THE LAST KINGDOM
Bernard Cornwell
Medieval Magic and Mysticism
> foreseeing the future by means of rune-sticks and various omens, eg the flight of two ravens
> reading the auguries
> the Weird Sisters, spinners of destiny
> the ancient Nordic religion as still practised by the Danes (and still believed in by many of the English)
> the Sceadugengan, the Shadow-Walkers
> magicking a new sword
Medieval Outsiders
> an English boy brought up among the Danes our hero
> an English girl, also living among the Danes, a warrior maiden who learns medicine and magic and can swim like a fish; she "will one day be a skeald and a sorceress"
Another book with its setting as the early years of King Alfred, when he was not yet Alfred the Great, but this time told from the viewpoint of an English (Northumbrian) boy brought up among the Danish invaders. He is, needless to say, far more impressed by their warrior culture and religion than by King Alfred's piety and the ubiquitous (at least in Wessex) Christian priests and nuns who represent it.
Even his father, the Ealdorman Uhtred, Lord of what had once been the kingdom of Bernicia, had been a pagan at heart, and "refused to give uo his wolf's head banner that proclaimed our family's descent from Woden, the ancient Saxon god of battles." Despite the veneer of Christianity, the boy had grown up in a Saxon world, the world of Midgard and Asgard, even before he was adopted by Earl Ragnar the Fearless. Small wonder that the son took to the religion of Odin like a duck to water.
The Saxon atmosphere is maintained throughout the book by, for instance, writing all the place-names in the contemporary Anglian or Saxon form. (There is a glossary many of them are almost if not quite unrecognisable.)
In Part One (A Pagan Childhood), which takes us up to the treacherous murder of Ragnar and the beginning of a bloodfeud that will apparently form the basis of the forthcoming sequel (The Pale Horseman, due out in October of this year), we see Uhtred the boy in a Danish setting.
In Part Two (The Last Kingdom), we see him as a young man in Wessex (the kingdom of Alfred, the last kingdom - Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia having fallen to the Danes during Uhtred's childhood), and even now he is unchanged.
The Danes reckon their dead warriors are carried to Valhalla, the corpse-hall of Odin, where they spend their days fighting and their night feasting and swiving, and I dare not tell the priests that this seems a far better way to endure the afterlife than singing to the sound of golden harps. I once asked a bishop whether there were any women in heaven. 'Of course there are, my lord,' he answered, happy that I was taking an interest in doctrine, 'may of the most blessed saints are women.'
'I mean women we can hump, bishop.'
He said he would pray for me. Perhaps he did.
The question now, of course, is: who should he fight for?
His own answer is that such decisions are made for us by the three weird sisters:
The three spinners sit at the foot of the tree of life and they make our lives and we are their playthings, and though we think we make our own choices, all our fates are in the spinners' threads. Destiny is everything
There are, as one would expect with Bernard Cornwell, vivid descriptions of Danes in battle, and of fighting in a shield-wall, such as one cannot possibly find elsewhere.
There is also a remakable comment on the wordsmith's trade!
I have sounded immodest [Uhtred comments, after singing his own praises in describing a battle], but I have told the truth. These days I employ poets to sing my praises, but on;ly because that is what a lord is supposed to do, though I often wonder why a man should get paid for mere words. These word-stringers make nothing, grow nothing, kill no enemies, catch no fish and raise no cattle. They just take silver in exchange for words, which are free anyway. It is a clever trick, but in truth they are about as much use as priests.
Excellent.
JM
