Njord (scroll down)
Nerthus (also the name of a planet) (scroll down)
Niaerdh
"'Nerthus - Naerdha - is still female. In centuries ahead, she will become male, the Eddic god Njordh...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT p. 566.
Njord is the hero of Anderson's War Of The Gods and a prophetess of Niaerdh is a heroine in "Star of the Sea." Njord and Nerthus are remembered as distinct deities and also regarded as brother and sister in Stirling's Emberverse.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Besides the obvious reasons why I don't believe in polytheism, one reason why I found the neo-paganism of the Emververvse books unconvincing was because of how "nice" they are. The real pagan
Scandinavian religion of our past believed in gods who were a pretty grim and bloody lot. And the same applies to the Celtic gods as well.
Poul Anderson had no illusions about the pagan faith of his forbears, which he described in his Foreword to HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA as "heathen rites obscene or bloody" (quoting from memory). And one Roman character in THE GOLDEN SLAVE contemptuously dismissed the Olympian gods as "children."
Yes, I do realize the neo paganism of our times is not actually based on what had actually existed in the past. More a mish mash of Theosophism, New Age speculations, and some bits cribbed from Hinduism (such as reincarnation).
Sean
Depends on which type of neopagan you mean. Wiccans are syncretistic; reconstructionists like the Asatruar much less so -- they're "hard" polytheists and believe the Gods are distinct individual personalities.
There's an Asatru joke that their religion involves a lot of homework and there's a test at the end.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Ha, ha!!! Very true. I forgot about the Asatruar "reconstructionists," neo pagans I take more seriously than the Wiccans. After all, we do have the ELDER EDDA and the sagas to give us some REAL knowledge of what pre-Christian Scandinavians believed.
Sean
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