Skafloc's wizard skis bear "...him like the wind." (p. 83) He meets Tyr who:
"Despite a chill wind...wore only a wolfskin kilt..." (ibid.)
It is not good to meet the god of war "...alone at dusk..." (ibid.) so, of course, the wind at the time of this meeting is appropriately chill.
"[Tyr's] voice was as of a slow storm through a brazen sky." (p. 84)
The earliest gods were personifications of natural forces. It would have been imagined that a storm was the voice of a god so, of course, this god's voice sounds like a storm. When society became more complicated so that social forces like wars overwhelmed individuals with the apparent inevitability of natural forces like hostile weather, then social forces also were personified. Thus: Thor, thunder; Tyr, war. Next, personified external forces were unified. Then they came to be understood and therefore no longer personified... However, because external forces remain uncontrollable, resort is still made to spells or prayers.
Poul Anderson's narrative returns us to those ages when a storm was a voice and when men told tales of gods and elves.
10 comments:
Tyr was "God of War" in an ancestral sense -- he was a descendant, so to speak, of the original Indo-european "Sky Father". Odin was a more recent God of War.
Kaor, Paul!
No, what Anderson did in stories like THE BROKEN SWORD and HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA was to set them in times when many still believed the Norse gods were actual beings. Albeit THE BROKEN SWORD shows them starting to fade away as knowledge of the true God proclaimed by Christianity spread.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: actually, Christians thought that pagan Gods existed -- as demons.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I know, and I agree. But, unless I remember wrongly, I thought other Christians like St. Augustine dismissed the pagan gods as literal nonentities. And that's what I believe as well--that there are no actual pagan gods.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, yes, but St. Augustine was a very well-educated and sophisticated observer. Most people weren't, and they lived in a universe in which spirits, ghosts, and suchlike were ubiquitous.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Not only weren't but also aren't! We haves seen a resurgence in recent decades of people believing in astrology, the enneagram, and the magic powers of crystals. I recall very well how scathing St. Augustine was about astrology in his CONFESSIONS, writing of how two men he knew recorded the birthdates of everyone on their estates, including even puppies, and used astrology to predict their fates, and failed.
What are ghosts? Simply our disembodied souls, so I do believe in ghosts. But most "appearances" of ghosts should be dismissed. I say only most, because Fr. Herbert Thurston's investigated many reports of ghosts, and I found it hard to dismiss all of them so summarily.
The late Russell Kirk, in collections like THE PRINCESS OF ALL LANDS and WATCHERS AT THE STRAIT GATE, wrote very good ghost stories. In his prefaces Kirk insisted all, or almost all of them, had some basis in fact. from incidents involving relatives and friends.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, the human mind is prone to delusions. We 'introject' models of other people's personalities on a subconscious level. "Seeing" them makes sense.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Mercifully, so far at least, I have not been afflicted by any such delusions. But I also believe by faith there are times when Christ and His saints can appear to any one of us. These would not be cases of delusions.
Ad astra! Sea
FWIW I recently heard about some experiments with exposing people to infrasound (sound at lower frequency than the 20 Hz limit of human hearing) and found it contributed to peoples' perception of a place as being creepy or haunted.
Sean: How does one tell the difference between a true appearance of Christ or one of his saints, and a delusion, possibly made by Satan?
Kaor, Jim!
I think I have heard of the experiments you mentioned. If the data gained are valid that might give some support to the idea of places haunted by ghosts. Fr. Thurston's investigated such cases long before the tech you mentioned was available to him.
In the Catholic Church alleged apparitions of Christ and His saints are treated very warily. Local bishops first investigate them and then send their reports, pro or con, to the relevant dicasteries in Rome. The officials there investigate such cases very rigorously, precisely to rule out all cases of delusions. It can take years or even decades before a decision is recommended to the pope.
This tedious, legalistic procedure was worked out over centuries to weed out cases of fraud, error, delusion.
Ad astra! Sean
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