I have had the impression that my knowledge of the the stories and events in the Norse mythology was very limited, but after reading Neil Gaiman’s retelling of the stories in his Norse Mythology it seems that I was wrong. Every little story felt familiar to me, except that I had never before really bothered with the names of the characters and the places. For the Swedish eye, it is of course difficult to see the spellings of the names in their English versions, but that is not the point here. It seems that I really have cared more about the stories than the names.
In the introduction to the book, Gaiman mentions that there are very few written sources to start from, so Norse Mythology can in general be seen as an easy to read introduction to the world in the mythology. It can also be used as inspiration to create more stories in that setting. It is an enjoyable read, but I would have liked the stories to go a little bit deeper to turn the list of events and anecdotes into a set of complete stories.