The Garden And The Tree

Operation Luna, 40.

We know the Garden of Eden from the Book of Genesis and the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, from the Eddas. Thus, a modern author incorporating such well-known locations into a new narrative must get them right.

CS Lewis discusses John Milton's description of Eden:

"Of course, the trees have golden fruit. We always knew they would. Every myth has told us so; to ask for 'originality' at this point is stark insensibility."
-CS Lewis, A Preface To Paradise Lost (London, 1967), VII, p. 50.

Again:

"...the unexpected here has no place. These references to the obvious and the immemorial are there not to give us new ideas about the lost garden but to make us know that the garden is found, that we have come home at last and reached the centre of the maze - our centre, humanity's centre, not some private centre of the poet's."
-ibid., p. 51.

So how well does Poul Anderson describe Yggdrasil? (Scroll down.)

For War Of The Gods, see Yggdrasil.

For Operation Luna, see:

Norse Myths In Modern Fiction II
Yggdrasil II
Under Yggdrasil
Mimir

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.

Myth And Fact

 

"'...that which was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis quotes from his own novel, Perelandra. I have Perelandra upstairs but will not now go to look for that passage in the original.)

Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is a myth to Dominic Flandry (see Yggdrasil And Youth) but a real place to Odin and Loki (see Yggdrasil). Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods is set in a universe where Yggdrasil is real. That universe is visited by Virginia Matuchek from the goetic universe in Anderson's Operation Luna (see Mimir).

Neil Gaiman retells Norse myths and asks whether Ragnorak has happened yet. The ambiguity of the answer to this question makes these myths:

"...seem strangely present and current..."

-Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (London, 2018), p. xii)

- instead of just past.

Lewis, Anderson and Gaiman are a trinity of the imagination.

Virtual Yggdrasil

The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

When the L-5 colony disbanded, the Tree, a giant sequoia grown in low gravity, was allowed to die. Although the space station has been moved from its L-5 orbit to Lunar orbit and repopulated, no second Tree has been planted in it. 

Fenn has had virtual reality experiences of that Tree and also of Yggdrasil:

roots in earth, winterland and hell;

trunk soaring into heaven;

nine worlds strewn through windy, shadowy leafage;

the All-Tree whose fall brings divine doom and the end of time;

the wind in its boughs had told him something deep but unknown.

Once again, the wind speaks. 

 

Everyone retells myths. I did not know that Yggdrasil was meant to fall at the Ragnarok. If anything, the World Ash Tree seems to be absent from accounts of Ragnarok although I also though that Lif and Lifthrasir were said to have hidden among its branches. See Hoddmimis Holt.

Yggdrasil And Youth

A Stone In Heaven, see here.

At the age of sixty-one, Dominic Flandry reflects:

"...he wasn't yet elderly, he could still pace most men twenty or thirty years his junior, but a hundred variable cues kept him reminded that time was always gnawing, the snake at the root of Yggdrasil. Who was it had said once that youth was too precious to waste on the young?" (XI, p. 143)

We notice:

Norse mythological imagery in a hard sf novel;

an extremely meaningful interpretation of the snake gnawing at the root of Yggdrasil;

I thought that that quotation was from Oscar Wilde but googling reveals that it was George Bernard Shaw.

Norse Myths In Modern Fiction II

It is easy to remember books featuring Odin and the Aesir in diverse forms. However, I was reminded of Anderson's understated use of another aspect of Norse myth. Operation Chaos, like its inspiration, Heinlein's Magic Inc, had climaxed with an expedition to Hell, where Valeria Matuchek's parents rescued their kidnapped baby daughter. In a far less dramatic chapter of Operation Luna, Valeria's mother visits Yggdrasil to consult the oracular severed head, Mimir, who regularly advises the Aesir. Ginny and her guide, a dwarf, see the path trodden by Odin when he descends Yggdrasil to visit Mimir but they neither meet nor want to meet the Hanged God.

I remembered this as I was rereading Mike Carey's Lucifer which also mixes mythologies - Michael and Lucifer fight above Yggdrasil, Fenris Wolf attacks the angelic city etc. Also, the Nine Worlds featured in a recent Thor film. The myths live as fiction.

Yggdrasil III

"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, and he knew that three roots ran down to three of them, the worlds of the gods, the giants, and the dead.
"Wind tossed his hair."
-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), XXXV, p. 295.

It is the final chapter. Hadding/Njord has died and is back where he belongs but that is quite a complicated cosmography to visualize. (See also here.) Where are the other six worlds?

I think that I have exhausted Yggdrasil as it is presented in Poul Anderson's works. There is also an introductory summary in Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. The myths live as long as there are authors like Anderson and Gaiman.

Yggdrasil And The World's Moods

The Norse mythological World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil:

is a metaphor in Poul Anderson's Technic History/Dominic Flandry novel, A Stone In Heaven;

exists literally in Anderson's myth-retelling heroic fantasy novel, War Of The Gods;

exists in one of the many parallel universes in Anderson's Operation Luna.

We can handle any of these options but can we conceptualize a single universe that somehow incorporates every mythology? In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, when Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell, he expels the demons and damned, locks the now empty Hell behind him and gives the key to Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming. Various pantheons petition Morpheus to give them Hell, including Odin who hopes to survive the Ragnarok by sheltering in Hell! In Lucifer, Mike Carey's sequel to The Sandman, Lucifer visits Loki bound under the Earth. We read:

Lucifer: "There is a cavern at the heart of the world..."

Mazikeen: "Is there?"

Lucifer: "Sometimes. It depends what mood the world is in."

-Mike Carey, Lucifer: Inferno (New York, New York, 2004), p. 134, panel 2, captions 1-3.

Well, that explains everything. Cosmology changes with the world's moods.

All of these works are connected in the collective imagination.

The Tree

Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

"...the cosmos of an ancient mythology - Yggdrasil, with roots in earth, in winterland, and in hell, with trunk soaring up to heaven, and nine worlds strewn through the windy, shadowy leafage of its crown - Yggdrasil, the All-Tree, whose fall shall bring the doom of the gods and the end of time...." (p. 49)

Retellings of myths change them, unless the retelling is scholarly and academic. In the Eddas:

the Tree survived the Ragnarok;

the surviving human couple hid among its branches;

the old gods died but their children survived into a new heaven and earth.

Yggdrasil And Youth II

See Yggdrasil And Youth.

Youth is too precious to be wasted on the young? With age, we understand such statements whether or not we agree with them. In The Rebel Worlds, Dominic Flandry suggests that the Didonian composite consciousnesses have solved the "if youth would, if age could" problem.

When my mother quoted, "Youth is too precious to be wasted on the young," to me as a small child, it was said as a put down. There was real resentment across the "generation gap" between those born before the atom bomb and those born after it. By contrast, I have felt nothing but respect for my daughter and her generation.

Together, we must build a future instead of recriminating about our pasts and there might be a generation that has a more secure and enjoyable present. See Blue And Green Planet.

More Mixed Mythologies In Works By Three Authors

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Morpheus' raven, Matthew, visits (Norse) Swartalfheim - and indeed is involuntarily yanked away from there when ravens gather in the Dreaming because it is threatened by the (Greek) Furies. Swartalfheim, home of the dark elves or dwarves, and Alfheim, home of the light elves, are two of the Nine Worlds in the Ash Tree, Yggdrasil.

Alfheim (scroll down) is in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. Yggdrasil is in Anderson's Operation Luna and in Mike Carey's Lucifer, the sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman. Carey also gives a big role to Fenris Wolf. Firespear's elf-hounds had:

"...blood of Gram and Fenris and the Wild Hunt's dogs in them."

-The Broken Sword, XII, p. 89.

In The Sandman: Season Of Mists, messages from the (Biblical) One God are relayed by an angel and the former appears as an elderly gentleman in modern garb in Lucifer. He exists but remains in the background in Anderson's The Broken Sword and Operation Chaos.

Valkyries

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE.

Alianora's swan dress, which empowers her to metamorphose into a swan, is said to have:

"'...once belonged to the Valkyries.'" (p. 37)

What are the cosmological implications of this? Are the Norse pantheons a part of the Carolingian universe where they would have to belong to the Middle World, serving Chaos together with the Giants? But the Carolingian universe would not be able to incorporate Ginnungagap, Yggdrasil, Nine Worlds, Ragnarok etc. So has there been inter-cosmic contact?

Virginia Matuchek travels from her native goetic universe to the hell universe where she summons Thor as an enemy of Chaos;

later, Virginia travels to Mimir's Well below Yggdrasil in yet another universe;

Virginia's daughter meets Holger in the Old Phoenix.

Thus, we might infer from all this that the Valkyries to whom Alianora refers inhabit not the Carolingian but the Nordic universe.

What Abides

"Yggdrasil, the All-Tree, whose fall shall bring the doom of the gods and the end of time...."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 4, p. 49.

 

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

-see Yggdrasil.

That second quotation is from Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods. Myths are told in different forms and sometimes changed when retold. I think that "...it shall abide..." is closer to the Eddaic sources.

When intelligent beings travel between stars in sf, we have to be told how this is possible whereas, when gods travel between worlds in fantasy, we do not have to be told how it is possible. It is sufficient to ride Odin's horse or to traverse the rainbow.

A Leaf On Yggdrasil

"...we belong here. The atoms of our bodies were born of the primordial fireball and later great suns. Our race is a twig, our spirit a leaf on Yggdrasil, the tree of life that has grown, ever-changing, through billions of years to overshadow its world."
-Poul Anderson, Introduction IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. xi-xii AT p. xi.

I thought that this passage was sufficiently poetic and striking to warrant quotation. It seamlessly blends the polar opposites of Poul Anderson's fiction, Norse mythology and hard sf.

Remember: "Our race is a twig, our spirit a leaf..."

Yggdrasil II

We have read about the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil. Poul Anderson realizes it as a physical place in War Of The Gods (New York, 1997) and in Operation Luna (New York, 2000).

In War..., Odin and Loki climb over twisting and swaying branches and through "...caverns of leaf..." (p. 82) to the branch from which Odin hangs himself. He is sacrificed to himself. Loki wounds him with his own spear. We recognize the central act of Christianity in a pagan myth.

In ...Luna, Virginia (Ginny) Matuchek (a witch), Edgar (a raven, Ginny's familiar) and Fjalar (a dwarf) see:

smoky fog;
light from an unseen sky;
a root like a cliff rising from the soil;
rich green moss;
a trunk too broad to show curvature, fading in both directions, rearing as if forever;
a gleam brighter than gold;
the mouth of a tunnel;
Odin's path.

Other senses:

warmth, life like a tide, strength, abidingness;
a ghost of the wind between the worlds;
roots deeper than death, crown among the stars.

The wind is always with us.

Poul Anderson's Cosmologies

In War Of The Gods, Odin is hanged on Yggdrasil.

In Operation Luna, Virginia Matuchek consults Mimir at the roots of Yggdrasil.

In A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek visits the Old Phoenix Inn between universes.

In "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn visits the Old Phoenix.

In "Flight to Forever," a time machine traverses the circle of time.

In Tau Zero, a relativistic spaceship time dilates into the next cycle of an oscillating universe.

In The Avatar, the oldest intelligences in this universe survive into new universes.

In Starfarers, the universe began in a quantum fluctuation.

In the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, there are plans for consciousness to survive the heat death of the universe.

Observations

Multiple cosmologies.

Some interact.

There is a (very) indirect link between Odin and van Rijn.

In Defence Of Paganism

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), some characters defend Paganism with two kinds of argument:

(i) (a) the gods are good for us and
    (b) will harm us if we forsake them;
(ii) (a) Norse myths are good stories,
     (b) essential to our identity.

(i) (a) The White Christ is powerful but:

Odin is wise, uplifts us in battle and begot our first kings;
Thor sends rain and repels trolls;
Aegir gives good luck and catches at sea;
Ran welcomes drowned sailors;
Frey begets;
Freyja loves;
Frigga is the mother.

(i) (b) " 'Dreams have come to me, nightmares...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." ' " (p. 323)

- (b) has been disproved in practice.

(ii) (a) " '...is not the world of the gods a wonderful world? Green Yggdrasil, wherein grows and shines everything that is...Odin...Thor...' " (p. 314)

(ii) (b) " '...not something out of Romaborg or the Empire, but ours. Without them, how long can we remain ourselves?' " (p. 314)

- (b) remains valid but does not require the stories to be literally true.

Odin

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

I meant to summarize Odin's explanation (see here). However, that explanation is already a summary. I would merely have been repeating his phrases in list form so let's just quote his dialogue:

"'Not yet is this game between Aesir and Jotuns and the new gods played out. Tyrfing still gleams on the chessboard of the world. Thor broke it lest it strike at the roots of Yggdrasil; I brought it back and gave it to Skafloc because Bolverk, who alone could make it whole again, would never have done so for As or elf. The sword was needed to drive back the trolls - whom Utgard-Loki had been secretly helping - lest Alfheim be overrun by a folk who are friendly to the foemen of the gods. But Skafloc cannot be let keep the sword, for that which is in it will make him seek to wipe out the trolls altogether; and this the Jotuns dare not allow, so they would move in, and the gods would have to move against them, and the doom of the world would be at hand. Skafloc must fall, and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.'" (p. 196)

That is complicated and will require some discussion. Odin mentions "...the new gods..." but still does not explain how they fit in with everything else.

King Vanimen

The Merman's Children, V.

Before the merfolk king, Vanimen, addresses his dispossessed people, he reflects that:

"He must offer them more than the empty wail of the wind." (p.26)

The wind usually plays some role. Often, it emphasizes dramatic pauses in the dialogue. Here, its empty wailing contrasts with the significance of the speech that Vanimen is obliged to deliver.

The king's roles are:

to preside over infrequent folkmoots;

to judge disputes;

to deal with other communities;

to lead any united efforts;

to act as the master of festivals;

to transmit wisdom;

to counsel the young or troubled;

to preserve and teach lore;

to keep talismans;

to know spells;

to guard against monsters, evil magic and humanity;

to intercede with the Powers.

Regarding the Powers, he is said to have:

"...guested Ran herself...." (p. 28)

Ran is the wife of Aegir, the Norse mythological sea giant, who is also mentioned. Are we to understand that the Aegir, the Vanir and Yggdrasil had also existed in this timeline?

Metamythics

How are myths related? Who better to tell us than Poul Anderson, Neil Gaiman and Elliot S. Maggin?

Alternative mythologies can exist in parallel universes, e.g.:

Anderson's Holger Carlsen, trying to find his way back to the Carolingian universe, meets Aztec gods;

an inhabitant of Anderson's goetic universe, where scientifically rationalized magic works, visits Mimir's Well at the roots of Yggdrasil in the Norse mythological universe;

Hell is a full-entropy universe unto itself;

fictional characters who have become myths share a drink and a yarn between universes here.

In Gaiman's The Sandman, all gods begin in one place, the Dreaming, but might then disperse to parallel universes while remaining spiritually linked to their worshipers. When Lucifer closes Hell, other pantheons want it but a Higher Authority intervenes.

Elliot S. Maggin seems to fit all mythologies into a linear narrative, listing Achilles, David, Davy Crockett, John Henry, John Kennedy and Superman. He tells us that Achilles drove back the Trojans "...under a sun that was carried across the sky in Apollo's chariot..." and that David killed Goliath "...in a land where...the Creator of Heaven and Earth spoke through the mouths of men in rags whose eyes burned with the lights of Eternity."
-Elliot S. Maggin, Superman: Miracle Monday (Caveat Corner Books, 2017), Chapter 4, p. 35.

However, Elliot then adds:

"Real or imagined, the heroes lived..." (ibid.)