Poul Anderson Appreciation: Judgment Day And Valkyries

Sunday 3 January 2016

Judgment Day And Valkyries

Religious ideas remain in language long after they have passed from belief. In Poul Anderson's "Holmgang," a spaceman, buried at Helmet Hill on the asteroid Achilles, is said to be waiting unchanged till Judgment Day. When two spacemen agree to "holmgang" combat on a small asteroid, one of them imagines "'Valkyries in spacesuits...'" (Cold Victory, p. 153)

Spiritualists say that each human being is an immortal soul that will survive his/her body. Some Biblical sects say that immortality can only be in a resurrected body. Orthodox Christianity combines these ideas so that there is both an immaterial hereafter immediately after physical death and a future resurrection of the body at Judgment Day. Valhalla was a cycle of fighting, dying, rising and feasting that would end at the Ragnarok.

References to these ideas remain in language even though many of us no longer entertain such notions.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

Maybe most of the people you personally know don't believe in orthodox Christian doctrines about the immortality of the soul and the resurrection, but many many millions still do. Myself included.

What I find really implausible and hard to believe is that neo pagans SAY they believe in either the Eddic gods, some vaguely defined "Celtic" mythology, or even the absurd Olympian gods. Hinduism aside, most pagan faiths I see today are too ridiculous to take seriously. ONE God makes far more sense than a swarming multitude of gods.

Sean; 5 January 2016 at 07:54
Paul Shackley said...: Sean,
I think that one God makes less sense: the creator before the creation would be a self without an other which is like a square without sides. Many powerful but finite superhuman beings are at least possible but there is insufficient evidence for their existence.
Paul.; 5 January 2016 at 21:07
Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

But I believe God IS God because He existed un-created from all eternity. How God or any god BE a god at all if they somehow did not exist before they had a beginning?

I see more far more convincing arguments for one God than for many gods. Beginning with the philosophic monotheism of Plato and Aristotle.

Sean; 6 January 2016 at 07:26
Paul Shackley said...: Sean,
If by "God" we mean a beginningless being, then, yes, any being that had a beginning is not God. There is a usage of the phrase, "a god," which allows for a god to have a beginning - but I am always willing to change terminology to avoid confusion. Thus, a powerful humanoid who is said to have preexisted humanity is not a god but something else.
Paul.; 6 January 2016 at 17:13