Yankee Doom
In a story fraught with mythological doom, the New York Times waxes poetic on the story of the squirrel at the end of creation.
But more significant, perhaps, was the pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during the game and that, according to Norse mythology, just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season.
Believe it or not, the squirrel’s actions closely resembled those of Ratatosk, or “gnawing tooth,” a squirrel in Norse mythology that climbed up and down a tree that represented the world. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic scholar and poet, recorded the story in his 13th-century work “Prose Edda.”
As the story goes, Ratatosk carried insults as it traveled to opposite ends of the tree, fueling a rivalry between the evil dragon residing at the bottom of the tree and the eagle perched at the top.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” said Roberta Frank, a professor of Old Norse and Old English at Yale University, when told of the squirrel’s antics at the stadium.
Frank was born in the Bronx and is a Yankees fan. She said in a telephone interview yesterday that in the Bronx version of this myth, the Yankees would probably represent the eagle and the rival Red Sox would represent the dragon. The Yankees, after all, are the home team this week, more or less making them the good guys. And if there were a sports team identified with an eagle, it has to be the Yankees, who have begun any number of postseason games with a visit from Challenger, the bald eagle who swoops in from center field.
With all due respect to Dr. Frank, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard, being noted scholars of Norse mythology ourselves, know that old Snorri Sturluson got his name because he always - every time - fell asleep during the telling of the myths. When the epics were told in the great hall, old Snorri would be passed out with a flagon of mead in the corner. Hence, he only heard part of any one epic poem. When it came time to write the epics down, Snorri would piece together the various parts he remembered into a single tale.
Ratatosk was actually a beaver and he swam back and forth between the shores of his pond delivering love letters between the eagle and the dragon. (Essentially, Ratatosk functioned as a primitive internet.) As the legend goes (minus Snorri's mead-induced revisions) the Eagle (named Lola) and the dragon (named Herman) are destined to finally meet and consummate their love. Whereupon the world will be annihilated when Lola finds out that Herman is not actually a Rhodes Scholar who drives a Maserati and Herman finds out that Lola is not a former beauty queen and heiress.
