“Mythago Wood” was British writer Robert Holdstock’s artistic and commercial breakthrough, and won him the first of his two World Fantasy Awards. Richly deserved it was, too; this is beautiful, eerie, entrancing work.
A portmanteau word compounded from ‘myth imago’, a mythago is the idealised embodiment of a mythic being or place, its archetype. Holdstock’s masterpiece deals with a mysterious woodland realm, Ryhope Wood. In the novel and its later follow-on works, Ryhope Wood is a sort of sinkhole into the collective unconscious which can manifest mythagos drawn from the minds of the people who live around it. Figures such as King Arthur and Robin Hood mirror superficial awareness of the British mythology layered into the nation’s collective unconscious, while the Green Man and the Wild Hunt represent deeper, darker layers of the mind.
Mythago Wood by Chris J Fry
The wood is peculiar in other ways, too. It is much, much larger inside than out, with barriers and defences to turn back the voyagers. In fact, it can even prevent aircraft from flying overhead. The main character of the story, Steven Huxley, finds himself desperate to penetrate the Wood to rescue both the mythago girl he loves, and his own brother. It’s a journey on several different levels, dense with symbolism and meaning.
The mythagos that the wood creates are fully physical and – when living beings – sentient. Their personalities and drives reflect aspects of the archetypal character they represent, as conceived of by the mind that brought them into existence. They can only survive over time within the wood, however. Their natures are as varied as the characters of myth, but, like most genuinely mythic figures, the humans that interact with them seldom find a happy ending to their stories.
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