"'...I've seen Wagner's Ring operas. And when I had a mission once in Scandinavia, toward the close of the viking period, I heard a yarn about Sigurd, who killed the dragon and woke the Valkyrie and afterward mucked everything up.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 356.
That Scandinavian mission occurs between installments of the Time Patrol series.
Inside the church is a Norse hog-back stone from around 1000AD, which would originally have been a grave cover.
-copied from here.
The stone has been moved into the church to protect it from weathering. We saw it today. It has:
Sigurd carved on one side and Sigmund attacked by wolves on the other;
two symbols, a fish and a shamrock-like shape, which might be Christian.
I am uninspired blog-wise today but here is a connection between a Poul Anderson text and our local environment.
See also:
St Patrick
Other Historical Connections
There is more about the hog-back stone here and here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I would have liked to have known more about this mission of Manse Everard's to the late Viking age of Scandinavia (perhaps during the time of King Harald Hardrede of Norway?). It reminds me of how we see occasional mention in the Flandry stories of missions by Sir Dominic that Poul Anderson "reported" on.
Sean
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