I must break this habit of posting late in the evening. The present post serves only to record that the Hell Horse is heard both in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions (see here) and in SM Stirling's The Sea Peoples (New York, 2017), Chapter Four, p. 66.
In Three Hearts..., the Horse exists in an alternative universe where the Carolingian myths are true whereas, in The Sea Peoples, it "exists" (?) in a shamanic Otherworld, "Between Waking World And Shadow," (p. 65) but it is the same Horse, another of our megamultiversal beings, no doubt.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have wondered what exactly Hell Horse was. A horse possessed by demons? Or somehow under a curse?
Sean
Sean,
There is a Wiki article, "Helhest."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That I had not known. I will be looking it up soon. Thanks!
Sean
I think Poul was drawing on the Danish folktales -- he was very familiar with them.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I think so too, what you said about PA drawing on Danish folk tales for the Hell Horse. That idea does not seem to be shared with Norway or Sweden when I looked it up.
Sean
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