Some Details On Starkad

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SIX.

Many readers of this blog will have read Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry at least once but will have forgotten most of its solid, colorful details although, without them, this novel would have been far less enjoyable to read. I am rereading this chapter as if for the first time:

Dragoika's hallway is dominated by a contorted three-meters high stone figure from the Ice Islands;

behind an archway, a spiral staircase, lit by arrow slits, leads to the parapetted house tower affording a view of red tile roofs, beam ends carved with flowers and monster heads, the rest of the town and the bay;

a small Merseian submarine, assembled on Starkad, has surfaced and is firing at Seatrader's Castle;

Starkad has no continents but many islands so the need for food from the sea causes conflict between land- and sea-dwellers.