"They called him Ingolf the Wanderer, and it was said no man since the Change had crossed from the eastern sea to the western so many times."
-SM Stirling, Lord Of Mountains (New York, 2013), Chapter Eleven, p. 239.
Adzel, an interstellar explorer, is later known as Adzel the Wayfarer.
Wodan travels between the Nine Worlds in the Tree.
Ingolf travels back and forth across North America.
Adzel travels between planetary systems.
Thus:
two kinds of universe, Eddaic and scientific;
within the latter, cosmically different scales - 2,680 miles as against millions of millions of miles.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And one thing to remember about Ingolf the Wanderer is that he eventually became tired of wandering and had a strong desire to simply settle down and never leave home again.
Btw, Anderson's "The Troubletwisters" is prefaced with a quote from the diary of Urwain the Wide-Faring, very similar to "wanderer." I've wondered if Urwain was Merseian because the name/nickname looks like something a Wilwidh Ocean Merseian would use. Perhaps a Merseian who somehow managed to do interstellar traveling soon after "Day Of Burning"?
IF we ever have a FTL drive (which I so much hope happens!), then traveling 200, 300, 400, etc., light years would be analogous to how long it took to travel by sea from Boston, MA to Hawaii circa AD 1900 (before the Panama Canal was built).
Sean
Sean,
Urwain is human. Check the post, "Noah Arkwright III," Monday 20 May, 2013.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I did, and I'm still not absolutely sure Urwain the Wide-Faring was human rather than Merseian. Urwain could simply have been recording in disary an anecdote from a human about how he had been hornswoggled by Noan Arkwright.
Sean
Paul:
As I said in my comment on that post, I, too, am still inclined to believe Urwain was an extraterrestrial — not NECESSARILY Merseian, despite the similar name pattern — recording what an unnamed human told him. The phrasing just doesn't strike me as what someone would use when describing in his personal journal what he'd told someone ELSE — especially since it's something the speaker is embarrassed about and doesn't want any other HUMAN to know.
Kaor, DAVID!
Good points. It helps to explain more clearly why I don't think Urwain the Wide-Faring was human.
Sean
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