"'I will come to you on the rainbow,' Niaerdh plighted.
"So it was. So it is."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 469.
The goddess Niaerdh addresses the god Frae to whom she has become betrothed. Rather than retelling a familiar myth, Anderson here imaginatively reproduces an earlier stage of Northern European mythology. Myths explain the origins of natural phenomena like the rainbow and also the seasons:
"'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.'" (ibid.)
Niaerdh coming on the rainbow would have made a colourful cover illustration if "Star of the Sea" had ever been published as a single volume.
For the second rainbow, see Words From A Danellian. In this passage, the Danellian, although not interested in the rainbow as such, uses the idea of diffraction to compare imperceptible alterations in the time stream to reinforcing and cancelling light waves. Is our temporal experience comparable to a vast rainbow? This suggests an even more intriguing cover illustration.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the Book of Genesis has the rainbow being used as a sign the world would never again be drowned in a global flood.
Ad astra! Sean
Of course.
As the spiritual goes:
The Lord done promise
In Noah's time --
No more water.
The fire next time.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Or that as well, with many apocalyptic types fearing/expecting an end of the world in nuclear fire.
Ad astra! Sean
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