Jotunheim

Jotunheim is north of the sea that surrounds Midgard. (How these worlds fit into a Tree I am not sure.) Thus, a journey between worlds is made by crossing the sea, not by traversing space. See here.

Frodi's men:

"...would have followed him to Jotunheim if he bade them." (War Of The Gods, p. 261)

Centuries later, Skafloc and Mananaan MacLir do make this journey. However, when Harald Hardrada attempts it, something different happens. His fleet finds only icebergs and a whale and must turn back. Poul Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy, about Hardrada, is neither heroic fantasy nor historical fantasy but historical fiction. Jotunheim does not exist. Either the supernatural realms were always imaginary or they have somehow withdrawn as in Anderson's The Broken Sword or in JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth History. For further treatment of this idea, see here.

Boring!

SM Stirling, A Meeting At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter One, p. 12.

After the Change, these school subjects are boring:

Presidents;
rockets;
atoms;
"'...all that hooey.'"

These subjects are more like real life:

King Arthur;
Robin Hood;
Niall of the Nine Hostages;
Thor's trip to Jotunheim;
A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Connections with Poul Anderson's works:

Niall of the Nine Hostages destroyed Ys;

the former King of Ys formed a defensive alliance with British leaders of the generation before Arthur;

an immortal met the original of Arthur;

Anderson's fantasies feature Thor and a trip to Jotunheim although not Thor's trip to Jotunheim;

A Midsummer Tempest is a sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.

And why did Shakespeare not write a Robin Hood play, having mentioned Robin in As You like It?

Patrick And Hardrada

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (London, 1977) succeeds Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys tetralogy in two respects. It refers not only to Ys but also to Patrick who brought the White Christ to Ireland. The younger Patrick, under an earlier name, is a minor character in the tetralogy.

By inversion, The Broken Sword also anticipates Anderson's Last Viking trilogy. In that work, Harald Hardrada's men, sailing as far north as possible, find not the mythical realm of Jotunheim but increasing cold and icebergs and have to turn back. The trilogy is historical fiction, not fantasy.

By contrast, Skafloc, the hero of The Broken Sword, sails north towards Jotunheim in an earlier period when Faerie still interacted with Midgard. Skafloc and the Irish god, Mananaan Mac Lir, in Mananaan's boat:

"...sailed farther than mortal ship would have gone ere sighting land..." (p. 156)

Tolkien's Silmarillion presents the idea that sailors occasionally follow not the curve of the Earth but the older straight path to the True West. Skafloc and Mananaan sail a similar course but to the north.

Like Harald's men, they too enter colder waters but, for them, "...moon and stars were wheeling awry..." and:

"Skafloc thought this realm could not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions near the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen. He had the notion that this was the Sea of Death on which he sailed, outward bound from the world of the living." (p. 156)

- an entire page of foul winds, snow, sleet, gales, icebergs, fogs, storms, waves, then at last land with mountains, glaciers, crags, ice-fields, screaming wind, ancient snow and cliffs of appropriate size for Giant Land, under which the god's boat crawls "Antlike...," cliffs so high that the wind above them "...might almost have been blowing between the stars." (p. 159)

This is as close to a space journey as could have been imagined in a period when the way to travel beyond Midgard was not to fly beyond the atmosphere but to sail beyond the horizon, beyond the sunset or, in CS Lewis' Dawn Treader, beyond the sunrise. Ships had not yet become spaceships.

Addendum, 13 Aug 2015: There is a third connection with Ys. Mananaan is the son of Lir, one of the Three of Ys.

The War In Jotunheim

In The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Poul Anderson summarizes, we read quickly and soon forget. Before Mananaan Mac Lir and Skafloc Elven-Fosterling can escape from Jotunheim with the reforged sword, they:

struggle against the elements;

devise spells to counteract giant magic, to loose storms and to bring mountainsides down on Jotun garths;

kill individual giants;

narrowly evade pursuit;

forage inland;

burn down a great steading, stealing its horses and other treasures;

receive hospitality from lonely crofters who did not ask whence they have come;

 

meet well disposed, human-sized women; 

 

encounter a dragon with a golden hoard, a burning mountain, a bottomless chasm, a giantesses' quern, an everlasting battle and a witch in Iron Wood;

 

fish in a river from hell;

hear the aurora sing.

We are told that, although each of these tales "...would make a saga in itself...they must be left among the annals of Faerie." (p. 166) They are mentioned so briefly that most readers will soon forget them so I have tried to preserve their memory here.

Mananaan And The Wind

The Broken Sword, XXII.

Mananaan Mac Lir is an Irish sea god and the son of Lir, one of the Three of Ys. When Mananaan and Skafloc embark for Jotunheim, Mananaan sings to the wind, calling it to blow him on his quest. And indeed a strong breeze springs up so that the boat surges. The wind tosses Mananaan's hair.

He refers to the Tuatha De Danaan as no longer gods or at "'...their full might.'" (p. 155) These powers are fading.

The Demon Of Scattery by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon (illustrated by Alicia Austin) is a tale told to Skafloc by Mananaan during their voyage to Jotunheim. Some of Anderson's works have extraordinary intertextual interconnections. (In sf, the Maurai future history is a work of fiction published during the course of the time travel novel, There Will Be Time.) 

"Ant-like, the boat..."

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter XXII.

Skafloc Elven Fosterling and Mananaan MacLir sail to Jotunheim, which they also call Giant Land. (p. 158)

"Ant-like, the boat crawled under the cliffs and peered into the fjord." (p. 159)

Such differences of scale sometimes provide dramatic or comic effect. En route to Jotunheim, Thor and Loki found a large hall with a wide entrance and five corridors off the far end. They sheltered in the hall overnight but, when they had emerged in the morning, a giant strode past and picked up his glove. Gulliver was big in Lilliput but small in Brobdingnag. The Borrowers use a postage stamp of Queen Victoria as a portrait. See references to Tom Thumb etc here. Cinema special effects have now caught up. See here.

In Jotunheim

Rereading Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, I find much to post about but I also avoid repeating information already summarized in earlier posts, e.g., in September 2012, I posted this summary of events during Skafloc's and Mananaan's visit to Jotunheim.

I had forgotten all of these details and I expect that every other reader of the novel or of this blog has as well so, this morning, please just read or reread the earlier post!

To Jotunheim

Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), XI.

Traveling a long and dangerous way alone, Odin often loses his path although always, slowly and painfully, refinding it:

passing through warring Midgard as the wanderer, he must often fight;

Ironwood is haunted by monsters and trolls and has no food;

cold, dark Niflheim, has rushing rivers, swarming vipers and the dragon that gnaws the deepest Tree roots;

he skirts Muspellheim where Surtr waits;

eventually, he reaches his destination in the highest mountains of Jotunheim where he will meet Loki.

The mention of Surtr raises a question that will be addressed in the following post.

Epic Journeys

An epic journey: walking long distance in high gravity carrying heavy survival equipment while threatened by a Walking Forest, hot geysers and Slaughter Machines. And so understated - this is just one incident in Part Two of Poul Anderson's The Star Fox.

Other such epic journeys are:

on Jupiter in Three Worlds To Conquer (see here);

from a colonized planet in the Cloud Universe through interstellar space and a dark nebula to an outpost of human civilization in "Starfog;"

to Jotunheim in The Broken Sword;

in search of Jotunheim in the Last Viking trilogy;

to the icebergs and back in The Man Who Counts;

a long time journey in "Flight To Forever;"

a long space journey in Tau Zero;

a cosmic journey in The Avatar.

No doubt there are others that I have forgotten. Yet another recurring feature that could be analyzed in its own right.

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.

Narrative Layers

Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods, I, states that:

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

- and much more. This is the omniscient narrator at work and we must accept whatever he tells us as true - within the fiction. (Within another work of fiction, it is true that the world was divided into three permanently warring superstates in 1984.)

In XI, Hadding tells his two guards how Odin traveled to Jotunheim, met Loki and hanged himself on the Tree. Since Hadding was not there, he must have heard this story from someone else and, in fact, when asked what had happened next, he replies in part:

"'The rest is merrier. Mind you, I heard it from a jotun, who may not have felt as worshipful toward the gods as he should.'" (p. 83)

And who told the jotun? Thus, in this case, the omniscient narrator tells us what Hadding claims he had heard from a probably disrespectful jotun who in turn must have heard the story from someone else. We are not obliged to accept this story as true.

A Bird Made Of Fog

Gunnhild, projecting her soul as a bird and calling her future husband to her, reproduces a magical achievement of one of the Nine Witch Queens of Ys. The sunken towers of Ys are seen in the first of Poul Anderson's five Viking Era novels and Gunnhild is referenced in one of its sequels.

The Witch Queens needed Gratillonius to challenge and kill their King and thus to take his place. Gunnhild needs Eirik's men to kill her two Finnish mentors and then to take her to Eirik.

Mother Of Kings, about Gunnhild, is a culmination of Anderson's historical novels containing elements of fantasy and a prequel to The Last Viking, the historical fiction trilogy in which an expedition in search of Jotunheim - visited in an earlier novel - finds only icebergs and whales.

Guests at Eirik's and Gunnhild's wedding consume:

beef
pork
mutton
fowl
fish cooked with garlic
leaks
peas
turnips
herbs
wheat and rye bread
butter
cheese
honey
berries dried and stewed
ale
mead

It is quite a while since we have had a food list on the blog but this wedding is a suitable occasion. 

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. 

1061

In Poul Anderson's The Road Of The Sea Horse (New York, 1980), Chapter XIII, How Gunnar Geiroddsson Fared to Nidharos, is a separate story starting in the saga style. Since the central character is to be Gunnar, we must first be given an objective account of Geirrodd, starting not with Geirrodd's point of view but simply with a reported fact:

"The man was called Geirrod." (p. 221)

Gunnar, not wanting to fish like his father, sets off on foot to offer his military service to the great King Harald Hardrada and is lucky enough, en route, to save the life of the King's leman's brother. Thus, he becomes one of the brother's men and thus, indirectly, serves the King.

Gunnar has not had much religious education. He speaks of " '...St Thor...' " and "...the wizards of Romaborg..." (pp. 228-229)

That new town that Harald had proposed a few Chapters back was built on the Oslofjord and came to be called Oslo.

After the different points of view of Chapters XII and XIII, the concluding Chapter XIV returns to the main narrative and describes Harald's Northern expedition which, because this novel is historical fiction, does not find Jotunheim, although that realm of the giants is visited in the same author's heroic fantasy, The Broken Sword.

The Nine Worlds

What are the Nine Worlds in the Tree? See here. Apparently, no list survives (see here) so it has to be reconstructed, e.g., see here.

How Do We Get Nine?
2 primordial opposites, cold and heat, Niflheim and Muspelheim;
2 kinds of gods, Aesir in Asgard, Vanir in Vanaheim;
2 kinds of elves, light and dark;
2 other kinds of beings, men in Midgard, giants in Utgard/Jotunheim;
Hel.

But Hel might be part of Niflheim. Dark elves and dwarfs may or may not be identical. One name for the world of the dark elves is Myrkheim (see here; see also Mirkheim.)

At the Ragnarok:

the giants, the dead from Hel (led by Loki), Fenris Wolf, the World Serpent and Muspel will attack Asgard;

former inhabitants of Midgard will fight on both sides (we do, don't we?);

elves will remain neutral (?);

Vanaheim will survive and some of the gods will return from it later.

Yggdrasil

Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods (New York, 1999) is set much more in the world of men than is his earlier Norse fantasy, The Broken Sword. The author summarizes the geography of Saxons, Jutland, Danes, the Baltic, Wends, Gardariki, Anglians, the Skagerrak, Zealand, Scania, Geats, Finns and the Swedish kingdom founded by Odin.

Mythological material is matter-of-factly incorporated into this realistic framework. A giant living in Midgard no longer fights men because they would call on Thor.

Anderson invents a story to explain both why Odin's brothers, Vili and Ve, fade from the story in the myths and why Odin swore blood brotherhood with Loki. But the invented story owes much to the myths. Loki buzzing someone as a fly rings a bell.

Anderson writes perhaps the most detailed account of the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, to be found anywhere in literature. The worlds are around its roots and its bole or high in its boughs. He describes its inhabitants as recounted in the Eddas and adds:

"...the tree lives, for it is life, and it shall abide when the world goes under." (p. 82)

(The new world after Ragnarok will be populated by descendants of a couple who hide in the Tree.)

Odin and Loki climb the Tree:

"...through shadowy, whispery caverns of leaf..." (p. 82)

I am fairly sure that that description is original with Anderson.

Yet again, Anderson's science fiction echoes his fantasy. In Harvest Of Stars, characters climb and contemplate among the branches of a tree grown huge in the low gravity of a space habitat.

In British children's fiction, Enid Blyton wrote a trilogy about a Magic Faraway Tree climbed by children who find a different world at the top each time. A typical Alan Moore job would be a sequel in which the children, grown up, revisit the Tree and interpret their earlier experiences there in adult terms.

Although the Faraway Tree is conceptually related to Yggdrasil, Anderson's treatment of the latter has greater imaginative power and literary merit. As in the sagas, the story of Odin's journey through Midgard, Ironwood, Niflheim, Muspellheim, Jotunheim and Yggdrasil is a "play within the play," in this case recounted by Hadding to his captors while getting them drunk so that he can escape and claim his kingdom. The mythical story of Odin plays its part in the human story of Hadding.

Hadding's hearers are fascinated by his account because Hadding, raised by giants, can recount stories from jotun sagas differing in detail both from what men know and from what the gods have disclosed. The jotuns are the oldest race, with lore that goes back to the beginning. If there were such a race, then their account would be valuable indeed.

Beyond The Ice Wall

Here's a thing. A few works by sf authors are set in alternative universes where Earth is flat. Which ones? I think that Poul Anderson is on the list.

Google the Flat Earth Society for a completely different cosmology:

Earth is a disk with the North Pole at its center and an impenetrable Ice Wall around the circumference;

thus, when we say that a ship circumnavigates Antarctica, they say that it sails around the edge of the disk;

the Sun, small and close, moves around the sky, only appearing to sink below the horizon;

no one knows how deep the Earth is or what is beyond the Ice Wall;

on the other hand, the possibly infinite plain beyond the Wall must be uninhabitably cold and dark - perhaps the equivalent of a cosmic vacuum.

This sounds like a dramatic cosmos that would be a perfect setting for fantasy novels by Poul Anderson. In his Viking fantasies, characters leave Earth/Midgard not by ascending into space but by sailing far enough North into Jotunheim. The Flat Earth has similar fictional possibilities and is an interesting proof that some people will believe anything.

Growing Up With Giants

Nursed by a giantess, Hadding grows quickly and becomes strong. He lives well with the giant family who hunt, fish, keep cows, grow grain, gather nuts, berries and wild honey and brew ale and mead. He is at home in the wilds, learns some of the Old Tongue from Jotunheim and shares their feasts which celebrate:

the shaping and slaying of Ymir;
the binding of Garm and Fenris;
Utgard-Loki's tricks on Thor.

These stories are in the Norse myths but not celebrated by any human feasts.

Once, alone on a winter night, Hadding sees light elves, their horses bounding from horizon to horizon in a few heartbeats, and hears their horn:

"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!" (see here)

He watches the giantess consulting a drow, which says that Hadding is not what he seems. Kraki visits and teaches Hadding about gods and weapons, how to fight and his place in Denmark. This is perfect preparation for Hadding's destiny and is also a hero myth. See also here.

Across The Universes

A novel by Poul Anderson is like a mountain-top launching pad that not only presents a panoramic view but also propels the reader across space, time or myth. The title of this post is borrowed from an Alan Moore collection: Across The Universe.

Anderson's narratives traverse multiple dimensions that sometimes converge:

a ship sails from Midgard to Jotunheim just as spaceships fly from Earth to everywhere else;

"Odin" is a god in heroic fantasy, a man in historical fiction and a time traveler in science fiction;

both Tir-nan-Og and Tau Zero involve time dilation;

the Roman Empire falls in historical fiction and the Terran Empire falls in a future history;

Merseians are like civilized trolls;

far future Artificial Intelligences are indistinguishable from gods to newly created human beings.

In case the Merseian-troll comparison is regarded as fanciful or inappropriate:

"...after his human guests had left, Ruethen and his staff had rolled out huge barrels of bitter ale and caroused like trolls for many hours..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 193.

Ravens III

Odin's symbol, the raven, appears on the banners and sails of his descendants, the Skjoldungs, in Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods and Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973) and the title of Volume III of his Last Viking Trilogy is The Sign Of The Raven.

This is one of the few Anderson novels that I have not yet read. However, it is possible to know exactly where it fits in his works. Like the first and second volumes of the trilogy, it is historical fiction, not fantasy. Thus, there can be no gods, giants, elves, dwarves or magic that works. (Indeed, in what has already been read, a sea voyage to the North discovers not Jotunheim but icebergs and must turn back.)

Secondly, since the title character and the events of his life are historical, we already know exactly how the story must end for King Harald Hardrada of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the North East of England on the 25th of September, 1066. We have the Norns' knowledge of what will be. But this inevitability and foreknowledge are appropriate.

Reading Anderson requires a dictionary although we can now easily google obscure phrases. This, without explanation:

"All men must dree their weirds." (p. 132)

We know "weird" by now but what is "dree"? It sounded familiar but I had to google it. All men must accept their fates. And that applies particularly in this case to Harald Hardrada, trying to conquer England and knowing already the possible outcomes.