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Thyra: A romance of the polar pit
B003EV7R08 a Romance of the Polar Pit hardcover Publication 1901-01-01 Henry Holt and Company US
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1901
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 30, 2022
This is a remarkable lost world adventure novel from the earliest days of the 20th century, a "romance" by it's own older terminology. It is a thoroughly engaging story and a fine example of the genre. Something of a lost world itself, this novel is overshadowed by more famous examples, but it is worth inclusion on the lists of the early greats of the genre, a product of that first growth of the modern fantastic at the trun of the century.
I suspect it must haves been influenced by the lost world and lost race tales of H. Rider Haggard, published in the preceding decades and which achieved great popularity. This tale shares many of the same elements, including the basics of a lost culture connected to a known people of history. It also boasts a similar group of well armed Western adventurers of disparate temperaments, with one being possessed of an almost atavistic resonance with the lost culture they discover. Just as in Haggard, Ames' heroes get wrapped up in the internal politics of the people they find and their adventure concludes with a dramatic showdown with the more brutal and darkly superstitious elements of the newfound culture.
Fortunately, it is a good formula and one that admits of much pleasant variation. Ames' version is well imagined and rich in detail, so rich, in fact, that it is almost Tolkienian at times, as characters reference people and places with such profusion and assumed familiarity that it might baffle casual readers. This adds to what that master of fantasy termed "the impression of depth," making Ames' pseudo-Norse world feel full of history and real in it's culture.
Unlike Tolkien, Ames' draws much of this texture from a real culture, but the way he maps Nose myth onto the almost mythic landscape of the Polar Opening is fascinating. How natural that displaced Vikings should regard the frozen North as Jotenheim or the Pit itself, out of which boil dwarfish monsters, Niflheim. The result is a well drawn world, and one with unusually strong Christian coloring.
In fact, Christianity turns out to form a background texture for the text, as the central conflict plays out between the unlikely but plausibly established Christian-socialist community of the heroes' allies and the blood-soaked barbarism of the savage tribe that shares their world. Interestingly, the wild Viking- descendants that makes up the anatomists Thorlings are given more depth, texture, and sympathy that is common for such cultures in these genre tales. Many of them are possessed of courage and honor in abundance, and even those who repost final conversion after the last conflict are painted with the type of hopeless dignity that we might expect from the Beowulf poet.
In the same way, the protagonists themselves are somewhat unusual. In many ways they are the stick adventurers of the genre, but they are at times also painted with an unusual amount of texture. One unusual feature of the group is that it contains a Black member, creatively named Black. His portrayal is by no means unproblematic by modern standards, but it is surprisingly positive for the period. He is given to several of the negative stereotypes of the era, but despite that, he is brave, competent, and, if not an equal member of the crew, a valuable one.
All of this results in an interesting and memorable tale, full of engaging action, well paced, and with both a heroic and a moral spirit that make for something of an unusual combination, especially given the lack of the usual imperialistic and colonial undertones of the contract between the heroes and the inhabitants of the lost world. The Rune-folk welcome the protagonists, but their culture is in no need of improvement or even of rescue, and the deliverance of the Thorlings is more a triumph of the Rune, the Christian-socialist culture of the Polar inhabitants, than it is that of the heroes.
I suspect it must haves been influenced by the lost world and lost race tales of H. Rider Haggard, published in the preceding decades and which achieved great popularity. This tale shares many of the same elements, including the basics of a lost culture connected to a known people of history. It also boasts a similar group of well armed Western adventurers of disparate temperaments, with one being possessed of an almost atavistic resonance with the lost culture they discover. Just as in Haggard, Ames' heroes get wrapped up in the internal politics of the people they find and their adventure concludes with a dramatic showdown with the more brutal and darkly superstitious elements of the newfound culture.
Fortunately, it is a good formula and one that admits of much pleasant variation. Ames' version is well imagined and rich in detail, so rich, in fact, that it is almost Tolkienian at times, as characters reference people and places with such profusion and assumed familiarity that it might baffle casual readers. This adds to what that master of fantasy termed "the impression of depth," making Ames' pseudo-Norse world feel full of history and real in it's culture.
Unlike Tolkien, Ames' draws much of this texture from a real culture, but the way he maps Nose myth onto the almost mythic landscape of the Polar Opening is fascinating. How natural that displaced Vikings should regard the frozen North as Jotenheim or the Pit itself, out of which boil dwarfish monsters, Niflheim. The result is a well drawn world, and one with unusually strong Christian coloring.
In fact, Christianity turns out to form a background texture for the text, as the central conflict plays out between the unlikely but plausibly established Christian-socialist community of the heroes' allies and the blood-soaked barbarism of the savage tribe that shares their world. Interestingly, the wild Viking- descendants that makes up the anatomists Thorlings are given more depth, texture, and sympathy that is common for such cultures in these genre tales. Many of them are possessed of courage and honor in abundance, and even those who repost final conversion after the last conflict are painted with the type of hopeless dignity that we might expect from the Beowulf poet.
In the same way, the protagonists themselves are somewhat unusual. In many ways they are the stick adventurers of the genre, but they are at times also painted with an unusual amount of texture. One unusual feature of the group is that it contains a Black member, creatively named Black. His portrayal is by no means unproblematic by modern standards, but it is surprisingly positive for the period. He is given to several of the negative stereotypes of the era, but despite that, he is brave, competent, and, if not an equal member of the crew, a valuable one.
All of this results in an interesting and memorable tale, full of engaging action, well paced, and with both a heroic and a moral spirit that make for something of an unusual combination, especially given the lack of the usual imperialistic and colonial undertones of the contract between the heroes and the inhabitants of the lost world. The Rune-folk welcome the protagonists, but their culture is in no need of improvement or even of rescue, and the deliverance of the Thorlings is more a triumph of the Rune, the Christian-socialist culture of the Polar inhabitants, than it is that of the heroes.
February 1, 2024
Fantastic adventure from1903
That is a novel dating to the great age of polar exploration. It concerns a small expedition to reach the North Pole that discovers a lost sociefg of Norse folk that inhabit a strange temperate depression , have divided into factions, and worship a surviving marine reptile. Beside the Mosasaurus other extinct creatures survive in this isolated realm, such as pterodactyls, mammoths, and hominid cannibals. All in all a ripping yarn for fans of adventure among lost societies.
That is a novel dating to the great age of polar exploration. It concerns a small expedition to reach the North Pole that discovers a lost sociefg of Norse folk that inhabit a strange temperate depression , have divided into factions, and worship a surviving marine reptile. Beside the Mosasaurus other extinct creatures survive in this isolated realm, such as pterodactyls, mammoths, and hominid cannibals. All in all a ripping yarn for fans of adventure among lost societies.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews