"...the Milky Way was a shining smoke..."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT Chapter Nine, p. 85.
The characters have left Starkad but not yet reached Merseia so Chapter Nine recounts two conversations in the spaceship, the Dronning Margrete. Hauksberg and Abrams drink wine while Hauksberg's butler goes to bed and Flandry and Persis look at the stars while no one else is in the officers' lounge...
Dronning Margrete means "Queen Margaret." The ship belongs to Ny (New) Kalmar and is used as a yacht by the current viscount, who is currently Hauksberg.
Chapter Ten is set in Ardaig on Merseia.
7 comments:
The name of the ship and the planet are meaningful: Margrethe was Queen of Denmark during the Kalmar Union, which united the three Scandinavian countries (and Finland, which was part of Sweden then); but the Union of Kalmar didn't last, and Margrethe's vision failed.
Kaor, Paul!
I had wondered about the origins of the Hauksberg viscounts of Ny Kalmar. Apparently they were Swedish in origin.
Sean
I would never have looked into "Ny Kalmar" if I hadn't been blogging and wanting to check out every detail.
Kaor, Paul!
Sandra Meisel did refer to Kalmar as the city where the Union of Kalmar was negotiated and signed.
Sean
Miesel in fact specified the significance of the yacht's name as a reference to Hauksberg's "peacemongering" and a hint that Hauksberg, like Margrethe, would fail.
David,
And I originally thought that "dronning" was a participle of a verb, "to dron."
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID!
While Queen Margaret's plans for including Sweden in her Union of Kalmar ultimately failed, as regards Sweden, the union of Denmark and Norway did prove lasting. Until Sweden seized Norway from Denmark in the Napoleonic wars.
Sean
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