There’s Essie Tregowan, a Cornish con-artist who is transported to America, and who brings with her the piskies of her youth, or Salim, a taxi-driver from Oman who becomes a jinn. These extracts tell how other gods and mythical beings make their way to the US, in the beliefs and stories of different culture. Interspersed throughout American Gods are extracts from a history, ostensibly written by Mr Ibis (the Old Egyptian God, Thoth). As Shadow crosses America, he reflects on these ironies, as well as the local quirks he observes, slotting them into an increasing sense of the nation’s variety and commonalities. It’s symbolic of the elaborate tapestry of heritage that makes up a nation that prides itself on its newness, but is uneasily aware of its traditions.
Starzįrom Haitian Voodoo figures to Hungarian Kobbolds this America is inhabited by a panoply of old gods. Wednesday (Ian McShane) and Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) in the 2017 adaption of American Gods. Mr Nancy, Anansi the African spider-trickster god, and Mad Sweeney, an original Irish leprechaun, appear from time to time, as do many others. Mr Jacquel, the Egyptian god Anubis, runs a funeral parlour with his partner Ibis (the god Thoth), in Cairo, Illinois. And Easter, the German goddess of fertility and rebirth, in whose footsteps flowers bloom, who is living in San Francisco. They call on Czernobog, the Bulgarian god of darkness, who lives in Chicago with the Zorya star sisters of Morning, Evening and Night.
With Shadow in tow, Wednesday traverses the US, calling the old gods to action, convincing them to gather and fight enemies like Mr Town and Media. A god who is not believed in suffers a particularly final form of death. As an “old” god, Wednesday is preparing to do battle with the new ones. People don’t believe in old gods any more they’re too busy worshipping new gods, or concepts, like cities and towns, roads and rails, high finance, media, and digital technology. “Tradition,” in the form of old gods like Odin, is under threat, he tells Shadow. It emerges that Wednesday is really the Norse god, Odin, drawn to the US by Viking voyagers.
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