In contrast to the rest of the content here, this is a true and accurate account of my correspondance with Danish author and Nobel Price nominee, Villy Sørensen.
In a sense the event is so strange the story could also fit very well under Fictions, and I suppose it could have passed in a different form as a short story.
In the end of it all, who is to say what belongs where, and what in this world is fiction and what is fact?
In a sense the event is so strange the story could also fit very well under Fictions, and I suppose it could have passed in a different form as a short story.
In the end of it all, who is to say what belongs where, and what in this world is fiction and what is fact?
Interview With A Seer
I was one of the last persons to have a conversation about literature with the Danish Nobel Price nominee, Villy Sørensen, before he died in late 2001.
Having read and reread and studied and marvelled at this poetic interpretation of the Norse myth of Ragnarok, "the death of the gods", I contacted Villy Sørensen and applied for an interview.
Villy Sørensen was gravely ill at this point, but replied in his kind and gentle manner that he would answer my questions if I sent them to him in a letter. Even a phone conversation was too strenuous for him in his condition. He preferred paper to electronic communication.
I sent him my questions, and he gracefully responded to each of them, stressing above all that he never intended his version of Ragnarok to be a comment on immigration, which was my opening question and the very motivation for contacting him.
Like a mad man or a superstitious fan I saw some deeper mystical truth in his account, which highlights the similarities and peculiar bond between Loki and Baldr.
More than anything else I was puzzled by the way Villy Sørensen depicted Loki as less than a villain and more than simply a dubious character - the character of Loki is conspicuously over-represented in his version of Ragnarok.
All my life I have sensed that something terrible was going to happen, a cultural clash of proportions, and with the early persecution of Muslims in particularly Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall, I saw this metaphysical fear beginning to come to fruition.
I felt Villy Sørensen's Ragnarok described the rise of the European New Right and later American Neoconservatism, as well as the rapid growth of Islamic terrorism.
It was as if Villy Sørensen was a character from Norse mythology himself, a seer and a mystic, who through his reinterpretation of the Ragnarok myth unwittingly explained the growing polarization of the world, at this point most notably in the escalating animosity against Muslims in Europe.
This was before September 11 2001, when terrorism against America was largely limited to attacks on embassies in Africa.
When on that fateful day the first tower was hit I was informed by a friend at school that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I did not even stop working on the assignment I was occupied with, but simply asked:
"Is it terrorism?"
I continued working on the project, since deadline was close at hand, while my friend went to look at the event on the big screen televisions in the hallway.
A little later he came back and said: "A second plane has hit the second tower".
"Then it is terrorism", I said. "That changes everything."
And it did. There was a world before 9/11 and a world after, even if terrorism existed before, and decency prevails past this point in time.
I thought about Villy Sørensen's detailed responses to my questions and his immediate protest against my allegorical reading, arguing along the lines of most authors that art does not have so specific a purpose as the one he detected in my questions.
I wrote him back, thanking him and explaining that my fascination with his epic poem was in no manner based on a primitive or adolescent linear interpretation. I also asked a few more questions, none so relevant to the topic they need to be mentioned here.
In his second letter Villy Sørensen's stance had softened - he was never brusque or stingy, but appeared only slightly bemused in his first letter - and I sensed both curiosity and puzzlement about my dedication to the subject and unusual method of analysis.
Villy Sørensen thanked me for writing and said that re-reading my questions he could tell I had given more thought to his book than he initially perceived, and he found our conversation "stimulating."
Shortly after I read in the paper Villy Sørensen had died, and it struck me as marvellous he had, in a sense, granted his last interview to as strange inquiry as mine.
I thought of him on his death bed, seeing his work in a new and unexpected light, and perhaps even seeing the world around him change in accordance to his own poetic vision from 1982 - before any of the crucial political mega-events I refer to was considered even probable.
My short story Frost Giant is inspired by this great Danish writer who was robbed of the Nobel Price, at least in my opinion.
Around the time I wrote the story - this year, 2009 - I caught a news report about Camp Einherjer, the Danish garrison in Iraq, named after the infantry of Valhalla by suggestions from modern day followers of Asatru, the ancient Norse religion, a small but influential group among the Danish troops.
Frost Giant is written under the influence of the major political events of our age, particularly 9/11 and the Danish Muhammed Cartoon Controversy, but it is in no manner a political manifesto - like Villy Sørensen I would oppose a simplistic interpretation.
Having read and reread and studied and marvelled at this poetic interpretation of the Norse myth of Ragnarok, "the death of the gods", I contacted Villy Sørensen and applied for an interview.
Villy Sørensen was gravely ill at this point, but replied in his kind and gentle manner that he would answer my questions if I sent them to him in a letter. Even a phone conversation was too strenuous for him in his condition. He preferred paper to electronic communication.
I sent him my questions, and he gracefully responded to each of them, stressing above all that he never intended his version of Ragnarok to be a comment on immigration, which was my opening question and the very motivation for contacting him.
Like a mad man or a superstitious fan I saw some deeper mystical truth in his account, which highlights the similarities and peculiar bond between Loki and Baldr.
More than anything else I was puzzled by the way Villy Sørensen depicted Loki as less than a villain and more than simply a dubious character - the character of Loki is conspicuously over-represented in his version of Ragnarok.
All my life I have sensed that something terrible was going to happen, a cultural clash of proportions, and with the early persecution of Muslims in particularly Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall, I saw this metaphysical fear beginning to come to fruition.
I felt Villy Sørensen's Ragnarok described the rise of the European New Right and later American Neoconservatism, as well as the rapid growth of Islamic terrorism.
It was as if Villy Sørensen was a character from Norse mythology himself, a seer and a mystic, who through his reinterpretation of the Ragnarok myth unwittingly explained the growing polarization of the world, at this point most notably in the escalating animosity against Muslims in Europe.
This was before September 11 2001, when terrorism against America was largely limited to attacks on embassies in Africa.
When on that fateful day the first tower was hit I was informed by a friend at school that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I did not even stop working on the assignment I was occupied with, but simply asked:
"Is it terrorism?"
I continued working on the project, since deadline was close at hand, while my friend went to look at the event on the big screen televisions in the hallway.
A little later he came back and said: "A second plane has hit the second tower".
"Then it is terrorism", I said. "That changes everything."
And it did. There was a world before 9/11 and a world after, even if terrorism existed before, and decency prevails past this point in time.
I thought about Villy Sørensen's detailed responses to my questions and his immediate protest against my allegorical reading, arguing along the lines of most authors that art does not have so specific a purpose as the one he detected in my questions.
I wrote him back, thanking him and explaining that my fascination with his epic poem was in no manner based on a primitive or adolescent linear interpretation. I also asked a few more questions, none so relevant to the topic they need to be mentioned here.
In his second letter Villy Sørensen's stance had softened - he was never brusque or stingy, but appeared only slightly bemused in his first letter - and I sensed both curiosity and puzzlement about my dedication to the subject and unusual method of analysis.
Villy Sørensen thanked me for writing and said that re-reading my questions he could tell I had given more thought to his book than he initially perceived, and he found our conversation "stimulating."
Shortly after I read in the paper Villy Sørensen had died, and it struck me as marvellous he had, in a sense, granted his last interview to as strange inquiry as mine.
I thought of him on his death bed, seeing his work in a new and unexpected light, and perhaps even seeing the world around him change in accordance to his own poetic vision from 1982 - before any of the crucial political mega-events I refer to was considered even probable.
My short story Frost Giant is inspired by this great Danish writer who was robbed of the Nobel Price, at least in my opinion.
Around the time I wrote the story - this year, 2009 - I caught a news report about Camp Einherjer, the Danish garrison in Iraq, named after the infantry of Valhalla by suggestions from modern day followers of Asatru, the ancient Norse religion, a small but influential group among the Danish troops.
Frost Giant is written under the influence of the major political events of our age, particularly 9/11 and the Danish Muhammed Cartoon Controversy, but it is in no manner a political manifesto - like Villy Sørensen I would oppose a simplistic interpretation.
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