Mark David's Blog

Checkin Nov 2019

A new timeline!

Inspired by the dual timelines of the HBO TV-series True Detective, I’ve been developing the new timeline, an interesting one – being the present. This means the whole universe is brought right into the ‘here and now’, as one of the main characters, Swedish journalist Ulrika Strömberg proceeds to write the book she’d been fearing writing (the feature pic is the lady herself as she was back in the Eighties).

Ever since the time she interviewed an inmate of a Swedish high-security prison back in the 2000’s, imprisoned for treason. She’d tracked her down, since it seemed to her at the time that they shared a past neither of them really understood, part of the series of violent events from the late eighties. Ulrika sees how the ‘new cold war’ is igniting old embers into flames, people still around who never accounted for their sins, but she’s past all that, committed to justice even though it’s a bitter calling.

On the structure side of things, these scenes are ‘dribbled in’ here and there, adding a gateway into the past. Finally I get to mention such things as iPads and cell phones, a bit of a relief to be in the middle of the world we all know, a far cry from the world of the late cold war. This approach is also used in a book I read recently, ‘The Wise Man’s Fear’ by Patrick Rothfuss, book 2 in a fantasy trilogy that has my firm recommendation. The main character, a man of many powers with a reputation to follow, recites his past to a Chronicler. Most of the story follows being in ‘the present of his past’, with only occasional intervals in the present, as he recites his story. Ulrika is the Chronicler, but she is also part of the past. At this stage, none of the characters has really discovered what any of it is about, but it doesn’t matter, since the world proceeds along the paths chosen by the dedicated few.

Editing Labyrinth 2

I’ve been through the book now ‘on-screen’ – next stage is to download it to Kindle and read it well away from computer screens, taking the tole of critical reader and see if anything needs changing. This is always the final test for me, a last chance to weave threads tighter, correct anything that needs correcting and get the ‘real feel’ for it all, despite the fact I’ve been going over the same ground for a long time.

Editing is a long, slow process, and a very important one too. I take a couple of months to work through it, adding in little extra details, linking one thing with another. Violence gets more violent, action slows down into micro-details, as I do my best to get the reader inside the head of the character and experience what they experience. Once, a friend told me this was quite unique for him, the extent that the ‘experience of being submerged in the moment’. I guess that kind of makes it ‘my approach’ then, a development of ‘show don’t tell’ that also works in the way the brain speeds up when someone is threatened.

Small talk around the dinner table

On a side note, I met a journalist friend on Saturday evening, someone I talked with a couple of years back, just as I was editing my first book project. He asked how it was going, what the plans were and all the rest. So I brought him up to date, talking about the project for the first time in ages kind of brought me back ‘into the groove.’ It was an odd feeling, looking back, seeing the things done over a ten year period, and then face the harsh reality of ‘constructive criticism’, that any project needs an audience and how that audience has to be reached. We discussed how this could be done, touching on my criticisms of the Amazon-lead self-publishing world, the inundations of Amazon marketing hype, the need to be committed and grow a project slowly.

That was when I told him about the vagaries of the self-publishing world, of the complete uncertainty of creative projects, and the idea that no expectations means absolute freedom to do what any creative project needs: full commitment. We talked about the plans for the elements, a new name being with respect to pitching the TV-networks. It was then I decided the name for the series would be the same as trilogy 1: Labyrinth, the name of the trilogy still being developed.

A new name?

It’s not a new name. But a TV project does need something ‘immediate’. A one-worder people can ‘get’ even if they don’t know what it is about. A labyrinth in time is what the series is about. I decided on this for the simple reason that The Elements is simply too big for one project. With the Prologue, the first Trilogy and the Timeline books being written, the The Elements is ‘all of it’. That was when I saw that look in his eye, that ‘you’ve got to be crazy’ kind of look, that look that told me, ‘you creatives really need to get real, target your product and cut to the chase marketing it.’

It was quite interesting, opening up creative projects, and seeing how to some people, they really seem like fruitless endeavors. Yes, yes, very good I thought. I will look to marketing, but first I need to get a trilogy done.

So that kind of closes the loop, bringing me back to the release schedule: Labyrinth 2 will now be released in 2020.

Myths Of Creation

“Once there was another Sun and another Moon; a different Sun and a different Moon from the ones we see now. Sol was the name of that Sun and Mani was the name of that Moon. But always behind Sol and Mani wolves went, a wolf behind each. The wolves caught on them at last and they devoured Sol and Mani. And then the world was in darkness and cold.

In those times the Gods lived, Odin and Thor, Hödur and Baldur, Tyr and Heimdall, Vidar and Vali, as well as Loki, the doer of good and the doer of evil. And the beautiful Goddesses were living then, Frigga, Freya, Nanna, Iduna, and Sif. But in the days when the Sun and Moon were destroyed the Gods were destroyed too—all the Gods except Baldur who had died before that time, Vidar and Vali, the sons of Odin, and Modi and Magni, the sons of Thor.

At that time, too, there were men and women in the world. But before the Sun and the Moon were devoured and before the Gods were destroyed, terrible things happened in the world. Snow fell on the four corners of the earth and kept on falling for three seasons. Winds came and blew everything away. And the people of the world who had lived on in spite of the snow and the cold and the winds fought each other, brother killing brother, until all the people were destroyed.

Also there was another earth at that time, an earth green and beautiful. But the terrible winds that blew leveled down forests and hills and dwellings. Then fire came and burnt the earth. There was darkness, for the Sun and the Moon were devoured. The Gods had met with their doom. And the time in which all these things happened was called Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods.

Then a new Sun and a new Moon appeared and went traveling through the heavens; they were more lovely than Sol and Mani, and no wolves followed behind them in chase. The earth became green and beautiful again, and in a deep forest that the fire had not burnt a woman and a man wakened up. They had been hidden there by Odin and left to sleep during Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods.

Lif was the woman’s name, and Lifthrasir was the man’s. They moved through the world, and their children and their children’s children made people for the new earth. And of the Gods were left Vidar and Vali, the sons of Odin, and Modi and Magni, the sons of Thor; on the new earth Vidar and Vali found tablets that the older Gods had written on and had left there for them, tablets telling of all that had happened before Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods.

And the people who lived after Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods, were not troubled, as the people in the older days were troubled, by the terrible beings who had brought destruction upon the world and upon men and women, and who from the beginning had waged war upon the Gods.”

Padraic Colum (deceased) described the Beginning as The Twilight Of The Gods in the opening chapter to The Book of Northern Myths.

 

Myths of creation, the forces of disorder, chaos and Ragnarok

In the beliefs of the Norse and ancient Egypt, divine behavior was believed to govern all nature. Except for the few deities who disrupted the divine order. In Egyptian mythology, the gods’ actions maintained maat and created and sustained all living things. They did this work using a force the Egyptians called heka, a term usually translated as “magic”. Heka was a fundamental power that the creator god used to form the world and the gods themselves. The gods’ actions in the present are described and praised in hymns and funerary texts.

In contrast, mythology mainly concerns the gods’ actions during a vaguely imagined past in which the gods were present on earth and interacted directly with humans. The events of this past time set the pattern for the events of the present. Periodic occurrences were tied to events in the mythic past; the succession of each new pharaoh, for instance, reenacted Horus’ accession to the throne of his father Osiris. Myths are metaphors for the gods’ actions, which humans cannot fully understand.

They contain seemingly contradictory ideas, each expressing a particular perspective on divine events. The contradictions in myth are part of the Egyptians’ many-faceted approach to religious belief—what Henri Frankfort called a “multiplicity of approaches” to understanding the gods.

Creation

The first divine act is the creation of the cosmos, described in several creation myths. They focus on different gods, each of which may act as creator deities.

The eight gods of the Ogdoad, who represent the chaos that precedes creation, give birth to the sun god, who establishes order in the newly formed world; Ptah, who embodies thought and creativity, gives form to all things by envisioning and naming them; Atum produces all things as emanations of himself; and Amun, according to the myths promoted by his priesthood, preceded and created the other creator gods.

These and other versions of the events of creation were not seen as contradictory. Each gives a different perspective on the complex process by which the organized universe and its many deities emerged from undifferentiated chaos.

The period following creation, in which a series of gods rule as kings over the divine society, is the setting for most myths. The gods struggle against the forces of chaos and among each other before withdrawing from the human world and installing the historical kings of Egypt to rule in their place.

maat and duat

A recurring theme in these myths is the effort of the gods to maintain maat against the forces of disorder. They fight vicious battles with the forces of chaos at the start of creation. Ra and Apep, battling each other each night, continue this struggle into the present.

Another prominent theme is the gods’ death and revival. The clearest instance where a god dies is the myth of Osiris’ murder, in which that god is resurrected as ruler of the Duat. The sun god is also said to grow old during his daily journey across the sky, sink into the Duat at night, and emerge as a young child at dawn. In the process he comes into contact with the rejuvenating water of primordial chaos.

Funerary texts that depict Ra’s journey through the Duat also show the corpses of gods who are enlivened along with him. Instead of being changelessly immortal, the gods periodically died and were reborn by repeating the events of creation, thus renewing the whole world.

But it was always possible for this cycle to be disrupted and for chaos to return.

Some poorly understood Egyptian texts even suggest that this calamity is destined to happen—that the creator god will one day dissolve the order of the world, leaving only himself and Osiris amid the primordial waters of chaos.

And herein lies a parallel with Ragnarok:

In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_deities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnarök

Autochthon

According to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis.

The word autochthon (n.) means “one sprung from the soil he inhabits” (plural autochthones), from Greek autokhthon “aborigines, natives,” literally “sprung from the land itself,” used of the Athenians and others who claimed descent from the Pelasgians, from auto- “self” (see auto-) + khthon “land, earth, soil” (see chthonic).

Following extract: Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, by Ignatius Donnelly, [1882] (source: sacred-texts.com)

A priest of Sais said to Solon,

“You Greeks are novices in knowledge of antiquity. You are ignorant of what passed either here or among yourselves in days of old. The history of eight thousand years is deposited in our sacred books; but I can ascend to a much higher antiquity, and tell you what our fathers have done for nine thousand years; I mean their institutions, their laws, and their most brilliant achievements.”

Donelly writes (extracts)

CHAPTER II
THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS BECOME THE GODS OF THE GREEKS

“And here we find that the Flood that destroyed this land of the gods was the Flood of Deucalion, and the Flood of Deucalion was the Flood of the Bible, and this, as we have shown, was “the last great Deluge of all,” according to the Egyptians, which destroyed Atlantis.

The mythology of Greece is really a history of the kings of Atlantis. The Greek heaven was Atlantis. Hence the references to statues, swords, etc., that fell from heaven, and were preserved in the temples of the different states along the shores of the Mediterranean from a vast antiquity, and which were regarded as the most precious possessions of the people. They were relics of the lost race received in the early ages. Thus we read of the brazen or bronze anvil that was preserved in one city, which fell from heaven, and was nine days and nine nights in falling; in other words, it took nine days and nights of a sailing-voyage to bring it from Atlantis.”

Plato says (“Dialogues,” Timæus, vol. ii., p. 533): “Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and from these sprung Phorcys, and Chronos, and Rhea, and many more with them; and from Chronos and Rhea sprung Zeus and Hera, and all those whom we know as their brethren, and others who were their children.”

In other words, all their gods came out of the ocean; they were rulers over some ocean realm; Chronos was the son of Oceanus, and Chronos was an Atlantean god, and from him the Atlantic Ocean was called by tho ancients “the Chronian Sea.” The elder Minos was called “the Son of the Ocean:” he first gave civilization to the Cretans; he engraved his laws on brass, precisely as Plato tells us the laws of Atlantis were engraved on pillars of brass.

Uranos was deposed from the throne, and succeeded by his son Chronos. He was called “the ripener, the harvest-god,” and was probably identified with the beginning of the Agricultural Period. He married his sister Rhea, who bore him Pluto, Poseidon, Zeus, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. He anticipated that his sons would dethrone him, as he had dethroned his father, Uranos, and he swallowed his first five children, and would have swallowed the sixth child, Zeus, but that his wife Rhea deceived him with a stone image of the child; and Zeus was conveyed to the island of Crete, and there concealed in a cave.

Hercules dwelt on the island of “Erythea, in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.” Hercules took a ship, and after encountering a storm, reached the island and placed himself on Mount Abas. Hercules killed Geryon, stole the cattle, put them on the ship, and landed them safely, driving them “through Iberia, Gaul, and over the Alps down into Italy.” (Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 257.) This was simply the memory of a cattle raid made by an uncivilized race upon the civilized, cattle-raising people of Atlantis.

CHAPTER III
THE GODS OF THE PHŒNICIANS ALSO KINGS OF ATLANTIS

NOT alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phœnicians was drawn from the same source. For instance, we find in the Phœnician cosmogony that the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the Phœnician gods Agrus and Agrotus. This connects the Phœnicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.

According to Sanchoniathon, Ouranos was the son of Autochthon, and, according to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis. He married his sister Ge. He is the Uranos of the Greeks, who was the son of Gæa (the earth), whom he married. The Phœnicians tell us, “Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?).” Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis. These four sons probably represented four races, the offspring of the earth. The Greek Uranos was the father of Chronos, and the ancestor of Atlas. The Phœnician god Ouranos had a great many other wives: his wife Ge was jealous; they quarrelled, and he attempted to kill the children he had by her. This is the legend which the Greeks told of Zeus and Juno. In the Phœnician mythology Chronos raised a rebellion against Ouranos, and, after a great battle, dethroned him. In the Greek legends it is Zeus who attacks and overthrows his father, Chronos. Ouranos had a daughter called Astarte (Ashtoreth), another called Rhea. “And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was called Zeus-Arotrius.”

We find also, in the Phœnician legends, mention made of Poseidon, founder and king of Atlantis.

Chronos gave Attica to his daughter Athena, as in the Greek legends. In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and “circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing.” It would thus appear that this singular rite, practised as we have seen by the Atlantidæ of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.

“Chronos visits the different regions of the habitable world.”

He gave Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who had invented the alphabet. The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was represented among them as “the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world,” bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.

This not only connects the Phœnicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Phœnicians.

There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phœnicians. We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Phœnicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Phœnicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Phœnicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Phœnicians.

Sanchoniathon tells us, after narrating all the discoveries by which the people advanced to civilization, that the Cabiri set down their records of the past by the command of the god Taaut, “and they delivered them to their successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris), the inventor of the three letters, the brother of Chua, who is called the first Phœnician.” (Lenormant and Chevallier, “Ancient History of the East,” vol. ii., p. 228.)

This would show that the first Phœnician came long after this line of the kings or gods, and that he was a foreigner, as compared with them; and, therefore, that it could not have been the Phœnicians proper who made the several inventions narrated by Sanchoniathon, but some other race, from whom the Phœnicians might have been descended.

And in the delivery of their records to the foreigner Osiris, the god of Egypt, we have another evidence that Egypt derived her civilization from Atlantis.

Max Müller says:

“The Semitic languages also are all varieties of one form of speech. Though we do not know that primitive language from which the Semitic dialects diverged, yet we know that at one time such language must have existed. . . . We cannot derive Hebrew from Sanscrit, or Sanscrit from Hebrew; but we can well understand bow both may have proceeded from one common source. They are both channels supplied from one river, and they carry, though not always on the surface, floating materials of language which challenge comparison, and have already yielded satisfactory results to careful analyzers.” (“Outlines of Philosophy of History,” vol. i., p. 475.)

There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the Phœnicians migrated from the shores of the Erythræan Sea, and this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf; but there was a very old city of Erythia, in utter ruin in the time of Strabo, which was built in some ancient age, long before the founding of Gades, near the site of that town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. May not this town of Erythia have given its name to the adjacent sea? And this may have been the starting-point of the Phœnicians in their European migrations. It would even appear that there was an island of Erythea. In the Greek mythology the tenth labor of Hercules consisted in driving away the cattle of Geryon, who lived in the island of Erythea, “an island somewhere in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.” (Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 257.) Hercules stole the cattle from this remote oceanic island, and, returning drove them “through Iberia, Gaul, over the Alps, and through Italy.” (Ibid.) It is probable that a people emigrating from the Erythræan Sea, that is, from the Atlantic, first gave their name to a town on the coast of Spain, and at a later date to the Persian Gulf–as we have seen the name of York carried from England to the banks of the Hudson, and then to the Arctic Circle.

The builders of the Central American cities are reported to have been a bearded race. The Phœnicians, in common with the Indians, practised human sacrifices to a great extent; they worshipped fire and water, adopted the names of the animals whose skins they wore–that is to say, they had the totemic system–telegraphed by means of fires, poisoned their arrows, offered peace before beginning battle, and used drums. (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. v., p. 77.)

The extent of country covered by the commerce of the Phœnicians represents to some degree the area of the old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Mediterranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to Ireland and England; while from north to south they ranged from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civilization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Columbus sailed to discover a new world, or re-discover an old one, he took his departure from a Phœnician seaport, founded by that great race two thousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean sailor, with his Phœnician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had been closed when Plato’s island sunk in the sea. And it is a curious fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind’s eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he thought it was the river Gihon, that flowed out of Paradise, and he wrote home to Spain, “There are here great indications suggesting the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable.”

Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judæa was derived from the Phœnicians. It would appear probable that, while other races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the Phœnicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Phœnician stock, and the people of America.

Upon the Syrian sea the people live

Who style themselves Phœnicians. . . .

These were the first great founders of the world—

Founders of cities and of mighty states–

Who showed a path through seas before unknown.

In the first ages, when the sons of men

Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned

To each his first department; they bestowed

Of land a portion and of sea a lot,

And sent each wandering tribe far off to share

A different soil and climate. Hence arose

The great diversity, so plainly seen,

‘Mid nations widely severed.

Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 3

***

Cover image credit: Leon Bakst’s vision of cosmic catastrophe

The Ynglingar

Extract from forthcoming book: Vol 2 of Viking Legends and Norse Mythology:

The Ynglingar

In any mythology, even fictitious ones as we know from Tolkien, there is always an origin, a source or a historical reference, no matter how fragile. We haven’t even begun to unravel the distant threads in time that has lead to the creation of the Norse Mythological pantheon, and if we needed the right place to begin, then it begins here, with the royal house of the Ynglings, called the Ynglingar. Perhaps, it is an impossible task, since Historians often added fable to fantasy and fantasy to fable to lend credence to the myths held to be all pervasive in Viking times. And yet, there exist fragments, glimpses into possibility that connections existing across bloodlines that stretched farther back than we can know with any certainty, since no records exist to tell fact from fiction.

To describe what is the oldest of all the Scandinavian royal Viking bloodlines, the Ynglings is a journey into the past the imagination of those who captured the past, but told as part of myth. The Ynglingar are a people who were said to have arrived in Sweden from the East. The tombs of which has been described in Volume 1, a people who are said to be descended from Odin’s race from Ásaland, Asgard, the land of the Gods. So to understand the significance of the Ynglingar, we have to go farther back in time and legend, back to the tales of migrations from the South of Europe. And even though concepts have been added by scholars and tale-tellers, it has to be left up to the imagination of the reader to accept myths, bust them or find the middle ground in-between.

The Heimskringla↵ is a collection of sagas relating to the blood line of the Norwegian kings, telling of the original homelands of the Norse Gods. The origins of the Norwegian royal bloodline starts comes from the Ynglingar. In the recounting of the legends/history, each chapter is a saga, translated as ‘tale’. The first of these tells the mythological prehistory of the Norwegian royal dynasty, tracing Odin of the people called the Vanir from the Age of Migrations. Described as a mortal man, Odin and his followers came from the East, from Asaland and Asgard, its chief city, to their settlement in central East Sweden close to the Baltic. The sagas tell of the contests of the kings, the establishment of the kingdom of Norway and Viking expeditions.  Pitted against Odin, we have the people of Vanaheimr, the Vanir. In Norse cosmology↵, is considered one of the Nine Worlds. Of the descendants of Odin emerged the royal bloodlines of legend.

Certainly at the root of all the Kings of Swedish Viking legend, lies a more fascinating and rich tapestry of chiefs, horse warriors and pagan deeds that in time. But had there really been a war that became myth? Had there been some incident far back in the mists of time that became embellished into the Myths of the Scandinavian people?

Moving on from beliefs about the underworld and the afterlife, we enter the wonderfully obscure zone where myths begin and where history isn’t told, but can only be glimpsed, but only if we squint our eyes, so we can hardly see where we are looking. Discovering who these people were, people who became Nordic gods has been, in the words of one Historian, “like moving from a room lighted by the occasional flash of a dying fire to one where we have to grope in absolute darkness.”

The sources are few and what accounts there are, are often contradictory. However, out of the mists of time, it is becoming increasingly possible to place the traces of the legendary past into some kind of order. As online resources continue to grow, so does our collective knowledge of the past. We can relate one old book to another without ever having to move beyond the comfort of our chair. This is a quest of discovery and rediscovery where I hope to unlock a little of that vast resource and bring it alive.

Grottasongr

Origins of the Maelstrom

Extract from the forthcoming Vol. 2 in the Viking and Norse series:

Grottasongr is what can be called a true Scandinavian fairy tale, in essence a poem put to song by two young slave girls. Slavery is one of the most overlooked aspects of Old Norse culture, and it was common for girls and boys to be bought to serve in the houses of the fledgling nobility.

The Prose Edda tells us that is a time of peace – the Pax Romana having spread to the lands of the North – that their ruled in Denmark king Frothi. This King of legend travels to his counterpart Kings in Sweden, journeying to Old Uppsala. Here he buys two slave girls called Menya and Fenya, both big and strong. They are taken back to Denmark, to serve the Danish house of the Scyldings at Old Lethra, serving King Frothi, or Frode, or Frodo, a name that is familiar to all of us. The two girls are put to work, tied to a magic grindstone, Grótti too big for any man to turn. They are ordered to grind without rest, grinding out the wealth for the king and sing for his household. King Frothi is demanding, and the no matter how hard the girls work for him, it is never enough and on they must grind. Eventually they reveal to the king that they are descended from Mountain Giants, that they are infamous warriors and feel that they feel badly treated and prophesize the coming of a great army that will take from him the wealth they have created. They tell him, that they require the blood of human sacrifice to warm them. Their message falls on deaf ears and on they grind until they break the turning ark of the grindstone. This is when, unable to turn any more, they turn and face the King, uttering to him their prophecy of vengeance:

Mölum enn framar. Let us grind on!

Mun Yrsu sonr, Yrsa’s son,

niðr Halfdanar, Hálfdan’s kinsman

hefna Fróða; will avenge Fróthi:

sá mun hennar he will of her

heitinn verða be called

burr ok bróðir, son and brother:

vitum báðar þat. we both know that

– Gróttasöngr: The Lay of Grótti, The Mill Song

And on they grind, harder and harder, grinding stone on stone, turning it by an impossible force until the grindstone itself is wrecked and split in two, the destruction of the stone matching their increasing wrath at the intransigence of the King. The song is finally finished with the impending arrival of the army, saying the last line:

Frothi, we have ground to the point where we must stop, now the ladies have had a full stint of milling.

This is the end of the peace for Frothi and the Kingdoms experience war into the Viking Age and beyond. A King from the sea called Mysi attacks Frothi, killing him and taking all of the wealth of his House as predicted by the two giantesses. Mysi takes Fenya and Menya with him on his ships and asks them to grind salt. They grind for him but it is never enough, until, unwilling to grind any more, they stop and the ships of the King sink beneath the ocean. Finally, a giant whirlpool swallows the ships and all their men, grindstones turning.

From this saga we get the name for whirpool, ‘mill’ and ‘stream’ – ‘mill stream’, or ‘maelstrom’. This is how and why the sea produces salt.

Viking and Norse Vol 2

Volume 2

The next volume in the Viking and Norse series is nearing end of first draft. Writing non-fiction is wonderful, but it takes a lot more time to get a book – at least a book that aims to be a useful resource – done. This blog introduces the book in progress and reveal some of what this series is an important undertaking for me. The following is an extract from the introduction.

The Nordic World

The Nordic world was one based on a belief in gods. The gods were divided into two groups: The Vanir under Freyr and the Æsir, people who had as their leader one called Othinn, or Odin. We know the gods from myths and the myths we know as fantastic tales, stories told in the past to children explaining how the world came to be and how it functioned, what our place was in it and how our fate was decided, and where we go when we die. How these gods came to be in the world, for the Norse called ‘Middle Earth’, was told in the tales of creation.

What of the gods weren’t gods at all, but were myths created from the tales of real people? And what if these real people, were the ancient bloodlines that came to us through the few, scarce sources that survived centuries of pillage, fire, theft and destruction?

In this second volume, we go back in time to the pre-Viking age, to the time where we know very little, since in an Age when everything committed to script was undertaken by the few, when works perished. We call the times after the end of the Roman Empire the ‘Dark Ages’. These times were not as dark as we would believe, but remain dark to us, since we have so little written material to rediscover the past. From the abundance of records from the Roman era, the written history of northern Europe is reduced to a trickle. The farther north we go, the less the written evidence available. Until, crossing from Germania into Scandza, the lands of the realms of the gods, the trickle stops altogether.

Myth Origins

Moving on from beliefs about the underworld and the afterlife, we enter the wonderfully obscure zone where myths begin and where history isn’t told, but can only be glimpsed, but only if we squint our eyes, so we can hardly see where we are looking. Discovering who these people were, people who became Nordic gods has been, in the words of one Historian,

“like moving from a room lighted by the occasional flash of a dying fire to one where we have to grope in absolute darkness.”

The sources are few and what accounts there are, are often contradictory. However, out of the mists of time, it is becoming increasingly possible to place the traces of the legendary past into some kind of order. As online resources continue to grow, so does our collective knowledge of the past. We can relate one old book to another without ever having to move beyond the comfort of our chair.

This is a quest of discovery and rediscovery where I hope to unlock a little of that vast resource and bring it alive.

The lands of Scandinavia and Northern Germany were literally littered with many different tribes, each tribe ruled by its own King, tribes fighting for scarce territory and resources. Today we look at maps and we see nations. In our age, the nation is the unit that defines who we are, what language we speak, how we dress and what we do. This was not always the way.

Tribal Origins

In the time during the end of the Roman Empire, Europe was divided into micro-tribal territories. Tribes fought each other for land, men battled and died and life went on.

To understand this reality of the time, we have to imagine we are not of a nation. Imagine we belong to ‘our territory’, that our chief is our King, but one who holds sway over a land that can be covered as far as a horse can ride in a day or two. That is our reality.

Next to us, are cousins. We understand each other, but their dress and dialect is a little different. They are them and we are us. We do not belong tho them, because they live over there and are different. Next to them is another tribe, one we may find harder to understand, and they us. And on it goes, the landscape we know today dotted with tribal lands, from the Cimbri in the north of the Cimbrian peninsula, the Fundusii, the Charudes, the Chali, Cobandi, the Sabalingii, the Sigulones, all were tribes working our way down, before we even get to one we do know, the Saxones, the Saxons and the Teutones, the Teutons.

Checkin Nov 2017

A new timeline!

Inspired by the dual timelines of the HBO TV-series True Detective, I’ve been developing the new timeline, an interesting one – being the present. This means the whole universe is brought right into the ‘here and now’, as one of the main characters, Swedish journalist Ulrika Strömberg proceeds to write the book she’d been fearing writing (the feature pic is the lady herself as she was back in the Eighties).

Ever since the time she interviewed an inmate of a Swedish high-security prison back in the 2000’s, imprisoned for treason. She’d tracked her down, since it seemed to her at the time that they shared a past neither of them really understood, part of the series of violent events from the late eighties. Ulrika sees how the ‘new cold war’ is igniting old embers into flames, people still around who never accounted for their sins, but she’s past all that, committed to justice even though it’s a bitter calling.

On the structure side of things, these scenes are ‘dribbled in’ here and there, adding a gateway into the past. Finally I get to mention such things as iPads and cell phones, a bit of a relief to be in the middle of the world we all know, a far cry from the world of the late cold war. This approach is also used in a book I read recently, ‘The Wise Man’s Fear’ by Patrick Rothfuss, book 2 in a fantasy trilogy that has my firm recommendation. The main character, a man of many powers with a reputation to follow, recites his past to a Chronicler. Most of the story follows being in ‘the present of his past’, with only occasional intervals in the present, as he recites his story. Ulrika is the Chronicler, but she is also part of the past. At this stage, none of the characters has really discovered what any of it is about, but it doesn’t matter, since the world proceeds along the paths chosen by the dedicated few.

Editing Labyrinth 2

I’ve been through the book now ‘on-screen’ – next stage is to download it to Kindle and read it well away from computer screens, taking the tole of critical reader and see if anything needs changing. This is always the final test for me, a last chance to weave threads tighter, correct anything that needs correcting and get the ‘real feel’ for it all, despite the fact I’ve been going over the same ground for a long time.

Editing is a long, slow process, and a very important one too. I take a couple of months to work through it, adding in little extra details, linking one thing with another. Violence gets more violent, action slows down into micro-details, as I do my best to get the reader inside the head of the character and experience what they experience. Once, a friend told me this was quite unique for him, the extent that the ‘experience of being submerged in the moment’. I guess that kind of makes it ‘my approach’ then, a development of ‘show don’t tell’ that also works in the way the brain speeds up when someone is threatened.

Small talk around the dinner table

On a side note, I met a journalist friend on Saturday evening, someone I talked with a couple of years back, just as I was editing my first book project. He asked how it was going, what the plans were and all the rest. So I brought him up to date, talking about the project for the first time in ages kind of brought me back ‘into the groove.’ It was an odd feeling, looking back, seeing the things done over a ten year period, and then face the harsh reality of ‘constructive criticism’, that any project needs an audience and how that audience has to be reached. We discussed how this could be done, touching on my criticisms of the Amazon-lead self-publishing world, the inundations of Amazon marketing hype, the need to be committed and grow a project slowly.

That was when I told him about the vagaries of the self-publishing world, of the complete uncertainty of creative projects, and the idea that no expectations means absolute freedom to do what any creative project needs: full commitment. We talked about the plans for the elements, a new name being with respect to pitching the TV-networks. It was then I decided the name for the series would be the same as trilogy 1: Labyrinth, the name of the trilogy still being developed.

A new name?

It’s not a new name. But a TV project does need something ‘immediate’. A one-worder people can ‘get’ even if they don’t know what it is about. A labyrinth in time is what the series is about. I decided on this for the simple reason that The Elements is simply too big for one project. With the Prologue, the first Trilogy and the Timeline books being written, the The Elements is ‘all of it’. That was when I saw that look in his eye, that ‘you’ve got to be crazy’ kind of look, that look that told me, ‘you creatives really need to get real, target your product and cut to the chase marketing it.’

It was quite interesting, opening up creative projects, and seeing how to some people, they really seem like fruitless endeavors. Yes, yes, very good I thought. I will look to marketing, but first I need to get a trilogy done.

So that kind of closes the loop, bringing me back to the release schedule: Labyrinth 2 will be released in Jan 2018.

A New Beginning

I’ve been doing a lot of re-thinking recently. I’ve decided to start the long, slow road to writing a screenplay for The Elements, based on developing a pitch for the streaming TV networks. The simple truth of self-publishing is, it’s for the most part a waste of time in terms of discoverability. The re-sellers like Amazon actually seem to try to keep a new author hidden, so even if I search my author name, I can’t find my books, since only sales stats and sales count. So if I can’t use re-sellers to be discovered, what is the point?

The point is, forget about self-publishing. Forget about sales. Develop craft, product as and when you feel inspired to do so, share with those few people who care, and let it grow slow.

As part of this new philosophy, I’ve resorted to a new simple contact with my developing story universe, linking the past to the future. For those who know the wonderful conceptual structures used by Christopher Nolan in film-making, he uses a sense of time in almost everything he does. Inception is a wonderful immersion in the relativity of time, from one dream state to another. In Interstellar, the regular beat of time is nowhere more conceptually manifest than when the decision is made to descend to the planet close to the black hole Gargantuan, where one year of life on earth passes in the beat of time made apparent in the wonderfully evocative music composed by Hans Zimmer. The impact of the waves scene unites all in what I believe is a truly powerful piece of moviemaking.

The Elements is also about time, but looks at time in a different way, but shares a lot of common ground.

Time is never made more real to us than in the impact the past has in those things we can’t really explain that conditions the present.

Therefore The Elements is really about the structures in time and how truth is hidden within them. To this end, the structure of time itself and the threads of the story I am now visualizing as part of a new drive to TV-network pitching.

The Elements will be called Labyrinth, a labyrinth in time. A labyrinth of deception and lies. And a labyrinth, where somewhere, their lies the truth, a cosmic premise waiting to be discovered that renders all the deceptions of mankind ultimately worthless. As part of this new re-think, I’m now adding in a new thread, the present. Here’s an extract from the ‘pitch in progress’:

***

LABYRINTH is an epic of storytelling that bridges the present to the past… and the future in ways never attempted before in fiction.

In the present, a reporter is isolated from her own past, having relocated to Baja California, to live a life of solitude, to come to terms with life that she has yet to make any sense of.

She bears with her a secret from the past that could redefine the very soul of mankind. Except, this secret has been perverted by the lies and deceptions of men who have dominated a world for so long that the world has forgotten what it used to be.

In the present she sits at a remote homestead bathed in the eternal orange glow of the desert. Here she returns to a world, the half-way recent past between her present and the past of her youth when she became a part of. She immerses herself in events she is still coming to terms with more than thirty years later. And as she writes, she becomes aware of the future, of the rise of a new threat she isn’t sure is just perceived or is so real as to become the final showdown amidst a new cold war waiting to be reignited.

In the present, old are the divisions. New is how they are once again torn open in a new fight between the divided East and the divided West in a world where global warming is all but forgotten about in the games played by the ignorant few who set the course for the many.

The main storylines of Labyrinth are based in her past

And in the past, we return to a world that has formed the present, when Europe was moving towards a final confrontation, except none of the ruling elite could see it coming. The fall of the Berlin Wall is not anticipated, the powers behind the scenes busy building webs of deception. An unseen battle is going on behind the scenes, as a cash-starved USSR becomes hungry for Western technology.

In the past, intelligence provided by a defector becomes a catalyst for a complex chain reaction, of cause and effect, projected not only forward to future events, but also backwards shedding new light raising new questions concerning disturbing incidents of the past.

The implications to the chain reaction are revealed by the characters, whose investigations reach back to events from the First World War, the use of Danish resistance operations controlled from London to later NATO operations of the cold war still shrouded in secrecy. The key to unlocking these secrets resides in a discovery of truth concerning the shadowy figure Eddie, a founding father of the most secret of Secret Intelligence Services.

Legend in all but name, if Eddie’s legacy were to become known it could threaten to undermine the carefully laid plans to destabilize the East-West balance.

As Ulrika in the present sits in her chair in Baja California, she returns to both the interviews she had conducted in a more recent past, the time she attempted to piece together the deeds of the more distant past she became a part of. In what becomes a search for the truth, as the more is revealed of Eddie’s past, the higher the stakes rise and the more the story transcends the limitations of normal life, the boundaries between the hidden and the visible world becoming increasingly blurred.

This is the new beginning, a scene to be added to the beginning of the already published Naked Ground:

The present day. Somewhere in Baja, California

There was always two sides to quiet and solitude. They were two distinct entities, yet the boundary between them was as indistinct as the line separating the Mojave from the Colorado desert. Neither had anything to do with the constant wind that blew in from the desert, whipping the air into a rising tide of dust, or did it have anything to do with the almost unnatural orange glow in the sky in the early morning and late afternoon, obliterating the once clear views to a horizon she couldn’t understand anymore. As far as quiet went, the silence wasn’t total. There was the soft hum of a car, the thrum of what she guessed had to be the refrigerator. But it was quiet and the quiet only caused a greater sense of frustration, as the women who had once called herself Ulrika Strömberg hunted for a word that still evaded her, despite the passing of the years, despite the attempt to journey overseas to start a new life. And then there was the solitude.

Solitude wasn’t being alone, she was used to being alone. It was being isolated… of not being to interact with the world, a world that had passed her life away in the blink of an eye. A world that for the most part, existed as memory, a world removed from afar like a distant echo of reality that had almost never been.

Without really knowing why, she looked across at the first of the many files piled high on her desk, and opened it. It was a picture of herself, taken in 1987. She had been… she didn’t even care to recall how old she had been. Young. And carefree. A young reporter on the hot trail of a hot story, oblivious to the warning signs. That story had taken her to, well, a place that changed her life, forever. She wondered briefly what would have happened to her life, if she had just kept walking, hadn’t thumbed for a ride back into Stockholm on a rainy day on a forest and ended up in the middle of a war no one knew about.

She would probably be dead, she realized. If she hadn’t been picked up that day, she would have returned to Stockholm, made a report in a newspaper about what had happened. She would have written up all the angles, recited what there was to be written. And that would have been that. She would most likely have been killed; by two, three or more bullets to her head as a car passed her at night, as she walked back to her apartment, silenced by the cold of a war that no one really knew for what it really was. So though she had been stupid, and stupidity is something in great supply in the young and the headstrong, her stupidity had saved her life in a world that had gone mad. Her stupidity meant she had tried to get back, had thumbed for a lift, had taken the first car that stopped by… and that was why she had never made it back to Stockholm. And that was why she was still alive, since she never wrote the story. And she had been beautiful, once upon a time. Beautiful and stupid and thank the gods for that.

She put the photograph away, closing off that part of her that still suffered from the things that had occurred back then. She stifled a shudder, deep forbidden memories stirring. In the end, it was the onward march of time that had lead her to take the decision: the decision to write.

And that was why the quiet had another side to it, since it allowed her to finally collect her thoughts. She had been waiting for the right time to begin, even though deep down she knew there was no such thing as the right time. She had no idea to whom this was for, if anyone would be in the slightest bit interested in reading any of it at all. And that was why she had taken 15 years to get to sitting here today, slouched in a chair from Ikea behind a sheet of glass from California, wondering if anyone would really care.

She got up and walked outside and sat on her chair in the veranda, sitting down to enjoy the warming late afternoon rays of the Californian sun, California dreaming before the fading shapes of Joshua trees. From hangmen caught in the gallows to Joshua trees; it was a strange juxtaposition and she tried to close her mind to the pull of emotions, feeling a rising tide.

What had started as an inner feeling had become a premonition, that she couldn’t leave this alone. She reclined in the simple reclining chair made of wooden boards with rounded edges they called an Amerikaner where she came from. She closed her eyes to the sunshine and flexed her fingers, feeling the writing itch she knew had returned. Tales like these didn’t belong in the modern world, with politicians who made an art form out of lying in public, where one country hacked the political mechanisms of another, where news was false, even when it wasn’t. It was a world of machines taking over jobs from the now unemployed, where news agencies vied for statistics instead of stories. All of this had at one time, never been here at all. Once, there had been a world without computers, social media or cell phones. A world where meetings were made in person, not on screen, when an arrangement was an arrangement, when people picked up a phone and made a call… yes, the world had changed. Deep down, she knew it hadn’t changed for the better.

There was this generation thing. What was the letter now?

First you had the baby boomers, these were the people she wanted to bring to justice, those of them that were left. Then there was generation X. This was her, the pre-Millennials. Then generation Y, the Millennial generation. Now there was this new generation, Z. What would the Z’s stand for? She wondered. Would they care less, this new generation? About shadows, secrets and lies from the past? Would they ever know the world they inhabited had been formed by those who had always escaped the light? Of course not. Real stories weren’t entertaining enough. And this one had none of those countless superheroes, dragons, or whatever else it was all the Z’s were into. Hers was the MTV generation, of great music, fancy clothes and stable jobs. But what of Angelica? She was an in-between, she thought, too late to be a baby-boomer, too early to have been an X. Perhaps that was why she never fit in, a victim to baby-boomer MGS’s, Grey Men In Grey Suits, as she had called them, all vestiges of world gone and forgotten. So deep down, she knew, no one was really interested in a story like this, with the many angles, the spy-shadowed secrets or the schemes of people long since dead and buried. Even if it did involve some of the most amazing discoveries no one ever knew abou…

The word was incarceration, that was it. The word that sounded like something you got by getting to near to something sharp.

She opened her eyes, took in the last rays of the sun then pulled herself out of beloved chair and listed to the beat of her feet on the floorboards. They beat a rhythm back to her laptop. She tapped a key and activated the screen, feeling the new beginning.

Heorot — Tolkien’s Meduseld, Hall Of Kings

Overlooking a shallow meandering valley, raised on a hill facing South are the remains of perhaps, two of the most important constructions for our collection understanding of the Hero Age in the middle of what is known as the Dark Ages.But before we get to this place, let’s go to somewhere we all know.

This is an extract from the book-in-progress, presenting ten years of research, sources writing The Elements and Viking Legends and Norse Mythology. Sign up for the occasional newsletter, follow Mark David on Twitter @authorMarkDavid. 

Rohan in Middle-Earth is the name given to the windswept open plains north-west of the realm of Gondor. Here the horse lords dwell, the Rohirrim — Sindarin for People of the Horse-lords, the herdsmen and warriors of the ‘riddermark’. Riddermark is a translation of the Nordic ‘knight-riding field’ — a ‘ridder’ being a knight and ‘mark’ a field or landscape. Conceptualized as the “Horse Lords of Rohan” allied with Gondor in early drafts of 1939, the Rohirrim took their final form in 1942 when about one third of The Lord of the Rings was completed.

The place we know is the one that is central to the lands of Rohan – Edoras, the city of the horse-lords built on the hill in a valley of the white mountains at the top of the valley known as Harrowdale. Crowning the town on a hill was the great horse-lord hall called Meduseld. This article is all about such halls that existed in real life, the basis for the tale of Beowulf.

 

Heorot in Winter by Pete Amachree on Deviant Art. ©2008–2017 PeteAmachree

Tolkien based the Rohirrim on Anglo-Saxon/ Beowulf tradition, Anglo-Saxon horse warriors themselves being part of a greater common cultural warrior identity that spread from Sweden through Denmark and North Germany, Holland to East Anglia.

Meduseld is described as a large hall with a straw roof which, in the low rays of the sun gave it the appearance of being made of gold. The word Maeduselde, in Anglo-Saxon means mead-hall, a hall where, just like the Vikings, mead-drinking feasts were held to celebrate kings, festivities, and victories. Within, the halls of Meduseld were adorned with rich tapestries and the sigils of the horse lords.

Origins

The direct source for Meduseld is the legendary hall of Heorot, the mead-hall of Hroðgar, the king of Denmark. The name Heorot means “Hall of the Hart” (a Hart is a male deer), being “the foremost of halls under heaven”. This is how the description of Heorot would have sounded in the days of Beowulf’s composition:

Then, as I have heard, the work of constructing a building

Was proclaimed to many a tribe throughout this middle earth.

In time — quickly, as such things happen among men —

It was all ready, the biggest of halls.

He whose word was law

Far and wide gave it the name “Heorot”.

The men did not dally; they strode inland in a group

Until they were able to discern the timbered hall,

Splendid and ornamented with gold.

The building in which that powerful man held court

Was the foremost of halls under heaven;

Its radiance shone over many lands.

Beowulf

In prose this reads:

“It came in his mind to bid his henchmen a hall uprear, a master mead-house, mightier far than ever was seen by the sons of earth, and within it, then, to old and young he would all allot that the Lord had sent him, save only the land and the lives of his men. Wide, I heard, was the work commanded, for many a tribe this mid-earth round, to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered, in rapid achievement that ready it stood there, of halls the noblest: Heorot he named it whose message had might in many a land. Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt, treasure at banquet: there towered the hall, high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting of furious flame. Nor far was that day when father and son-in-law stood in feud for warfare and hatred that woke again. With envy and anger an evil spirit endured the dole in his dark abode, that he heard each day the din of revel high in the hall: there harps rang out, clear song of the singer.”

Was there a real Heorot?

In a word, yes, though this is ‘speculative probability’, meaning, it is probable but not certain. The evidence lies in the legends and sagas and certainly, many researchers and scholars think so. I believe so, certainly, based on going through the different sources, comparing these to the archaeological evidence. Heorot corresponds to Hleiðargarðr, seat of King Hroðulf — Hrólfr Kraki, the great hall mentioned in Hrólf Kraki’s saga. This was located at present day Old Lejre.

 

Beowulf arrives at Heorot. By Liam Reagan on Deviant Art. ©2015–2017 liamreagan21

Lethragard

In my fiction work, I use the place name ‘Lethragard’, as this is the name I have provided for the seat of the legendary kings of old based at Old Lejre, stemming from Leðra, pronounced in English ‘Lethra’. Gard is the Nordic name for a place, as we know from Tolkien as in Isengard, the place of Isen. Gard can mean farm, or a homestead. It is also used to mark the seat of a ruler, hence Lethra-gard.

I have visited Old Lejre many times over the last ten years during the development of The Elements. Called ‘Lethra’ in The Elements, in accordance with the old name leiðar with the soft ‘d’, this little village South of Roskilda nestles next to a stream-valley where the monuments of the later Vikings can still be seen today. The area is mentioned by the medieval chroniclers Saxo Grammaticus. It has been written by the medieval chronicler Sven Aggesen in the 12th century, the very oldest of the written material from Denmark chroniclers, that Lejre was the chief residence of Hroðgar’s Skjöldung clan, or Skjoldungs (“Scylding” in Beowulf).

 

Hrothgar’s distress by JYoung82 on Deviant Art. ©2014–2017 JYoung82

The hall being large enough to allow Hrothgar to present Beowulf with a gift of eight horses, each with gold-plate headgear. As halls in the Viking age, the great abode functioned both as a throne-room, a hearth, a residence for the king’s thanes (warriors). It was the very symbol of rule and power, coming to manifestation under the Danish Viking King who built a series of circular forts, all divided into quadrants, each quadrant featuring four great halls arranged as squares, each fort comprising 16 halls in all. This, like Heorot not only from legend — but Heorot in reality, was the epitome at that time of human civilization and culture in the North, as well as the might of the Danish kings.

With the legendary deeds of Haldan and his successors written by the Danish chroniclers of the 12th century from oral tradition and possibly older written sources no longer known, it is most probable that the entire area around Lethra was founded on oral tradition. Such traditions continued on into the Age of Nordic Heroes with the tales told that were the real legends based on real deeds behind the telling of the tale of Beowulf. As testimony to this area and the importance it holds not only for the Norse, but indeed for the world understanding Norse culture in the age of heroes I decided to base the first three books in The Elements series in a fictional rendition of present-day Lethra for the simple reason, that the history of this area is fascinating. Little remains today to make a visit any kind of revelation.

Grendel comes to Heorot. By Liam Reagan on Deviant Art. ©2015–2017 liamreagan21

Interested in Tolkien’s sources, Viking legends and cutting edge fiction?

I’m currently developing a new no-holds-barred series, making my research available for reading or as sources for those interested fantasy, history, legend and mythological interest. Each book in the Viking Legends and Norse Mythology series will be digital-only, published as eTEXT linking to the world’s online sagas, libraries and resources. Signup for The Elements newsletter to receive pre-publication news.

Review of Fear of Broken Glass

Originally posted by author David Higgins  5TH MAY 2017 ~ DAVE HIGGINS

‘Dave Higgins writes speculative fiction, often with a dark edge. Despite forays into the mundane worlds of law and IT, he was unable to completely escape the liminal zone between mystery and horror. A creature of contradictions, he also co-writes comic sci-fi with Simon Cantan.’

 

Review of Fear Of Broken Glass

Merging ancient pagan magic with gritty realism, David creates a novel that lies in the liminal zone between occult thriller and bleak mystery.

This book is a prologue to The Elements series. When the body of Thomas Denisen, an art dealer, is found dead in Tiveden National Park, Sweden, the case is assigned to Hasse Almquist. The mutilations of the body echo pagan rituals carried out at the site centuries earlier. However, they also suggest links to a series of unsolved murders that has obsessed Almquist for over a decade. With the opportunity to both find closure and improve his tarnished reputation, he decides to isolate Denisen’s companions in the farmhouse they have rented until he can tease out the truth. However, with each conversation only raising more questions about both Denisen and the lost masterpiece discovered in the boot of his car, Almquist finds the truth slipping further and further away.

David describes this novel as a combination of Dan Brown conspiracy thriller and Scandinavian noir mystery. With a plot that weaves runic inscriptions and pagan ritual with a man’s struggle to overcome the errors of his past, this is not an inappropriate comparison.

Indeed, readers who find the freakishly tall albino assassins of Brown’s conspiracies a little unfeasible might find David’s grittier and more introspective trappings render ancient conspiracy more plausible; whereas those who find Larsen’s portrayal of the banality of evil a little too bleak might find the contrasting thread of mysticism elevates the tale beyond the depressing.

While it is hard to discuss a plot that bases itself so strongly around both unsolved murders and ancient mysticism without spoiling the experience, there are no overt magical successes or failures; as such, readers seeking a clear answer on whether or not there is supernatural power as well as human venality behind events might be disappointed. However, the answers David does provide both provide a sense of closure to the novel’s arc and a sense of greater mysteries lurking beyond this introduction to the world.

Taking the pacing from Swedish noir and the layering from conspiracy theories, this novel unfolds slowly rather than rushing from event to event. yet in no way lacks a sense of tension. Whether this density is a feature or a flaw will depend upon a reader’s tastes; however, this is not a book that lends itself to being set aside then resumed some period later.

Almquist is a character as layered and obfuscated as the plot. Shaped by both the horrific experience that motivated him to become a detective and the past that has tarnished his reputation, matters that are only glimpsed in half-thoughts and conversational asides, he provides a sympathetic but deeply flawed protagonist.

David uses this same technique of hinted past to provide a sense that the odd behaviour of other characters would seem reasonable were the reader to know more; as such they are a pleasing mix of plausible motivation and unexpected choice.

As befits a thriller based around intersecting stories and hidden motives bursting free when people are trapped together, other characters equally bear the mantle of protagonist. However, while this does provide some dramatic irony, each narrator is unreliable, often providing more questions than answers.

Overall, I enjoyed this book greatly. I recommend it to readers seeking a conspiracy tale that focuses on the experience of teasing truths from lies and misapprehensions, rather than the race to stay one step ahead.