I missed something.....when did the Worm...

[Frostheart Grueburn]

Thanks guys, going to add to this and blather about Finnish odds and ends as well when I'm back from Norway next week...yes shame on you, melonboy.

Interesting finds there, Fallen, and I agree!

Kindwind lost her hand/forearm as well in a Týr-esque fashion--and she becomes Jeremiah's Foamfollower (Týr is also known for his great wisdom) in a sense, educating him about the deeper meanings of life. Not to mention that in spite of her injury, she does not scruple defending the "heroes" until that fateful Cavewight spear invades her brain in the bowels of the Foulish Mountain.

This I've mentioned before: Lostson Longwrath is Loke. A wrathful, chained giant with a ravaged face (Loke became disfigured first by the gods sewing his mouth shut and then later by serpent venom dripping upon his visage); Dire's Vessel serves as Naglfar, Loke's ship which carries jötnar to wage war upon the Æsir on the battle-plain Vígríðr, in this case The Land and the roles overturned. Depending on the stanzas, either Loke or (a captain/general jötunn) Hrym stands in the helm with "shield held high". Hrym, while the meaning is different, got a wry smirk from me as the pronunciation, as far as I comprehend it, resembles Hrím, Rime. As if we didn't already have the Frost Giant allusion and connection to cold in the personal names.

Very vague, and more on the humorish side, I thought Mahrtiir (particularly the deified Forestal version) has some odd resemblance to Höðr the blind God who slew Baldur with a mistletoe. A plant association!

SRD admits in an interview printed together with one of the Gap books that the Chrons have been strongly inspired by Wagner and Norse myths as well--not as visible as in names akin to Holt Fasner (=Fáfnir + Fasolt), but notably, nonetheless.

[Khazduk]

For anyone who understands a bit of Swedish, I'd highly recommend "Asken Yggdrasil" as a great introduction to these topics in general. Alf Henrikson was a real master in making complex things in history accessible and enjoyable. Maybe a tendency to oversimplify sometimes though.

[Zarathustra]

HLT, why would it matter which came first, Arch or Worm? I'm not sure what you're looking for in this thread (certainly not Norse mythology comparisons, right? ).

Personally, I think SRD's metaphors are a little confused here. He equates Worm with death/entropy, but then he says it can break the Arch of Time, rather than destroy the world. These aren't exactly the same thing. While destroying the Arch would destroy the world, this truism doesn't hold in the reverse case. But why would death/entropy have any effect on Time, when it's an effect of Time itself? I think SRD needed not only the seeds of destruction in this metaphor, but also the possibility of rebirth and redemption, and therefore the seeds of creation as well. And that's what destroying the Arch gets you, because once causality no longer follows the arrow of time, reversals of destruction become possible.

Therefore, SRD made the Worm a potent force against the Arch because it was needed for the ending. But in doing so, I believe he confused the relationship between Foul's purpose and the Worm's. Foul is the Timeless, Immortal being who finds himself unnaturally within the Arch of Time, desperate to get out. But the Worm is merely the earth's seeds of destruction. It's the imperfection within the world that makes both life (in its slumber) and death possible. Sense the Worm is the world's own mortality--that which makes this a real, natural, physical world and not some version of Heaven--I would think that the Worm would be just as subject to Time as every other living creature. It doesn't make sense to me that it should be able to destroy the Arch.

Where does it go once the Arch is destroyed? Is it then immortal like Foul? No, that doesn't exactly sit right with me. Immortality is for Ideals, spiritual truths, not physical truths such as the necessity of death.

But the demands of plot sometimes outweigh metaphorical consistency.

[ussusimiel]

For shame, u! There's you in the Emerald Isle with a massively rich mythological legacy and you dutifully ignore it? You've got all that Tuatha de Danaan stuff, what with Tir Nan Nog, the Dagda, Lugh Long Arm, Dian Cecht, Manannan mac Lir, The Morrighan and loads more I've now forgotten, plus Cuchulainn and Fin mac Cool etc etc...

It's not that I don't know of the myths (they used to teach them in school! ) it's that they don't grab me that strongly, not in the way that Tolkien's and SRD's do. Not really sure why, maybe I should get a DNA test to make sure that I'm a true Gael!

u.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

If we are not free to distance ourselves from a particular cultural heritage then we aren't really free. Our kids sometimes ask me things like "where was your family originally from?" to which I reply, "I don't know and I don't care". Technically, that is only half true--I do know, thanks to the research my grandmother and father did over the years, but I really don't care because, to me, family history--and by extension cultural history--is irrelevant. That doesn't mean I don't study it and don't know it but by the same token I don't ascribe any relevance to it as far as my life is concerned.

[Savor Dam]

Hashi...if you really care so little for your roots, I trust you have near-total faith in the wings your younglings are developing. Most of us are counting on a balance between the roots we provide and the wings they grow.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Personally, I think SRD's metaphors are a little confused here. He equates Worm with death/entropy, but then he says it can break the Arch of Time, rather than destroy the world. These aren't exactly the same thing. While destroying the Arch would destroy the world, this truism doesn't hold in the reverse case. But why would death/entropy have any effect on Time, when it's an effect of Time itself?

I think the key to this was the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death. The Arch of Time is at one point referred to as "the arch of life that spans and masters Time." Somehow, the Law of progress from life to death to life and so on mirrors the abstract progress of time from moment to moment to next moment, enough to where, as per the caesures as correlated with the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death, the Arch might be undone just by the final power of the Worm (which power elsewise would've simply broken the Earth apart).

[Khazduk]

Personally, I think SRD's metaphors are a little confused here. He equates Worm with death/entropy, but then he says it can break the Arch of Time, rather than destroy the world. These aren't exactly the same thing. While destroying the Arch would destroy the world, this truism doesn't hold in the reverse case. But why would death/entropy have any effect on Time, when it's an effect of Time itself?

I think the key to this was the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death. The Arch of Time is at one point referred to as "the arch of life that spans and masters Time." Somehow, the Law of progress from life to death to life and so on mirrors the abstract progress of time from moment to moment to next moment, enough to where, as per the caesures as correlated with the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death, the Arch might be undone just by the final power of the Worm (which power elsewise would've simply broken the Earth apart).

Another way of phrasing this interpretation could be - in my quasi-understanding of physics - that the Laws could be viewed as the "arrow of time" that defines a direction from "less to more entropy". And/but when the Laws are broken, entropy itself is broken, and time could be able to collapse beyond repair.

Uh... this is why I became a historian and not a physicist.

[Zarathustra]

K, I agree that utterly breaking all the Laws (i.e. breaking the Arch, since these Laws would include Time) would also "break" entropy, or render it invalid in the sense that it no longer implies an absolute march toward death. But in that sense, we're saying that breaking the Arch (i.e. time) would lead to breaking or invalidating the Worm (i.e. entropy), rather than the other way around, which is how the story is written. The Worm broke the Arch.

But I do think something like this happened when the Arch was broken by the Worm, and causality itself became murky, which is how the world was able to be put back together. In fact, I predicted this as the final solution in a question in the GI. (We discussed some of these issues in Mighara's Destruction of Causality thread, near the bottom of this forum's first page.)

[Cord Hurn]

Just wanted to take a moment here to thank both Frostheart and The Fallen for their work in providing us insights into how Norse mythology has influenced elements in TLD: THANK YOU! I really haven't gotten around to learning much about Norse mythology yet ( and here I consider myself a fantasy fan! ), so I obviously have a lot more research to do.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Hashi...if you really care so little for your roots, I trust you have near-total faith in the wings your younglings are developing. Most of us are counting on a balance between the roots we provide and the wings they grow.

It doesn't require faith, only the knowledge of what does and does not work as far as family relationships are concerned. That is the knowledge we are passing on. My parents got divorced but even before that they weren't passing along good relationship skills to my brothers and I, which is probably why all three of us have also been through a divorce with our respective former wives. Our children will have a better foundation than the one I had; they shouldn't have to struggle to create their own from scratch like I had to.

[Iolanthe]

Well, this is interesting, from the worm to family history in three posts! But I see how you got there. Hashi, in a way I agree, although I have spent more than 30 years now researching my own family history. Ask a group of family historians why they do it, and they will answer that they are seeking their roots, finding out who they are, but the further you go back the more irrelevent ancestors become to who you are now, so the whole thing becomes a huge detective puzzle, and of course some of us get sidetracked by particular periods of time or sources. Oh, and my mother in law (born in West Meath) was very sure that she was descended from the Kings of Tara!

Is there a Watchie award for the best thread drift?

[ussusimiel]

Oh, and my mother in law (born in West Meath) was very sure that she was descended from the Kings of Tara!

If your claim to fame is that you're from Westmeath then you really do need to have something else to fall back on

Is there a Watchie award for the best thread drift?

If there is it'll have to be a group award and I want my share of the credit!


Oh yeah! On topic: where the hell is wayfriend when we need him to help us with the Möbius-bending intricacies of the Worm/Arch!

u.