Vikings, Archtypes and Influences.

Been awhile since I've put anything up. I'd like to say I've been busy with my varying projects but thats just not true. Most of my time lately has been directed toward my family or recovering from one of the nasty bugs floating around. Car is still broken but I now know what's wrong with it(Finally). The compiling of my sourcebook has barely moved, my second blog is barren, I have taken opportunities to practice my writing but none of those experiments merit any space here and lastly I've played a fair amount of Stronghold 2/Tactics Ogre.

Norse mythology has long been used as a basis for fantasy. Long standing rumor is Tolkien borrowed heavily from it; even the one ring is said to be borrowed from the legendary Andvarinaut. Ever since playing Valkyrie Profile I've paid more attention to nordic trends in fantasy and I saw plenty in both games I've been playing recently. I've been thinking about how mythology (Most notable being Norse) should fit into it, I'm not a big fan of using names directly from mythology... I prefer making my characters from scratch using an archtype or perhaps even inverting an archtype that exists in history. Creating new archtypes is ideal but requires a tremendous amount of work and creative insight... not to mention a deep understand of the cultural framework you are working inside. I could make a new thor but that doesn't mean that he would fit the culture of thor perfectly. In fact it might seem clumsy and amateur if I were to create a new Thor.

A few months ago during the rewrite of the gods I came up with Sorrent the Ice Lord.
Not particularly nordic sounding but I had some good concepts to play with. In also covered some needed holes in the origins of certain races in my setting. (Dwarves mostly...) It also gave me a cultural framework for northern barbarians; who until this point had been severely lacking in culture. Sorrent himself was a pretty basic Ice Giant warlord god. Everything about his personality can be found in that sentence. A good lesser deity perhaps but not something worthy of what I need. No I need a rival to Thor and Odin. I need a deity that has ballads sung in his honor... something that invokes the heroic norse ideal.

Playing off established archtypes is good move for alot of reasons. A. It's easier to visualize for both reader and writer. B. It requires less backstory/explanining when you take an ancient culture and reuse it. I already have to describe and explain new cultures and races and taking some off the reader/players plate is alot of help. D. The Nordic mythology fits perfectly into a setting based on the conflict between creation and destruction. So perfectly in fact that when I toyed with the idea of making a new culture for the northern tribes it ended up like a bastard child of the eskimos and the norse. It's hard to improve on something that fits so well.

Originally when I started this setting (14 years ago give or take) I had a very limited scope of both imagination and knowledge. I was creative but because the intake of ideas was so limited (Mostly by poverty and social isolation) that the output of ideas was equally narrow. The result was a basic D&D knockoff setting (Which is ironic because I hadn't yet played D&D). I was however a prolific reader of poorly written TSR/Wizards fantasy series (Mostly famously dragonlance which actually got better.) and much better fiction (Terry Brooks novels). By reading them I devloped a strong sense of the fantasy "archtypes". The Noble Warrior (Sturm Brightblade/Caramon), The Token Dwarf (Flint... poor Flint), The mascot/comic relief (Tas), The tormented soul (Raistlin/Tanis/Wil Ohmsford) and even the Naive female royalty (Laurana, Amberle). I didn't however identify with them much. I understood them but found them to be extremely patronizing and overly simplified. (Except Raistlin... but thats a different bag all together)
I vowed to avoid using such simple and uninteresting archtypes in my own writing/design.

Instead my archtypes are rooted in psychology and history. Occasionally I play off a traditional fantasy archtype. For example: Springer the Kobold isn't a great fighter. He's small and aside from being a genius with mechanical devices (Mainly traps) he's not very smart or charismatic. He is however funny, honest, loyal and serious often. In some ways you can compare him to Tasslehoff Burrfoot. But Springer doesn't have the (Obnoxious) kender immunity to fear. Springer goes to fight alongside his friends because he loves them and wants to protect them. Tas feels no fear it's not hard for him to risk his life. The archtypes are not copies but rather guidelines (Which I frequently break anyway), all writers use them rather they do so intentionally or not. It plays off our natural instinct to judge and to catagorize things.
This itself could be a lengthy topic of discussion but I need to return back to the problem of Nordic archtypes.

In creating a Norse sub-setting without using the pre-existing gods I am taking a number of risks and doing something that quite honestly could be out of my reach as a writer/designer right now. Yet it is what the setting calls for. I could leave this entire corner of my world alone and nobody would notice (Thats what I've doing for 14 years anyway); But that would be denying an important (and interesting) new viewpoint and set of ideals to my world.
My conclusion?

Cheap knockoff gods (Like a ripoff Thor/Odin) are no good, Cheap original gods (Like Sorrent) are ok for lesser deities (Who nobody cares about)... I can use an existing archtype or one of my own (Crafted from my knowledge of psychology, a secret weapon in the world of stale-generic fantasy) but it has to fit into both the original nordic culture and my settings unusual history and power structure. Ultimately I think that it is the last and perhaps best option I will take: To merge the nordic culture with something else. A fusion of idealology.
The Vikings invaded England and their culture changed drastically. If the vikings invade another Drakkorian society what would happen? If they invade a society that relies on machines you could have technology wielding barbarians(Or technology fearing). Or if they invade an oriental society. The concept of honor and discipline from the subjegated would change the direction of their culture dramatically. What about a viking culture that is exagerated in some area? More tribal and more pagen then before... a viking society that rejects gods and focuses on spirits or totems.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't a diehard perfectionist.
Goodnight everyone.