China

Tomorrow, Lancaster will celebrate Chinese New Year, complete with street procession and dancing dragon. It is good to live in a multicultural society.

China is a big country that maybe does not get a lot of attention in Poul Anderson's works?

In "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the large quadrupedal alien, Adzel, performs the Chinese dragon in street parades while he is a student on Earth.

In The Broken Sword, the supernatural beings of different national traditions coexist and (I think that) Chinese beings are mentioned.

In Rogue Sword, Lucas has returned from Cathay.

China is more civilized than Europe here.

In The Boat Of A Million Years, one of the immortals is Chinese. See here. Thus, his introductory chapter is set in China.

In "SOS," Pitar Cheng leads a Great Asian space fleet.

Finally, not to ignore our ever-growing food thread, in exchange for his dragon performances, Adzel:

"...has an unlimited meal ticket at the Silver Dragon Chinese Food and Chop Suey Palace."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Technic Civilization Saga: The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 195.

What have I missed? (See comments.)

With Trevelyan Micah

The first three novels written (not published) by Poul Anderson were:

The Broken Sword (fantasy);
Vault Of The Ages (juvenile sf);
Star Ways/The Peregrine (a volume of his first future history).

A future history is event-driven, not character-driven. In this, the Psychotechnic, future history, three characters appear twice and that is it as far as character continuity goes:

"Un-Man," about clones of the dead but well remembered Stefan Rostomily, cameos Fourre;

"Marius," written later but set earlier is about Fourre and cameos Stefan;

in Star Ways, Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service bids farewell to Braganza Diane before departing on a mission;

in "The Pirate," written many years later but set a few years earlier, Micah again bids farewell to Diane before departing on a mission.

Thus, Fourre, Micah and Diane each appear twice.

Trevelyan refers to the Second Dark Ages which happened between "Brake" and "Gypsy." When he visits Port Nevada, we read one of Anderson's list-descriptions:

"...humans and nonhumans hustled, jostled, chiseled, brawled, clashed, stole, evangelized, grew rich, grew poor, came, went, and were forgotten..."
-Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 213-214.

Trevelyan's nonhuman colleague says of the man whom they are investigating:

"'Our information concerning his world line is fragmentary, and zero about its future segment.'" (p. 220)

Of course information about the future is zero! But does Smokesmith imply that his species does sometimes have information about future segments of world lines? The very fact he (?) discusses a man in terms of his world line is suggestive.

"...the mother-of-pearl iridescence on [Smokesmith's] rugose torso was lovely to watch." (p. 221)

(I took "rugose" to mean "red.")

Nerthus, like Tyrfing, is a name that links Anderson's hard sf to his mythological fiction.

Between Books II

(The Peshawar Club.)

I have been doing "blog maintenance," which improves earlier posts but does not add any new ones. It will also take some time to complete the job.

Meanwhile, maybe the next Poul Anderson volume to be reread should be The Demon Of Scattery? It describes events post-Mother Of Kings and is narrated during The Broken Sword. Thus, these three Viking volumes are set centuries after War Of The Gods and Hrolf Kraki's Saga but before The Last Viking Trilogy.

SM Stirling's The Stone Dogs cannot arrive tomorrow because there is no post on Sunday. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is extremely enjoyable to reread but I am determined not to google every unfamiliar word like sambhur. There are too many of them, in any case.

In ...Lancers, the King estate has a church, a temple, a mosque and a gurdwara and the Kings' business agent in Delhi is a Jew. Admirable pluralism, also to be found in Anderson's Terran Empire although not in its rival imperium, the Merseian Roidhunate. In Europe right now, terrorist fanatics are trying to destroy our pluralism and start a race war. These are bad times.

The First War And Later Events

"The gods themselves fought the first war that ever was."
-Poul Anderson, War of The Gods (New York, 1999), Chapter I, p. 9.`

There is a beginning.

"Saxo places Hadding three generations before Hrolf Kraki."
-War Of The Gods, Afterword, p. 301.

Thus, War Of The Gods, about Hadding, precedes Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

"Great and rich was the Thraandlaw, a home for heroes. Hither had come Hadding from the South, to fell a giant, and win a king's daughter. Hence had gone Bjarki to the South, he who became the right hand of Hrolf Kraki."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Two, Chapter XXII, p. 184.

Thus, Mother Of Kings, about Gunnhild, comes third.

"'It's said he fathered Gunnhild, the queen of King Eirik Blood-ax -'
"Skafloc gripped the tiller hard. 'The witch-queen?'
"Mananaan nodded. 'Yes...'"
-Poul Anderson & Mildred Downey Broxon, The Demon Of Scattery (New York, 1980), p. 193.

Skafloc and Mananaan converse in the untitled Prologue and Epilogue of The Demon Of Scattery during their voyage to Jotunheim described in The Broken Sword. Thus, The Broken Sword and The Demon Of Scattery are, chronologically, the fourth and fifth volumes of this sequence although everything in ...Scattery between Prologue and Epilogue is an extended flashback.

Mananaan's father, Lir, was a God of the City of Ys and Skafloc sees:

"...the drowned tower of Ys..."
-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter V, p. 31.

Thus, Poul and Karen Anderson's four-volume The King Of Ys precedes The Broken Sword and, indeed, since it features the decline of the Roman Empire, is set several centuries before Mother Of Kings and about a century before Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

The title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy is Eirik Blood-Ax's father's great-great-grandson, Harald Hardrada, who refers somewhere in the Trilogy to Gunnhild and falls in battle in 1066.

Skafloc also saw:

"...the sea maidens tumbling in the sea and singing..." (ibid.)

Christian priests drive the last merpeople from Europe in the fourteenth century in Anderson's The Merman's Children.

One long literary sequence alternating between historical fiction, historical fantasy and heroic fantasy.

How The Gods Speak

If an intelligence pervaded and controlled our environment, then how might it communicate with us? On a cosmic scale, in Carl Sagan's Contact, when computers calculate the value of pi, the numbers start to form a pattern that contains a message.

In Poul Anderson's heroic fantasy, the gods speak through the elements. In his Genesis, a new voice speaks:

"...not from any throat or instrument. Maybe the walls of the house reverberated with it, soft though it was." (Genesis, p. 82)

And, later, inside an emulation:

"'That will not be necessary,'" said the wind." (p. 232)

"The blowing of the wind, the rustling in the leaves made words." (p. 233)

(When I quote, I realize that we do not all use commas in the same way.)

In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, the ecology of a colonized extrasolar planet has a presiding intelligence that can address individual colonists through an audio system. Pagan and sf ideas meet.

The Broken Sword Graphic Adaptation

I have speculated about adapting Poul Anderson's works into comic strips. See here. Googling for an image of The Broken Sword for the previous post, I found that that novel has been adapted. See image.

Mother of Kings II

As expected, Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings, which I have as yet read only as far as page 54, turns out to be a longer and more substantial culminating volume for the author's loosely connected Viking era fantasy novels. These five fantasies can be classified either as "heroic" or as "historical," depending on how much real history is incorporated into their plots. Three of them, beginning with the the first of the five, The Broken Sword, feature the god Odin as a character.

When I have read more of Mother Of Kings, I will comment on it as an individual work. Meanwhile, as always, I am overwhelmed by the impression that Anderson really presents a single long series covering many centuries of history:

before the Vikings, Lir was one of the Three Gods of the city of Ys;
Skafloc, bearer of "the broken sword," saw the submerged Ys;
during the quest to reforge the sword, Lir's son told Skafloc of Gunnhild's grandfather;
Book One of Mother Of Kings describes Gunnhild growing up, learning magic and marrying Erik Blood-Ax, son of Harald Fairhair;
the Afterword to Mother Of Kings summarizes the career of Harald Fairhair's great-great-grandson, Harald Hardrede, the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy, whom Anderson shows as reflecting on the history of Gunnhild;
Harald Hardrede died failing to conquer England in 1066, the same year in which his remote relative William of Normandy succeeded in the Conquest.

England has been a monarchy, with one brief interregnum, since 1066. Lir's mother was Tiamat, the primordial chaos, slain by a god in Babylonian and Ysan myths. Thus, a slight extension of Anderson's multi-volume narrative generates a story beginning with Tiamat and culminating in the present Queen Elizabeth II, who is expected to be succeeded in due course by her son, grandson and soon to be born great-grandchild.

Mythological Beings

Like The Broken Sword, The Merman's Children assumes that each national mythology accurately describes non-human intelligences that once existed in that country. Thus, in the fourteenth century:

merfolk had colonised various coastal waters;
a were-seal dwelt at sea but alone;
Leshy tricked people in the wildwood;
polevik kept blight from crops;
domovoi embodied a household and its well-being;
Kikimora sometimes helped housewives;
a vodianoi, growing old or young with the lunar phases, was a water monster shaped like a bulky man but covered in moss and weeds, tailed, webbed and taloned;
a vilja was a young woman barred from Heaven because she had drowned herself, now embodied in mist, wind and dreams, pulling men underwater if they embraced her;
Rousalka, further north, were similar to but more fearsome than vilja;
a tupilak was a stuffed walrus hide with sewn on fangs and claws, animated to move, seek the water and prey on its maker's enemies. (There was an animated creature in Oz: the Gumph?)

I had previously heard of only three of these ten and had encountered the term Leshy only because Larry Niven used it in the title of one of his series.

The Demon Of Scattery II

In Poul Anderson's The Demon Of Scattery (New York, 1980), unfamiliar terminology: Vikings call Christians " '...Papas.' " (p. 16) Also, " '...prime-signed...'" Pagans can trade with Christians even though not (yet) baptised. (p. 64) I do not remember noticing these details on first reading.

The book becomes unequivocally a historical fantasy only on page 124 of 193 when Brigit, the goddess, not the saint, appears to Brigit, the nun. As in The Broken Sword, we see both the divine and the nature through which the divine is seen. When the goddess vanishes:

"Where she had stood was merely a patch of green moss, like any other spot on the banks of the pool." (p. 126)

Earlier, the goddess had worn green in the heroine's dream. But, if we start to think that a green patch has been mistaken for a green-clad woman, then next we see a giant serpent attacking the Vikings and killed by lightning (Thor).

In Brigit the nun's second dream in the novel, she sees her mother, who had followed the Old Way, die in child-birth while a "...shadow figure..." says, " '...she served us well.' " (p. 91)

My Pagan friends will like the conclusion of this novel when the former nun accompanies the Viking chief back to Norway and bears his sons and daughters.

Odin In The Saga

I have been saying that Odin appears in two fantasies by Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword and War Of The Gods. Having read Hrolf Kraki's Saga only once many years ago, I had not remembered that Hrolf, while on a perilous journey, is advised three times by a tall, gray-bearded, spear-carrying, blue-cloaked yeoman hight Hrani wearing a broad-brimmed hat, who is old but wanders widely and laughs like a wolf. Two ravens are aloft and a wolf howls nearby.

Why do Hrolf and his warriors not recognise Hrani? Is it that the knowledge of Odin's appearance has been handed down to those who hear the stories but was not generally known at the time? Or does Odin cloud their minds? He does do this to some extent:

his house is not easy to see, standing in deep shadow like another darkness, and is of indeterminate size;
their experiences in the house are dreamlike;
they sense uncanniness;
Hrani is wise and a good story teller;
he regards Hrolf with "...an eye..." (p. 191);
they accept his unwelcome advice without question until afterwards.

Whatever the explanation, here is another appearance by Odin, adding a greater unity to Anderson's Dark Ages novels.

Differences

Poul Anderson's earliest heroic fantasy, The Broken Sword, differs in several respects from his later War Of The Gods and Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

(i) Whereas they are faithful retellings of Norse stories about Odin's descendants, it is a fanciful sequel to Norse stories about a magical sword.

(ii) Whereas they are firmly grounded in Scandinavian and North European geography, much of its action occurs in the invisible and apparently even impalpable halls of English elves.

(iii) When creating a new narrative, Anderson's imagination is not confined to Norse mythology. Thus, in The Broken Sword, Irish, Greek and Chinese supernatural beings coexist with those of the Vikings.

(iv) Those are national mythologies but the new internationalism of the Roman Empire is supernaturally represented by the White Christ before whom the old gods retreat. Christianity, absent from War Of The Gods, affects Hrolf Kraki's Saga only in that the stories of Hrolf, Frodhi, Hroar, Helgi, Svipdag, Bjarki, Yrsa, Skuld and Vogg are recounted in an English Christian court several centuries later.

Thus, in different works, we appreciate both creative invention and imaginative reconstruction.

Magic Swords

The sword Tyrfing connects Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (New York, 1973) back to an Eddaic poem and a saga but also forwards to Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga which lists four "...magical swords...":

Sighurd's Gram;
"...Tyrfing the accursed...";
Skofnung, given to Hrolf by an elven woman;
Lovi, of which more will be told later in the Saga (p. 129).

Magic swords never rust and always bite although Excalibur is not listed here.

Poul and Karen Anderson wrote a King of Ys tetralogy;
The Broken Sword refers to Ys;
The Demon Of Scattery refers to The Broken Sword;
War Of The Gods, like The Broken Sword, features Odin;
Hrolf Kraki's Saga, like War Of The Gods, describes Odin's descendants;
Hrolf Kraki's Saga refers to the broken sword.

Thus, here are eight connected volumes: four by Anderson; four by the Andersons.

Odin

(i) In Poul Anderson's historical fiction, two men who lived about 100 BC come to be deified as Odin and Thor.

(ii) In his science fiction, a time traveler regularly visiting a Dark Age tribe is mistaken for Odin and has to play that role to the end.

(iii) In his heroic fantasy, Odin connives to get the Eddic sword Tyrfing reforged and also prevents a second War between Aesir and Vanir.

Thus, we encounter the original of Odin, a man mistaken for Odin and Odin. The god permeates three genres and four works.

In (i) the historical novel, The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), the central character, leading a slave mutiny, is helped by a large man with red hair and beard who grabs and kills with a hammer, then declares:

" 'They call me Tjorr...' " (p. 128)

I immediately thought, "OK. Where's Odin?" He had been with us from the beginning. The central character, introduced in the second sentence, is called "Eodan." Tjorr goes on to say something equally significant, although I did not realize this on first reading:

" 'I am of the Rukh-Ansa...' " (p. 128)

"Ansa" is another name for "Aesir." As Anderson writes in the Epilogue:

"It was told from olden days, and written in the books of Snorri Sturlason, that the Asa or Ansa folk fared from the land of Tanais to the North. They soon became overlords...who themselves came to be worshiped as gods after they died. The first Asa king was called Odin, and he was the chief of the gods." (pp. 281-282)

And the Author's Note at the beginning of the novel informs us that the "...tradition described in the epilogue may be found..." in the Heimskringla and Saxo Grammaticus. (p. 6)

Thus, Saxo, a source for Anderson's fantasies featuring Odin as a god, is cited here instead as a source for the idea that Odin was a man, later deified. We read in Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga (see here) that there was a temple of the high gods at Upsala but, according to the tradition described in the epilogue, Upsala was first the center from which the human Ansa ruled.

In the novel, we see Eodan lead his men from Tanais. He has encountered Zoroastrianism and we are to understand that the good-evil conflict in that religion informs the gods-giants conflict in Norse religion. Of necessity, Eodan loses an eye during the novel. He says at the end:

" 'I gave it for wisdom.' " (p. 279) 

Incest

At least three times, the issue of incest arises in Poul Anderson's fantasies.

(i) A Mithraist becomes King of Ys and refuses to marry his daughter when the gods of the city mark her to replace a deceased Queen. The embittered daughter, a devotee of the Ysan gods, conspires with the king's enemy who destroys Ys, as its gods seem to want. Like other pantheons, they withdraw before the new god of the Roman Empire.

(ii) Skafloc Elven-Fosterling unknowingly marries his sister but his dead brothers unwillingly reveal their kinship when Skafloc recalls them seeking other information. Skafloc, raised by feckless elves, does not respect the incest tabu but his sister does and withdraws from him.

(iii) In Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973), the Danish King Helgi and his wife learn, when they have had a son, that they are father and daughter. She points out that to stay together would bring bad luck on their country. They anticipate:

"Blighted fields, murrain on the stock, sickness sweeping through a starveling folk, Denmark naught but the haunt of ravens and wolves, cutthroats and madmen, until an outland ax hewed down the tree of the Skoldjungs..." (pp. 81-82)

Since the Saga is a fantasy, such an outcome is possible. Helgi and Yrsa do not stay together.

Literary Styles

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (London, 1977; original publication, 1954) begins and ends in the style of a saga:

"There was a man called Orm the Strong, a son of Ketil Asmundsson who was a yeoman in the north of Jutland." (p. 15)

"Here ends the sage of Skafloc Elven-Fosterling." (p. 208)

His Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973) begins and ends in the same style:

"There was a man called Eyvind the Red, who dwelt in the Danelaw of England while Aethelstan was king. His father was Svein Kolbeinsson, who had come there from Denmark..." (p. 3)

"Here ends the saga of Hrolf Kraki and his warriors." (p. 261)

Chapter I of his War Of The Gods (New York, 1999) begins with the subject matter of an Edda:

"The gods themselves fought the first war that ever was." (p. 9)

However, its human action begins, in Chapter II, in the style of a novel:

"Up into the hills that rise north of the Scania lowlands came a small troop riding." (p. 15)

Let us compare the three texts so far. In The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki's Saga and War Of The Gods, Chapter I, a narrator directly addresses the reader and starts his story at the beginning. The gods are close to the beginning of all things and here they begin war, an important social institution for the Vikings. Neither Orm nor Eyvind will turn out to be our hero. Orm is Skafloc's father. Eyvind's Danish wife will recount Hrolf Kraki's Saga. These are the things that we need to be told first.

By contrast, War Of The Gods, like Paradise Lost after its opening invocation, "plunges into the midst of things" (in media res). We have yet to learn who the "...small troop..." are. We soon learn that this troop, en route to visit a giant, guards the two sons of a recently slain king. Thus, we learn what is going on while it is going on. Major events, including a battle, have already occurred but one of the characters soon recounts this to another and thus to the reader.

In accordance with the conventions of a novel, we expect the narrative, even if it is in the third person, to be presented from the point of view of a single one of its protagonists. The likeliest candidate is Braki Halldorsson, who fares at the head of the troop. Our expectation is only partly fulfilled. Certainly, we do not hear the voice of a distanced story-teller informing us equally about all of the characters and events. On the other hand, the point of view remains collective:

"...uneasiness was upon them." (p. 16)

"...Braki and his following...sat down, feeling bolder than before." (p. 19)

"Braki's followers loosened their grip on their weapons. Things were going as he had promised them." (p. 18)

Thus, when, after this third quotation, the text relates:

"Once this giant had murderously raided farms..." (p. 18)

it is telling us what Braki's followers knew and could reflect on as they relaxed while his earlier promise to them was fulfilled. This is different from a literary style in which the narrator or story-teller simply recounts the giant's deeds directly to the reader.

In War Of The Gods, the human story ends with the hero's followers finding his body. There is no conclusion in which we could be told about the succession or subsequent events. The novel as a whole ends in novelistic style with dialogue when Njord of the Vanir tells Odin of the Aesir:

" '...from this day to the last, we are brothers.' " (p. 298)

Details in War Of The Gods

I continue to appreciate details while rereading War Of The Gods (New York, 1999). First, there is more weather:

"Next day brought clouds, a wrack like smoke flying low. Rain-showers slashed. They made mud of a road that had become a mere track. It wound among fields gone back to weeds. Wind skirled through scattered hursts, tossing their leaves like beggars' rags." (p. 48)

Secondly, yet another dead man is called back. Like Orm in The Broken Sword, he expresses his disquiet in powerful verse:

"You drew me from the dead. Now doom shall fall on you
"Who haled me out of hell. Ill hap and woe be yours." (p. 52)

- and he continues in similar vein.

Thirdly, the Norse myths were inconsistent about the size of the beings involved. Thor sheltered overnight in one of five chambers at the back of a large open hall only to learn the following morning that the hall and its chambers were really a glove dropped by a giant, yet later in the same story he drinks from a giants' horn and wrestles with a giant. Poul Anderson would not have been able to reproduce such inconsistency even in a fantasy so a giantess is also a witch who can shrink to human size to have sex with Hadding. 

Human And Other Beings

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is mostly about elves and trolls - and about a man raised by elves who fights trolls. War Of The Gods (New York, 1999) is more about human political and military affairs. But both presuppose a world where human and other beings coexist and interact. In War Of The Gods, Hadding, brought up by giants, sees light elves riding by and watches as a giantess summons the dead (as had also happened in The Broken Sword).

A king's life is threatened in infancy so he is raised in secret to claim his kingdom when he comes of age: Anderson's Time Patrol Series dismisses this story told of Cyrus and many others as a typical hero legend but Hadding's story, which is retold in War Of The Gods, is a legend or even, as Anderson suggests in the Afterword, a myth so, of course, this is what happens to Hadding.

Of the jotuns, it is said:

"Some were wise, with a lore that went back to the beginning of time." (p. 10)

And the jotuns who raise Hadding:

"...shared much of their lore, tales and verses going back to the beginning of worlds..." (p. 34)

A nice idea but, of course, impossible. Between the beginning of the world and the existence of beings capable of transmitting lore, a very long period of time had to elapse. But that is modern knowledge. Here, we imaginatively re-enter an earlier world-view.

As in some parts of the Time Patrol Series, Anderson, giving an account of people living and working closer to nature sometimes begins a chapter with the weather and the seasons:

"A wind out of the north bore tidings of oncoming winter. Rain slanted before it, mingled with sleet. Bare boughs tossed and creaked above sere meadows. Stubblefields were becoming mires." (p. 26)

"That year the fields throughout Denmark bore overflowingly, kine grew fat, and fishermen filled their nets. The Danes thought this was because they had a rightful king again." (p. 92)

Rereading, it is possible to pause and appreciate these details instead of rushing forward to follow the narrative.

Mythical Cosmography

Poul Anderson's later fantasy novel, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), has several features in common with his much earlier The Broken Sword (London, 1977; first edition, 1954). In both:

there are gods, giants, elves, dwarves and trolls;

the chief god, Odin, converses with other characters and initiates major events;

the jotun or "giant" race are not all uncomely or of gigantic stature;

Jotunheim is oversea north of Midgard.

The fact that Jotunheim is not part of Midgard/Earth but can be reached by sea entails that the sea voyage to Giant Land is the mythical equivalent of a space journey even though the direction is north, not up. Symbolically and appropriately, our thinking rotates through ninety degrees when our attention turns from mythological reconstruction to scientific extrapolation. Anderson incorporates both reconstruction and extrapolation into diverse works of imaginative fiction.

The voyage across the sea that encircles and defines Midgard is made in The Broken Sword and Anderson's The Demon Of Scattery is a tale told during that voyage. Thus, mythical cosmography closely connects these three novels. Anderson writes in the Afterword to War Of The Gods:

"With the cosmic framework I have taken a still freer hand. After all, we have lost much. Lines here and there hint fleetingly at what must once have loomed high..." (pp. 302-303)

Chapter I summarizes or alludes to several myths. Thus:

"...jotuns remembered how Odin and his brothers slew Ymir their forebear." (p. 10)

This refers to the Norse creation myth because the brothers made the earth and sky from Ymir's body. Before that, there was only a Chasm or Void where northern cold and southern heat condensed to form life, starting with Ymir. (The account first of a void, then of interaction between opposites generating life, amounts to a philosophically sophisticated creation myth. Arbitrary elements, like a primeval cow to feed Ymir, had to be added to keep the story going.)

The retold myths include the story of Mimir's head which is consulted in Anderson's Operation Luna (see here).

War Of The Gods retells and reinterprets a heroic myth whereas The Broken Sword goes further by presenting a sequel to a story told in an Eddaic poem and a saga. Anderson historically progresses the mythology by adding "...new gods..." to "...this game between Aesir and Jotuns..." (p. 196)

One new god won as we, living later, know.

Endings And Beginnings

After endings, come beginnings. Poul Anderson's first published fantasy novel, The Broken Sword (1954), ends with Odin striving to delay the doom of the world while an elf-earl anticipates that:

" 'Faerie shall fade...and the gods go under.' " (p. 207)

- and the struggle to delay the inevitable "Long Night" of post-Imperial barbarism is a major theme of Anderson's longest science fiction (sf) series.

Thus, there is a focus on endings both in Anderson's fantasy and in his sf.

Forty three years after The Broken Sword, a new Anderson fantasy novel, War Of The Gods (New York, 1997), went back to the beginning. Its opening sentence:

"The gods themselves fought the first war that ever was." (p. 9)

This mythical beginning informs the action of the novel, a retelling of the myth of Hadding, by making this hero an avatar of the god Njord. Anderson's source, Saxo, places Hadding three generations before Hrolf Kraki, even making Hadding's son Hrolf's great-uncle. Since Anderson also retold Hrolf Kraki's Saga, this enables us to relate these two volumes chronologically. They are two of the five novels set between Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy and Poul Anderson's Last Viking trilogy. Unfortunately, I have yet to read Mother Of Kings so I am not yet clear about all the connections.

After the Last Viking trilogy, come three novels of different genres set in the fourteenth century. These many works could indeed be presented as a single long series whose volumes alternate between historical fantasy and historical fiction - with one sf novel added in the fourteenth century.

Continuations And Conclusions

When an installment of a comic strip in the old Eagle comic ended "continued," there would be at least two more installments. When it ended "to be concluded," there would be just one more installment. When it ended "the end," there would be no more installments. Thus, I started to learn the meaning of the otherwise unfamiliar word, "concluded."

Although we are familiar with the term "the end," it is rarely printed at the end of a novel where it would in any case be somewhat superfluous. Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (London, 1977) ends with an elaborate:

"Here ends the saga of Skafloc Elven-Fosterling." (p. 208)

Both the text and the later written Foreword strongly imply a sequel. Odin, taking Skafloc's and Freda's newly born son, says of the child:

" 'His weird is high and awful...Skafloc must fall and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.' " (p. 196)

That will be difficult because the Irish sea god casts the sword well out to sea although he knows that:

" 'The will of the Norns stands not to be altered, and the sword has not wreaked its last harm.' " (p. 207)

(In Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Prospero's book of magic is retrieved from the sea but it was close to the shore.)

Beyond the weird of the sword, is the end of the old ways. The elf-earl says:

" '...I feel a doom creeping up on me...that the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade, the Erlking himself shrink to a woodland sprite and then to nothing, and the gods go under. And the worst of it is, I cannot believe it wrong that the immortals will not live forever.' " (p. 207)

At the end of Wagner's Ring, Valhalla burns in the distance. At the end of The Lord Of The Rings, the Elves return to the True West, the Third Age of Middle Earth ends and the Age of Men begins. In the myths and in The Broken Sword, Odin strives to delay "...the doom of the world..." (p. 196) He says:

" 'Not yet is this game between Aesir and Jotuns and the new gods played out.' " (p. 196)

With the benefit of hindsight, Anderson adds "...the new gods..." Since then we have lived in the age of one new god but, as they knew back then, all things end.