Everard And Heidhin

"Star of the Sea," 12.

On the beach, Heidhin is on the verge of asking Maring/Everard to accompany him and Veleda. This would have been an opportunity for Everard to learn more about their origins but it doesn't happen. But what would have happened if Everard had accompanied Veleda and Heidhin and had gained their confidence?

Everard learns that Veleda was attacked by Romans but rescued by the goddess? From their description, he recognizes the goddess as a woman on a timecycle? He investigates in the past? From a distance, he observes Everard and Floris surveillancing the island of Oland, then Floris attacking the Romans? This would mean that he had duplicated himself.

Might a Time Patrol-type timeline become hopelessly complicated and chaotic?

"...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 3, p. 17.

Manse Everard on a timecycle and the Time Traveller on the Time Machine deserve to meet somewhen. Since we are never told what eventually becomes of either character, there are narrative possibilities here but they should be approached either with subtlety or not at all.

Conversation With Ulstrup

"Star of the Sea," 11.

"'Trade with the South increases year by year. Roman or Gallo-Roman ships sometimes ply as far as Scandinavia.'" (p. 569)

And that will be the problem as we learn when we read on.

A possible course of events:

"'Our twentieth century will never exist.'

"'That's what we're trying to head off,' Everard said harshly.

"A silence fell. Wind lulled, leaves rustled, sunlight skipped on the ruffled stream. The peacefulness made the landscape feel unreal." (p. 569)

Silence falls because of the gravity of the conversation. Wind is heard, as ever. The (time) stream is ruffled. Maybe the scene seems inappropriately peaceful but the concluding sentence comments on that. It seems unreal. Time Patrollers can come to feel that the whole universe is unreal.

The chapter ends as Floris gazes:

"...northeasterly toward an unseen shore." (p. 570)

There is a shore where Everard meets Heidhin and another where Floris saves Edh. Both events are unseen because past.

Spot The Textual Difference

Benoni Strang converses with a colleague:

"Emma Reinhart shivered a bit. She had glimpsed the fanatic."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Prologue, Y minus 5, p. 30.

"Andrew Drake, despite his anglicized name, was also a Ukrainian, and a fanatic."

-Frederick Forsyth, The Devil's Alternative (London, 1980), Prologue, p. 13.

We are to understand that both Strang and Drake are fanatics. However, in Anderson's text, we have just read Strang's dialogue so we can make our own judgment. We understand that the statement that Strang is a fanatic is made from Emma Reinhart's point of view. We do not necessarily accept any character's opinions, e.g., in Anderson's The Man Who Counts, Eric Wace's opinion that Nicholas van Rijn is a parasite. There are times when we can be fairly certain that a character's opinion does match that of the author, e.g., Manse Everard's statement that rent control always guarantees slums. In Mirkheim, we are to understand that Emma's assessment of Strang is accurate.

In Forsyth's text, the omniscient narrator merely informs us that Drake is a fanatic so that we have to accept this as a fact at least within the parameters of this particular narrative. Given the differences between Forsyth's world-view and mine, it is quite possible that someone whom he describes as a fanatic I would think of as a reasonable guy!

The Veledan Alternative

"Star of the Sea," 11.

Janne Floris speculates about a Germanic religion inspired by Veleda:

"'It could grow and develop onward after her death. Oh, it would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered. She would give folk as much, spiritually, or almost as much, as Christ could. Few would ever join the Church.'" (p. 568)

Jens Ulstrup concurs:

"'Quite conceivably the Nerthus faith can become the seed and core of a Germanic civilization - not barbarism but a civilization, however turbulent - which has the inner richness to resist Christendom as Zoroastrian Persia will.'" (ibid.)

Does this timeline exist somewhen even if prevented, in their experience, by the Patrol? How did the Tacitus Two manuscript originate? 

Why should the Nerthus faith not become monotheistic? One deity becoming the supreme figure around whom everything else gathers is one way that monotheism does emerge from polytheism. Floris can only mean that full monotheism would not be immediate

I have tried to imagine a world religion as different from Buddhism and Christianity as they are from each other. The best that I can think of is a feminine monism recognizing many local manifestations of the Goddess. I would expect it to be tolerant and to be able to practice just sitting meditation within it.

What does any deity give folk spiritually? A local Evangelical apparently reached rock bottom with drug abuse, then asked for help from Whoever was there, then began to recognize and accept help offered by other people and external events. She did that. She personified the source of the help as the deity named by the local dominant tradition - Jesus, not Krishna or Allah. Of course, she also believes that that deity literally exists and that the others do not. Someone brought up in the Nerthus tradition would believe likewise.

Gods And Planets

Andersonians recognize another meaning for the name, "Nerthus.":

"(Ship Harpsong of Nerthus, out of Highsky for David's Landing, is long overdue..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 137-165 AT p. 137.

The deities, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, were regarded as identical with the planets of those names. Subsequently discovered planets were then named after deities:

Uranus

Neptune

Pluto

Proserpine in James Blish's Cities In Flight

Nerthus in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Woden in Anderson's Technic History

A planetary name becomes completely distinct from its original meaning. We do not think of Odin when we read about Wodenites. In the Psychotechnic History, the planet Mars is referred to with a feminine pronoun:

"...Mars was savage to her lovers, but she gave them of her strange beauty and they would not forget her while they lived."

-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, 2017), pp. 21-100 AT III, p. 29.

What Ulstrup Says

 

"Star of the Sea," 11.

"The neopagans of [Everard's] home milieu did not include [Nerthus] in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice." (p. 565)

They do not need to. Neopagans can acknowledge that their religion has evolved like everyone else's.

Ulstrup differentiates between the "'...aboriginal chthonic pantheon...'" and the sky-gods brought by the Aryans. (p. 565) Cultural conflict is reflected in myths of a war between gods, settled by negotiations and intermarriage. We have just read Poul Anderson's imaginative reconstruction of an early stage of such a myth in Chapter II. The goddess, Nerthus, will become the god, Njord, the hero of Anderson's War Of The Gods. Yet again, we appreciate the diversity of Anderson's works.

History And Myth

"Star of the Sea."

At the end of Chapter 10, in 60 A.D., east of the Rhine, Veleda speaks for the gods and Manse Everard wonders about mystery, the transhuman and the time stream. In the following chapter, II (not 11), we read a purely mythological narrative about Anses and Wanes. The following chapter, 11, returns us to history and geography:

"A.D. 49.

"Westward from the Elbe, south of where Hamburg would someday arise..." (p. 561)

We are back in the viewpoint of Time Patrol agents. The first such that we meet is Jens Ulstrup, resident ethnographer, but he soon joins Manse Everard and Janne Floris at their camp above a river and, whatever they say, we will have to return to it tomorrow.

Stages Of Myths

"Star of the Sea." 

Poul Anderson makes sure that we understand that myths develop through successive stages and survive in different versions, e.g.:

"'I will come to you in springtime with my dowry of rain...

"'Each autumn I will leave you and go back to my sea. But in spring I will come again. This shall be the year and every year henceforward.'" (I, pp. 468, 469.)

That was said at the dawn of time.

"Therefore in spring Naerdha returned to her husband, but not gladly. She left him once more in autumn. So has it been ever since." (II, p. 560)

That happened long after the dawn of time but immediately after a particular conflict. The two stories are not meant to be compatible. Some retellings of myths attempt to reconcile alternative versions. Retellers have different agendas. Neil Gaiman wrote that myths live when retold. And they live in Anderson's and Gaiman's works.

From War To Peace

"Star of the Sea," II.

In Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods, the Vanir attack Asgard. In "Star of the Sea," the Wanes attack the Anses when the latter enter the world, darkening the air with their arrows and enraging men with their battle horns. These are two different versions of the first war in the world.

Froh, riding his bull, wields the Living Sword. We saw Frae with his bull and sword in Chapter I. Naerdha sails the wind-scourged sea, steering with the Ax of the Tree, casting eagles against the Anses, a star burning on her brow. We saw Niaerdh sailing on an iceberg, wielding her net and rising with the morning star on her brow in Chapter I.

In both versions, as, of course, in the sources, the gods of necessity make peace. "Star of the Sea" shows the mythological development from the celebration of war to the celebration of peace. Chapters III and IV tell very different stories.

Veleda In Her Setting

"Star of the Sea," 10.

The sun sets.

Dusk rises.

Wind slithers.

The valley smells of smoke and forest.

Thralls stoke fires.

Flames flicker, growl and spit.

Crows and swallows fly home.

The evening star shines.

Horns sound.

Warriors tread.

Spears flash.

The king speaks.

He announces Edh.

She speaks from a three-legged stool, steel and winter winds in her voice.

The goddess will bring down Rome.

The time stream bears Edh along.

Next is Chapter II: the Anses ride into the world.

The reader is swept along.