Vandals And Goths

Vandals were a tribe or are perpetrators of vandalism.

See Vandal blog search result. (Scroll down.)

SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall thinks:

"Van-dals..."
-The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 444 -

- when a fountain is used as a watering trough.

Goths were a people or are a fashion/subculture.

See Goths blog search result. (Scroll down.)

When I asked Nygel, the great-grandfather of all the Goths in Lancaster, to write for the blog about Goths, he texted:

"They r miserable. That was easy :). I await ur nxt challenge :)"

Words have fascinating histories, carried from history through current usage into future histories.

Goths fight Vandals in some of the linked posts.

How And Why Carl Helped The Teurings Against The Vandals

"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," 300-302, 1980.

Most Goths returned from battle. Some had seen a blue-cloaked spearman in the sky. (Antigrav.) Monsters charged the Vandals who saw eerie lights and felt blind fear. (Illusions and subsonic beams.) The Wanderer united the Gothic tribes, led their chiefs and imparted military intelligence. Lootless Vandals withdrew. 

Carl killed no one and saved lives on both sides. That Vandal raid was unrecorded and its outcome was insignificant apart from the fact that Gothic victory preserved a society where Carl was able to continue his mission. He claims that the line of descent that he had started was a minor statistical fluctuation that would soon average out. However, very soon, he will accept and take for granted without any apparent surprise or concern that that line of descent is the exact same family that is central to the stories that he has come to investigate. Something does not quite add up there.

Referring to Indian, Persian, Celtic and Slavic myths, Carl tells Everard:

"'...those last are even more poorly chronicled. Eventually, my service will-'" (p. 390)

It is difficult to know what the words, "are," "Eventually" and "will," mean within a time travelling organization spanning a million years. An individual field agent who, on his own world-line, has not yet done the research must be prevented from knowing the results of the research before he has done it but, apart from that, surely all of his colleagues should benefit from his research whichever part of the timeline they are working in?

Stilicho And Molitor

"STILICHO, FLAVIUS: A Roman general, half Vandal by birth, who became effectively the dictator of the West Roman Empire."
-Poul and Karen Anderson, Dahut (New York, 1989), Dramatis Personae, p. 492.

(The capitalized name means that Stilico is historical.)

MOLITOR, HANS FRIEDRICK: A Terran Admiral, Germanian by birth, who became Terran Emperor.

(The capitalized name shows that Molitor is future historical.)

"'Stilicho may not be easy to reach,' Gratillonius said...'The way he moves around, holding the Empire together.'
"Apuleius nodded. 'Like the captain on a foundering ship, who dashes about as timbers and cordage come apart in the storm,' he answered sadly." (Dahut, Chapter XI, section 1, p. 238)

"'...barely six years on the throne have I had. The first three, fighting to stay there. I need another twenty or thirty for carpentering this jerry-built, dry-rotted Empire into a thing that might last a few more generations, before I can lay down my tools.' Hans chuckled coarsely."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry (New York, 2012), p. 379.

I did not expect such a good match between the quotations when I started to look for them. Hans' jerry-built Empire is what eventually came after the world's great age beginning anew of the Polesotechnic League period (here).

And here is another similarity between Stilicho and Molitor:

"'[Stilicho] is a soldier himself, a practical man, experienced in starcraft; and, I hear, being half a barbarian, he nourishes a wistful admiration for everything civilized...'" (Dahut, p. 238)

"A blunt pragmatist, uncultured and unashamed of it, shrewd rather than intelligent..." (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 380)

The Wreck Of The World

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

This dialogue between the Wanderer and his great-grandson, who has just become a father, is a perfect blend of science fiction, historical fiction and mythological writing -

Hathawulf: You have worn yourself out for us. If you are of the Anses, then they are not tireless.
Wanderer: No. They too shall perish in the wreck of the world.
Hathawulf: But that is far off in time, surely.
Wanderer: World after world has gone down in ruin ere now, my son, and will in the years and thousands of years to come. I have done for you what I was able. (pp. 442-443)

Carl Farness, called the Wanderer, and believed to be Wodan, is conditioned against revealing the fact of time travel which, in any case, his Gothic descendants would scarcely understand. Readers know that, when Carl speaks of ruined worlds, he means ways of life, civilizations, planets and even possibly universes and that he speaks on the basis not of ancient godly wisdom but of future scientific knowledge. But none of this needs to be made explicit in the dialogue.

A few pages later, Sibicho the Vandal almost quotes the Bible:

"'She calls on her witchy ancestor? Suffer her not to live! Let earth purify itself of that blood she bears!" (p. 445)

And an event occurs that is described in the Elder Edda and the Volsungasaga... Carl cannot prevent it.

Time And Wind

The Emperor Frederick says, "...if time allows...," not, "...if God allows." Winnithar the Goth proposes to gather as many men as time allows. They say more than they know. Both are in the presence of a Time Patrol agent.

When Carl agrees to help the Goths against a Vandal attack but in his own way:

"Nobody cheered. A sound like the wind passed down the shadowy length of the hall."
-"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," 300-302, p. 368.

The shadowy length is life. The sound that is not the wind is the passage of time. Carl sets in motion a myth that he will have to complete.

Wodan And The Wind

See Winds Between Worlds.

Carl Farness, Dagobert's father, comes from and returns to the wind. He is identified with Wodan the Wanderer who is the god of the wind and, since the dead ride on the night wind, it is Wodan who conducts them:

"'...to the Afterworld.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 391.

Being the Wanderer makes Wodan:

"'...the patron of travelers and traders.'" (p. 380)

Travellers include time travellers, like Carl himself. Traders include Nicholas van Rijn, "Trader to the Stars," although that Master Merchant offers to St. Dismas.

When Carl enters the hall:

"Wind flapped the edges of his blue cloak..." (372, p. 339)

When he offers to help against a Vandal attack:

"A sound like the wind passed down the shadowy length of the hall." (300-302, p. 368)

When he informs his great-grandson, Alawin, of the deaths of Alawin's half-brothers, Hathawulf and Solbern:

"Morning brought rain. Driven on a hooting wind, hail-cold, hail-hard, it hid everything but the thorp that huddled beneath it, as if the rest of the world had gone down in wreck." (372, p. 456)

The wreck of the world prefigured.

When Carl makes his last farewell to Alawin:

"He strode through the shadows, out the door, into the rain and the wind." (p. 459)

- out of the world.

Carl And The Teurings

In 300, Carl visits the thorp that is the home of the Goth Winnithar of the Teurings above the Vistula, where he also meets his host's wife, Salvalindis, and their daughter, Jorith.

Using future technology, he repels a Vandal attack and takes the sixteen year old Jorith as a leman but she dies giving birth to their son, Dagobert. 

Carl, a time traveler, has started a line of descent in his own past. Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" follows this family from 300 until 372. Carl, benefiting both from time travel and from futuristic longevity treatment, visits his descendants throughout that period.

However, since the time here is now 12.45 AM, I will resume this summary of the family's history some time tomorrow or the day after.