especially the intensely personal description of battle – is reminiscent of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories. Were his works of historical fiction an influence on your series? Do you read much historical fiction or history, in general?

ML - I deliberately avoided Bernard Cornwell because I didn’t want to end up reproducing his style or, worse, writing against it. The realism, if it comes from anywhere, comes from my own martial arts and fencing experience. The nervousness you get before a judo contest or going in for a session of heavy sparring at boxing informed how I described the people’s feelings in a battle. Everyone feels nervous in those situations, everyone has moments of doubt and has to fight down their fear. And that’s in modern, regulated sport. How much more nervous will you feel facing an armed and lethal enemy?

I read an awful lot of history and some historical fiction. I particularly enjoyed Frans G. Bengtsson’s The Long Ships for its ability to capture the Viking character. I’ve read a lot of Robert Harris and also enjoyed stuff such as Q by Luther Blissett and The Name of the Rose [by Umberto Eco]. I’ve read little historical fiction about war. I don’t find this a drawback when I write – I like to come at things from my point of view, not carrying respect or dislike for another writer’s way of doing things.

Bengtsson's The Long Ships

I’m glad you used the word "realism." The "ism" is crucial. What I’m offering isn’t an academic document that will act as a reliable guide to life in the Viking Age. I’m offering a well-researched novel. There’s a big difference. I have much greater license than historians do when approaching their work.

For instance, the berserker cult of "Odin the Frenzied" relates strongly to descriptions of berserkers, the full body tattoos are inspired by Arabic descriptions of Vikings, but there are elements to them that I simply don’t have the evidence to support. My berserkers appear as sort of violent ascetics of Odin – they spurn personal wealth, they don’t really wash (very un-Viking-like, from what I understand) and they work as mercenaries largely for the reward of battle. They’re clearly fictional creations. They do fit with the feel of Norse myth but there’s no evidence such people existed. In fact, the berserkers of the sagas seemed very interested in personal wealth. But my berserkers do feel real to me in the story. So they’re not real, but they are realistic.

KS - You have mentioned Michael Moorcock as an early influence, and I can see echoes of his concepts in Wolfsangel. The idea that the werewolf is reborn as a different character in each novel of your series is somewhat analogous to Moorcock’s idea of the Eternal Champion that ties together so many of his own works. Your character Authun is nicknamed the White Wolf, which can be seen as an Odinic reference or an homage to Moorcock’s Elric, who was also known as the White Wolf. Authun calls his weapon the Moonsword, and you write that "it came from 'beyond the dawn,'" which seems like a tribute to Moorcock’s Hawkmoon novel, The Sword of the Dawn. Was all this done purposefully, or do you think that Moorcock’s works are simply bubbling around in your creative subconscious?

Moorcock's The Weird of the White Wolf

ML - I’d forgotten Elric was called the White Wolf. It seems these works are bubbling around in my head, as you say. If Authun is equated with anyone it’s Vidar from the Edda – Odin’s son, second in strength to Thor. There are correspondences with the Eternal Champion, but the real influence on Wolfsangel is Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. There, the characters find themselves acting out a mythic story. The characters in Wolfsangel are reincarnated, but it’s more that they are reborn still trapped in a repeating story – or at least a story that tries to repeat itself. It’s up to them to fight against it.

The expression "beyond the dawn" was simply a poetic way of saying "the east" – a manner of description I thought the Vikings might apply to a mythic weapon.

Moorcock's The Sword of the Dawn

Moorcock is a great visionary and a storyteller and also a very good phrasemaker – he comes up with very evocative one liners. "Blood and souls for my Lord Arioch" was the calling cry of my youth. He’s also a very good creator of the still image. You can really picture Hawkmoon looking up at his ornithopters or Elric sitting on the dragon’s back with Stormbringer in his hand. I tried to get that feeling with the witches and when the wolf is watching the shamans in the cave.

A key difference between me and Moorcock is how we pitch our level of exoticism. I mean this in no critical way at all when I say that Moorcock presents a surface exoticism. There’s a lot of glittery stuff in Moorcock – albino warriors, fantastic armor, ranks of animal-headed soldiers, ships that sail on the land. That’s a big reason a lot of people love fantasy and Moorcock does it brilliantly. I never got through the Jerry Cornelius stuff, so perhaps he goes deeper than that there, but there’s really no need to. Elric, Hawkmoon and Corum all sparkle in a beguiling way.

The exoticism of my stuff is that of history, which can offer a different sort of weirdness – such as when Vali doesn’t know what a tower is, because he’s never seen one, or the "vastness" of Haithabu – a town of around 100 houses. And Moorcock, of course, has invented his myths whereas I’ve taken mine from history and adapted them. So my writing has an exoticism that’s pitched at the level of what people think and, sometimes, do – which can seem odd to modern readers and, I admit, is potentially alienating.

Reconstructed Haithabu Viking village in Schleswig, Germany

For instance, one reader commented that he didn’t find it realistic that the berserker Bjarki and the merchant Veles would arrive at their destination island to find it covered in mutilated corpses and still explore it. They would turn and run. I argued that it would be more unrealistic for Bjarki not to explore it. He’s a berserker, a man who lives by the creed that "One thing I know that never dies / The fame of a dead man’s deeds." He would need to seem brave in front of his men and would welcome the chance of killing a famous monster or proving himself against great danger. Veles is simply dragged along with him at this point.

Site of Viking longhouse in Iceland, with replica in background

Another thing that is strange to modern readers – and to me – was discovering how the Vikings lived. The idea of a village, to me, would have been a collection of about 20 houses. To the Vikings, though, this would have been a good-sized town, very few of which existed. The needs of the story in Wolfsangel meant that I put Forkbeard’s hall among some other buildings. That’s historically accurate – such conglomerations of buildings did exist, but they were rare. It’s a dramatic necessity, though – for the action to unfold as it does you need a fair few people together. The chances are that the king’s hall would have stood completely alone – as would many of the longhouses. At this point, many Vikings lived apart from each other on their own farms, separated from neighbors by quite a distance. It’s a very isolated existence from the modern point of view.

Tegnér's Fridthjof's Saga

KS - Your evocative description of the Moonsword is that it is "long and thin with a pronounced curve to it. It was stronger than any straight sword and, though lighter, had cut enemy weapons many times. Authun had bought it for a fortune from a southern merchant who said it came from 'beyond the dawn' – by which Authun had supposed he meant the east. Wherever it came from, Authun knew it was enchanted, forged – as the merchant said – by magical smiths in the legendary kingdoms of the sands. The merchant had named it Shamsir, and Authun had kept the name as it seemed to contain the stir of the desert winds, or at least how he imagined they would sound." This is all reminiscent of the legendary sword Angervadil, the name of which means “wader through sorrow” – very appropriate for the weapon in your book. Angervadil belonged to saga heroes Viking, Thorstein and Fridthjof. It was described by Esaias Tegnér in his poem Fridthjof's Saga (1825):

Angervadil the brand was hight, and the brother of lightning.
Forg’d had it been in some eastern land (saith ancient tradition),
Harden’d in dwarf-fires red . . .
When in wide hall drawn it glitter’d
Like quick lightning flash there through, or a sky-streaming northilight.
Hammer’d gold was the hilt, but the blade was cover’d with runics
Wonderful, all unknown in the North, but known at the sun’s gates –
There, where our fathers dwelt, till th’ asas led them up hither.

You call the sword a shamsir, which is a curved Persian sabre. Was Tegnér’s poem (or its source sagas) something that you read in researching your novel, or is this idea of the eastern sword something that has seeped into the fabric of fantasy fiction, divorced from its original source?

ML - Having characterized Moorcock’s work as full of glittery items we come to . . . a glittery item of my own.

The sword is a scimitar, which is basically a mild anachronism. "Shamsir" is simply a Persian name for a sword of any description – but it tends to refer to a specific type of sword when used in English, rather like the French épée.

Turkish shamsir (19th century)

I am stunned by that correspondence between my description and Fridthjof’s Saga. I would love to say that I took the inspiration from there, but unfortunately I didn’t. I just saw a scimitar in Authun’s hand when I pictured the scene on the beach – though it’s possible, I suppose, that I’ve read this poem and forgotten about it. I do read a lot in the area, and I forget – or bury – a lot as well.

I knew the Vikings had contact with the Caliphate, so wondered if it might be possible he had bought it from a trader. Scimitars were in use in the 8th century but not in the style of Authun’s sword. However, I thought it plausible that certain pioneering smiths may have come up with the weapon, so I didn’t feel I was being too cavalier by giving one to Authun. Again, I’m a creative writer, not a historian, so I didn’t feel too bad about this leap.

Fridthjof and Angervadil (1909)

Later, and after the fact, I thought to equate the Moonsword to the sword called the Wand of Destruction, Lævatein, forged by Loki at the doors of death. So the idea of the sword came first, and then I recalled the myth and thought it might fit my purposes.

By making the sword a scimitar I also wanted to make a point about the multiculturalism of the Vikings.

KS - The Lord of the Rings clearly makes use of Norse myth and saga as its primary source material, but "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." You decided to keep the references explicit, to set the action in the actual world of Scandinavian myth and legend – choices that move the work from epic fantasy to historical fantasy. Whatever genre name you use, how would you describe the difference between the literary end results of your and Tolkien’s decisions?

At the Grey Havens by the Brothers Hildebrandt (1978)

ML - Gosh. More and less successful would be one way. Who can argue with Tolkien? He’s one behind God when it comes to numbers of books sold. I think Tolkien provides a much more reassuring world than I do. Things are set right at the end of Lord of the Rings, evil is defeated at a cost and our heroes retire to live indefinitely in the Grey Havens. In my world, the heroes are caught in the schemes of the gods as if in some crushing machine, and they have to struggle terribly and pay an awful price if they have even the chance of an escape.

Tolkien is, in some ways, reacting to the same forces that informed modernism. He sees the world falling apart, the threatening future, just as T. S. Eliot did. And, like Eliot, he uses myth to stitch it back together again. He has a very solidly Christian moral outlook.

In my world humanity is not just threatened, but doomed by fate. That’s the Viking view.

J. R. R. Tolkien

I would say Wolfsangel has a much less solid idea of good and evil – one that I tried to interpret from Norse culture. There is right action and wrong action, but no one is intrinsically bad, not even the Witch Queen. Also, characteristics such as being uncompassionate or bloodthirsty can be seen as good things in my world – or at least as strengths.

Tolkien’s grounding in Norse myth is much deeper than mine. In fact, it was much deeper than virtually anyone’s, so the detail of his vision is stunning. I don’t go in for anything like that level of detail. I’m about impression and feeling, atmosphere and character point of view. If I had to name an inspiration for Wolfsangel from another writer who is inspired by myth, it wouldn’t be Tolkien but Ted Hughes, the poet. The atmosphere of his poems is remarkable – showing nature in all its ferocity, beauty and strangeness and underpinned with a mythic sensibility. That’s what I’m aiming towards in my writing.

Ted Hughes

KS - One of the most interesting things about Wolfsangel is that its fantastic locales are not fantasy; they are actual locations in the real world. Part of the book takes place near the port of Eikund, which is now known as Egersund in Rogaland, Norway. Authun is King of the Horda, and Hörðaland is a county in Norway named for an ancient Germanic tribe. Your Haithabyr is Heiðabýr (also known as Hedeby), a Viking trading center on the border of Denmark and Germany. The mystic Troll Wall that is so central to your story is – almost unbelievably – a real place on the Norwegian coast known as Trollveggen. This is something that, in a way, makes your book deeper than Tolkien’s works; the magic of the novel seems more real, because it occurs in real locations. I would have loved for the book to have a Tolkien-style hand-drawn map in the front. Was this ever an option discussed with the publishers?

Troll Wall in Norway

ML - No, because of cost. The most fantastic location – and one I visited for research – is definitely the Troll Wall in Norway – a kilometer-and-a-half high overhanging cliff. I went to the top and couldn’t see the ground – thank God – because of cloud. I would have loved a map too – though I think their use is becoming a little kitsch by now. Fantasy – at least good fantasy – is in a constant struggle with kitsch, or at least a negotiation with it. We all have our ways of dealing with it. Mine is to root my stuff in myth. Others go for a hyper-real approach, letting the characters swear, having cynical and amoral heroes, being shockingly violent or using knowing humour. Some people, of course, embrace the kitsch, and that seems very popular too. I, probably unfortunately for my bank balance, have an inbuilt loathing of kitsch and try to cut it out of my work as much as I can. But there are people – and a lot of them – who love it. Although, if you call it kitsch they sometimes get a bit angry.

Helgi und Sigrun by Johannes Gehrts (1901)

KS - I won’t give away the conclusion of the novel by saying who does what to whom, but one character says to another at the end of the book that, "If you die, my love is so strong that it will call you back from the halls of the dead." This brings to mind Hermóð’s journey to Hel’s realm in attempt to bring Balder back to the land of the living, but is even more closely related to the prose coda attached to the Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani, which describes the fate of the lovers in the poem: "There was a belief in the pagan religion, which we now reckon an old wives’ tale, that people could be reincarnated. Helgi and Sigrun were thought to have been reborn." You’ve credited the publisher Gollancz with the idea to "go through history. Start in the Viking period and nine, ten books later get to World War Two." Was reincarnation integral to your original concept (and suggested by Norse myth), was it something that became a necessity to spin the first novel out into a series, or did the idea occur "naturally" as your wrote the book?

ML - Yes, reincarnation was always at the heart of the story. My central idea was that the werewolf is looking for his lost love, who is reincarnated in many lives. In the original version, the werewolf was immortal – or at least unageing – and he searched for Adisla down the centuries. That side of the story has yet to be developed – but the werewolf will very likely pass from reincarnation to being unageing. This brings up lots of problems for him as he’ll have to watch his loved ones age and die.

KS - You write of Authun that "his cloak seemed alive with sparks and even his mouth, the teeth inlaid with tiny red sapphires, seemed to burn." Was this inspired by the relatively recent discovery that Vikings – for decoration or intimidation – filed horizontal marks into their visible teeth, or was there another source for this idea?

Filed Viking teeth - very stylish!

ML - Like a lot of what I write, I can’t remember where I got the idea from. I knew – or thought I knew - that Vikings inlaid their teeth but that was before the news of the teeth-filing came out. This can only be proof that I am myself an immortal Viking who has let these insights slip and so compromised his secret. Either that or I read it somewhere else and forgot about it. Or, more oddly, that it just felt right and was one of those things that I invented that had a coincidental correspondence with reality. My bet is on number two.

I suspect this has been known for a long time, I’ve read about it and forgotten about where. I don’t log my sources in the same way an academic writer would – I’ve no need to, until I face interviews like this one! In making Authun appear as exotic, I was trying to capture the idea that the Vikings would have seemed like alien invaders to the people they attacked – strange boats, strange dress, strange language. The Vikings are conscious of this and Authun actually dresses up before the attack in order to appear more other-worldly and threatening.

Click here for Part Two of the interview.