Sometimes I remember having read a phrase in one of Poul Anderson's works and would like to quote that particular phrase here but cannot find it in the text. Something that Hanno thought about his footsteps through time? This is a reminder of how rich Anderson's texts are. It is impossible, while reading, to note everything that might come to seem worthy of recollection later. Find a passage that describes a natural scene or that imparts a lot of information and try to summarize that passage. You will appreciate the details more for having summarized them and will also write something that might encourage others to read or reread.
The Boat Of A Million Years, Chapter V, returns us to familiar Andersonian territory. It begins:
"It is told in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason how Nornagest came to him when he was at Nidharos and abode some while in the king's hall..." (p. 108)
Anderson is at home among sagas, Olafs etc. It is as if Boat is to incorporate multiply diverse historical milieus.
Is Nornagest another of Anderson's "immortals" that can be identified with a character to be found in earlier literature?
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have a copy of an English translation of Snorri Sturluson's HEIMSKRINGLA, his saga history of the kings of Norway. I should reread Snorri's saga of Olaf I to see if Nornagest is mentioned.
Anderson was a big fan of the HEIMSKRINGLA, which he thought one of the best of the histories/chronicles written in the Medieval period. In 1991 or 1992 I gave Anderson, as a birthday present, a copy of Lewis Thorpe's translation of St. Gregory of Tours' HISTORY OF THE FRANKS (alone with another of my too long letters!). In his reply Anderson not only thanked me but commented that on looking here and thru Gregory's book he found many fascinating bits.
Along with St. Bede's somewhat later ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, St. Gregory's TEN BOOKS OF HISTORY (as he called it) was one of the best and most interesting of the Medieval histories.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Without the bishop of Tours and St. Bede, our knowledge of Merovingian Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England would be immeasurably poorer.
Ad astra! Sean
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