Heathen

[stubbleupdate]

This weekend, I have been mostly reading Natasha Alterici's Heathen. It recently finished but as of writing this I am only 8/12 issues into it. I'll read the final arc this afternoon.

If Heathen was a Netflix series, the genre keywords would be anti-authoritarianism, LGBT, Vikings, mythology

The story synopsis is Aydis is a viking, a warrior, an outcast, and a self-proclaimed heathen. Aydis is friend to the talking horse Saga, rescuer of the immortal Valkyrie Brynhild, and battler of demons and fantastic monsters. Aydis is a woman. Born into a time of warfare, suffering, and subjugation of women, she is on a mission to end the oppressive reign of the god-king Odin.

This extract is from issue 4 where the Valkyrie Brynhilde stumbles across a village at war with itself.



Brynhilde, at the beginning of this series was cursed by Odin to be trapped on a mountain. She could only be freed by a mortal who was brave enough to cross the flame of her prison, and then Brynhilde's curse was lifted so she could marry her mortal rescuer. But a Valkyrie is immortal and at the death of her rescuer, she was returned to the mountain.
The man with the moustache is Sigurd. He rescued Brynhilde, they fell in love, but after being gravely wounded he was given a transfusion of Godsblood. This makes him immortal and because of the curse, he cannot marry Brynhilde.






Brynhilde and the witch step away so that she can uncover the truth behind the villagers' accusations.






That's an incredible final panel





Heathen is so good.

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

This is one of those things where the person obviously knows some thigns, but also not enough.

Like, if christianity is new, it is way too earlywe z for witch trials (much less burning at the stake of witches, which really didnt get going until much later) we do have a single case of a person being burned at the stake in the middle-ages in scandinavia, but that was a guy being burned for heresy in a fairly technical way.

Nor did the specific kinds of tropes (pacts with satan) show up until the late middle ages, and in any case the connection with midwives, herbalists or local magicians isnt really a thing: It makes for a good narrative to have the people accused of witchcraft being some kind of proto-doctor, but it just doesent jive with the research (midwives shows up a lot in witch trials... accusing other people of being witches)

Its one of those "vaguely mixes tropes together with no real understanding of the context and sequence of historical events", things.

Homosexuality in a scandinavian context is also interesting because while illegal it tended to be punished only rarely (which is different from some places on the continent) and often with exile rather than execution (partially it seems because authorities feared that making a big deal out of it would teach people the ways of the gays) we have only a handful of executions for homosexual acts across the centuries, compared to thousands for beastiality, for instance. (though that again is later, the early law codes seem to be more concerned with the harm to a persons reputation being done by accusing someone of homosexuality (well, more specifically accusing someone of allowing themselves to be penetrated) than actual homosexuality)

By context this would take place in... Maybe the late 900s early 1000s? Its just way to early for some of these tropes.

[zachbeacon]

Wait, when did we start expecting medieval fantasy to take place in real Europe?

Also, if we're going to be nitpicking. ...I'm just going to assume a lot of the Norse Mythology used here is wrong because the surviving versions of those stories were filtered through a Christian lens.

[arilou_skiff]

It's a bit like having George Washington raving about communists trying to take his precious bodily fluids.

[zachbeacon]

Considering how many modern US politicians today have strong beliefs on what the founding fathers would have thought of the modern day, I guess it's just become white noise.

I mean if you want to talk about the historical inaccuracies* in Hamilton then we could but I just take it as a musical loosely based on real events.

*For one thing there were a lot more than three Schuyler siblings and some of them were male. Also there was a lot less singing... probably; I wasn't there.

[mastermahan]

anti-authoritarianism, LGBT, Vikings, mythology

Well, I'm sold.

[super_fly]

Norse mythological being says LGBT rights