Friday 21 September 2012

Oland


" 'Oland...is a long, narrow island off the Baltic coast of Sweden...Old windmills everywhere, ancient barrows, snuggled villages, and at either tip a lighthouse overlooking a sea where sailboats bob along -' " (1)

"A narrow strait...Beyond it, low and ling-worn, stretched the long island called Oland." (2)

Time Patrol members visited Oland in 43 AD. King Hadding fought a battle opposite it a few centuries later. But these were in different timelines.

The Time Patrol series is science fiction and the history protected by the Patrol differs from ours only in that it includes Sherlock Holmes as a real person. War Of The Gods is heroic fantasy and its history differs from ours by including gods and giants as real beings. Imagine a world in which twenty first century history books about Denmark included the information that Hadding became king with help from a man called Gangleri now known to have been the god Odin and that Hadding killed a giant after Thor had refused to do so even when the local king had called on him with mighty offerings.

So these are different Olands. Nevertheless, the reader appreciates this faint echo of the Time Patrol in a very different part of the same author's imagination.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, The Time Patrol, New York, 1991, pp. 291-398 AT p. 361.
(2) Anderson, Poul, War Of The Gods, New York, 1999, p. 210. 

No comments: