Three Facts

These facts impressed me when I learned them:

that the Buddha was not a strange god but a compassionate man;

that the Norse gods are doomed;

that a Trojan prince was an ancestor of the founders of Rome.

I learned the first two from an encyclopedia at home and the third from a Latin class at school.

Poul Anderson:

presents sympathetic treatments of religious practitioners, including two Buddhists, Adzel and Trygve Yamamura;

wrote a lot about the Norse gods;

wrote a lot about the Western and Eastern Roman Empires and their fictional successor, the Terran Empire;

also addressed many other themes.

Thus, lessons learned early in life were good preparations for an appreciation of Poul Anderson's works.