Ten Wonderful Books about Folklore and Mythology

Germanic Mythology, Irish Stories, and Folklore From Around the World

My love for folklore is quite paradoxical, because (aside from Tolkien, of course), I am not a big fantasy lover (why does this always upset people when they hear this?) And yet, I love nothing more than reading about ghosts of the past, phantom armies roaming the night skies, and banshees wailing when the sun goes down.

Perhaps, it is because folklore and mythology occupies an ‘in-between world’, between fantasy and realism: it is not too outlandish to imagine. Everybody has seen something moving past them and mistook it for a person, only to realise that it is just a shadow on the wall. I bet most of us have woken up at night, spooked by the moaning of the wind, and thought, for one moment, that it is a person kicking up a storm outside.

Mythology and folklore occupy the space between realism and ‘unrealism’: it is unreal. However, it isn’t fantastical or grotesque. I remember studying the Tuatha Dé Danann (Irish gods and goddesses before the arrival of Christianity) during university, and my professor told me that they were always heralded by mist. They may not exist, but mist does, and the strange shapes of half-revealed trees and rocks in the fog are real. This is the liminal space that folklore occupies in our psychological and cultural consciousness. And that is why I love it so much.

So, let’s begin with the top ten books that I would recommend if you’re into mythology and/or folklore.