Mørketid, og bøker

Tromsø goes dark in November. The last proper sunset is around the twenty-first, and then nothing until late January, and what you do with that depends entirely on your temperament. Some people get SAD lamps and supplements. I get weird about Norse mythology. I work at Tromsø public library and I shelve a lot of crime fiction and a fair amount of self-help. What I actually want to read is in the old collection, the thin paperbacks nobody requests anymore, the Eddas in various translations, the folklore compendiums from the 1950s. Snorri Sturluson does not get the foot traffic he deserves. The fantasy I write is not the kind with maps at the front and a chosen one. It is closer to the mythology itself: short episodes, gods behaving badly, women making choices that the myths recorded only as consequences. My current project is a retelling of the story of Skaði, the frost giantess who married a sea god and spent the whole marriage being miserable about it, which is honestly relatable. I wrote the first version during polar night two years ago and I think the darkness got into it. I'm leaving it in.