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.

One Long Series

Yet again, Poul Anderson's historical novels present the appearance of a single long series spanning more than a millennium. The title character of The Last Viking (New York, 1980) refers to the title character of Mother Of Kings. Harald Hardrada:

"...remembered Gunnhild the witch, wife of Eirik Blood-ax." (pp. 86-87)

Harald compares Gunnhild to the Eastern Roman Empress, Zoe. We see the last days of the Western Empire in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys and of the Eastern Empire in  Rogue Sword. The title character of The King Of Ys refers to Marius who defeats the barbarians in The Golden Slave.

Since:

The Golden Slave is one of three novels set BC,  
The King Of Ys is a Tetralogy,  
Mother Of Kings is one of five interconnected fantasy novels set in the Viking period,
The Last Viking is a Trilogy and 
Rogue Sword is one of three novels set in the fourteenth century -

- these eighteen volumes present a panorama of the past comparable to the futuristic panorama presented in Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

There are differences. The Technic History, comprising more than one sub-series and many individual works, remains a single diverse science fiction series whereas the past "History" is not a single series and its constituent works are not even of a single genre. In fact, if, as I believe, Mother Of Kings, which I have yet to read, is a fantasy, then its Gunnhild cannot be exactly identical with the witch queen of that name referred to in a work of historical fiction.

Nevertheless, I think that a Complete Works of Poul Anderson could usefully present these works in their historical order. The reader would then see history develop and would appreciate the cross-references as they appear. Of course, the other way to present a Complete Works is to follow the author's development by arranging the works in order of publication but this approach, if taken to its logical conclusion, would split up the works that are meant to be read as series so that, for example, Ensign Flandry would be read after some later phases of Flandry's career.

I apologise to any regular readers of this blog who will certainly tire of this aspect of Anderson's works before I tire of writing about it.

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.

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.

Wind Gusts And Snarls

Poul Anderson's historical novel, Mother Of Kings, was published at the very beginning of the twenty first century. Its opening paragraph -

"Wind snarled and skirled. Smoke from the longfire eddied bitter on its way upward, hazing lamps throughout the hall. Shadows flickered. They seemed to bring the carvings on pillars and wainscots to uneasy life. Nightfall came fast at the end of these shortening days. Soon there would be nothing but night."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), p. 3.

- sets a familiar scene in a recognizable style: a lamp-lit hall, sounds, sights and seasonal change, impersonal description, alliteration and a two-word sentence. It also recalls the opening paragraph of "The Sorrow of Odin The Goth" -

"Wind gusted out of twilight as the door opened. Fires burning down the length of the hall flared in their trenches; flames wavered and streamed from stone lamps; smoke roiled bitter back from the roof-holes that should have let it out. The sudden brightness gleamed off spear-heads, axheads, swordguards, shield bosses, where weapons rested near the entry. Men, crowding the great room, grew still and watchful, as did the women who had been bringing them horns of ale. It was the gods carved on the pillars that seemed to move amidst unrestful shadows..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth," 372 IN Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 333-334.

The latter paragraph should be read in full although I have shortened it for quotation purposes. It is longer, describes not only a hall but also its occupants and includes both a short list-description and one item of vocabulary that I googled. I think that I know what such words mean but then find that I don't, exactly.

Meanwhile, a good start to Mother Of Kings.

Chronological Links

In The Demon Of Scattery by Poul Anderson & Mildred Downey Broxon, the viking Halldor and the nun Brigit come together. At the end of ...Scattery, its narrator, Mananaan MacLir, tells Skafloc that Brigit's first son became the father of Gunnhild, the witch-queen, who is the title character of Anderson's Mother Of Kings. In his Afterword to Mother..., Anderson tells us that Gunnhild's contemporary, Harald Fairhair, was the great-great-grandfather of Harald Hardrada, who is the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy. Thus, these three works form a chronological sequence:

The Demon Of Scattery
Mother Of Kings
The Last Viking (3 volumes)

However, Mananaan narrates ...Scattery during an interval in the action of The Broken Sword. Therefore, this volume becomes number three in the sequence.

Set several centuries earlier and in this order are:

The King Of Ys (4 volumes; with Karen Anderson)
War Of the Gods
Hrolf Kraki's Saga

The Broken Sword refers to the sunken city of Ys which was flooded at the end of The King Of Ys, Volume III. Mananaan is the son (Mac) of Lir, one of the Three Gods of Ys. Hrolf Kraki's Saga is narrated to the English King Aethelstan, another contemporary of Gunnhild. Thus, these twelve volumes form a long historical sequence preceded by three novels set Before Christ, three set in the fourteenth century and several set in different historical or prehistorical periods, the last group overlapping with Anderson's futuristic fiction. And there are four contemporary novels between the historical and the futuristic.

Northumbria And Cumbria

Northumbria once meant Northern England. However, in Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, January 2003, first edition: September 2001), Eirik Blood-ax, ruling "Yorkish Northumbria" (p. 257), is at peace with "Northern Northumbia" (p. 259) which stretches to the Firth of Forth, thus well into what we call Scotland.

To the west and northwest of Yorkish Northumbria is the earldom of Cumbria, "...occupying, approximately, present-day Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire."
-Poul Anderson, "Geographical Glossary" IN Mother Of Kings, pp. 607-611 AT p. 607.

In 1974, Cumberland and Westmorland were reunited as "Cumbria." I know this because I grew up in Cumberland and have lived in Lancashire since 1973 but there was no reason why Poul Anderson living in the US should have known it! Geography is perhaps my worst subject. This detail came to light only because I am rereading Mother Of Kings in such detail. Like probably most readers, I refer to the Geographical Glossary and Dramatis Personae list but do not read their every word or regard them as part of the text.

Back To The Future

My edition of Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings ends with a five page trailer for For Love And Glory, Anderson's last futuristic hard science fiction (sf) novel, which I have also not yet read.

Regular readers look out for any clue that a new novel belongs to an existing series. For example, a reference to an alien race of "Merseians" would instantly place any  new novel within Anderson's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilisation.

Theoretically, this need not be the case. A fictitious species could inhabit more than one future timeline just as readily as terrestrial human beings do. For example, Lithians and their planet are destroyed in 2050 in James Blish's Trilogy yet still exist millennia later in one of his tetralogies. Nevertheless, an author usually signals that two stories are set in different futures by having the human protagonists of the stories meet different alien species.

This question arises here because For Love And Glory does return to the earlier sf idea of faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel in a multi-species galaxy where at least some extra-solar planets are humanly inhabitable whereas Anderson's other later works, the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, had featured slower than light (STL) interstellar travel by artificial intelligences encountering very little organic life.

The trailer mentions:

" '...the Orcelin civilization...' " (p. 615);
"...an anthropard from Rikha or a Rikhan colony..." (p. 616);
the planet Gargantua;
Asborg - Sunniva III.

(That last must be either a planet called Asborg which is the third planet of a star called Sunniva or a city called "Asborg" on the third planet etc.)

None of these names is familiar so most probably this new novel exists in its own timeline. Another clue is that the human language spoken is "Anglay," not "Anglic" - as it would have been in the Technic History.

Artifacts left by Forerunners, clearly an earlier space traveling race, are mentioned. There were such forerunners in the Technic History although there they were variously referred to as Foredwellers, Ancients, Elders, Others and Old Shen. Even the use of a slightly different term, "Forerunners," implies that the new novel is set in a different timeline.

The Gargantuan resembles a tyrannosaur which makes him sound like a Wodenite from the Technic History except that the latter are centauroid/quadrupedal. Also, Wodenites appropriately speak in deep, rumbling voices whereas the Garagantuan, called "Karl" for human purposes, speaks inaudibly and communicates through an artificial translator.

Characters in the Technic History often refer to " '...this fraction of a single spiral arm which we have somewhat explored...' " (1) whereas Lissa Davysdaughter Windholm of Asborg reflects that "The galaxy's so huge, so various, and always so mysterious." (2) So maybe Lissa's people have fared further - with faster FTL?

The word "Windholm" occurs in the Technic History but as a place name, not as a surname. Patronymics are familiar from Anderson's Norse fiction. I cannot avoid the impression that familiar story elements are being rearranged somewhat.

(1) Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, Riverdale, NY, 2012, p. 207.
(2) Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings, New York, 2003, p. 617.

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.

Deaths III

"The last warriors of King Hrolf made a ring around him... the guards and the great captains went down. Hrolf Kraki trod out from the breaking shield-burg. Man after man he felled. No one of them slew him; it took them all."

-Poul Anderson, Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973), VII, p. 255.

 

"Grim was that battle. Knowing they would die whatever happened, the Teurings fought till they dropped. Hathawulf alone heaped a wall of slain before him. When he fell, few were left to be glad of it."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 372, p. 455.

 

"Eyjolf and the housecarls found him in the morning. A wind had awakened. Whitecaps chopped. The rope creaked as Hadding swung to and fro. On each of his shoulders perched a raven. They had not taken his eyes. As the men drew near, they spread black wings and flew off eastward."

-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), XXXIV, p. 295.

 

The wind and the ravens of Odin. We see where Hadding goes:

 

"Leaves rustled, alive with sunlight. He stood beside an ash tree whose trunk was mightier than a mountain and whose crown reached higher than heaven. Those boughs spread as wide as all the worlds..."

-ibid., XXXV, p. 295.

 

"Gunnhild needed no witchcraft to know she was dying...

"Her strength ebbed into the wind. She sat down, then lay down, her face turned seaward. It felt as if moonlight streamed through her."

-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), XXXII, pp. 587, 591.

 

The wind is present again. Mother Of Kings was published posthumously. 

Coincidentally, I am rereading Neil Gaiman's retelling of the myth of Orpheus. Gaiman integrates Orpheus into his Sandman myth. Thus, Orpheus is the son of Morpheus/Dream and consults Dream's older sister, Death, before descending into the Underworld.

 

Hail Anderson and Gaiman.

Die By The Sword

"Those who live by the sword die by the sword." (Mt. 26.52)

Two Norsemen, Eirik Blood-ax and Harald Hardrada, fall in battle in Northern England, in 954 and 1066, respectively. Appropriately, Harald dies near the end of the third volume of his trilogy, The Last Viking by Poul Anderson, whereas Eirik dies near the end of the third of the six Books in Anderson's Mother Of Kings because, as its title indicates, this latter work primarily focuses on Eiric's wife, then widow, Gunnhild - and her children and enemies.

Both Eirik and Harald were King of Norway. Eirik was also twice King of Yorkish Northumbria with intervening exiles in Orkney. Only by summarizing plots in blog posts like this am I able to keep track of such up and down careers.

Mother Of Kings Books Four, Five and Six recount the subsequent careers of Eirik's widow and heirs. I have read the novel once before but remember nothing of its contents beyond this point so it is like entering new territory. Gunnhild has had to acknowledge Christ as a powerful deity but has not foresworn the old gods, still practices magic and has committed murder. Will she improve morally in what remains of her life?

Two Springs

"Spring and the wanderbirds came back; darkness dwindled; snow and ice thawed away into rushing streams; buds opened; grass sprouted; a tender green lay everywhere over the land."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Five, Chapter XII, p. 451.

"Raw winds and sleety rain brought in the springtime."
-Chapter XV, p. 459.

I honestly find Anderson's ever-fresh descriptions of seasonal changes more interesting than Gunnhild's malicious machinations. Not content with her sons' murders of Kings Gudrod Bjarnarson and Tryggvi Olafsson, she now hunts down Gudrod's young son and Tryggvi's pregnant wife! Gunnhild's maternal love for her own offspring has been completely perverted when it leads her to seek the death of another woman's as yet unborn son or daughter.

Taoist saying: "Two sages can share a blanket. Two Emperors cannot share a kingdom."

This and "Earth abides" seem to be the two messages of Mother Of Kings.

Kings

Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Two, Chapter VII.

A king has to travel around within his realm:

to be seen widely;
to confer with local leaders;
to be well informed;
to subdue resistance;
to make judgments;
to lead offerings to local deities;
to bestow gifts;
to spread the cost of his household.

At the holy boulder in a shaw on the island of Atley, Eirik Blood-Ax beheads a fat cow in a seasonal rite, sprinkles the worshipers with blood and asks the local goddesses for help. Today, we visited a rebuilt Saxon Shrine where bread and wine represent flesh and blood, worshipers drink well water and are sprinkled with oil and the Mother of God is asked for help. Nowadays, the kingly and priestly roles have been separated.

Kings also behaved in ways that we would consider childish. As soon as King Harald of Norway grasps a sword sent by the English King Aethelstan, the latter's messenger immediately announces that acceptance of Aethelstan's sword has made Harald Aethelstan's vassal! But Harald had neither known of nor agreed to any such contract. Thus, he cannot be morally, legally or constitutionally bound by any vassalhood to Aethelstan. Nor could Aethelstan have meant "...to lay any real claim." (p. 119). Maybe it is a warning: stay away from England. Aethelstan's father had defeated the last Danish attack, subjugated the East Anglian Danes and gained kingship over Mercia and Essex and allegiance and tribute from the Welsh princes. Aethelstan had taken Northumbria and subjugated the Scottish kings. With such strength in England, any further invasions from Northern countries will be resisted.

Harald replies by sending his youngest son, Haakon, for Aethelstan to foster, thus notionally making Aethelstan lowlier than Harald. The Norse bringing the child Haakon, like the English delivering Aethelstan's sword, were prepared to fight if necessary. Imagine conducting diplomatic negotiations on that basis.

History, Legend And Fiction

Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003).

History
Gunnhild was probably a Danish princess, sister of Harald Bluetooth, politically married to Eirik Blood-Ax.There is no evidence that she was unusually ruthless or a witch. However, making an enemy of the great skald Egil probably contributed to her legend -

Legend
The daughter of a Norwegian chief, she learned magic from two Finns and became "...a sinister enchantress." (p. 593)

Fiction
Anderson's novel is a synthesis, as historically accurate as possible apart from incorporating the legend. His treatment of Gunnhild is analogous to Shakespeare's of Macbeth.

Eirik's father was Harald Fairhair whose great-great-grandsons included Harold Hardrada, as Anderson notes at the end of his Afterword to Mother Of Kings. Thus, Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy about Hardrada is a perfect sequel to his five Viking era novels which culminate with Mother...

Learning

As conscious and intelligent organisms, we are here to learn. Are we? I do not believe that we were created to fulfill any purpose. However, now that consciousness and intelligence have evolved, it is natural to use them to learn. I regard knowledge not only as a means to practical ends like survival but also as an end in itself. It is good to know about the universe - I think, although I have met people who deny it.

So what do we learn? Two practical kinds of knowledge are:

(i) how to achieve existing ends more effectively;
(ii) the error of our ways.

Queen Gunnhild, wife of Eirik Blood-ax and the title character of Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings, learns nothing of (ii) and has only a limited ability to learn (i).

"She had better not get angry with him. The abidingly faithful could become few."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Three, Chapter III, p. 196.

The abidingly faithful become very few for rulers who are callous and overbearing. Eirik's opponent gains an enthusiastic following by promising justice and the restoration of ancient freedoms. Gunnhild's reflections continue:

"It was not enough to hope for victory. She must learn beforehand how to deal with the worst of outcomes, for her sons, her daughters, the blood that ran in them." (ibid.)

Gunnhild is a determined survivor (i). But she does not learn whether Eirik and she have conducted themselves in ways that put their children at risk (ii). Meanwhile, it is good to live in a period when ambitious politicians must campaign in elections, not divide the country between warring armies!

Bringing It All Together

In the previous post, I referred to Morecambe. Coincidentally, I then reread Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003) to the point where Eirik Blood-ax lands in Morecambe Bay. See here.

The previous posts on Paganism and Christianity were here and here. Two more recent posts on this theme are here and here.

Gunnhild, far-seeing Eirik's last battle in the form of a swallow, is pushed aside by departing souls but does not know where they go. Why should they go anywhere?

"Men believed they knew, many and many a belief."
-Poul Anderson, Mother of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Three, Chapter XX, p. 274.

Some say, "I believe..." Some say, "I know..." Which? Gunnhild says that they believe they know. Claims to communicate with the dead or to experience the postmortem state should be assessed scientifically.

People seemed to leave their bodies in sleep and to visit another realm where they could meet (i.e., dream about) the dead. So it seemed that selves leave their bodies temporarily in sleep and permanently at death but the mere consciousness of not being alive was not a happy prospect. When society divided, so did the hereafter: warriors went to Valhalla, everyone else to Hel. Only later were social divisions overturned (the good rewarded and the poor compensated) in the hereafter.

Greek philosophers who believed that, if there was any immortality, then it was in the soul, not in the body, laughed when St Paul told them that God had raised a man from the dead. Christians, the great synthesizers, came to accept both Biblical resurrection of the body and philosophical immortality of the soul. The Buddha analyzed everything, including the mind, as a temporary coming together of constituents that will inevitably separate again, thus no immortality anywhere.

An Ythrian, told of the belief that "'...the spirit outlives the body...,'" snaps:

"'How could it?...Why should it?'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), pp. 107-134 AT p. 122.

I am with the Buddha and the Ythrian although I am interested in any evidence.

Kings And Vikings

Poul Anderson's The Last Viking, a trilogy, and his Mother Of Kings, a single long novel, are two biographical historical fictions, each culminating in its title character's death. You might expect a trilogy to be longer than a single novel and in this case you would be right but not by a very wide margin. Novels vary considerably in length. The trilogy totals 819 pages whereas the single novel, which is divided into six Books, is 619 pages. Thus, one Book of the novel is shorter than one volume of the trilogy but nevertheless is comparable in length to a short novel.

If the trilogy were to be re-issued in an omnibus edition, then the two works would match each other on a book shelf. Between them chronologically comes Anderson's The Broken Sword but the genres of the three works differ -

Mother Of Kings: historical fiction with elements of historical fantasy;
The Broken Sword: heroic fantasy;
The Last Viking: historical fiction.

As I think the French say, long live the difference.

Ysan Inns

The murderous inter-dynastic deceit in Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings approaches a crescendo. Haakon Jarl plans to kill Gold-Harald Knutson who plans to kill Harald Eiriksson who is sailing into a trap of the kind devised for Tryggvi Olafsson by Gudrod Eiriksson: the consequences of their own actions.

I seek temporary respite in the intriguing inns of Poul and Karen Anderson's uncanny city of Ys. See:

In An Ysan Inn
Time Passes
Inns In Ys
More Details About Ys
Epona's Horse
Appreciating Details

There may be more about Ysan inns and, of course, there is a lot about Ys, sadly inundated centuries before the events of Mother Of Kings.

"An Endless Wind"

How powerful are the gods? It depends which world we are in. Pantheons rule some of the universes in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse. In his Mother Of Kings:

"'Dreams have come to me, nightmares. The same, over and over. I stumble lost, through a land gray, cold, bare. Everywhere lie dead bones, gnawed by trolls. In an endless wind, I hear a mockery, "You have forsaken the gods. So the gods have forsaken you." He shivered...'"
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Four, Chapter IX, p. 323.

Trolls gnaw dead bones in a cold land with an endless wind. A bleak if intriguing scene but can the Aesir do this? This question can be answered on two levels. No, because a more powerful god will replace them. No, because the premise of the novel is that historical events unfold as in our world even though there is some supernatural activity behind the scenes.

Men who have had this dream have also seen an unseasonal swallow. That informs the reader that the dreams have been sent not by the messenger of the gods but by the Witch-Queen Gunnhild. Her sendings are not prophetic warnings but cynical manipulations. She, though nominally Christian, incites the men to attack their Christian King - who has indeed tried to force them to forsake their gods. Whereas Sigurd Jarl strives to keep the peace, Gunnhild tries to foment strife.

She is learning from experience. Men who attack Christian churches do not suffer any more than could have been expected in any case. But nor do men who forsake the gods. Gunnhild favors a shamanism in which men unite with and act on nature without any recourse to gods. In this respect, at least, she anticipates scientific knowledge and practice.

When Gunnhild visits (in order to manipulate) a bishop, we of course read about the surrounding scenery before she enters his house. We look for three senses and find the second and third in the last sentence:

"Rooks fluttered black around the spire. Clouds drifted fleecy beneath the cool blue sky of late summer. A breeze scattered somewhat the racket and smells of the town." (p. 344)

Mother Of Kings: Conclusion

Any solid biographical novel shows us the central character as young, then aging, old and dying. Poul Anderson does this with Gunnhild, the Witch-Queen, in Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003). Surprisingly (I thought), the Afterword informs us that, although Gunnhild "...really lived...":

"There is no good evidence...that she practiced witchcraft." (p. 593)

- so what this novel presents is not the historical but the legendary Gunnhild, just as Shakespeare presents not the historical but the legendary Macbeth.

Appropriately, Anderson's historical fiction trilogy, The Last Viking, indeed refers not only to the historical Macbeth, who was contemporary with the events of the trilogy, but also to the remembered Gunnhild although again we are shown how she was remembered rather than how she would really have been.

Heroic fantasies end with heroic victories whereas this novel, historically accurate apart from the fantasy element of the heroine's clairvoyance, ends with most of Gunnhild's sons dead and the two survivors failing to regain their kingdom because that is what happened. The concluding chapters are definitely doom-laden.

My next Anderson project is to read for the first time the third volume of The Last Viking Trilogy, which also ends in heroic failure, but there are a couple of other things to be done first.