I know; I lost focus. Perhaps that’s what Odin intended. Perhaps he was trying to stop me from doing any more mischief by keeping me in a perpetual state of sexual exhaustion.

But, idyllic as it was at first between Angrboda and myself, it was inevitable that, in time, our . . . activities . . . would bear fruit. Demons often tend to . . . let’s say exotic progeny, and in Angie’s case, this was especially true. Over our twelve-month liaison, she presented me with three offspring: a cute little were-wolf called Fenris, an undead half-corpse-daughter called Hel, and Jormungand, an enormous snake, which proved to be the final straw between me and Angrboda.

So shoot me. I can’t stand snakes. But she liked to push the boundaries. We argued – well, she argued. She said that I needed to take responsibility for my actions; accused me of fearing commitment; said she felt violated and used and finally screamed at me to go back to my wife, whom I obviously was never going to leave, and with whom she wished me a long and happy future. And so I went back to Asgard for good, feeling more or less relieved, and leaving Odin to figure out what to do with Fenny, Hel and Jormungand.

Well, the snake was the easiest. By the time we reached a decision he’d grown so large that only the One Sea could safely hope to contain him. So that was where we threw him, to lounge in the ocean mud and feed on fish for the rest of his days, and he became the World Serpent, spanning the Middle Worlds with his girth, tail in his mouth, biding his time till Ragnarók.

As for Hel, by the time she was grown, everyone wanted rid of her. It wasn’t that she was evil, as such, she just wasn’t a social animal. She could clear a room in two minutes; her conversation was minimal; everywhere she went, there was gloom; parties fell flat as storm-blown tents.

Even so, Odin tolerated her for my sake, at least until she was in her teens, when, as well as developing the most shocking case of adolescent acne, she also developed an equally bad case of puppy-love towards Asgard’s favourite Golden Boy, aka Balder the Beautiful. It eventually got so embarrassing that at last Odin made a decision and gave Hel her own realm, the Land of the Dead, on the near bank of the River Dream, and waved her merrily on her way.

It was only fair, given that her brother already ruled the One Sea. As for Fenris, for the next fifteen years he lorded it in Iron-wood, dismembering small creatures and generally running amok. They had to restrain him later, of course, though for the time being he was considered insufficient threat to count. But Hel was smart, and had to be dealt with a little more sensitively.