Ragnarok Fantasy

"He who writes in his own blood does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart."
- Friedrich Nietzsche


I admire many writers. My favourites include George Orwell and Joseph Conrad, whom I admire for their graceful precision with the English language, as well as J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, whose immense imaginations have served as the primary sources of background material for almost the entire genre of modern epic fantasy – even if their own works are themselves rooted in the sagas of antiquity. I generally don't understand or enjoy poetry, but Howard's masterful Cimmeria is one of the few exceptions to that deficiency.

My favourite sci-fi writer is Ben Bova, a prolific author who understands both storytelling and real science. His extraordinary lifetime output of over seventy novels puts me in mind of Joseph Stalin's famous observation that "Quantity has a quality all of its own." Bova may not be the world's greatest stylist, but I imagine that he is so busy writing stories that he couldn't care less. Having read his books, I now have vivid and plausible memories of exploring every planet in the Solar System.

These writers have all left their mark on King Ragnar, in one way or another, and I am indebted to them for my own education as a writer. I have not enjoyed the privilege of a university education, but having studied such accomplished masters as these, I do not believe that I need one. I hope that you will agree after reading King Ragnar.

"If I have seen far it is because I stand upon the shoulders of giants."
- Sir Isaac Newton

"All murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
- Voltaire

 


“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche



     

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he that to-day sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

- William Shakespeare
Henry V

For the great Gaels of Ireland,
Are the men that God made mad;
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad

- G. K. Chesterton

       

I wrote King Ragnar on my property in the mountains east of Numeralla. No phones, no faxes, no emails, no Internet. I just play the Götterdämmerung loud enough to shake the mountains, then write.

I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;
The grey clouds’ leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista upon vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay.
So when a man climbed up a rugged peak and gazed,
His shaded eye saw but the endless vista —
Hill on hill, slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun,
Which made squat shadows out of men.
They called it Cimmeria,
Land of darkness and deep night.

It was so long and far away
I have forgotten the very name that men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
I recall only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of darkness and the night.

Robert E. Howard
Author of Conan the Barbarian

                 

Wilder Wein                                 
Vor diesem Dunkel                     
Wilder Wein                              
Von Licht geheilt                      
Es bleibt verborgen                  
Sonst könnten wir uns wehren   
Ich warte auf dich                    
Am Ende der Nacht                  

Rammstein
Wilder Wein

Wild wine
Before this darkness
Wild wine
Healed by the light
It stays hidden
Otherwise we could fight
I wait for you
At the end of the night

He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them – the ship – and so is their country – the sea. One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings and the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance, for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing.

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness

“He’s absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was: I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell after it stops. It’s not built in the rhythm of ordinary prose, but on something existing only in his head. And as he can never say what it is he wants to say, all his things end in a kind of hunger.”

- T. E. Lawrence of Joseph Conrad

The Children of Doom, Doom's Children. They told my lord the way to the Mountain of Power; they told him to throw down his sword and return to the earth. Ha! Time enough for the earth in the grave.
- Conan the Barbarian

Conan, what is best in life?
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.
- Conan the Barbarian

All the gods, they could not sever us. If I were dead and you were still fighting for life, I'd come back from the darkness, back from the pit of Hell, to fight at your side.
- Conan the Barbarian

Fylliz fjòrvi feigra manna
    It shall gorge on the blood of doomed men
Frydr ragnar siòt raudom dreyra
    Paint red the chieftans’ halls with crimson gore
Svòrt verda sólskin of sumor eptir
    Black shall be the sun’s rays in summers to come
Broedr muno beriaz ok at bònom verdaz
    Brothers will fight and slay one another
Muno systrungar sifiom spilla
    The children of sisters shall defile kinship
Hart er i heimi
    The world shall become hard
Hórdómr mikill
    Whoredom rife
Skeggòld, skálmòld
    An axe age, a sword age   
Skildir ro klofnir
    Shields shall be riven
Vindòld, vargòld
    A wind age, a wolf age

- Edda Saga