First of all, let me just say that I maybe should have planned to spend two weeks “in” Sweden, because we could easily spend the entire week just on Norse mythology without ever eating one meatball or Dancing one Queen. We started off strong yesterday with brief introductions to Pippi Longstocking (via the cheesy but loveable 80s movie), the Tomten (via this picture book) and Thor and Freya (via my brain and the internet). Pippi was, of course, a big hit – who doesn’t love a crazy chaos-making redhead with a highly individual sense of style? Stupid people, that’s who. The Tomten was deemed slightly less awesome, until they associated him with Bilbo (the slightly adulterated Bilbo from the stories my mom tells them, rather than the echt Tolkien version), and then they wanted to know more. (Ellie wrote a cute little story about meeting a Tomten in the back yard one night and going on an adventure for her writing time today.)
Freya and Thor were chosen because both girls are big fans of The Avengers, so they sort of already know who Thor is, in a Marvel-comics kind of way. Also, I have always really dug the idea of Yggdrasil, the world tree (I mean, I got it tattooed on my forearm, for god’s sake) and I found a really lovely artist’s conception that I kind of want poster-sized in my bedroom but is also a good visual introduction to Norse mythology for kids: Continue reading
