I listed several epic journeys in Poul Anderson's works here and have just found another:
the Inuit tribe gathers in an oppressively hot house;
the angakok (shaman) strips naked and lies on a bearskin on a ledge where he is bound with thongs;
the lamps are extinguished except for one tiny flame;
the angakok chants rhythmically to the beat of a drum;
the people sing, sway, writhe, speak in tongues, howl and scream;
the angakok enters a trance (or disappears physically but in the dark?);
he -
- swims down through the rock;
enters the underworld;
goes out under the waters;
passes the country of the dead and an abyss with an eternally whirling disc of ice and a boiling cauldron of seals;
evades a baying, snapping guardian dog greater than a bear;
crosses a bottomless chasm on a knife-thin bridge;
comes before huge, one-eyed, hostile Sedna, Mother of the Sea;
compels her to divulge undersea intelligence;
returns when the single flame has been extinguished;
prophesies for the tribe;
tells the merfolk where their kin have gone, using coastal place names unfamiliar to him that Sedna has learned from drowned sailors.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteThis other worldly journey of the Angakok immediately reminded of Aeneas own visit to Hades in the AENEID.
Sean