Now that it’s done.

Tales From Vatngaard Book III - A World Void of Truth is out in the world. And I think I am done with writing books. For now at least. I want to share with you, you few who find and read this what I was trying to achieve.

Spoiler warning.

Þeir eru það sem við gerum þá. They are what we make them is a theme running through all three books. Well, what does it mean to me and why is it important?

Every god in the trilogy exists because mortals need them. Von exists because mortals need hope. Hel exists because mortals need an end. Bogus exists because mortals wanted more than enough. The gods are mirrors of human longing. They don't create us, we create them. We pour our fears, desires, and failures into the shape of the divine, and then we bow to it.

In the real world, we do the same thing. We create systems, ideologies, and institutions that reflect our collective values, and then we forget we made them. We treat them as eternal, unchangeable, natural. But they're not. They're made. By us. And we can unmake them, or remake them, if we choose.

We make our prisons.

Hel says to Kief in book 1: "You are creatures of habit. You cling to what you know, to the safety of patterns, even when those patterns bind you." Mortals build their own prisons, traditions, expectations, fears and then blame the gods for the walls. But the walls are made of human habit. They can be broken.

In the real world, we do this constantly. We stay in jobs we hate. We repeat cycles of harm. We believe we can't change because we've always been this way. We believe in the system of our “fathers”. But that's a lie we tell ourselves. The chains are real and heavy, but they're made of our own belief in them. And belief can be changed.

We make each other.

The most literal reading of "they are what we make them" is also the most profound: we create each other. Every interaction, every word, every choice shapes the people around us. A parent's love makes a child brave. A teacher's belief makes a student capable.

And the opposite is also true. Neglect, cruelty, and abandonment make people broken. Trauma makes people afraid. The people we become are not just the result of our own choices, they're also the result of what others have made of us, and what we have made of them.

The tragedy and the hope of this “truth.”

The tragedy is that we often make each other badly. We create gods who demand sacrifice. We build systems that crush the weak. We raise children who carry our wounds. We look at the brokenness of the world and say, "This is just the way of the world."

But what makes this design hopeful is that if we made it and we can unmake it. We can choose differently. We can be kinder. We can raise children who are not afraid. We can build systems that serve life instead of death. Life instead of profit. We can look at the gods we've created and say, "You are not who we are. You are who we were. And we are done with you."

Lilja is the proof of this.

She was made by grief, by loss, by the violence of the world. She was broken in ways that should have destroyed her. And she chose differently. She chose sacrifice over safety. She chose love over survival. She chose to break the pattern.

She didn't break her chains because they were weak. She broke them because she believed she could. And that belief made it true. As Seethastur says about mortals in Book 3, “You are the only creatures in the cosmos who act as if your tiny, flickering moment matters more than the stars. And because you believe it, for that moment, it does.”

That's the message of the trilogy. Not that we are doomed to repeat the past. Not that the gods are in control. But that we are makers. We make gods, prisons, each other and we can make them differently.

We are what we make each other.

So what will we make?

Much love. -H.W.