More On Paganism And Christianity

In Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Poul Anderson's fascinating imaginative account of early interactions between Paganism and Christianity continues. Eirik Blood Ax hears mass before going in viking. Does the priest not mention "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not steal"?

Eirik lands in Morecambe Bay and attacks Cumbria. I grew up in the town of Penrith in the county of Cumberland, the latter now re-integrated with neighboring Westmorland and Lancashire over Sands into a reconstituted Cumbria. I have lived since 1973 in the City of Lancaster whose  District boundaries include the town of Morecambe facing across the Bay towards the Cumbrian hills. So, although Anderson's narratives favour our rival City of York, this part of the novel focuses on events here in the North West!

Eirik and his wife, Gunnhild, receive Communion at Easter for political reasons but she withholds information from her confessor:

"She didn't believe it fooled Christ. Maybe he understood and forgave. If not, maybe she could make it up someday...
"Besides, there were other powers. Who could tell which of them had roots running deepest down into the world and most widely below the earth?" (pp. 259-260)

Christ and his saints have not answered her prayers for redes but this may be because she has not confessed fully? However, Christ is only one "power," not necessarily the greatest, and the source of power is the earth, not the heavens. The powers include the Man on the Cross, the Man on the Gallows and the Man with the Drum. Gunnhild, modelling deities on kings, thinks that it befits their greatness to reward their followers, even her holding back from her confessor. Odin, the gallows god, wants offerings and stalwartness, gives victory or death and, it is believed, hospitality in Valhalla till doomsday.

Following the shamanistic way of the drum, albeit quietly in the shadow of the Cross, Gunnhild sends forth her soul to witness Eirik fall in battle. Above the battle, the departing souls of the newly slain force hers aside and she does not know where they are going. This is the limit of the fantasy in this novel. Anderson shows us Gunnhild's clairvoyance but not a hereafter. And he tells us how she reflects on the powers but does not show us the powers themselves behind the scenes or as they intervene in Midgard.

Meanwhile, the Christian King Haakon, accompanied by his chaplain, thinks that it is alright for his men to kill, burn, plunder, enslave and rape because:

" 'They've done the same to our folk.' " (p. 291)

"They" obviously does not mean the particular individuals being killed, enslaved or raped. Christians and secularists alike have morally progressed to the idea that willful harm to non-combatants is a war-crime, a concept that did not yet exist back then.

Pro's And Con's Of Practical Religion

In the Pagan world view of Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), how is the strength or power of a god to be measured? The title character, Gunnhild, assesses Christ by these basic criteria:

(i) How many worshippers has he?
(ii) Do they prosper?
(iii) Does he afflict his enemies?

(i) "This was no small god...His worshippers filled every land southward to the Midworld Sea and the Moors, eastward to the Wendish marches. More and more of them were to be met in the North." (p. 221)

(ii) Christians fight well and assimilate Danes. Their trade and wealth attract many. They forge the best swords. Their wise man "... had lore going wider and deeper than she could fathom." (p. 222)

But Christian King Haakon in Norway expresses this concern:

" 'By God's grace, hitherto the harvests and fishing have been good, even overflowing. But should they fail, the Norse will soon believe their gods are angry with me.' " (p. 254)

(iii) Vikings do not suffer for killing Christians but nor do heathens suffer for becoming Christians so criterion (iii) cancels itself out. However, heathens do recognise Christ's power. At Easter:

"Any heathens would think it unlucky to offer to their gods while Christ went down into death and rose anew, victorious." (p. 259)

- and:

"At the Easter mass Gunnhild felt in her bones something of the power in the White Christ." (p. 259)

I agree with the Pagan view to the extent that I think that spiritual practices should be beneficial before, not after, death. However, the benefits are spiritual, like a growth in understanding, rather than material, like an increase of wealth.

Ubiquitous Ravens

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Gunnhild sees two ravens on the wind before a battle. Why two? They could be Odin's. I said before that the gods have not yet appeared in this historical fantasy and also that I no longer expect them to. In fact, I accept American correspondent Sean's observation that The King Of Ys and Mother Of Kings are more like historical fictions with elements of fantasy. They certainly differ from The Broken Sword which is heroic, not really historical, fantasy throughout.

It is all the more appropriate then that Anderson includes this detail of two ravens which could mean either that Odin is watching or just that ravens are gathering and that these two have arrived first. Gunnhild does not attribute them to Odin but, knowing that there will be a battle, reflects:

"Did they foreknow? More would be gathering." (p. 242)

Synchronistically, I have just watched Smallville where the High School football team is "the Crows," not ravens but close, and have also just reread Neil Gaiman's The Sandman where supernatural ravens, including even Noah's, gather in the Dreaming before an attack by the Furies - another faint echo between the works of Anderson and Gaiman.

Christianised Paganism

When, in Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Queen Gunnhild and her children are for political reasons christened by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, readers witness this event from Gunnhild's point of view. Thus, we understand that she is not changing her world view but is instead incorporating Christ as a powerful god into her existing Pagan world view.

As she sees it:

"Odin hung, wounded with a spear, offered to himself, nine nights on windy Yggdrasil, to gain the runes; and he had since raised seeresses from their graves to foretell for him." (p. 225)

It follows that the next logical question is:

"What powers had his own sufferings, his own death won for the Christ? How could they strengthen her house?" (p. 225)

- political reasons, indeed.

Both Odin and Christ are shamans:

"Not only song and drum, but pain could loose the shaman from the flesh." (p. 225)

She has cast runes and spells but must now access the accumulated wisdom gathered in a library of illuminated manuscripts. Since she cannot yet follow the Latin Mass, she uses the time to plan not forgiveness but vengeance. With her Queenship in a Christian realm secured, she again has a big home where she can discretely set aside a room to cast spells and send forth her soul in the dead of winter. Yule is not for her the birth time of Christ but the time "...when the doors between men and gods..." are open (p. 226).

Of the crucifix, she thinks that:

"...something was in it that she did not understand, and must..." (p. 225)

but also:

"...whatever she said to the likes of Wulfstan, she would not utterly disown the old gods." (p. 225)

10th Century York

Alternative Yorks:

Poul Anderson's Operation Luna describes contemporary York albeit on a parallel Earth;

Anderson's Genesis describes an alternative York in a post-human AI emulation;

his Mother Of Kings (New York, 2033) describes 10th century York -

"A wind from the north went astray in the twisting lanes of York, milled about between walls and hissed under eaves. Most stenches scattered before its sharpness. Thatch, turf, and shakes blocked sight of the morning sun, but light spilled down from the wan blue. Wild geese were on the wing. Their honking blew faint through hoofbeat, footfall, creak, clang, mumble, all the manifold racket below." (p. 219)

- a characteristically evocative descriptive passage, ending with a list of sounds. Some Andersonian street scenes include even longer lists of smells.

Eirik Blood Ax, having lost Norway, has become King in York so the action of the novel has moved to the North East of England. As Queen Gunnhild rides forth with the King:

"It was no mean town through whose streets she passed. For all the war and woe that had gone by, it had grown strongly under the Danes. Even this late in the year ships crowded its wharfs, come up the River Ouse - on whose west side newer buildings now also clustered thick - from the Humber and the North Sea with goods to stuff the warehouses." (p. 219)

The rich description continues, becoming rather too long to quote in full except to say that it presents yet another list:

"...workmen, chapmen, sailors, fishers, farmers, herders, wives, children, hawkers, priests, thralls, beggar, now and then a whore or maybe a wandering ragged singer, surely thieves, and who could say what else?" (p. 220)

This is the birth of the Yorks described in Operation Luna and Genesis.

Voluspa

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), a skald recites the then recently composed Voluspa. Anderson does not name the poem but it clearly is Voluspa. The skald explains:

" 'It deals with how everything came to be and how it shall end...The words are of a seeress whom Odin raised from the grave to soothsay for the gods.' " (p. 217)

I have copied below a post on Voluspa from another blog:
 
The Elder Edda begins with Voluspa, a short poem that starts with an equivalent of Genesis, includes a death and resurrection story and ends with an equivalent of Armageddon. Thus, a Norse mini-Bible. Ymir and Bur's sons inhabited a yawning gap with no sea, sand, earth, heaven or grass and Bur's sons lifted the land although Voluspa does not tell us how these beings originated or that Bur's sons made the land from Ymir's body. These details are in other Eddic poems. The beginning presents a more sophisticated view of a pre-cosmic void than Genesis. Voluspa envisages nothingness, not chaos. And the other Eddic poems account for change and the emergence of life through dialectical interactions, not through divine creation. 

 

After Ragnarok, the returning or surviving gods are Baldr, Hoth, Honir, Odin's nephews and a mighty lord who comes on high, all power to hold, all lands to rule. The author of Voluspa can, like Virgil, be seen as a pagan prophet but post-Christians can simply appreciate the connections between mythologies.

The Christian King Haakon, hearing the poem, might be pleased about the "mighty lord" who is to come.

Two Or Three Levels Of Fantasy

It has just hit me that there are at least two levels of fantasy. We class Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003) as a fantasy because Gunnhild sends out her spirit as a bird; Eirik, seeing the bird, knows that it is uncanny and it draws him to her. So magic works.

But, otherwise, the novel reads as historical fiction. It tells us what happened, albeit in a fictionalized narrative. So far - I have read to page 191 of 591 - there is no suggestion that the gods exist and I think that their intrusion at this stage would come as a deus ex machina.

That differs from other works by Anderson where Odin is one of the characters. It also differs from The King Of Ys Tetralogy by Poul and Karen Anderson where the gods do exist although they remain off-stage, only the effects of their activities becoming visible to human beings, like the mark appearing on each newly chosen Queen of Ys.

I noticed this because the text describes a sword that is a gift from a King. People see:

"...the gilt-hafted sword he bore, King Eadmund's gift, the lovely ripple-sheen of the steel, and heard how with it Haakon had cloven a quernstone from rim to hole. No better blade was known in the North." (p. 190)

It sounds like the best weapon that men could make but thereby falls short of the magic swords, forged by dwarfs and given by gods, that are fated to kill every time they are unsheathed.

Skafloc, Gunnhild, Hadding And Hrolf

Of Poul Anderson's five Viking fantasies:

The Demon Of Scattery (with Mildred Downey Broxon) opens with a reference to Skafloc (The Broken Sword) and ends with a reference to Gunnhild (Mother Of Kings);

Book Two of Mother Of Kings closes with references to Hadding (War Of The Gods) and Hrolf Kraki (Hrolf Kraki's Saga).

Thus, these five fantasies enhance each other and need to be republished in uniform editions, to be preceded by The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson), set earlier, and followed by The Last Viking Trilogy, set later.

I am grateful to the many viewers of this blog - 41 page views by 10.45 AM today. I hope that they do not expect frequent new posts. Reading, for the first time, Mother Of Kings has slowed to a crawl because of other retirement activities: meditation; gym; walking; Latin classes; family outings; social occasions; another blog; no part time work at present but an imminent family visit of indeterminate length to Leicester where I will not have access to a computer.

Leicester, historically associated with Simon de Montfort, the "Father of Parliament," is close to Nottingham (the latter historically associated with Robin Hood) and has the only Jain Temple in the Western Hemisphere, with side chapels for different Jain sects.

Comments on posts are welcomed and will be acknowledged (after a delay).

Later: 72 page views by the end of the day.

More Hidden Verse?

Some of the text in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest and in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy is in fact verse even though laid out as prose. Some, though not all, of this concealed verse rhymes. There are also a few lines of rhyming verse in Anderson's War Of The Gods.

Therefore, some verse might be hidden in other prose works by Anderson. One clue is whether the rhythm of the text seems to be curiously regular. I thought that I was starting to find something like this in Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003) but am not sure. A passage of verse might not have the same number of syllables in each line and, if, in addition to this, there is no rhyme, then it is difficult to see where the lines might end.

As with the other works mentioned here, I have been trying to reproduce the apparent rhythm of some dialogue in Book Two, Chapter XVIII of Mother Of Kings by re-arranging the lines but, so far, have not done this convincingly. Yet some of the dialogue continues to look as if it can be re-arranged:

" 'She came with him.
" 'They sought to me.
" 'I made them welcome
" 'And have lodged them
" 'As was fitting.' " (p. 161)

I would be interested to know if any other readers can comment on this.

Make Trade, Not War

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Eirik visits Tunsberg, near the Oslofjord. The city of Oslo does not yet exist because it has yet to be built, in the following century, by Harald Hardrada.

The shire-king of Vestfold, residing in Tunsberg, was Bjorn who seldom waged war but instead:

"...sent merchant ships far and wide, growing wealthy thereby." (p. 147)

Well done, Bjorn. It is good to read about this when so many of his fellow kings, including Eirik, still go in viking. Unfortunately, conflict ensues between Bjorn and Eirik and the outcome earns the latter his "...nickname Blood-Ax" (p. 151).

Although this pleases both Eirik and his wife Gunnhild, it is to be regretted that political disputes were still settled by surrounding and burning buildings rather than by peace conferences and majority votes.