Volund and Hervor

EDIT: Finally fixed the streak, and decided to adjust the contrast, saturation, etc, a tiny bit. Prints that actually fit the length of the image are available at Redbubble: www.redbubble.com/people/vikin…

For the "My Fav myth/fairytale/legend contest" at the myths and fantasy group. My take on the Lay of Volund (definitely my favorite) from the Old Norse "Poetic" Edda--the elf/Saami/smith Volund saying goodbye to his girlfriend the valkyrie Hervor before she goes off to war and leaves the story--the infamous ring, which he later gives to the daughter of his captor, is in his hand, the ring that "marks his bride" according to one potential translation of the Old Norse. Oh, and yeah, I decided to portray the valkyrie's horse as kind of a phantom-mist monster--I feel like it fits with the name of at least one valkyrie (Mist... literally) as well as the imagery of flying horses.

Rushed to get it together for the contest, and now may have missed the deadline because my computer couldn't handle the size of the file (stupidly made it too big--started this pic way back when I first got Photoshop, and didn't think about the size issue when I decided to return to and finish it for this contest). Have wasted well over an hour and a half waiting for computer stuff to work... argh.

Will write more later, too tired tonight. Probably a blog post to follow eventually about the poem.