"Another Whole Universe!"

In the alpha timeline, Manson Everard, traveling under his own name as the illegitimate son of an Anglo-Norman knight, befriended King Roger II of Sicily and accompanied him to the Battle of Rignano. In the beta timeline, Everard posing as Munan Eyvindsson, an Icelandic outlaw, becomes a guest of Roger's grandson, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who is also a grandson of Barbarossa.

Munan has two ways to impress Frederick:

a gift of a falcon from the Time Patrol's pre-Indian North American ranch, where Keith Denison had stabled his horses;

sagas and Eddic and skaldic poems.

"'You open another whole universe!' Frederick exulted." (The Shield Of Time, p. 396) -

- even though Frederick knows international scholars, including the mathematician "...who introduced Arabic numerals into Europe." (ibid.)

Many of us share Frederick's appreciation for Norse myths, in our case as retold in prose novels by Poul Anderson and in graphic novels or films from Marvel Comics. I am now looking at three volumes of Thor and Loki and will shortly open them for a change from reading prose.