Friday 30 October 2015

The First War And Later Events

"The gods themselves fought the first war that ever was."
-Poul Anderson, War of The Gods (New York, 1999), Chapter I, p. 9.`

There is a beginning.

"Saxo places Hadding three generations before Hrolf Kraki."
-War Of The Gods, Afterword, p. 301.

Thus, War Of The Gods, about Hadding, precedes Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

"Great and rich was the Thraandlaw, a home for heroes. Hither had come Hadding from the South, to fell a giant, and win a king's daughter. Hence had gone Bjarki to the South, he who became the right hand of Hrolf Kraki."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Two, Chapter XXII, p. 184.

Thus, Mother Of Kings, about Gunnhild, comes third.

"'It's said he fathered Gunnhild, the queen of King Eirik Blood-ax -'
"Skafloc gripped the tiller hard. 'The witch-queen?'
"Mananaan nodded. 'Yes...'"
-Poul Anderson & Mildred Downey Broxon, The Demon Of Scattery (New York, 1980), p. 193.

Skafloc and Mananaan converse in the untitled Prologue and Epilogue of The Demon Of Scattery during their voyage to Jotunheim described in The Broken Sword. Thus, The Broken Sword and The Demon Of Scattery are, chronologically, the fourth and fifth volumes of this sequence although everything in ...Scattery between Prologue and Epilogue is an extended flashback.

Mananaan's father, Lir, was a God of the City of Ys and Skafloc sees:

"...the drowned tower of Ys..."
-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter V, p. 31.

Thus, Poul and Karen Anderson's four-volume The King Of Ys precedes The Broken Sword and, indeed, since it features the decline of the Roman Empire, is set several centuries before Mother Of Kings and about a century before Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

The title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy is Eirik Blood-Ax's father's great-great-grandson, Harald Hardrada, who refers somewhere in the Trilogy to Gunnhild and falls in battle in 1066.

Skafloc also saw:

"...the sea maidens tumbling in the sea and singing..." (ibid.)

Christian priests drive the last merpeople from Europe in the fourteenth century in Anderson's The Merman's Children.

One long literary sequence alternating between historical fiction, historical fantasy and heroic fantasy.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Except, of course, that these works can be read independently of each other. Poul Anderson included these connections and allusions to amuse, interest, and deepen our appreciation of these stories, NOT because they were NECESSARY.

Sean