A review by trilbynorton
Nine Visits to the Mythworld: Told by Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas by Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas, Robert Bringhurst

adventurous challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

I made my first trip to Canada recently, and this book was a gift from my partner while out there. I had already encountered elements of Coastal Salish art and culture throughout British Columbia, and helped to contextualise much of it.

The supplementary material - the introduction, appendices, and endnotes - are themselves invaluable. They include a wealth of information on the history of the Haida, especially the last two hundred years and their relationship to European colonisers. They also do a lot to explain what is a very different mythological tradition to what we’re used to in Europe.

That’s what struck me the most reading the stories included in this book: how different the stories presented here are to the kinds of stories we find in Greek, Roman, and other European mythologies. Haida mythology appears to be bound up inextricably with natural processes and cycles, and assumes a familiarity with the natural landscape of the Pacific Northwest. If I’m honest, I often found the stories difficult to follow, because causes and motivations are rooted less on the cosmic soap opera that defines European mythologies, and more on the natural and cyclical relationships between animals, plants, the earth, and the sea.