I’ve been thinking about the Norse goddess Hela lately, mainly because she plays an important role in the book I am writing Valda Goes Through Hel. I finished the first draft and have moved on to edits before I send the book off to my awesome group of readers. That means I am in the part of the book process where I don’t have to be as creative. So my mind is whipping off onto different tangents as it tends to do.
So I was thinking about Hela, which got me to thinking about the other children of Loki. There was Jormungandr, the sea monster better known as the Midgard Serpent. He eventually grew big enough to encircle the entire globe. There was Fenrir the giant wolf who bit off the hand of the god Tyr and is fated to kill Odin at Ragnarok. We also have Sleipnir, Odin’s 8-legged horse. Loki was not the father of this “best of horses,” he was the mother. Go here to read more about that if you want.
Definitely a strange batch of children and the thought popped into my head “I wonder what it was like raising that group of kids?” (I know normal people don’t think of things like that. I crossed that bridge many years ago, folks.) Thinking about them as kids lead me to doodling on the computer which lead me to today’s pictures. One of Loki’s li’l ones down, three to go.
Mark Neumayer 