moment, is the form that the spelling of his Christian name takes. One finds, in the few bits of Germanic documentation that survive in their various dialects as well as in the many Norse sagas, nearly every spelling possible of every aspect of the name and life of Thor, son of Odin, god of thunder, and paragon of youthful Germanic-Norse virtues, who spent nearly all his time aiding other gods, demi-gods, and humans with his great strength, command of thunder, and magic hammer, Mjolnir. The important element, however, for our purposes, is that his name in Old High German appears to have been spelt Donar, which would have been pronounced ‘Donner’—the same form we find here in Donner Niksar. The variations of the names are all of little importance, of course, as they are mere variations on the dialectal terms for ‘thunder,’ although it is interesting to note that the modern German word for that phenomenon, donner, has hewed so closely to at least one ancient version: Broken’s. Thus, there is the strong suggestion not only that the myths of the supposedly ‘Norse’ gods were likely those of the entire Northern European region, but that they may well have originated with those Germanic tribes who inhabited the area we today consider Germany, calling at least some of the aspects of the Norse domination of civilization in that region into question.” Without realizing it, of course, Gibbon is anticipating the notion advanced most forcefully in our own time by Michael Kulikowski, and discussed at length earlier in these notes: that the myths of the Gothic migrations and the Norse invasion and cultural domination of northern Germany may have been largely just that: myths. —C.C.
† “the Krebkellen” Gibbon writes, “The practice itself is explained in the text; we pause only to reassert the fact that Oxmontrot, its creator, considered not even the most fundamental Roman tactics to be above improvement. The practice of the Krebkellen, which we may confidently translate as ‘crab colony,’ certainly takes its inspiration from the Roman testudo, or ‘tortoise,’ the tactic which had long proved successful by enabling Roman soldiers to form a sort of shell out of the interlocked protection of their great convex shields, or scuta, to their fore, back, sides, as well as over their heads; but again, this tactic, while ingenious, could also be clumsy, designed as it was to mirror the essentially steady, deliberate movement permitted by the formation of the quincunx—that is, a primarily frontward-and-rearward motion — to say nothing of the continued relegation of the role of cavalry as essentially support troops for those infantry formations. The contrast with Broken’s Krebkellen, on the other hand, can indeed be likened to the difference between a tortoise and a crab — or, to complete the terminological explanation, a ‘colony of crabs,’ in which such creatures are known to live and defend themselves. While both species use their external shells for protection, as both infantries used their shields for interlocking protection, the Broken troops sacrificed some strength of defense for speed, maneuverability, and, hence, offensive potential, the last especially embodied in the cavalry units, which acted as the faster-moving ‘legs and claws.’”
‡ “‘a … worthy of our claws’” Gibbon lets this part of the discussion go without remark, perhaps because it’s unclear whether Akillus is talking about the “claws” of the Krebkellen, or is referring to the pride that every man in the Talons took in the raptor’s claws that adorned his cloak. It makes very little difference to the ensuing action. —C.C.
†† the “aptly named fellow,” Taankret An obvious source for what would become the famous chivalric name of Tancred, the word itself is combined of elements implying “thinking” or “thought” and “counsel”—and is, indeed, suited to its man, as so many names in the Manuscript seem to be. —C.C.
† Fleckmester Gibbon writes, “Here is a name that, given all the guidelines we have established for the Broken dialect, is not difficult at all to understand: ‘fleck’ is an ancestor of the modern German pfeilmacher, counterpart of our own ‘fletcher,’ or arrow-maker, while mester is plainly the some Old German variation of meister, or ‘master.’”
‡ “longbow” As is perhaps apparent, this use of the word “longbow” simply implies a greater length than the bows used by the Bane — it is not, apparently, an anticipation of the later English invention that would famously carry the day at battles such as Agincourt. —C.C.
† Nerthus Gibbon ignores the name, perhaps because scholarship in Germanic and Norse mythology had not yet reached the point that the Germanic goddess of fertility could be identified precisely; this would be a very strange omission, however, for it is one of the goddesses that Tacitus actually names, using this same spelling, in his Germania (pub. ca. A.D. 98), placing her firmly in the original pantheon of ancient Germanic, rather than Norse, deities, and supporting the theory that a very great deal of what we still think of as “Norse” culture and mythology was actually taken from Germanic traditions. Indeed, one senses that Gibbon is reluctant to give so much credit to the Germanic tribes (perhaps because of their repeated thrashings of the indomitable Roman legions), but, being even more hesitant to go up against a scholar of Tacitus’s standing, simply passes the name over, as he does so many uncomfortable subjects.
The sole question that remains, then, is just what extraordinary creature we are discussing; and from the behavior, the extraordinary size and strength, and the markings, we can definitely say that we are dealing with the Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo), a bird of immense size and power, as great or greater than its formidable cousin, the Great Grey Owl of North America (Strix nebulosa). The differences are mainly of appearance, the Grey Owl having an ovular or circular face and no “ear tufts,” the feathery “horns” that actually are no more than cosmetic, having nothing to do with hearing. The Eurasian owl is more like the North American Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) in appearance, but the size of the Eurasian Eagle Owl is much greater. Needless to say, these creatures caused enormous fear among humans, because of the fact that, like all owls, their weight was and is amazingly light in comparison to their power: it is always remarkable to come upon a recently deceased owl of any type and feel its extraordinary lightness, in this regard — a lack of weight designed to assist their silence and agility in flight and the hunt. And they could take not only such normal prey as rabbits and other small mammals, but deer fawns; and it was therefore believed, quite logically and rightly, that they might do the same to important domestic livestock such as lambs, kid goats, and even newborn calves and foals (always a real danger), to say nothing of human infants and toddlers. —C.C.
† skutem shields Gibbon writes, “Having so closely aped so many of the most crucial Roman military customs, it is not altogether surprising that we here find the soldiers of Broken almost directly transposing the Latin word for shield, scutum, into their own tongue.” It is also true, however, that by the time Oxmontrot served as a foreign Roman auxiliary, the classic Roman scutum had changed in size and shape, becoming more ovular and slightly smaller; so it is possible we do not, in fact, know precisely what Broken shields resembled, just as we do not know the precise details of so much of their culture. —C.C.
† “… dance his deadly round.” At this point in the general history of northern Europe, as well as many other parts of the continent, “dance,” as a form of recreation, still consisted almost solely of “dances in the round,” that is, the joining of hands and then unchoreographed movement to one direction, then the other, etc., rather than of the courtly steps and masques with which we associate the later and higher Middle Ages. The only other forms of dance commonly referred to were quite sinister, in both origin and meaning: there were the “dances” that were associated with severe illness, generally nervous — such as St. Vitus’s Dance, a name given to various forms of chorea — and there was (as is mentioned here) the “Dance of Death,” or “Danse Macabre,” which involved that entity leading the wicked or the sickly to a generally unhappy end in the hereafter, either through trickery or sheer power. The Dance of Death could often involve witchcraft, which was blamed for many disorders, especially after the rise of the monotheistic faiths: again, medicine was poorly served by the predominance of those faiths, except in the cases of those who took their piety with a grain of salt, and refused to let it interfere with reason. Even these last were largely preservative movements; that is, they kept existent knowledge that had been gleaned centuries ago from vanishing, rather than advancing or building on it: progress that would not begin again, after brought to a virtual standstill in the fourth and fifth centuries, until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries — a full thousand years or more that could obviously have been used to great advantage. — C.C.
‡ “… the Great River … Hel …” The name of the river over which one crossed, in Germanic/Norse mythology, to get to the underworld, was never so important as the route one took to reach its complementary and unique paradise, Asgard, home of the gods and
