Spoiler alert! If you haven’t read the full series, go no further!

For the Fate of Legends series, in addition to discussing themes of self vs. community, and how each individual chooses to sacrifice some of their own personality to fit in with a group, I also wanted to explore several different mythologies.

My wife is part Native American, from the Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts. She also has some Norwegian ancestry, in addition to African. As Hunter is very much like his mother, I wanted to include these into the series.

Thus we have Tykus, who is actually one of Leif Erickson’s sons. He traveled to the United States, and quickly found himself transported to a strange world. They found it overrun by what they thought were dark elves, or Svartalfar in Norse mythology. For the dark elves had their own world called Svartalfheim, separate from Miogaror, or earth. They assumed the portal to this world was one of many allowing travel to the nine worlds of their mythology.

The Kingdom of the Deep is the land of the original Native Americans that went through the portal to the world, long before the Norse or the English and eventually American settlers arrived. They carry the belief system similar to the Wompanoag tribe.