Monday 14 August 2017

Uppsala III

"After Uppsala came the string of small industrial towns along the Norrland coast. Hedestad [fictional] was one of the smaller ones, a little more than an hour north of Gavle."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), Chapter 4, p. 68.

Uppsala is, like Norrland, another name to conjure with. The former was famous for its Temple, which is described by Poul Anderson. (See the "Uppsala" link in the previous sentence.) Anderson takes us to Uppsala in the days when the gods were worshipped in the Temple whereas Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist passes through Uppsala by train en route to Hedestad. Heroic fantasies and contemporary novels share geography and historical associations.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And of course it was natural to choose the site of the old pagan temple for the first cathedral of Uppsala after the Swedes became Christians.

Sean