When Tharasmund dies:
"An arval followed that went on for three days. On the last of these, the Wanderer appeared." (p. 429)
(What is an arval?)
Yet the next time the Wanderer visits, he asks:
"'How fare Tharasmund and his kin?'" (pp. 433-434)
Stunned when he is "reminded" about the arval, he immediately leaves but privately questions a cowherd at length about Tharasmund's death.
Straightforward? No. A friend in Lancaster did not understand why the Wanderer had "forgotten" about his grandson's funeral. People think that time remains the same linear sequence for everyone even if there is time travel.
A Christian comments that the Wanderer's forgetfulness:
"...showed how the old gods were failing and fading." (p. 434)
- as in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys. Not that they never existed but that they are fading. Is this the fate of all gods? In Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, the immortal Hanno converts to Christianity when expedient but outlives all gods. If we combine all of Anderson's works together into a single multiverse, then we wind up with something quite remarkable.
3 comments:
From the context Arval sounded something like a 'wake'.
From this it doesn't seem very far off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvals
The wake is a common feature of many cultures -- usually combining both grief and celebration.
Arval is from Middle English root (arvell), from a Scandinavian word, arfr (“inheritance”) + öl (“ale”). Grave-ale, a feast given at a funeral.
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