{"id":1757,"date":"2008-06-17T22:10:44","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T02:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2008-06-17T22:10:44","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T02:10:44","slug":"mother-of-kings-by-poul-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1757","title":{"rendered":"Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"

I approached the late Poul Anderson\u2019s Mother of Kings<\/a><\/i><\/strong> with some trepidation. I wanted to read it because a) it\u2019s a Viking historical fantasy, and b) I\u2019m thinking out a book of my own in which one of the main characters in this one plays a part. But in a book about Gunnhild, wife of Norway\u2019s King Eirik Bloodax and mother of King Harald Greyfell (and his brothers\u2014they ruled jointly) I imagined I\u2019d be dealing with a Marion Zimmer Bradley-esque feminist fantasy, all about what oppressors men are, how smothering Christianity is, and how real freedom is found in the worship of some Mother-goddess or other. I expected visceral, existential feminine rage.<\/p>\n

Having read the book, I almost wish it had been like that. It would at least have had some fire to it.<\/p>\n

Gunnhild is a character of mystery in Viking history and lore. Historians believe she was probably a Danish princess, conventionally married to Eirik Bloodax, son and heir of Harald Fairhair, who is remembered as the uniter of Norway. (Anderson seems unaware\u2014or doesn\u2019t care\u2014that historians today doubt that Harald was really more than a regional overlord in the west, who may have begun<\/i> the process of unification. For the purposes of this story he treats the account found in Snorri Sturlusson\u2019s Heimskringla<\/i>, the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings, as literally true. I\u2019ll admit I do the same thing in The Year Of the Warrior<\/i>, but I claim in my own defense that the theory was new back then, and I hadn\u2019t heard of it).<\/p>\n

In the sagas and legends, though, Gunnhild is a very different character\u2014the daughter of a Finnish (“Lapp” or Sami) wizard, a witch of fearsome power, terrible in her hatreds, lascivious in her morals, and bloody in her vengeances.<\/p>\n

Anderson splits the difference. He imagines her as the daughter of a Norse chieftain, a girl who chooses to learn magic at the feet of two Finn wizards, whom she manages to kill off at the same time that she magically summons Eirik to sail in and sweep her off her feet. This is a promising beginning from the dramatic point of view, but sadly Anderson doesn\u2019t sustain it. Once married to her prince, Gunnhild becomes a fairly conventional wife and queen, devoted to her husband and children. She assists them all through their lives by the use of her magical powers, but is thwarted more often than not. Her successes, when they happen, aren\u2019t terribly impressive or lasting.<\/p>\n

The result is that it\u2019s hard to root for Gunnhild. She\u2019s not good enough to sympathize with much, and not powerful or evil enough to be very entertaining. She becomes an almost passive center around which the drama of 10th Century Norwegian politics plays itself out. This is a great drama, but in this work it lacks (it seems to me) the rich hues and symphonic music of real epic. Anderson does some moments of pathos well, particularly concerning the deaths of Kings Haakon the Good and Harald Greyfell, but overall I found it pretty dry.<\/p>\n

This is a problem I\u2019ve always had with Anderson, and with Science Fiction writers as a group (no doubt there are exceptions). Science Fiction writers by and large (and that\u2019s what Anderson primarily was), it seems to me, have a hard time handling human emotions, dreams and aspirations. They\u2019re more oriented toward machines and machine-like people.<\/p>\n

I always comment on books\u2019 theological implications and treatments of Christianity in these reviews. Mother Of Kings<\/i> provides unusual problems. Anderson is neither friendly nor hostile to Christianity, so it could be worse. Historically Eirik Bloodax ruled Norway as a heathen, but converted, along with his family, to Christianity when he fled to England and became King of York. Some of his sons seem to have been genuinely zealous in their missionary work (a point that\u2019s largely ignored in Heimskringla<\/i>). Gunnhild is portrayed here (quite reasonably) as a nominal Christian, uncertain as to what religion (Norse heathendom, Christianity or Finnish pantheism) offers the most useful magic for her exploitation. Clearly she\u2019s a heathen at heart, but her deepest inclinations seem to be pantheistic. This can\u2019t exactly be viewed as an argument for pantheism, though, because Gunnhild isn\u2019t admirable enough to provide one.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I\u2019d have found the whole thing more exciting if I hadn\u2019t already known the basic story. But I doubt it. I can\u2019t really recommend Mother Of Kings<\/i> very highly.
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I approached the late Poul Anderson\u2019s Mother of Kings with some trepidation. I wanted to read it because a) it\u2019s a Viking historical fantasy, and b) I\u2019m thinking out a book of my own in which one of the main characters in this one plays a part. But in a book about Gunnhild, wife of … Continue reading Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[948,1931,2244,3272],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-reviews","tag-fantasy","tag-mother-of-kings","tag-poul-anderson","tag-vikings"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}