Better Late than Never

So, we're humbly abashed for not having updated the blog yesterday. Sincere apologies all around.

Yesterday was a bit dull. I made a few job applications on the web and followed up on some leads. Nothing solid coming out of this yet. We live in hope, don't we?

As regards the book, I have to design a map of the realm that the characters can explore. It's harder to do that I first imagined. It's one thing to create characters out of nothing, but quite another to make up a whole new world - especially one that the ancients had considered to exist already. The realm that I'm talking about is Asgard and the other eight worlds of ancient Norse mythology.

You would think that something as common as this would have already been explored to the limit but this is not the case. After doing thorough searches and the like I only managed to come up with others' ideas of what Asgard looked like. And a lot of these ideas are strangely fanciful. Take a look at this map I found.

I then found this other one for the nine worlds:



It's pathetic, isn't it? This means that I have to really get creative in order to come up with a world that my characters can really explore.

The only real problem with this is that I need it to be a real representation of the actual realm imagined by the vikings and their contemporaries. In order to do this I am going to have to read every single ancient text on the subject.

To this end I have recently completed reading the Prose Edda (written in the 13th century). The next book will be its companion, the Poetic Edda. Unfortunately, in this small town where I live I have not been able to find a decent version of the translation. So, I went to the library and had to get an inter-library loan from one of the libraries in London.

Once this arrives I'm sure that I'll be able to get a better idea of what Asgard looked like, and then be able to come up with a map that will be realist and believable.

Fingers crossed. I'll let you know how it turned out. And if you have any ideas on an easier way to go about this tast, don't hesitate to drop me a line and let me know.