Chapter Three: The Myths

The letter Sophie receives in this chapter is mainly a story.  It gives a background to Nordic mythology, and tells a story about treacherous giants of Utgard trying to destroy the world by stealing Thor’s hammer.  When Thor’s right hand man, Loki comes to retrieve the hammer, the giants tell him that they will only return the hammer in exchange for Freyja, the goddess of fertility, marrying the king of the giants.  Heimdall has the idea that Thor should dress up as a bride and go to the giant’s kingdom himself.  Thor hesitantly agreed, knowing it was the only way to save the world.  He took Loki as his “bridesmaid” and Loki had to save them from having their cover blown many times.  Eventually, Thor gets the hammer back and good has conquered evil, just as it does in all good stories. 

That’s just a summary of the story explained in this chapter.  The point of explaining that was that mythology was created as an explanation.  Drought could be explained by the giants having Thor’s hammer.  And rain could be after he gets it back. 

Xenophanes, a philosopher mentioned in this chapter, was one of the people who said the gods were simply created in the image of man.   As this realization occurred, people began to see things a little differently.  Greek philosophers began to look for natural explanations to natural occurrences instead of supernatural myths or things like that.  This is all restated in the chapter.

What Sophie realizes from hearing all this is that people have a need for explanation.  Life exposes us to countless problems and we need to find ways to explain them to ourselves.  Why is the sky blue?  Why does it rain some days and not others?  We are constantly looking for answers, which again, is a recurring theme in philosophy as far as I can tell! 

Because of this need for explanation, Sophie wonders if she had grown up in the garden, unexposed to scientific explanations, what would she think about nature?  Would she come up with her own stories?

Now, what about me?  If I hadn’t ever gone to school, or ever been exposed to the news, or anything that could explain the mysteries of the world, what would I have grown to believe?  Would I really believe that the sky is blue because that is the color reflected by the molecules that make up air?  Or would I have come up with something like Nordic or Greek mythology?  Would I have even been able to think of God if I was never exposed to him?  For me, that’s a scary thought.  If I hadn’t of grown up the way I did, and been influenced the way I was, what on earth would I believe?  My way of thinking would be completely altered!  Not knowing things leads to explanations.  How do the presents get under the tree Christmas Eve?  Santa.  How does he fit down the chimney and get to all the houses?  Magic.  How do the Easter eggs get hidden?   The Easter bunny.  Now looking back, I know those things aren’t true, but at one point I believed them because that’s what I was told.  What if my parents hadn’t explained Santa to me?  What other crazy ideas could I have come up with for why the presents seemed to appear out of thin air?  It’s just crazy to me to think that everything we believe could be completely different if we hadn’t been told the things we were told or saw the things we’ve seen.  It’s mind blowing. Honestly.