Sometimes an author reaches a limit of what he is able to explain or account for within a given text. Discussing time travel paradoxes, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol breaks off and says:
Of Poul Anderson's science fictional species, the Lunarians most closely resemble elves. However, other comparisons can also be made.
When preparing for war:
"Each province of Alfheim was readying itself alone; the elves were too haughty to work well in concert." (p. 95)
Alfheim (scroll down) is in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. Yggdrasil is in Anderson's Operation Luna and in Mike Carey's Lucifer, the sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman. Carey also gives a big role to Fenris Wolf. Firespear's elf-hounds had:
Elf-earl Imric tells guardsman Firespear:
The Dark Lord to the witch:
"'Did you think you ever summoned me and struck a bargain? No, you were led astray; that was another. Mortals never sell me their souls. They give them away.'" (p. 90)
The Sabbat Goat to the black magician:
"The dim splendour of the castle which was also a barren tor, the sorceries adrift through its eternal warm twilight, the presences that haunted hills and woods and waters - oppressed [Freda] with strangeness." (p. 86)
See also:
Here again, Poul Anderson's text expresses two levels of reality or perception. People saw tors and imagined or interpreted them as elven castles. They saw hills, woods and waters and sensed haunting presences. I do not expect to meet a ghost in a wood but I do expect to experience some of what our ancestors felt as twilight deepened in such places. We must follow the narrative and also feel its atmosphere.
"Go with G - !" Well, no. Freda cannot say that in Elfheugh. But the Faerie realms are fading or withdrawing...
Skafloc's wizard skis bear "...him like the wind." (p. 83) He meets Tyr who:
"Despite a chill wind...wore only a wolfskin kilt..." (ibid.)
It is not good to meet the god of war "...alone at dusk..." (ibid.) so, of course, the wind at the time of this meeting is appropriately chill.
"[Tyr's] voice was as of a slow storm through a brazen sky." (p. 84)
The earliest gods were personifications of natural forces. It would have been imagined that a storm was the voice of a god so, of course, this god's voice sounds like a storm. When society became more complicated so that social forces like wars overwhelmed individuals with the apparent inevitability of natural forces like hostile weather, then social forces also were personified. Thus: Thor, thunder; Tyr, war. Next, personified external forces were unified. Then they came to be understood and therefore no longer personified... However, because external forces remain uncontrollable, resort is still made to spells or prayers.
Poul Anderson's narrative returns us to those ages when a storm was a voice and when men told tales of gods and elves.
Freda's home is burned and her family killed. She says:
"'Broken is the tree whose branches sheltered the land, and wind blows cold across fields gone barren -'" (p. 79)
Leea warns Skafloc against Freda:
"'There is doom in her; I can feel it, like chill in my marrow.'" (p. 80)
- but Leea does not know the reason. Freda is Skafolc's sister.
I admit to not remembering what happens next despite several previous readings. Maybe the plot of The Broken Sword will stay with me longer this time.
I also admit to preferring Poul Anderson's fantasies to Tolkien's. Anderson deserves as much recognition.
Leea sings about the wind:
"Seaward blows the wind tonight..." (p. 66)
Women, hearth, kith and kin cannot hold men called to sea by the wind which Leea addresses as "...old wanderer..." (ibid.)
The wind that Valgard had released from a sack blows Skafloc's fleet into the same fjord where the elves find human longships and murdered men.
When they approach Illrede Troll-King's hall:
"Wind shrieked and cuffed them with cold hands." (p. 68)
That is what we expect! However, there is not much more wind in this chapter. During the battle in the hall, Skafloc Elven Fosterling and Valgard Changeling come face to face (the same face!) in combat but they are driven apart. Illrede, Valgard and some others flee. Skafloc frees the human prisoners, Asgerd and Freda, not knowing that they are his sisters.
When the elves, with the freed women, return to their ships, they expect attack because they hear troll horns:
"...blowing ragged on the wind." (p. 72)
Skafloc leads a wedge formation.
"...they saw the trolls massed black against the wan night-bridge of the gods..." (p. 73)
"Night-bridge" is yet another description of the Milky Way and the trolls are something else seen against it.
When the elven survivors escape, Skafloc's runes shift the wind in their favour.
