How The Northlanders Differ From (The Rest Of) Humanity
The Rogaviki cooperate well but only in small, close-knit groups.
They are not pack or herd animals.
They have no laws or state.
Nonconformists are merely ostracized.
Women are more aggressive than men.
Married women have several husbands.
The Rogaviki's need for open space is stronger than their need for life.
They are overwhelmingly territorial, strongly dislike visiting cities or even cultivated land and live only by hunting.
Therefore, they conserve large herds of wild animals.
Children of Rogaviki and outsiders are infertile.
Rogaviki women cannot settle with foreign men who, however, are strongly attracted to them.
The Theory
Human beings who did not want to be crowded by their own kind survived better on the vast northern plains caused by the Ice Age.
They emit a pheromone that makes them uneasy "...beyond a certain concentration..." (p. 206) and causes them to dislike urban crowding.
Their need for space explains their territoriality.
The pheromone enables Rogaviki women to satisfy many men while remaining active in other fields of life and also to entrance or bewitch foreigners.
The Rogaviki are a new human species.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It seems to me, quite aside from my dislike of them, that the Rogaviki would become an evolutionary dead end. If they are genetically hard wired to be aggressive predators living off bison hunting, and are few in numbers, then killing a sufficient number of bison would break them. Esp. since they are UNABLE to cooperate in more than small groups.
I don't think the Rogaviki could forever hold off larger and more numerous nations of ordinary humans. Esp. if they came under pressure both from the Rahidian Empire to the South/Southwest, AND new nations arising in the wide lands east of the Jugular. Esp. since I suspect the era of THE WINTER OF THE WORLD was seeing the beginning of a revival of both science and industry.
These are some of the points I hoped I would have made in a hypothetical letter written by me to Poul Anderson discussing THE WINTER OF THE WORLD.
Sean
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