Just the same, here is a grand yarn, full of action, color, and glimpses of a world altogether strange to us. I have long wanted to share it with modern readers. Georges Dumézil’s brilliant study Du mythe au roman: La Saga de Hadingus et autres essais shows that Hadding was actually the god Njord. This first suggested to me how the tale might be made into something more than another sword-and-sorcery swashbuckler. I owe considerable as well to the Eddas, the Heimskringla, and the work of archeologists and literary scholars.
On the whole, the earthly part of this retelling follows Saxo’s text. Mainly I have tried to flesh it out, find causes and motivations for events he leaves obscure, and limn their background. That background is frankly anachronistic—not the Germanic Iron Age, in which the story ostensibly takes place, but the viking era. Societies, technologies, horizons, and doings belong, in an ahistoric fashion, to the ninth or tenth century, as they do in Saxo. However, though avoiding Latinisms as much as possible, I have not sought to imitate the austere style of the Icelanders. What was familiar to them is alien to us and needs explaining. I hope I have evoked a little of it.
Some things may strike you as unfortunate. For example, various names are easily confused, notably Hadding, Hunding, and Haakon. I did not presume to change them, or any other important part of my source, but I made an effort to write for clarity. Nor did I pussyfoot very much about the brutality, the ethnic prejudices—especially against Finns—or the status of women—although that was rather higher than it got to be later. These were of the milieu. Most persisted through subsequent centuries. Our own has seen massive resurgences of them. As for people’s feelings about wolves, animals that I too like and admire, that was also the way it was; and there is some reason to think that in fact they were more dangerous to humans before the appearance of firearms than they have been since.
Now and then I must resort to sheer guesswork, most conspicuously in the case of the Niderings. Saxo tells us nothing about them except that they were somewhere in Norway. The ancient name of Trondheim, Nidaros, gave me the idea that they might have lived in that area. Perhaps they were absorbed afterward by the historical Thronds, or perhaps they merely sprang from a linguistic confusion in Saxo’s mind. Apart from this fantasy requiring some real-world geography, it doesn’t matter.
With the cosmic framework I have taken a still freer hand. After all, we have lost much. Lines here and there hint fleetingly at what must once have loomed high, and more heroes than Hadding seem to be gods in disguise Snorri too euhemerizes myths, leaving us to guess what they formerly said—not that the mythology of preliterate peoples was ever very coherent or consistent. We know almost nothing about the war between the Aesir and the Vanir, except that it happened. I found that with a bit of rearrangement and a few minor additions I could unify a number of fragments. To some extent I have drawn on Viktor Rydberg’s nineteenth-century conjecture about the captivity of Njord, Freyr, and Freyja under Hymir. It is written that Odin and Loki once swore blood brotherhood, which helps explain how Loki got away with what he did for as long as he did; but we do not know why. That incident is my own invention. So, of course, is the whole concept of Hadding not as a redaction but as an actual avatar of Njord.
Here names are generally in their current English forms. Among other things, this means that d frequently represents edh, i.e., th as in “that,” especially when following a vowel or at the end of a word. As for other pronunciations, j is sounded like y in “yet,” ag is approximately ow as in “how,” and ei as in “rein.” The rest should be fairly obvious.
Terms get their nearest English equivalents, e.g., “chieftain” rather than hersir, “housecarles” rather than hird, “sheriff” rather than lencirrnadr, etc. In some cases this was not practical. Thus, jar, though cognate, does not really correspond to “earl.”
Nor does Svithjod to “Sweden.” The southern end of what is now that country, Scania, was then Danish. North of it seem to have been the people known in Beowulf and elsewhere as Geats; this is not certain, but I have assumed it. North of them in turn lay Svithjod, the realm of the Swedes proper. Borders were rather vague and changeable, and there were complications, including still other tribes, which I have ignored. Similarly for such areas as Wendland (roughly, maritime Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia) and Qardariki (roughly, northwestern Russia).
But these details are of no importance to any but enthusiasts, who already know about them. All that this book does is tell a story. May you enjoy it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In addition to the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and
