Yet More Details

Slowly rereading a Poul Anderson novel in order to blog about it is an excellent opportunity to appreciate Anderson's attention to detail even more closely than usual. For instance, in The Day Of Their Return, we read that, on the dry planet, Aeneas, the Hedin Freehold is able to engage not only in ranching but also in agriculture because:

the Wildfoss river flows close enough to maintain a water table with a few wells;

wind-driven moisture from the canals, marshes and salt lakes of the Antonine Seabed brings rain two or three times a year.

Whitewashed rammed earth buildings decorated with stone or glass mosaics comprise manse, cottages, barns and workshops around a paved courtyard. Windbreak trees are:

native delphi and rahab;
Terrestrial oak and acacia;
Llynathawrian rasmin;
Ythrian hammerbranch.

The casual reference to Ythri is evocative for regular Anderson readers.

All flowers have had to be imported because Aenean plants never evolved blossoms, their closest approach being a few bright leaves or stalks. When it comes to describing the life and activity of the steading, Anderson presents one of his description-lists, including kinds of people, animals, vehicles, sounds and smells. The animals include stathas. It is explained in a later passage that these green, six-legged, domesticated animals were imported to Aeneas - as, in the previous installment of the Technic Civilization History, to Freehold - from elsewhere just as horses were imported from Earth.

I must have read all of these details before because I have read through the entire novel at least twice but over a long period. Details about the Hedin Freehold were not remembered but are worth recovering.

The Hedin Freehold

The Day Of Their Return, 4.

Ivar Frederiksen, on the run from the Impies, spends a short while in the Hedin Freehold. Before posting about this considerable steading, I must check what has already been posted. It is quite a lot and might be sufficient.

See:

Yet More Details

Trees 

Aeneography 

 

Please read or reread these earlier posts, if interested. Meanwhile, I will reread Chapter 4 to find out whether there is anything more to be said, after some real world activities, of course.

The Hedin Freehold II

The Day Of Their Return, 4.

Aeneas, like Mars, has dried up but has not gone as far yet. The Antonine Seabed, a former sea, remains wet with canals, marshes and salt lakes sending moisture and occasional rain via westerly winds onto the edge of the Ilian continent where the Hedin Freehold is located. This plus the proximity of the Wildfoss River enables the family to farm and ranch.

 

The Hedins' staff have a feudal relationship to them just as the Hedins and other Hesperian yeomen have to the Firstman of Ilion in Windhome.

The Hedins' courtyard bustles with:

overseers

housekeepers

smiths

masons

mechanics

field hands

range hands

children

dogs

horses

stathas

hawks

farm machinery

ground and air vehicles

sounds and scents, also listed

Ivar, hidden in a storeloft, watches the oldest tenant's birthday party:

glowing house

floodlit yard

leaping, stamping Ilian dances

music whooping from a sonor

shared flagons

In any milieu, Anderson shows us human life.

Trees

On Aeneas, the Hedin Freehold has a windbreak comprising:

Aenean delphi and rahab;
Terran oak and acacia;
Llynathawrian rasmin;
Ythrian hammerbranch.

That is a very mixed ecology although not the only such in Technic civilization. When Flandry was on Llynathawr, trees were mentioned although they were not identified as "rasmin." The Hedins' flowers, cultivated with difficulty, are all extra-planetary because blossoms did not evolve on Aeneas.

Wind brings moisture from canals, marshes and salt lakes so the Hedins farm and ranch. The remainder of the account of the Freehold is familiar from many similar passages in Anderson's works:

manse
cottages
barns
sheds
workshops
paved coutyard
mosaics
machines
many kinds of people and animals
sounds
generations of leadership and loyalty

While rereading The Day Of Their Return, I do not summarize the plot, which is there for anyone to read, but instead try to highlight details that might be missed while merely following the plot. Ivar Frederiksen is on the run from the Impies but we can pause to appreciate the trees of four planets.

Aeneography

The Day Of Their Return.

Of all the planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History, we see maps only of Imhotep and Daedalus in the Patrician System. However, after reading Anderson's texts, it would be possible to draw maps of parts of Avalon, Hermes, Dennitza and Aeneas.

Ivar Frederiksen hears:

"...the sound of the Wildfoss flowing." (2, p. 76)

Thus, this is a different river from the Flone which, we saw, connects the capital city of Nova Roma and small towns like Boseville to the Cimmerian Mountains. See Boseville.

The Wildfoss provides a water table and wells for the Hedin Freehold which is east of Windhome and close to the edge of Ilion.

Desai And Ivar

The Day Of Their Return.

It is with a heavy heart that I turn from that pedestrian plodder, Chunderban Desai, to the charismatic criminal, Ivar Frederiksen, but we must follow the author's narrative. Ivar is the kind of fugitive action hero who is passed from pillar to post, in Ivar's case, from Windhome to the Hedin Freehold to the tinerans to the Riverfolk to the Orcans and finally, since he runs out of alternatives, to Desai and the Imperium. These formative experiences will make Ivar eventually an effective and empathetic Firstman of Ilion. In particular, he will aim to free the tinerans from their addiction to the telepathic parasites which in turn might explain the fate of the Ancients who were also the Chereionites. The Technic History is a single long narrative although its diverse details might obscure certain larger scale connections. In The Game of Empire, Axor investigates the Ancients while Tachwyr wonders about Aycharaych and, as in real history, not every question is answered. As Tolkien wrote about The Lord of the Rings, it is too short. However, Tolkien's Trilogy seems rushed - the characters depart on a long journey and, almost immediately, reach their destination. By contrast, a very great deal of time elapses between the opening Technic History instalment, "The Saturn Game," and the conclusion, "Starfog." Everything else that we read about, League, Empire etc, comes and goes between these end points.

A Cobbled Quadrangle

The Winter Of The World, I.

There is no doubt that Poul Anderson enjoyed writing about certain kinds of societies and also communicated his enthusiasm about them. Donya's wintergarth at Owlhaunt sounds familiar:

sod-roofed timber buildings sheltered by birches, around a cobbled quadrangle;

shed;

smokehouse;

workshop;

stable (horses);

kennel (hounds);

mews (hawks);

clerestory above the underground dwelling;

hounds roaring forth;

descent by ladder to a vestry;

wood floors;

hides;

fabrics;

carved, painted, movable interior partitions;

weapons and murals on walls;

hundreds of shelved books;

a tiled stove;

oil lamps;

fruits and flower sachets hanging from rafters;

a girl singing with a stringed instrument;

kith seated on shelves or cushions.

Not everything is the same, of course, but we remember the Vymezal estate on Dennitza (see In The Kazan) and the Hedin Freehold on Aeneas.