Two Or Three Levels Of Fantasy

It has just hit me that there are at least two levels of fantasy. We class Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003) as a fantasy because Gunnhild sends out her spirit as a bird; Eirik, seeing the bird, knows that it is uncanny and it draws him to her. So magic works.

But, otherwise, the novel reads as historical fiction. It tells us what happened, albeit in a fictionalized narrative. So far - I have read to page 191 of 591 - there is no suggestion that the gods exist and I think that their intrusion at this stage would come as a deus ex machina.

That differs from other works by Anderson where Odin is one of the characters. It also differs from The King Of Ys Tetralogy by Poul and Karen Anderson where the gods do exist although they remain off-stage, only the effects of their activities becoming visible to human beings, like the mark appearing on each newly chosen Queen of Ys.

I noticed this because the text describes a sword that is a gift from a King. People see:

"...the gilt-hafted sword he bore, King Eadmund's gift, the lovely ripple-sheen of the steel, and heard how with it Haakon had cloven a quernstone from rim to hole. No better blade was known in the North." (p. 190)

It sounds like the best weapon that men could make but thereby falls short of the magic swords, forged by dwarfs and given by gods, that are fated to kill every time they are unsheathed.