More Mixed Mythologies In Works By Three Authors

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Morpheus' raven, Matthew, visits (Norse) Swartalfheim - and indeed is involuntarily yanked away from there when ravens gather in the Dreaming because it is threatened by the (Greek) Furies. Swartalfheim, home of the dark elves or dwarves, and Alfheim, home of the light elves, are two of the Nine Worlds in the Ash Tree, Yggdrasil.

Alfheim (scroll down) is in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. Yggdrasil is in Anderson's Operation Luna and in Mike Carey's Lucifer, the sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman. Carey also gives a big role to Fenris Wolf. Firespear's elf-hounds had:

"...blood of Gram and Fenris and the Wild Hunt's dogs in them."

-The Broken Sword, XII, p. 89.

In The Sandman: Season Of Mists, messages from the (Biblical) One God are relayed by an angel and the former appears as an elderly gentleman in modern garb in Lucifer. He exists but remains in the background in Anderson's The Broken Sword and Operation Chaos.

King Vanimen

The Merman's Children, V.

Before the merfolk king, Vanimen, addresses his dispossessed people, he reflects that:

"He must offer them more than the empty wail of the wind." (p.26)

The wind usually plays some role. Often, it emphasizes dramatic pauses in the dialogue. Here, its empty wailing contrasts with the significance of the speech that Vanimen is obliged to deliver.

The king's roles are:

to preside over infrequent folkmoots;

to judge disputes;

to deal with other communities;

to lead any united efforts;

to act as the master of festivals;

to transmit wisdom;

to counsel the young or troubled;

to preserve and teach lore;

to keep talismans;

to know spells;

to guard against monsters, evil magic and humanity;

to intercede with the Powers.

Regarding the Powers, he is said to have:

"...guested Ran herself...." (p. 28)

Ran is the wife of Aegir, the Norse mythological sea giant, who is also mentioned. Are we to understand that the Aegir, the Vanir and Yggdrasil had also existed in this timeline?

Myth And Fact

 

"'...that which was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis quotes from his own novel, Perelandra. I have Perelandra upstairs but will not now go to look for that passage in the original.)

Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is a myth to Dominic Flandry (see Yggdrasil And Youth) but a real place to Odin and Loki (see Yggdrasil). Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods is set in a universe where Yggdrasil is real. That universe is visited by Virginia Matuchek from the goetic universe in Anderson's Operation Luna (see Mimir).

Neil Gaiman retells Norse myths and asks whether Ragnorak has happened yet. The ambiguity of the answer to this question makes these myths:

"...seem strangely present and current..."

-Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (London, 2018), p. xii)

- instead of just past.

Lewis, Anderson and Gaiman are a trinity of the imagination.

In The Council Hall

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 14.

Dalespeople crowd into their Hall for a vitally important Council meeting with their Chief, clergy ("Doctors") and elders:

"This was more than [Carl's] own life. Perhaps the future of the world would be settled today." (p. 135)

Perhaps. Imperceptibly, the future is settled every day but some days are more significant than others, historically speaking.

Before rushing on to consider the content of the meeting, we should pause to notice the description of the Hall. Gods, heroes and animals are carved in oak. We are not told the names or functions of any of the gods. Are the heroes only from since the Doom or also from before it? Would we recognize any of their faces or names? We might be surprised to find that some figures heroic to the Dalespeople had been unheroic to us or vice versa? The carvings would have to be shown in any screen adaptation. 

"...wooden pillars...were graven with leaves and fruits from the Tree of Life." (ibid.)

Which Tree of Life? The Biblical one? Yggdrasil? A composite image? Again, a film would have to present these carvings, not just ignore the author's account. However, at the same time, visual details would have to be created. 

We can read a future history series either in its order of publication or in the chronological order of fictional events. Those who read the series while it is being published can only read it in publication order but later readers have a choice. When we do read the series in its original publication order, we come to instalments that were written later but set earlier. In these cases, we know something of the future of the events about which we are currently reading. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Saturn Game," set earlier than any of the other instalments although written later than most, introduces the Jerusalem Catholic Church although instalments set much later have already featured characters who were described as Jerusalem Catholics. We know, when reading "The Saturn Game," that these characters will include an alien (Wodenite) priest, Axor, even though no aliens have yet been contacted at the time of "The Saturn Game." We develop a historical perspective.

I was reminded of this when visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop earlier today. He and I follow a superhero TV series. Superhero universes can become even more complex than future histories. The universes have different but roughly parallel "continuities" in different media. In any standard continuity, Superman and Lois Lane should eventually get together although it might take a long time. This afternoon, the mention of the construction of a particle accelerator in a particular city reminded us that this will lead to the origin of a new superhero and, beyond that, to the discovery of the multiverse - and, of course, that reminds Poul Anderson's readers that he too has a multiverse which we would like to see on screen.

Yggdrasil And The World's Moods

The Norse mythological World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil:

is a metaphor in Poul Anderson's Technic History/Dominic Flandry novel, A Stone In Heaven;

exists literally in Anderson's myth-retelling heroic fantasy novel, War Of The Gods;

exists in one of the many parallel universes in Anderson's Operation Luna.

We can handle any of these options but can we conceptualize a single universe that somehow incorporates every mythology? In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, when Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell, he expels the demons and damned, locks the now empty Hell behind him and gives the key to Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming. Various pantheons petition Morpheus to give them Hell, including Odin who hopes to survive the Ragnarok by sheltering in Hell! In Lucifer, Mike Carey's sequel to The Sandman, Lucifer visits Loki bound under the Earth. We read:

Lucifer: "There is a cavern at the heart of the world..."

Mazikeen: "Is there?"

Lucifer: "Sometimes. It depends what mood the world is in."

-Mike Carey, Lucifer: Inferno (New York, New York, 2004), p. 134, panel 2, captions 1-3.

Well, that explains everything. Cosmology changes with the world's moods.

All of these works are connected in the collective imagination.

Norse-Technic Interfaces

Van Rijn arranges weregild for the families of Gorzuni mercenaries.

He quotes, "Bare is brotherless back.'" (Satan's World, X, p. 99)

Burning with fury, David Falkayn:

"...might have been reliving ancient incarnations as he swung a Viking ax..." (XI, p. 101)

The changes on Satan as it approaches Beta Crucis are compared to Ragnarok.

Dominic Flandry sees time as the snake gnawing the root of Yggdrasil.

Ginnungagap is referenced both in "The Saturn Game" and in "Starfog."

Those are seven examples. Anderson readers can turn back to Hrolf Kraki's Saga etc.

Myths

A Stone In Heaven, XI.

Myths make sense of life. There are two on p. 143:

"...time was always gnawing, the snake at the root of Yggdrasil." (p. 143)

"Flandry sat down and laughed. Why not? The gods, if any, did. I sometimes think we were created because the gods wanted to be entertained one evening by a farce - but no, that can't be. We are high comedy at least." (ibid.)

"The gods, if any..." is my theology. Gods are important in imagination, which is important to humanity, but, if they also exist literally, then they have yet to show themselves in the public arena. If asked to pray for the success of any enterprise, I would be able to say only," All gods, we ask your help. But, if you cannot or will not help, then we'll do it ourselves." That is intended sincerely, not disrespectfully. If there is Anyone there, that can help, then please do...

Incarnation

War Of The Gods.

Do we understand how the incarnation of Njord as Hadding reconciles the Vanir with the Aesir? I don't think I do. But how do divine incarnations work in any case?

The Biblical Incarnation of God ends with Crucifixion and Resurrection. This Pagan incarnation of a god ends with self-hanging and a return to the boughs of Yggdrasil. Hangings are offerings to Odin so that is some measure of reconciliation. Poul Anderson has followed the myth of Hadding closely and maybe made some sense of it.

In Buddhism, a man becomes enlightened. In the Fourth Gospel, the light becomes a man. Are these the same process described from opposite perspectives?

Sri Chinmoy: "Man said, 'I need You for my realization.' God said, 'I need you for my manifestation.'"

Hadding as man yearns for that which he does not consciously remember:

"'I think you are the home I have ever been seeking... But how can a man have his home in the sea?'" (XXXIII, p. 277)

In terms of divine justice, we might think that Ufhild gets away lightly but the thwarting of her ambition is probably sufficient penalty.

Myths Retold V

War Of The Gods, XI.

Hadding recounts a myth to his guards.

During the Aesir-Vanir war and after visiting Mimir, Odin went alone through wild ways, often losing his way and finding it again. He went through Midgard, often having to fight. He went without food through Ironwood haunted by trolls and monsters. He went down into hell, through cold, dark Niflheim, past rushing rivers, swarming vipers and the dragon Nidhogg. He skirted Muspellheim and climbed the highest mountains of Jotunheim where he met Farbauti and Laufey and their sons, Byleist and Loki. (We are still at the beginning of the worlds when figures like Loki appear for the first time.)

Farbauti and Laufey had a huge hall with swart elf servants and wind forever howling outside, driving snow and ice. Loki persuaded his parents to tell Odin that the wisdom he sought was on the far side of death. With Loki as guide, Odin went down the mountains, across the glaciers and wastes and past giants' garths to the sea which they crossed in the half boat seen by sailors before they drown. Loki called a drow from his barrow to ferry them.

They passed through a wildwood inhabited only by "...the beings of water, earth, and sky..." (p. 82) and came to the Tree with the worlds at its roots, on its trunk and in its branches. The red squirrel Ratatosk carries ill will between Nidhogg at the roots and an eagle aloft. A hart grazes the leaves and a rot attacks the wood but the Tree endures. They climbed high into the Tree, along lengthy branches, through leafy caverns. From a particular branch, Odin hanged himself. Loki wounded Odin with his own spear. Odin died and hung for nine nights. He revived and fell when the rope broke. Rising, he grasped the graven runes of high magic and deep wisdom combining the lores of gods, elves, dwarves, giants and men. Because of this, the Tree is called Yggdrasil, Horse of the Terrible One, and Odin is the Lord of the Gallows. 

Beginnings

The World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, is like a changeless Absolute despite the dragon Nidhogg gnawing at its deepest roots. The Tree survives the Ragnarok although it is not mentioned in the stories of the Ginnungagap. Mythology is neither logic nor science. (Thor sleeps in one finger of a giant's glove but later wrestles with a giant.) The Tree comes to an end in Wagner's Ring operas but that is a different version of the story.

Although most accounts of Norse myths begin with the Ginnungagap, Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods begins with:

"...the nine worlds in the Tree." (I, p. 9)

- although it also mentions the slaying of Ymir.

The text lists Asgard, Vanaheim, men, elves, dwarves and jotuns/thursirs: six, not nine. The Eddas present no definitive list. See Norse Cosmology: Nine Worlds. 

In just over six pages, pp. 9-15, Chapter I of War Of The Gods summarizes several Norse myths as a build-up to an innovative action by Odin. In the just under three pages, pp. 295-298, of the concluding Chapter XXXV, that action, an intervention in human history, has been completed. These chapters book-end Anderson's retelling of the story of Hadding.

Fictional Coexistence

Fictional characters created by different authors can interact in three ways.

(i) A later character refers to an earlier character as fictional.

(ii) It is revealed that the two characters coexist and even meet.

(iii) They exist in parallel universes which somehow interact. This is necessarily a fantasy or sf approach.

Needless to say, Poul Anderson does all three. When Manse Everard of the Time Patrol refers to Sherlock Holmes by name, it is as if to a fictional character. However, Everard also meets an unnamed investigator answering the description of Holmes. Finally, figures answering the descriptions of Holmes and Watson are also seen in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

The same procedure applies to supernatural beings. In Operation Otherworld, God and his Adversary operate in one of the many universes whereas another such universe contains Yggdrasil and its inhabitants. But, in The Merman's Children, Norse and Christian supernatural entities operate in different parts of the same universe.

Different Versions Of A Story

We know from the Bible, from mythologies and from screen adaptations of prose fictions that stories come in different versions. "Everyone knows" that Aphrodite rose from the sea foam but Homer didn't know it. He presented her as a daughter of Zeus. Then Plato differentiated between a heavenly Aphrodite and an earthly Aphrodite. Mythology and literature affect philosophy. A man in the Hindu Temple in Preston told us that there are different versions of the story of how Ganesh got an elephant head. Of course.

Poul Anderson presents two accounts of Yggdrasil, two versions of his Kith future history and two accounts of the fate of Ys after its inundation. In The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson), Ys is not only submerged but also completely demolished so that no memory of the fabulous city will remain whereas, in The Broken Sword, "...the drowned towers of Ys..." remain visible to elf-sight.

Poul Anderson's Cosmologies

In War Of The Gods, Odin is hanged on Yggdrasil.

In Operation Luna, Virginia Matuchek consults Mimir at the roots of Yggdrasil.

In A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek visits the Old Phoenix Inn between universes.

In "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn visits the Old Phoenix.

In "Flight to Forever," a time machine traverses the circle of time.

In Tau Zero, a relativistic spaceship time dilates into the next cycle of an oscillating universe.

In The Avatar, the oldest intelligences in this universe survive into new universes.

In Starfarers, the universe began in a quantum fluctuation.

In the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, there are plans for consciousness to survive the heat death of the universe.

Observations

Multiple cosmologies.

Some interact.

There is a (very) indirect link between Odin and van Rijn.

What Abides

"Yggdrasil, the All-Tree, whose fall shall bring the doom of the gods and the end of time...."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 4, p. 49.

 

"...the tree lives, for it is life, and it shall abide when the world goes under."

-see Yggdrasil.

That second quotation is from Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods. Myths are told in different forms and sometimes changed when retold. I think that "...it shall abide..." is closer to the Eddaic sources.

When intelligent beings travel between stars in sf, we have to be told how this is possible whereas, when gods travel between worlds in fantasy, we do not have to be told how it is possible. It is sufficient to ride Odin's horse or to traverse the rainbow.

Virtual Yggdrasil

The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

When the L-5 colony disbanded, the Tree, a giant sequoia grown in low gravity, was allowed to die. Although the space station has been moved from its L-5 orbit to Lunar orbit and repopulated, no second Tree has been planted in it. 

Fenn has had virtual reality experiences of that Tree and also of Yggdrasil:

roots in earth, winterland and hell;

trunk soaring into heaven;

nine worlds strewn through windy, shadowy leafage;

the All-Tree whose fall brings divine doom and the end of time;

the wind in its boughs had told him something deep but unknown.

Once again, the wind speaks. 

 

Everyone retells myths. I did not know that Yggdrasil was meant to fall at the Ragnarok. If anything, the World Ash Tree seems to be absent from accounts of Ragnarok although I also though that Lif and Lifthrasir were said to have hidden among its branches. See Hoddmimis Holt.

Where Hermes Goes

"A Feast for the Gods."

the Underworld;

Yggdrasil;

Nan's coral palace;

the caverns of Xibalba;

the Jade Emperor's "...infinite intricate rooms-within-rooms..." (p. 221);

"...storms and stars and immensities commanded by Yahweh..." (ibid.);

Tir-nan-Og;

the Paradise of Mohammed;

the Christian Paradise;

New York;

cyberspace, the eeriest, the rim of a new age or an abyss.

Cosmologies

Mythological cosmologies have been creatively imagined whereas the expanding multi-galactic cosmos has been discovered recently and is still being discovered. Since I value both imagination and truth, I value the many imagined universes and the one empirical universe. I mention this because another Zen practitioner could not see how it was better to know about the scientifically discovered universe than just to live conceptually inside one of the many mythological universes. I can only reply that I think that truth is a value in and of itself.

Poul Anderson wrote fiction set in the galactic universe and in different mythological universes and also linked them in a multiverse. We know that there is no Yggdrasil but we imagine what it would be like to go there.

A Self-Contained Universe

I have found an interesting self-contained universe that could fit into Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse. The Book of Genesis begins with two creation myths:

1:1-2:4a;
2:4b-25.

They are different stories with different orders of creation and different divine names. The second story features Adam and Eve and begins a narrative that continues until the end of Revelation whereas the first story ends with the day of rest following the creation of an unspecified number of men and women. Thus, this is a different universe created by a deity with a pre-Mosaic name and we are told nothing of its subsequent history. Before creation, God moved over water that covered the earth. 

Day 1
Creation of light.
Separation of light from darkness.

Day 2
Creation of the sky.
Separation of water above from water below.

Day 3
Separation of land from sea.
Creation of plants.

Day 4
Creation of lights in the sky.

Day 5
Creation of fish and birds.

Day 6
Creation of animals and human beings (not just two).

Day 7
A special, blessed day, suggesting a happy universe.

I summarize all this because, although we know the general outlines, we might not remember every detail. If Yggdrasil exists in the multiverse, then so might this seven-day universe. Who are its inhabitants and what happens to them on the eighth and subsequent days?

A Leaf On Yggdrasil

"...we belong here. The atoms of our bodies were born of the primordial fireball and later great suns. Our race is a twig, our spirit a leaf on Yggdrasil, the tree of life that has grown, ever-changing, through billions of years to overshadow its world."
-Poul Anderson, Introduction IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. xi-xii AT p. xi.

I thought that this passage was sufficiently poetic and striking to warrant quotation. It seamlessly blends the polar opposites of Poul Anderson's fiction, Norse mythology and hard sf.

Remember: "Our race is a twig, our spirit a leaf..."

The Boatright Expedition

"Operation Xibalba."

When the Matucheks were about to be defeated by the demons in the hell universe, Virginia summoned other powerful beings who turned out to be Thor, Athena and one of those South American feathered serpent deities. Now, following Virginia's example, a guy called Rick Boatright has led an expedition into the hell universe in search of:

"'"...morally neutral allies in the struggle against the Adversary."'" (1, p. 155)

But Virginia summoned those three deities into the hell universe from somewhere else so Boatright is not going to find such beings there.

Scholars who have studied the Matucheks' data think that the serpent was an analog of a North, not South, American deity so Boatcheck has entered "'...Hell from Yuma...,'" (ibid.) thinking that this will make him more likely to find that deity. But the deity is not in Hell! (Note that the word, "Hell," not the phrase, "the hell universe," is used.)

Are the deities projections of human beliefs or are the beliefs intuitions of independently existing beings? In Operation Luna, it is clear that the Norse mythological universe with Yggdrasil etc exists independently and has moved further away or become less easily accessible. We are still very much in the multiverse.