Some myths explain origins, e.g., in the Book of Genesis. Section 1 of "Star of the Sea" presents a few origin stories. Niaerdh made seals, whales, fish, gulls and spindrift. Her song brings rain or light. She tells Frae:
"'Each autumn I will leave you and go back to my sea. But in spring I will come again. This shall be the year and every year henceforward." (p. 469)
- and:
"'I will come to you on the rainbow,' Niaerdh plighted.' So it was. So it is." (ibid.)
Beginnings also contain or foreshadow endings. In Norse mythology, Surtr awaits the Ragnarok even before the creation. Similarly, Niaerdh says, of the Frae's bull, Earthshaker:
"'...mine he shall be, and in the end I will call him to me forever.'" (ibid.)
Poul Anderson imagines earlier celebrations of beginnings and endings.
5 comments:
Note that the origin story doesn't occur at any precise time in history -- because the preliterate Germanics didn't have any sense of historic time; they were living in legendary/heroic time.
Christianity's myths can be precisely located in space (Palestine) and time (first century CE). That religion arose in a culture-zone that was already existing in historical time.
I think of Christianity as a cross-over between cyclical agricultural time and linear historical time. The resurrection is historicized and happens only once.
And there is an abrupt return to legendary/heroic time in Volume I of EMBERVERSE.
Yup. The habit of seeing history as a linear progression requires a fairly sophisticated set of intellectual constructs; it's not "natural".
One of Harry Turtledove's characters thinks about this -- IIRC, in a story of the "Agent of Byzantium" series: that the Incarnation implies that history will change, but his life isn't much different from this father's, or grandfather's, etc.. Though he will see changes in his lifetime -- vaccination against smallpox, and printing.
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