Carl Farness, Dagobert's father, comes from and returns to the wind. He is identified with Wodan the Wanderer who is the god of the wind and, since the dead ride on the night wind, it is Wodan who conducts them:
"'...to the Afterworld.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 391.
Being the Wanderer makes Wodan:
"'...the patron of travelers and traders.'" (p. 380)
Travellers include time travellers, like Carl himself. Traders include Nicholas van Rijn, "Trader to the Stars," although that Master Merchant offers to St. Dismas.
When Carl enters the hall:
"Wind flapped the edges of his blue cloak..." (372, p. 339)
When he offers to help against a Vandal attack:
"A sound like the wind passed down the shadowy length of the hall." (300-302, p. 368)
When he informs his great-grandson, Alawin, of the deaths of Alawin's half-brothers, Hathawulf and Solbern:
"Morning brought rain. Driven on a hooting wind, hail-cold, hail-hard, it hid everything but the thorp that huddled beneath it, as if the rest of the world had gone down in wreck." (372, p. 456)
The wreck of the world prefigured.
When Carl makes his last farewell to Alawin:
"He strode through the shadows, out the door, into the rain and the wind." (p. 459)
- out of the world.
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