Evening is chill.
The Kattegat glimmers towards dusk. The shore darkens. Sunset reddens the water.
The breeze smells of swamp and damp.
A bittern booms, a lapwing shrieks and an owl hoots.
Four senses as the crew unloads the gold taken from Averorn. Eyjan remarks that, since the owners were not Christians, they are now:
"'In some gray place outside of time.'" (p. 105)
We must remember the theological background of this narrative. Eyjan and her fellow merfolk are physically unaging but have no souls so will go nowhere when they are eventually killed by accident or violence. The Averornians were human but not Christian so will not go to Heaven. Eyjan thinks that their destination will be not Hell but somewhere gray and timeless. That does not sound so bad.
After their labor, cold food and sour wine add the fifth sense.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Eyjan had in mind what more "haut" Christians called Limbo.
Ad astra! Sean
As to the weather, Americans tend to forget how far -north- Europe is.
Southern Europe is about the same latitude as the Washington DC area; England is north of Labrador, and Scotland is around the same line as Hudson's Bay.
Habitable Europe extends much further north than the habitable parts of our continent.
Early English settlers in New England were shocked and surprised at the winters; since it's actually south of the latitude of say, Kent, they expected a milder climate.
(Boston MA is 42 degrees north, while Canterbury in Kent is 51 degrees north.)
I remember reading a letter one such early New Englander wrote home, describing a February day, with a roaring fire on the hearth... and the sap being driven out of one log freezing as it oozed out on either end!
This way of thinking persisted. Early settlers in Georgia tried to grow olive trees and oranges because they were at 32 degrees north, while Cadiz in Spain was at 36 degrees. They were astonished and upset when frost killed them off.
(You can grow olives down on the border with Florida -- had some rather nice olive oil from an orchard there last time I was in Atlanta).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I've actually looked at maps and globes, so I knew how far north Europe was compared to the US and Massachusetts! And I've been to the UK in summer, and I admit to being wonderstruck at how long daylight could be, staying light till at least 9.30 PM.
And New England winters certainly can be miserably frigid and cold! Colder than it usually seems to be in England.
And, despite being so far north, I have read of how, before the Little Ice Age starting around AD 1300, grapes could be grown and wine made from them in southern England. And how that is now again practical.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, viniculture is now possible in England again -- very small variations in average temperatures are enough for that. In Roman times it happened (albeit not very well) as far north ss what's now Scotland.
OTOH, in 1600 the Thames regularly froze solid, and they held winter fairs on the ice with skating and sleighs and even roaring bonfires (on circles of brick or stone) that didn't melt through the ice.
So you can imagine how cold Massachusetts had to be to strike Englishmen of the era as having miserable winters!
It's all a matter of the Gulf Stream.
Incidentally, during the Roman "climatic optimum", what's now the Sand Hills in Nebraska was a moving dune system in a desert nearly as dry as the Sahara.
Looked it up: they were moving dunes in the Medieval Warm Period (the one preceding the Little Ice Age) too.
Temperatures then were about 1C (1.8 F.) warmer than they are now.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And we still see mention of London having frigid winters as late as Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL. The Little Ice Age only started easing up after about 1850, I think.
Never heard of those Moving Dunes in Nebraska, tho! I usually think of it as a big farming state. Something to look up!
Ad astra! Sean
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