Fragments of Wizard Knight Aramini

# THE WIZARD KNIGHT: HOW FAR TO THE DREAM MY MOTHER HAD? (Fragments by Aramini)

>Who treads those level lands of gold,

> The level fields of mist and air,

>And rolling mountains manifold

> And towers of twilight over there?

>No mortal foot upon them strays,

> No archer in the towers dwells,

>But feet too airy for our ways

> Go up and down their hills and dells.

>The people out of old romance,

> And people that have never been

(Lord Dunsany, “The Riders”)

The weighty religious and philosophical themes of Wolfe's longer fictions seem almost secondary in his *Wizard Knight* series, which at first appears to be a fun and fast-paced examination of power. Wolfe portrays a violent and class conscious (but still chivalrous) age; might is used (and misused) to maintain order. However, the narrator Able’s insistence that he is really just a child in a man's body establishes a metaphor for the love of fantasy fiction in general that encapsulates the youthful yearning for a better time, free from office jobs and bills, containing magic, love, and strength of arms. Two things separate Wolfe's fantasy from mere escapist fare. The first is characterization: in order for Able to mature in a world devoid of truly Christian concepts, there are certain self-imposed restrictions by which he attempts to live. Wolfe's sophistication as a writer comes out not only when his seemingly traditional narrative refuses to take us to the places we expect, but also in his use of the fantastic. The way that these characters employ their powers is just as important as having them.

The other feature which sets Wolfe apart from almost every other fantasist involves a mountain of metaphorical subtext that congeals at times but might be easily ignored, and in *The Wizard Knight* the dream sequences suggest a tragic allegory which might answer the primary questions of the text – what kind of boy does not get to live his life as a boy, is promised a sword he cannot use, and is given magic he must never wield? Why does Able seem to have so much potential that he is never able to enjoy? When the dreams and other seemingly random repetitions are examined, we might discern that Able truly *is* still a child in an adult body, though the body he inhabits is ultimately his mother’s. At one point Able waxes philosophical about how to reach Aelfrice, and asks, “How far to summer, sir? How many steps? How far to the dream my mother had?” (*Wizard* XXVI, 314). Once again in Wolfe, the irony of this question is almost too much to bear. All that Able could ever be is encapsulated in it, for he is but a potential, a dream in his mother’s womb, one of the “people that had never been” from old romances, noted in Lord Dunsany’s “The Riders” above, which Wolfe quotes to open his fantasy sequence.

Many fans insist that there is no right way to read Gene Wolfe, and further claim that insisting on one “true” reading actually limits the work. However, if we accept that Wolfe is capable of constructing puzzles and scaffolding which point to an explanation which makes sense of the many mysterious non sequiturs and small details, then pattern, repetition, and objective details outside the text can all support a reading that helps us to understand the narrative (and Able’s sacrifice) more clearly. Wolfe has several modes, and this appears to be one similar in nature to *Peace* and *There Are Doors*, in which the surface understanding of the main character requires some extra contextualization to truly understand the narrative. In the first of those books, Weer’s status has not truly been considered controversial, and this might in large part be to Wolfe’s candidness in interviews concerning *Peace*. Since then, we have been much more on our own. The harsh physical circumstances Able finds himself in encourages the creation of a consistent story, representing the birth of a myth intimately tied to his biological experiences: he undergoes many tests and trials, and the story of the text involves the power of imagination to describe Able’s development.

After the difficulty of convincing anyone at all of my reading of *The Book of the Short Sun*, I flirted with the possibility of burying the thesis deep in this write-up. However, if we are to achieve a holistic understanding of the thematic weight of Able’s sacrifice at the end of the book, it is necessary to be aware of the subtext. Fortunately, *The Wizard Knight* directly challenges us to understand the intersection of Mythgarthr and America in its conclusion: when Able puts on his helm of true seeing, he is shocked by what he discovers, something far beyond his understanding:

>Lovely Disiri became a puppet of mud and leaves. That was horrible, but I had expected it. Two other things I had not expected and cannot explain. The Valfather was a bright shadow. Nothing more.

>And Bold Berthold, who had been sitting beside Gerda, vanished. She was the same lovely young woman, but Berthold was gone and you, Ben, sat in his place. As I say, I cannot explain these things. (*Wizard* XL, 476)

Able heals Bold and others in this climactic scene, breaking his oath to the gods of Skai and using the magic he has been granted, but at a terrible cost: “It took a lot to restore the thing [Bold] had left in a pond so long ago.” (*Wizard* XL, 474). Able also heals several other characters, including Uns, Lynett, Gylf, and Wistan (who once fought with Toug over Able’s sword and dropped it into a well – we will discuss all of these characters in more depth soon). When Able straightens the crippled and bent Uns, the text notes, “How slowly he rose! He thought it was a dream … He thought he was dreaming, and feared at every finger’s width gained that he might wake. Toug came to stand by him. Toug was crying, and so was I” (*Wizard* XL, 475). The tears here are far more poignant than a first reading might suggest; the Valfather reveals that Able’s destiny is sealed: “You would end your life if I asked, and will end it in any case” (*Wizard* XL, 475). Able’s act of healing, even though his narrative continue, ends many of the opportunities he might otherwise have had.

How can we understand the nature of Able’s sacrifice, and how can we rationalize how Bold Berthold could possibly be Ben when Able looks at him, if Arthur Ornsby crossed from our Earth into Mythgarthr after fleeing his family’s cabin? As with much in Wolfe which is at first opaque, the mysteries can sometimes explain one another, though there is a little bit of lupine trickery in Able’s initial memories. In Mythgarthr as a grown man, Able first comes upon an ogre named Org, a starving and ravenous being found as an unwanted child by a twisted and deformed man named Uns, who is jealous of his able brother, Duns, and uses the ogre to make him feel superior. Uns describes how he found Org: “Da ma was dead, layin’ inna woods wid arrows all over in her ‘n Org stavin’” (*Knight* XL, 247). It is at the point when Able wrestles Org that he remembers a small fact which never seems to bear fruit in the text


: “I had given little Ossar to the Bodachan when they gave me Gylf” (*Knight* XLI 251). [We shall return to the significance of the forgotten child of the dead Disira, but it is vitally important as our analysis unfolds that we pay attention to the initials involved in these exchanges. Org and Ossar are explicitly linked in this memory.] It is only when Able sneaks Org into the dungeons, ravenously hungry, that we get several dreams which represent the true frame of this story, related back to back and not as disjointed as they at first appear:

>I was a woman in a dirty bed in a stuffy little room. An old woman sitting beside my bed kept telling me to push, and I pushed, although I was so tired I could not push hard, no matter how hard I tried. I knew my baby was trying to breathe, and could not breathe, and would soon die.
>“Push!”

>I had tried to save; now I was only trying to get away. He would not let go, climbing on me, pushing me underwater.

>The moon shone through pouring rain as I made my way down the muddy track. At its end the ogre loomed black and huge. I was the boy who had gone into Disiri’s cave, not the man who had come out. My sword was Disira’s grave marker, the short stick tied to the long one with a thong. I pushed the point into the mud to mark my own grave, and went on. When the ogre threw me, it became such a sword as I wished for, with a golden pommel and a gleaming blade.
I floated off the ground and started back for it, but I could no longer breathe. (*Knight* XLI, 257-8)

These dreams conjoin nicely with an earlier image, in which Able is injured on board the Western Trader while he attempts to fight off the Osterlings. During this sea voyage, Able has a dream:

>In the dream I had been way down under the main deck. It had been pitch dark, but I had known somehow that our mother was not really dead at all – she was down there, tied up and gagged so she could not make any noise, and if I could find her I could cut her loose and bring her up on deck. Only the captain was down there too, and he had a rope he wanted to choke me with. He was moving around very quietly, trying to come up behind me and get it around my neck. I was trying to be quiet, too, so he could not find me. …

>There had been somebody else down there with us in my dream, somebody that never moved at all or made any noise; but I did not know who it was. (*Knight* XVII, 114)

Here Able, some quiet stranger, and his mother are all somehow below deck in the dark, with the threat of the captain lurking to strangle him. Soon, Able will accidentally kill the captain by hitting him in the head with Swordbreaker, he drops him into the ocean. This will become another motif which we should pay attention to, as both Able, Garvaon, Swordbreaker, and some part of Bold Berthold will suffer the same fate, in dreams or in waking. There is one final dream sequence that only makes sense if we understand that Able has awareness from before fertilization:





“I was lookin’ our sharp for a berth when you spied me on th’wharf.” (*Knight* XVIII, 117)
The relationship between America and Mythgarthr and the entire cosmology of *The Wizard Knight* come into a different light when we recognize that much of the conflict in the story is metaphorical, and that while there is no named Cain to Able’s Abel, his relationship with his brother Ben is fraught with peril for both of them. Just as Uns resents his whole brother Duns, the text is full of jealous brothers – and even murderous ones. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Bold Berthold’s name involves a reference to the Norse god Baldr (the old Norse world for Baldr means “bold”). In myth, Baldr is killed by his twin brother, Höðr, who happens to be a blind god, after he is tricked by Loki. Heree, we have a blind Bold Berthold. The joining of Baldr and Höðr into one character actually holds huge significance for our understanding of what happens in *The Wizard Knight*, given that two of the most difficult characters to distinguish are the chimeras, Uri and Baki. A chimeric twin is a situation in the womb in which one twin is reabsorbed into the other and is never born. When Bold’s village is first threatened, he eventually escapes into a lake, attempting to hide. It is at this point that he feels a shadow drop off from himself quite mysteriously, and in the metaphorical dream logic of the text, this represents the dropping off of a twin. After this point, the threat of starvation looms in the womb, and the cold weather which befalls the land hints at the paucity of resources available. Given the fate of Garsecg, strangled by Parka’s string, and the repetitive imagery of difficulty breathing from both Able, the dreams above, and even Svon and King Gilling, it is easy to imagine what the string, which holds the dreams of America within it, actually represents. It is an umbilical cord, and it threatens to strangle one of the infants just as Org murders the giants in the second volume.


Able’s sacrifice on the last pages of *The Wizard* becomes far more poignant when we realize  that he will never actually be real: he has been reabsorbed into his twin to heal him in the womb (becoming a “chimeric” twin in the process); Mythgarthr is not merely the metaphorical body of Ymir (whose name means “twin”), but the womb of their mother. The increasingly cold state of Arnthor’s realm in the second volume serves as a terrible reminder of the cost many women have paid in childbirth. There are several motifs that form the backbone of the novels, and they include an inimical relationship between brothers, a great difficulty in breathing, the death of a mother in pregnancy, and the ultimate threat of falling into a body of water.

## Frustrating Expectations

Sooner or later, Able is given all of the powers of a child's wish fulfillment. He becomes large, strong, physically capable, attracts the attention of women and god-like beings, attains sentient servant animals and even the endorsement of angels. However, even in upholding some of the most dogmatically traditional ideas about gender and class responsibilities, Wolfe's novel still manages to go in directions the first-time reader never expects. When Able ascends to Skai and the Valfather's castle after defeating Grengarm and gaining the blade Eterne, with its legion of phantom knights to aid him, we expect the second volume to pick up from that point. Instead, the narrative shifts to Able's young peers, secondary characters like Toug and Svon. Wolfe even presents many of the background details through one of the most frustrating narrative techniques imaginable - Toug breaks Svon's nose, and we are treated to exposition which vastly alters the pace and tone of the book: "You wand do know w'eder we god a mon'der wid us? Da answer's yes. Bud dad isn'd my mon'der - isn't da mon'der Zir Able gave me do. Id's your mon'der" (*Wizard* 25). We shall return to the metaphorical significance of the damaged nose later, and Svon’s assertion that both Toug and he have been bequeathed “monsters.”

Once again, narrative development in Wolfe consistently reflects important points. At the point when Svon and Toug fight, Able has left the world of Mythgarthr and his old concerns, and while we receive hints of the adventures he had in Skai fighting the Giants of Winter and Old Night and serving the Valfather, the story is always about maturation, and that cycle includes how we influence others. Svon and Toug, when Able leaves, are not yet the men they will become, and progress for them is much more difficult and developed more slowly than for Able, who has left them behind. That slow percolation of character and maturity is more important to the themes of *The Wizard Knight* than the adventures in Skai. Able has truly ascended into myth once he grabs Eterne (and then dies from grievous wounds in confronting the dragon Grengarm and falling into the water, as the text suggests). As he reveals in his tale to Leort, Able even becomes the Green Man who challenges Gawain in our tales of the round table. The stilted and injured dialogue of Svon, on the other hand, reflects the difficulty he has in progressing as a knight, for his wounded pride slows his momentum to a crawl, and this marriage of theme and style subjects us to the least enjoyable section of the novel, where we must filter words through his deviated septum. His path to knighthood is equally slow, laborious, and painful, hampered by his mortal weaknesses. When Toug discusses Svon's pride and the injuries he has faced with Idnn, who fancies Svon, he realizes, "it was time for a good solid lie ... and he lied manfully. 'I said something ... I don't think he's forgotten; but I don't think he's mad anymore, either.'” (*Wizard*, V 61). When Toug must take Mani to King Gilling, he asks himself if Able, Sir Garvaon, or Svon would perform the task, and resolves to do so as well (*Wizard*, VI 66).

Upon Able's return to fulfill his obligations, we expect him to be unbeatable, yet the first thing he does is lose a joust to a young and inexperienced knight who refuses to grant his requests - because Able wants to get on with more important goals. This loss, too, seems to have a symbolic resonance with Able’s ultimate destiny. When Able’s plans to abandon his responsibilities don’t go according to plan, he stations himself at the bridge and fulfills the tasks he has been set. This becomes one of the central features of the two volumes. Even though Able's physical development has been meddled with by external powers, he still has some important lessons to internalize. For the most part, these are by necessity self-imposed. The first volume, *The Knight*, gives us a hero who refuses to take up a blade until he finds the "right" one. The second volume, *The Wizard*, has Able attaining almost god-like powers from Skai, but refusing to engage those magical forces until he has no choice. This frustrating refusal to use the powers at your command is of course exactly what it feels like to be a man in the modern world, bound by expectations, social responsibilities, and an inner sense of what is just - and sometimes the only escape from all of these feelings is of course to imagine the world as you conceived of it when you were a child. To actually use great strength to resolve problems runs the risk of transforming you into a bully and, at worst, a monster.

## Here and There

This project has been involved in bringing Wolfe’s subtext into the open, and it seems that *The Wizard Knight* marks a definite shift into territory that might be easier to dismiss as “minor” in theme. The primary mystery, the ontological relationship between Able of Celidon and Arthur Ormsby of America seems to be intimately related to the very cosmology of the worlds described in the novels. It should be noted that the corporeal remains of important (often villainous) characters from higher realms somehow seep below and create the landscape of the world below them. While the body of Ymir the giant formed Midgard in Norse mythology as well, Wolfe applies the pattern more thoroughly to the seven layers of reality in his series. When much of Mythgarthr is viewed as the corpse of a giant, perhaps we can make sense of Able’s own relationship to Bold Berthold (and Ben!) and the original Able. Luckily, Wolfe often provides small set-pieces and parallel situations that will allow us to extrapolate some facts about Able. Dead or alive, Able’s journey involves change and development, and the hardest things to accept in a rapidly changing world involve the times when we must learn to restrain ourselves from using and abusing the powers we have.

It seems that the denizens of one world can ascend only one layer to the next, but they can descend all of the way down to Nifleheim. If we view this as a biological metaphor, it makes a kind of sense: a nucleus is a nucleus, and a liver cell a liver cell, but once we ascend one biochemical level, it is a part of the liver. After that point, the liver is a part of the digestive system, and the digestive system is a part of, in this example, a human being, a small but commanding part of the ecosystem. If we take a part of the human, there is no guarantee that the liver cell will be found within that part – individuality is lost as the levels go up, but individual cells can die even while the entire organism continues. We see the things living in the blood of the giants in *The Wizard Knight* with some disgust, but this literary act involves making clear that blood actually is composed of living cells who are simultaneously a part of (while still independent from) the macrocosmic organism.


## The Bully Born of Necessity

Bullying is an almost universal problem in schools. It happens when imbalances in power run rampant without a just (or perhaps even an adult) perspective, allowing the strong, either through physical attribute or strength in number, to victimize the weak. The relationship between the just and unjust use of strength is one of the primary explorations of the first volume [though, as we will discuss in our plot summary with gloss below, Able has some very good reasons for his attitudes]. When Able first finds himself in his virile and potent man's body, without suitable clothes, he immediately goes back to Glennidam and knocks down a man (Toug's father of the same name) who laughs at him (*Knight*, VIII 59). In addition, without reflection, he declares himself a knight to Toug's sister Ulfa, whose advances become overt because of his physical characteristics (*Knight*, VIII 61). During this scene, Ulfa confirms one of the biggest imbalances in the books, which Able has been sent to rectify. When asked if her mother is alive, she says, "By Garsecg's grace she's still among us" (*Knight*, VIII 61). Garsecg, a dragon of Muspel who has ascended to Aelfrice with (self-proclaimed) decent intentions, has been swayed by his hunger for power over those who dwell in Aelfrice and has subverted their worship, inverting the natural order of reverence downwards towards his own home. The city of Glennidam, in the world of Mythgarthr even further above Aelfrice, seems to have turned to his worship as well. Garsecg has no grace to offer them.

When reason and temperance do not exert any influence on strength of arm, and action merely begets reaction rather than a reflective breaking of the cycle, then to those who live and die by strength of arm, perhaps it does not seem that they act unjustly. Toug's father and some other citizens of Glennidam plan to ambush and probably kill Able, but Able subdues Toug and tells him, "I was younger than you are yesterday. That may be why it doesn't feel like bullying to do this. But maybe it is" (*Knight*, VIII 65). Without the perspective of a mature man, Able does not understand how to temper his strength with reason, responding in kind to the violent reactions of the people. When Able leaves town with the young Toug, they find themselves in Aelfrice, and Able is reunited with Disiri for a short time (*Knight*, IX 67). We shall return to the importance of this to understanding the book’s metaphors below.


When Able kisses Ulfa, "a wolf howled in the distance" and Ulfa declares it a bad omen: "A Norn-hound." (*Knight*, VIII 63). Later, when Uri offers to kneel before him and invites him to Aelfrice, "Something too deep-voiced for a wolf howled in the distance" (*Knight*, XXXVIII). This sexual temptation, with women both fay and mortal, seems to prompt that call. Just as in Wolfe’s stories of Latro, an excellent point of reference might be found in the cautionary constellation tale, “The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin is the Sun.”

 Later, he scares Ve so that he will not tell the outlaws that he is coming for them, "to make him do what I told him, because I did not have any money." (Knight XIV 98). Ulfa suggests, "kindness might have done it."(Knight XIV 98)
He immediately offers to kill Toug if Disiri desires it, and she says, "You mortals ... are often tender about such things. It is supposed to be a good example for us, and sometimes it is." (Knight IX 68). She supposes they have been apart over a year, though to him it is but a day. "I just made myself a knight. I was hoping it would make me somebody you could love." (Knight IX 69). She says that by the same measure she made herself a goddess. (Knight IX 69).
She says that he should have a sword that is "a fabled brand imbued with all sorts of magical authority and mystical significance - Eterne, Sword of Grengarm." (Knight IX 69).  That sword was forged in the "Elder Time" when the Overcyns visited Mythgarthr more often and taught smiths such as Weland, who broke six tongs before he produced the unbreakable Eterne, which is haunted, and "commands the ghosts who bore it." (Knight, IX 69).

"When the wind moans in the chimney, O my lover, go into the wood. There you will find me crying for the lovers I have lost." (Knight IX 70)

Able forces his way into the captain's cabin, and when he fears he might vomit, he thinks, "I would make Pouk clean it up if I did. And kill him if he would not do it."(Knight XVI 107)

Argument over his dog eating. "I picked him up, turned him over, and dropped him. "Im living at Sheerwall Castle now. You can go to Duke Marder for justice, and I'm sure you'll get it if you do. Only first it might be smart for you to think about whether you really want it" (Knight XXXVI 225) He fights Nytir, who tries to stab him after he has been defeated. The squire declares him "a true knight" (226).

After meeting with Marder, he and Pouk are on their way back to Forcetti: "We're going into Forcetti to pay an innkeeper what we owe him, and we can pay you as well." (Knight XXXV 220)

When he comes at last to the Isle of Glas, he dreams: "I rode down out of the sky like the Moonrider. I think I came to do justice on earth, only the earth swallowed me. What does it mean?" (Knight, XXIV 153)

Eterne was a fire aelf construct, confusion over Weland as man or Aelf. (Knight XXXVII 231)"

>On Weland: After all, Weland seems to come from a mythological tradition that emphasized his suffering and his bloody revenge, which involved dismembering children, raping women, and making tableware out of body parts (“Lay of Volund”). “Deor” mentions his suffering and his impregnation of Beadohild, and it seems to find in Weland a figure worthy of admiration, the rape of Beadohild notwithstanding.  “Waldere” evokes both Weland and Widia, his son by Beadohild (Nithhad’s daughter), and here Weland clearly figures primarily as a legendary smith, as he does in Beowulf; there is no indication that he was associated with the sort of bloodthirsty behavior he portrays in “The Lay of Volund.”  As if the multivalence of Weland as a literary figure were not stunning enough, his story is also portrayed on the Franks Casket, and his panel illustrates episodes from his revenge and escape right in the midst of other panels showing the Adoration of the Magi, for instance (“Franks Casket”).  Plainly, Weland could move easily between the pagan and Christian, the oral and literary, the classical and vernacular.  His story was apparently well known to Anglo-Saxon audiences, as it is alluded to in the corpus but never laid out in full.  Primary sources from the Norse-Icelandic corpus suggest a darker and more dangerous figure than do Anglo-Saxon sources, so it’s possible that, as Bradley suggests, the association with the supernatural in the Anglo-Saxon imagination was not as pronounced as it was in the sagas. http://k-navit.livejournal.com/683252.html

"the old high gods of the Aelf are likewise immortal. What will become of your spirit when you die?" (Knight XXIV 155).

Skull under a lime tree with a green glass tube on the Isle of Glas, female pelvis (Knight XXIV 156).

"What memories would you like to discard? ... About America. My real name, and living there." Uri said, "Is America your real name?" (Knight XXV 160)

He thinks Disiri must have made him grow "the way I would have if I hadn't been in Aelfrice ... Only Bold Berthold, he's maybe thirty, forty years older -" (Knight XXV 162)

When Garsecg speaks of freeing the aelf from Kulili, Able says, "I had stopped to look at a tree of a shade of green I had never seen before. I am sure it came from Aelfrice, but it was so fresh and new-looking that it seemed like God had just made it. Like He had planted it a minute before I got there. It had blue and purple flowers, and the long feelers of whatever you call them inside the flowers were bright red. I have never seen another one like it, and I have remembered it all this time." (Knight XXV 166)
"A thousand of your years have passed since that war" (Knight XXV 165)

Kulili says, "*I made them. I shaped them as a woman molds dough, taking something from the trees, something from the beasts that felled the trees, and something from myself.* I saw her hands then, hands knit of a million millions of thread-worms, and Disiri taking shape as they labored. That dream was lost among ... many others, dreams of death, long before my eyelids fluttered. But not lost completely." (Knight XLIII 390)

"You are one with the sea, more than you know." (Knight XXV 169).

Kulili: "*This world was mine. Mine in a time when there were no Aelf. They drove me from the land into the water, and from the water into these depths. I can be driven no farther." (Knight XXVII 171)
>The beautiful woman was gone. Instead I saw a strange forest. There were trees like phone poles, with a few big leaves at the top. There were pools of water all over, and down where the roots were, something really big was getting bigger and sending out feelers everyplace. The trees talked to this woman under them, and the little plants did too; she answered all of them, one at a time, and was great. She saw them all, and she saw their souls, because each of them was wrapped in a soul like a man would wear a cloak.
>... the woman underneath them made protectors for them, taking little bits of their souls and little pieces of herself, pale gray wisdom that gleamed like pearls. Sticks, leaves, and mud, too, and fire and smoke and water and moss. All sorts of stuff.
>At first the protectors were sort of like animals too, but the big woman under the roots looked up into the sky and saw Mythgarthr, and people up there plowing, and planting flowers and tending orchards. So she made the protectors more like them. (Knight, XXVII 171)

"Back then I did not know that the Osterlings were going to take it away from us, or that we were going to take it back. If you had told me I was going to be the one that gave the order to give it up and retreat south, I would have said you were crazy." (Knight XXIX 179)

When he descends with Thunrolf into the Mountain of Fire, he says it is hardest to tell the truth. He did not realize he would have to descend all the way to Muspel. (Knight XXX 189)

After returning from the mountain after the passage of a year, his dreams were not troubled "by the people whose lives wove the bowstring Parka bit through for me." (Knight XXXI 193)

Beel takes responsibility: "I am ready to stand before King Arnthor, to report that I have lost his gifts, and to welcome whatever punishment he may decree." (Knight XLI 374)

Svon comes to realize that a manor would be better than his father's acres (Wizard, II 27). He still neglects his horse, and Able says, "If I had a squire he'd take care of my mount - not because I don't think it's important, but so he could learn to do it. When he was a knight himself, he might not have anybody to care for his horse. (Wizard, III 33)"

## The Reflection of Reality and the Echo of Myth

One of the features which consistently separates Wolfe from other fantasists is his presentation of fully formed secondary worlds with very real connections to our own. There are many of these "parallel" worlds in fantasy, from Lewis's *Narnia* to Zelazny's *Amber*, but in Wolfe’s series we never actually get to see the "real" world save for a brief opening chapter, with Able running through the woods, afraid that he will be in his brother's way, and the occasional memory or dream granted by the strange bow-string given Able by Parka of Kleos. This bow-string actually seems to be the link between Mythgarthr and Earth.

In order to draw conclusions about the relationship between Earth and Mythgarthr, it might be necessary to take a closer look at how Wolfe changed the Norse cosmology. There were usually nine worlds rather than seven in the standard Norse myths; Wolfe has completely taken out a few and seems to have combined others. In the branches and roots of the world tree Yggdrasil, the worlds were Niflheim, Muspelheim, Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, and Helheim.

In misty, Niflheim, the well Hvergelmir sits – the origin of all life, to which it returns eventually, and one of the large roots of Yggdrasil drinks there. Wolfe’s novels have Niflheim as the lowest world, where the most low god dwells. Above that, Wolfe places Muspel. Muspelheim was a land of fire ruled by Surtr, the enemy of the Aesir. Wolfe also places Setr in Muspel originally, though he has been able to subvert the worship of the aelf to himself rather than to the humans above them. Skai is appropriately Asgard, which also existed in the sky, home ot Odin and the other Aesir.

In Wolfe’s novels, Jotunhome is the secret country of the giant Angrborn women, and thus Jotunheim may be combined with Mythgarthr/Midgard. While Able travels to Jotunland in the north, he never actually visits Jotunhome. However, just as in Norse Myth, the well Mimir is in Jotunhome. To drink form this well of wisdom, Odin gave up one of his eyes.

The real issue which confounds easy interpretation involves the way in which Wolfe splits Norse myths between Mythgarthr and Skai: the normal characters such as Seaxneat, Ve, and Vili are all named after important Norse figures. Indeed, Seaxneat is one of Odin’s sons, and Ve is one of the primary deities of creation – but they are a brigand and a child in Wolfe’s novel, respectively. Gods such as Forseti, the deity of justice, are transformed into city names such as Forcetti. The place of the giantess Hel, who will amass all of the wicked dead to storm Asgard at the time of Ragnarok,  seems to be taken by the most low god.

To make matters worse, there seems to be a similar “echo” between all of the plot strands: Arthur Ormsby is left by Ben, who is interested in Geri, Able is neglected by Bold, whose girlfriend’s name is Gerta, and even Arnthor has Gaynor, though his half-brother Setr does not match the “alphabetical” pattern.


One of the interesting legends surrounding the Fortunate Isles, also known as the Island of Glass, involves the idea that those worthy of it were found virtuous in three incarnations and judged fit for the Elysian Fields each time. It might be no coincidence that Wolfe chose


"Parka had bitten off for me from her spinning, the string whose murmuring voices and myriad strange lives had disturbed my dreams for so many nights." (Knight VIII 59)

When he is wounded, he dreams of losing his machine gun and thinks, "our captain came, shuffling his feet, and when he was standing beside me he kicked me in the face." (Knight XIX 124) This is probably the military captain, disciplining his wounded soldier for failing or losing his machine gun, and later, when Pouk tells him that the Captain wanted to kill him, but everyone else followed him, e thinks, "Pouk had become another dream. ... But the Osterlings were gaining on us, their thin black ship leaping across the sea, and the arrow was at my ear." (Knight XIX 124)
The complex cosmology is a bit confused by the concept that the stars adn the moon are the same as on Earth.

"After that I was in bed, and a nurse came in and said I had fought the hijackers, and everybody was so proud of me they could bust. There was a dog in the hospital, that was why she was there, and had I seen it? " (knight XIX 125)

"I hit him with Sword Breaker thinking I would knock him out. I hit him too hard, though, and the diamond-shaped blade went deep into his head instead." (Knight XX129)

Parka's bow: "listening to the murmur of the many, many lives that made up that string - to the noise of hte poeple, if I can say it like that. To life. Those men, women, and children who make up Parka's string knew nothing about me, nothing about my psiny orange bow, nothing about the arrow they would send whistling at some outlaw; but they sensed all of it, I think, sensing that their lives had been drawn tight, and the battle was about to start. ... they sat at their fires or did the work they did each day; but they sensed that there was going to be a battle, and how it came out would depend on them. (Knight XIII 91)"

"I loved Queen Disiri, always, and nobody else; and if you do not understand that, you will never understand all the things I am oging to tell you at all, because that was always the main thing. ... I knew I was just a kid inside. ... I knew it was not true, it was just something Disiri had done, and I was really a kid. (Knight XIII 93)

"Where you are, people kill people all the time just like they do here. Then they talk like it was the worst thing in the world. Here it is murder that is bad, and fighting is just fighting. Our way, people do not feel bad about doing what they had to do; Sir Woddet killed so many Osterlings once that it made him sick for a long time, but killing Osterlings never did bother me. How can you feel bad about killing somebody who would cook and eat you? Killing outlaws never bothered me either. (Knight XIV 96)"

"When I was a boy, I spent years in Alefrice, but when I had gone I couldn't remember what had happened there, and I looked the same way I had when I got there. All those years hadn't changed me at all. ... Terrible things have been nibbling at the edges of my mind. "( Knight XIV 98)

When he first meets Pouk Bad Eye, who will serve him, he again calls himself a knight: "because I knew I coul dnever get people to believe me unless I believed it myself." (Knight XV 102)
"Knights used to guard the fords in my time. They'd help poor travelers, and fight any other knight who wanted to cross." (Knight XV 104) "It is the seeing of the sword - the perception of it - that matters. Not the sword itself." (Knight XV 105)

He gets a mace of the "Lothurlings" who live where the sun sets, eventually calling it Swordbreaker (Knight XV 105)

Fighting in the great hall at Sheerwell with Caspar and Hob. "I hit him because he was going to threaten me, and keep on threatening me until I did. His Grace's ban on fighting is a good idea hwen everybody acts decently. Is it really worse to have a fight now and then, than to have people like him, people who like to hurt other people when they can't fight back, spitting in somebody's face while he's trying to talk to somebody else?" (Knight XLII 265)

Org kills and eats Hob. (Knight XLIII 267) Then he beats Svon for not tending to the horses and saying, "You told his Grace that you had guided Sir Ravd and me in the forests above Irringsmouth. Another lie. .. Your pet's killed somebody else." (Knight, XLIII 270)

"I am a gentleman, and gentlemen avenge any wrongs they suffer." (Knight, XLIII 270).

"Your mother never knew you ... I, who know so little, know that now. I make mistakes, you see. I am near perfection." (Knight XLIV 275). Michael appears after he is banished from Marder's court.

"What lies beyond skill?" (Knight XLIV 276)
"Pray, rather, that she does not find you." (Knight XLIV 276)
"He called you." (Knight XLIV 277) Knight with black dragon (calling himself)

"You should ask whence came the tongs that grasped Eterne. Notice, please, that I did not say I would answer you. Farewell. I go to Aelfrice to seek that far-famed knight, Sir Able of the High Heart." (Knight XLIV 277)

When Beel attempts to use his magic, he drinks from a goblet and calls on three names from Celtic mythology: Mongan, Dirmaid, and Sirona. (Knight LIX 362)


So many of the events in *The Wizard Knight* mirror Norse myth without having a direct relationship. For example, one such story from myth involves the kidnapping of the goddess Idnn, who is spirited away from Odin, Loki, and Hoenir as they travel through desolate mountains by the eagle form of the giant Thiazi after Loki bargains her and her fruits away. As a result of this, the gods and goddesses begin to age and wrinkle. Comparing this with Queen Idnn's marriage, in large part engineered by Thiazi for King Gilling, creates a parallel situation that has a subtly different connotations.   Gilling, too, is a character from myth who was murdered by two dwarves named Fjalar and Galar who rowed him out to the center of a lake. The outcome of that murder bears little resemblance to the story of King Gilling, but the murder remains, perhaps in some way indirectly inspired by the inversion of priorities engendered by the most prominent figure of the sea, Garsecg.

While we certainly disagree on a few of the references, Duke at the Duchy of Cumberbach online has compiled a list of possible references and allusions throughout *The Wizard Knight*
While I do not necessarily agree with all of his inferences and references, several of the parallels are most interesting, especially comparing many of Able's accomplishments with the Labors of Hercules, the trials of Odysseus, or the efforts of Theseus implying the interconnectivity of all of these mythic patterns and also explaining something of the structure of Able's adventures from that mythical perspective. However, Duke also attempts to map many of the characters onto traditional Arthurian myths, and unfortunately one of the tricks Wolfe is using here involves a heavier reliance on Norse Myth even in Mythgarthr. While Arnthor's name is meant to put us in mind of King Arthur, he has much more in common with Sigurd. It seems that his grandfather was King Pholsung, which bears a strong resemblance to the name Völsung. [Forgive my hypocrisy for challenging Duke's shifted names while engaging in the same type of analysis - in this case, the specifics of the life of Pholsung's grandchild forces my hand.]

Volsung's son Sigmund is the father of Sigurd the dragon-slayer. Odin brings the sword Gram (forged by Weland, as Eterne was) and plunges it into the Barnstokk tree. Only Sigmund can free the sword. A jealous rival uses his shapeshifting mother (who turns into a wolf) devours Sigmund's brothers one by one until only he remains. Sigmund eventually becomes something of an outlaw, but must eventually face Odin, who shatters his sword. As he dies, he tells his wife that his son Sigurd will one day make a great weapon out of the sword. Another story has Sigmund grow suspicious of his wife's virtue, casting his sown out.

Sigurd's life begins to parallel the story of Arnthor, just as his father Sigmund's actually seems to resemble the legendary stories of Arthur.Sigurd's mother marries King Alf and sends him away. Eventually he reforges Gram. Upon returning


While Michael Andre-Driussi's *The Wizard Knight Companion* lists the mythical connotations of the names Thiazi and Idnn, he does not equate the things which befall the mortal Idnn with the goddess she is named for and the mythological events which befell her directly; any complete look at the series should inquire why myth and mortality are so intertwined, especially when these same struggles might be occurring in Skai as well.

Nerthis: "An Overcyn who lived in Mythgarthr. She was the queen of wild animals and made trees grow." Wizard, 12). Able claims never to have heard of "him", though Toug asserts it is a woman (Wizard, III 35). This matches the Germanic deity Nerthis, believed to be masculine in origin: *Nerþuz, a direct precursor to the Old Norse deity name Njörðr. While scholars have noted numerous parallels between the descriptions of the two figures, Njörðr is attested as a male deity."




## The Story in Brief: Metaphor or Not?

Written as a letter from Aelfrice after the events of the novel are finished, the text is addressed to our narrator’s brother Ben. Left in a cabin alone while his brother goes to spend time with his girlfriend, Arthur Ormsby chases fantastic figures in the clouds (one of them a six-sided castle, “all spiky like a star because there were towers and turrets coming out of all its sides” (*Knight* 20) before descending a slope in the darkness and being grabbed by mysterious figures later revealed to be the aelf. When he comes to himself again, he finds himself in a cave with Parka, who instructs him to plant a seed but advises him that he will have to wait for the slack of the tide. She also gives him the name Able of the High Heart, and he realizes that something has been lost somehow while he tarried with the aelf. Indeed, he notes, “it was all mixed up with somebody else, a little girl who had played with me; and there had been big, big trees, and ferns a lot bigger than we were, and clear springs” (*Knight* 22).

[Knowing that there would be some resistance to a metaphorical reading of the entire story, I must still stress that this sudden shift in environment resembles a sperm chasing the ideal of an egg, being hostilely transplanted from one environment to another, winding up in a strange cave, and even given the mandate of planting a seed. Since the events in *The Wizard Knight* are the myths which the fertilized Able uses to romanticize the terrible struggle between twins for resources in the womb, an a-temporal quality to Able’s story emerges. His union with Disiri here results in Able being “all mixed up” with her (a meeting which, when it occurs in text, will result in him suddenly “growing”) - this represents fertilization, and later dreams he has of swimming with Garsecg among silver and red fish harken back to his recollection of life as a sperm. At one point, he even dreams that he is a pregnant woman, whose child cannot breathe and will certainly die. This is one of the central moments of the text to help understand the ending sacrifice Able will make. The events of the book repeat some of the worst struggles which both the unfertilized sperm and the fertilized egg underwent during the pregnancy, and the gigantic sperm of the giants introduced in the second volume, which seem to be living and moving creatures, help unpack the metaphor as well – especially considering that the action takes place in the rotting body of Ymir.]

Parka tells Able that he has been sent by the Aelf with tales of their wrongs – a message he will not remember until he stands face to face with King Arnthor of Celidon. Able finds himself near a shattered tower with only Parka’s strange bowstring [this will come to represent an umbilical cord], three seeds, and a small knife in a pouch at his waist. As he plants the first seed, he sees a large man watching him in chain mail featuring a black dragon, and only later will we learn that this is a future version of Able, ascended to Skai, who drinks from the well of Mimir and sees his past self. Soon he finds himself with fisherman, who share food with him and tell ghost stories. He is told that most spiny orange trees only have one fruit with three seeds, but that when the tree is chopped down it must be planted in three places. Able describes planting one of the seeds and seeing the knight standing before him as he drank. When the knight disappears, he turns into a cloud, which is mentioned as “the breath of the Lady” by Sha’s grandfather. They indicate that her name cannot be spoken. (*Knight* 26)  [The goddess of clouds and the sky, Frigg or Frigga, incidentally has a name which bears some mirror resemblance to the name that is running through Able’s head: Griffinsford. The Griffin will come to have a far more symbolic meaning by the end of the story, since the novel deals heavily in letter tropes. Garsecg, Garvaon, Gilling, Gylf, and the Griffin all pose a similar threat, the hostile embodiment of the greedy will to destroy a brother that the negative life struggle of the twins involves, while the benevolent version features B names, such as Ben and Bold Berthold, embody a more positive and loving characterization. It should already be obvious that Able, Arnthor, and Arthur Ornsby all represent almost Jungian aspects of our narrator’s psyche.]

Leaving Irringsmouth to search for Griffinsford, two boys attempt to rob him. (Later we learn that one of them is Toug, who will play a prominent role in the second volume. At one point, Toug will be lost in Aelfrice, just as Able was). Able winds up beating them and taking their bowstring. He learns to hunt with his bow and eventually presents himself at Bold Berthold’s hut with a grouse to share. [This sharing of food and the threat of starvation will become a huge theme throughout the novels, especially when winter comes to the land at the end of the second volume. This coming of winter bodes ill for the survival of Able’s mother, and we will discuss how this is reflected in the text through the death of Garvaon’s spouse in pregnancy and the manner in which Uns’ and Duns’s mother meets her own end – Wolfe repeats the motif of the death of the mother enough to explain why Mythgarthr has become so cold, with eternal winter looming.] Bold tells him that no one lives in Griffinsford, and Able realizes, “the name of our town had not been Griffinsford. Perhaps it is Griffin – or Griffinsburg or something like that. But I cannot remember.” (*Knight* 28). The village was destroyed long ago by giants led by Schildstarr [who will one day take Gilling’s place as the ruler of Jotunland. There is even a resonance between Schildstarr, Svon, and Setr in terms of understanding the metaphorical action of the novel.] During the burning attack of the giants, Bold takes refuge in a lake, and a shadow slips from him. [This is actually a pivotal moment in the text, for there is truly only one way to justify some of the later dreams Able has, in which he feels that someone is pushing his head down under water, standing atop him. Only in the final pages of the novel does Able restore the shadow Ben lost to him. Able is the twin which separated from the fertilized egg from Ben at this point, and something will soon happen to compromise airflow and resources to both developing embryos. This is the moment when life becomes hard for Bold and for Able, when brother is pitted against brother in a war in the womb. All of Able’s cruelty in the first volume, all of his selfishness, is predicated upon a struggle that boils down to survival of the fittest: the sperm must be quick and ruthless to win the race, and if it must share resources, it must fight to take as much as it can. The moral quandary of the entire first volume, with Able’s bullying parsimony, makes much more sense in light of the harsh environment of the womb. All life is born of an intense struggle; only the strong can be born.]


They visit Griffinsford, where the human inhabitants have been offering worship to the world below Mythgarthr, Aelfrice, adopting as gods those who were meant to worship them. [Here of course the implication is not only that human beings are caught up in greed and in material things rather than in the gifts of the spirit, but also that the harsh conditions which Able finds himself causes all of his instincts to focus on the lowest goal: individual survival at all costs.]  Eventually Able meets the knight Sir Ravd and his squire Svon.

“The cuts became the surges of the clear sea of Alefrice, the green stick that was the Green Sword, that was Eterne, curling like a wave and breaking like an avalanche, only to return to the sea and rush ashore again. … “Master Tung used to say a true swordsman was a lily blooming in the fire.” (Knight 342).

“But first of all speed. Which is what Garvaon stressed over and over. If you cannot do it fast, you cannot do it.” (Knight 343).

## DYING IN CHILDBIRTH

“I’m a widower. … It will be two years this fall. My son died too. Volla was trying to bear me a son.” (Knight 355) Garvaon [Volla is another name for the Norse goddess Fulla, whose name might mean “bountifull.” She serves as Frigg’s confidant and tends to the ashen box Frigg owns. This chapter appears in back to the ashes.

“”underneath those things I kept thinking over and over that if Idnn really wanted to be rescued, here [Garvaon] was.” (Knight 356).

“What should I do when the other man foins? How can I guard against it?’ (Wolfe 357)

“It’s because he’s crippled that I treat him as harshly as I do. … He could have gone on living with his mother, and done little or no work, and his brother would have continued to take care of him when she was gone. That was why he left. … I’ve made myself a knight. That’s high up for a poor kid that lost his folks early. Uns is scared he may never have a spot at all. I’m trying to show him that he’s got one- that somebody wants him around for what he can do, and not just because they feel sorry for him.” (Knight 367).

“You’ve had a rough time of it with me.”
“Just once.”
“In the boat?”
“In the cave.”
I rode in silence after that. There was a nightingale singing in the trees beside the river, and I found myself wondering why a bird that would be welcomed wherever I went would choose to live in Jotunland. It made me remember how I had stayed at the cabin so I would not get in your way. I had not minded it, and in fact I had liked it a lot; and that made me realize that I liked being by myself out there in Jotunland, too. People are all right, and in fact some are truly good; but you do not see the Valfather’s castle when you are with them.” (Knight 392).

Garvaon would have been all right, but no Garvaon was better, because he was really Setr.” (Knight 392)

“So Garsecg had chained Gylf up like the Angrborn had, and for a while I wondered why Gylf had let either one of them do it. … he would rather let somebody chain him up than change. (Knight 393)


“He had locked it in an iron chest bound with seven chains and seven big padlocks” (*Wizard* 408)


“Morcaine and her brothers were reared in Aelfrice when their mother abandoned them.” (*Wizard* 409)
“Some sorcerersses have teeth down here. You stick it in and they bite it off. Mani told me.” (*Wizard* 409)

“Their mother did not abandon all three. Setr was a dragon, so why should she? She kept him by her in Muspel, in Aelfrice, and here in Mythgarthr. He was her firstborn, and so the right kind of this part of Mythgarthr, though I do not believe he tried to claim it.” (Wizard 409)

“Is King Arnthor afraid of his sister?” (Wizard 409)


## CHASING CLOUDS IN THE SKY

When he leaves the cabin, he finds a tree distinct from the others, and cuts off a branch. "That may have been the main thing, my main mistake. They are not like other trees. The Mossman care more about them." He carves the stick and lies down to look at the clouds. "Everybody has seen pictures in clouds, but I saw more that afternoon thaan I ever have efore or since - an old man with a beard that teh wind changed into a black dragon, a wonderful horse with a horn on its head, and a beautiful lady who smiled down at me.
After that, a flying caslte, all spiky like a star because there were towers and turrets coming out of all its sides. ... I got up and chased after it, waiting for the wind to blow it apart, but it never did." (Knight, I 20) He is then grabbed in the dark, in Aelfrice.

Soon he will learn from the people near Blue Stone Castle, where he planted the first seed of his spiny orange, that "Clouds are the breath of the Lady" (Knight, II 26).

"You planted if 'fore you went away. It was on my land, and I wouldn't let nobody cut it. Only somebody done, when I wasn't looking." (Knight III 36)

When he encounters Svon and Ravid, Svon assumes he is an "ouph" (38) They ask him for an account of the people nearby, and he doe snot include dogs (Knight IV 38)

In the ruined town by Blue Stone Castle, a vision of a knight decorated with a black dragon on his helm, surcoat, and green shield appears to watch Able drink the water. Later, during his time in Skai, Able realizes that he was watching himself. (Knight, 2 24)

Bold tells him that birds can visit Skai but can't stay. (Knight, III 32)


Crol: "I know the feeling" of being a boy (Knight XLVIII 297)

## THE MISSION

When Able first arrives in Mythgarthr, he remembers that he was little when he knew aobut teh Aelf, though "it was all mixed up with somebody else, a little girl who had played with me; and there had been big, big trees, and ferns a lot bigger than we were, and clear springs. And moss. Lots of moss. Soft, green moss like velvet." Parka tells him, "They have sen you with the tale of their wrongs ... and their worship ... [o]f you." (Knight, I 22)

When he sees the gold ceptre, he notes that there is a mace on one side, and Arnthor on the other, who looks, "Like he would do whatever he wanted, and if you did not like it you better get out of his way and keep your mouth shut." (Knight, XVIII 120)

[He writes his epxeriences down at one point and it is in Aelf writing - it does not seem to be the same document] (Knigh XVIII 121)

He is chased up a tree by a bear (Knight, XXI 131)

Sees the Lady with a bow (132) and the Moonrider in the sky (Knight XXI 133)

"Then I thought about the highest world, Number One. It seemed to me for that living way up there and looking down on the rest of us would make him proud. After a while I saw where that was wrong, and under my breath I said, "No, it wouldn't. It would make you kind instead, if there was any good in you at all." (Knight XXI 133)

When he meets Garsecg for the first time, who claims that the sea will heal him, he thinks of "Gilling dying down there in a bed as big as a lot of people's houses. (Knight XXII 137-8)"

the only time he and Garsecg ever fought was when he wanted to follow Disiri (138)

"the wind made me think of a knight, a big knight on a big horse riding among little ordinary people like Garsecg and me and slashin gleft and right. (Knight XXII 138)"

"your blood is the sea" (Knight XXII 139). "I was a sea-creature in Mother's womb, and she was a sea-creature inside her mother, and I will be a sea-creature as long as I live. The king must know, exactly the way I do because he put a nykr on his shield." (Knight XXII 139)

"The king's royal father lay with a woman of my race, even as you with your Aelfmaiden." (Knight XXII 140)

the Isle of Glas is made of fire opal, the "dragon stone" (Knight XXII 140)

Morcaine dwells in one of Setr's towers (Knight XXII 141)
"[T]he part about the sea was just me, too; that had been there all the time, although I had not known it." (Knight XXII 141)

"If a prisoner renounces his chains, do they fall from his wrists?" (Knight XXIII 147)

"Here Setr plans to judge our world ... Forcing us to live virtuous lives." (Knight XXIII 148)

Garsecg: "His eyes were a high wind on a dark night." (Knight, XXIII 149).

When Baki invites him to Aelfrice, "something too deep voiced for a wolf howled in the distance." (Knight XXXVIII 237)

aelf like to bother lonely armorers. (Knight XXXVIII 239)

they only hate Kulili out of fear (Knight XXXIX 242)

When he finds Org, he notes,
>Disiri was watching us then. I know that because of something that she gave me when we got here, not a drawing (although I thought it was a drawing at first) but a cutout of black paper glued to blue paper: a knight swaggering along with his hand on the hilt of a short sword; a monstrous thing behind him taller than he is, shambling on bowed legs with one scaly hand upon the knight's shoulder; and a big dog that looks small because it is following the monster. I have put it where I see it every day. It has not made me wish to go back to Mythgarthr, but I know it will someday.
>(Knight XLI 254)

## THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST

gylf was "one of the Valfather's dogs, and he had a whole pack of them. ... What was [the Valfather] like, would could he be like, if he had dogs like that? I still wanted to get to his castle in the sky. ... I wanted to go there and take Disiri with me. I still do." (Knight XVIII 120)

It is not strength or wisdom alone that makes a night, and it certainly not money or a horse. "A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. ... he acts honorably toward others, even when they do not act honorably towards him. His word is good, no matter to whome he gives it." (Knight, IV 42)

## THE MURDER OF GILLING

Even though Norse myth involves the actual murder of a giant named Gilling, the manner in which his assassination is achieved bears little resemblance to the slow, two-stage death of King Gilling. General consensus seems to be upheld by the text: motivated by love for Idnn, Garvaon first attempts to kill King Gilling and eventually succeeds.

>All the time we were talking, I was thinking about what Idnn had said about Beel giving her to King Gilling, but I could not tell Garvaon and I would have been afraid of what he might do if I did. And underneath those things I kept thinking over and over that if Idnn really wanted to be rescued, here he was. ...
>"If she rejects me, I'll tell you. But until she does, and I tell you so, I want you to promise you won't try to win her for yourself." (Knight LVIII 356)

>Waves crashed against a cliff, and I leaped and sported in them, together with the maidens of hte Sea Aelf, maidens who save for their eyes were as blue everywhere as the blue eyes of hte loveliest maids of Mythgarthr, fair young women who sparkled and laughed as they leaped from the surging sea into the storm that lit and shook the heavens.
>That lit and shook Mythgarthr. Why had I not thought of that....
>Garsecg and Garvaon waited on teh cliff, Garvaon with drawn sword and Garsecg a dragon of steel-blue fire. The Kelpies raised graceful arms and lovely faces in adoration, shrieking prayers to Setr; they cheered as a gout of scarlet flame forced Garvaon over the edge.
>He fell, striking rock after rock after rock. His helmet was lost, his sword rattled down the rocks with him, and his bones broke until a shapeless mass of armor and bleeding flesh tumbled into the sea. ...
>The cliff from which Garvaon had fallen was the NOrthern Mountains now, mountains my stallion's hooves had someow transformed into southern mountains; and the Kelpies were nothing more than a shrieking wind.

He then dreams of the Armies of Winter and Old Night advancing, and the castle standing against them alone. (Knight XLII 380)

Then, he seems to "become" Bold Berthold in the dream:

>I could not see. It might be night, it could be day - I had no way of knowing. The chain around my neck was held by a staple driven into a crevice in the wall. Once I had tried to pul it out, but I did not do that an more. ...
>Once I had hoped some friend would bring me a blanket or a bundle of rags. That the seeing woman who had been my wife once would bring me a crust or a cup of broth. Those things had not happened, and would never happen.
>Once I had shivered in the wind, but I had disobeyed, and would shiver no more. I was sleepy now, and though the snow brushed my face and crept up around my feet, I was not uncomfortable. There was no more pain." (Knight XLII 381)

Able is awoken by Gylf here.

"Garvaon would have been all right, but no Garvaon was better, because he was really Setr." (Knight XLIII 392)
## ARTIFACTS AND SEEDS

"somebody important told me to plant a seed, and I hadn't known what she meant until I found seeds in here." ... "You chopped down a spiny orange. ... you got to plant three seeds, young man. If you don't the Mossmen'll get you." (Knight, II 25)

When he meets Bold Berthold, he remembers that "the name of our town had not been Griffinsford. Perhaps it is Griffin - or Griffinsburg or something like that. But I cannot remember." (Knight, II 28)

:You went off, and I thought you'd be back in a year or two when we got settled. Only you never come 'til now. (Knight, III 35)'

>Since that time alone in a forest of Aelfrice, it has always seemed to me that the spiny orange must have come from there, as I said earlier, its seed carried by an Aelf or more probably by some other human being as forlorn as I was, returning to his own world. ... I took the last of my seeds from tehpouch at my belt and planted it in a glade i found, a place of silence and surpassing beauty. Whether it sprouted and took root, I cannot say. (Knight, IX 71)
Able calls out for Disiri, but finds the wounded Disira and her child, saying Ravd sent him. A wolf howled when he asks if she tried to find her way to Glennidam (Knight IX 72) She wants "to be loved by somebody strong who would not hurt her." (Knight IX 73).
He attempts ot save her child Ossar and sees the castle once again, before receiving Gylf in exchange for the boy (refusing to shoot hte brown doe and fawn are aelf). The Bodachan trade Ossar for Gylf.

"He was glad to see I was as old as I ought to be, and bigger than I ought to be, too (Knight IX 72)"

"the ugly little creatures that swam in [the blood]" (Knight LXVII 411)


THE LIST OF NAMES: Walewein, Wace, Vortigern, Kyot, Yvain, Gottfrie,d Eilhart, Palamedes, Duach, Tristan, Albrecht, Caradoc p 412 Knight LX 412) wolfe howls here too.
## THE OSTERLINGS

"Some people I stayed with told me the Osterlings tore down Bluestone Castle." (Knight, III 31)
They had burnt most of Irringsmouth without Duke Indign to stop them (Knight XVI 111)

Fightes with the Osterlings and gets stabbed, has a dream that he was looking "for a machine gun I had lost. And the truth is I remember that dream a lot etter than the real thing, and maybe some parts are mixed up." (Knight XIX 122)

Loki Lothur (Ve)

## THE CREATURES

Bold teaches him of the creatures in Mythgarthr:
"If the Angrborn had been giants, the Osterlings who sometimes came in summer had been devils, gorging on human flesh to restore the humanity they had lost. The Aelf had come like fog in all seasons, and had vanished like smoke." Bold describes the Bodachan as mud, begging for blood in return for finding lost stock.  (Knight III 35)

After Svon encounters the aelf, he tells Able: "You are to be sure that your playmate is looking out for you." (Knight, V 47) He sees three males and a woman, and describes their terrible eyes, burning "with moonlight like a cat's." (Knight V 50).

Some are afraid to say Disiri's name, for it is a name men use to conjure, and some are by extension reluctant to say Sexneat's wife's name.

"moan like the wind" calling for help (Knight VII 55) Disira is stuck beneath a "blasted tree," which may have been struck by lightning. (56)

Moss Aelf: called "Dryads, Skogsfru, Treebrides" (Knight VII 58) "We are loathesome in the eyes of those who do not worship us." (Knight VII 58)

Almost from their initial description, the Angrborn are described as unlovable: "When you have imagined a man like that and fixed his appearance in your mind, take away his humanity. ... they are never loved, neither by us, nor by their own kind, nor by any animal. Disiri probably knows what it is in people, in aelf, in dogs and horses, and even houses manors, and castles that makes it possible for somebody to love them; but whatever it is, it is not in the Angrborn and they know it. I think that was why Thiazi built the room I will tell you about later." (Knight X75)

"what you eat makes you more like it, and the closer it is to you, the more it moves you that way, if you know what I mean. ... That is how it works, and sometimes I think it must be mostly in the blood, becasue when I drank Baki's blood it healed me a lot in just a day or so, and in certain ways I was more like one of hte Aelf. I guess I still am." ()Knight XIX 123)

When Org is introduced as a ghost haunting the farm, they discuss the motives of such phantasms: "If it's a woman's ghost ... she may be after some property or something she thinks is coming to her. I talked to an old lady downsouth who knew a lot about ghosts, and she told me that women's ghosts generally mean the woman was murdered. More often than not, justice is all they want." (Knight, XXXV 221)

>"There were disembodied spirits in Aelfrice then, creatures something like ghosts, although they'd never been alive. Kulili made magic bodies of mud and leaves and moss and ashes and so forth, and put the disembodied spirits into them. If she used fire, mostly, they became Fire Ael, Salamanders. If she used mostly seawater, they're Sea Aelf, Kelpies."
>"Correct ... We're not like the Aelf. We're much more like Kulili, having been created, as she was, byt the Father of the fathers of the Overcynes, the God of the highest world. Here, as there, he also created elemental spirits. As Sir Able says, they're rather like ghosts. They are creatures both ancient and knowing, having the accumulated wisdom of centuries of centuries." (Knight XLVI 350)

HULD:
"It was the rain outside talking. the way the drops hit amid the words. ... Her blessing ... wherever ... I ... bless. curse. ... Never die...." (Knight, XLVI 285)


"Black is the boldest color and the best." (Knight XLVI 289)

"Ghosts can't [eat]" (Wizard, III 34).

"It goes along with our nine lives. Once you've been dead, it seems very natural to see ghosts." (Wizard, III 40).

Toug is a god to Baki, who feeds from him. (Wizard, IV 43-4).

When she renounces Setr and says that her mother is Kulili, Able rests a hand on Toug's shoulder and says, "She's a thing in your mind, and you can trust me on this. She's a thought, a dream. Have you got a knife?" (Wizard, IV 44).

"Mani's mistress made him, too." (Wizard, IV 45), by combining a cat and an elemental.


Ymir was "merely badness, imperfection" (Wizard, IV 46). Some surrendered in order to destroy him. When Ymir died, "Pieces of him still lived." (Wizard, IV 47).

Mythgarthr: "the Clearing Where Tales Are Told" (Wizard, IV 47) "We call his bones rock, his flesh earth, and his blood the sea." (Wizard, IV 47)
"The servants of the High God have His ear in Kleos. ... those who left no longer had it. They had to ask their brothers to intercede. They ultiplied, and their children knew no other place. Their brothers became their gods." (Wizard, IV 47).

Lothur mated with a giantess to produce the giants of Mythgarthr (Wizard, IV 48)

"we were raised from the beasts." (Wizard, IV 48)

Baki says, "We are what was left when the Highest God finished building your world. What he piled together and burited." (Wizard, IV 51).

Uri wanted Grengarm to heal Baki after she is injured by one of the Angrborn. (Wizard, IV 51).

"We went to the spring Mimir ... I visited myslef, watching myself drink water in the ruins of Bluestone Castle.  ... In the same way the Aelf have refused to be gods to teh world below theirs, preferring to give them the worship they owe you. But that's not the point. The point is that the Valfather bound me not to use the atuhority that is mine. I was not to return as an Overcyn from Skai." (Wizard, V 56)

Aelfrice is "a dump for the refuse of Mythgarthr (Wizard, IV 49)."

"We wanted to be free, and to us that means free to to do what we want, judged by no one and nothing." (Wizard, IV 49).

## A Lost Family

When Able first arrives in Mythgarthr, he supposes that he can somehow return home to his brother, but questions its wisdom. "[A]t that time I believed i would be home soon. I had been kidnapped, I thought, by the Aelf. They had freed me in some western state, or perhaps in a foreign country. In time, the memories of my captivity would return. ... You would get married, and I would be in the way all the time until I was old enough to live on my own. The best plan might be for me to stay out at the cabin, for the first year anyway. It might be better still for me not to come home too quickly. Home to the bungalow that had been Mom and Dad's. Home to the cabin where we had gone to hunt and fish before snow ended all that" (Knight, III 33).

I was confused already, memories of home mingling with stories Bold Berthold had told me of the family here that had been his and was supposed to be mine. It was all in the past, and although America is very far from here in teh present, the past is only memoreis, and records nobody reads, and records nobody can read. This place and that place are mixed together like the books in tehs chool library, so many things on the wrong shelf that nobody knows what is right for it anymore. (Knight, IV 39).
"Our father died years ago ... and my mother left soon after I was born." It was true wher eyou are, and here as well. (Knight, IV 39)

The coin Ravd gives Able has a king on one side and a nykr on the other: "a monster compounded of woman, horse, and fish" (Knight, IV 38)

"Our king was born in Aelfrice ... as was his sister, Princess Morcaine." (Knight V 49).

On the ship where he enlists Pouk and takes over the captain's quarters, he asks why Kerl is the Megister and not the captain.

>I had asked that because of the dream. In the dream I had been way down under the main deck. It had been pitch dark, but I had known somehow that our mother was not really dead at all - she was down there, tied up and gagged so she could not make any noise, and if I could find her I could cut her loose and bring her up on deck. Only the captain was down there too, and he had a rope he wanted to choke me with. He was moving around very quitely, tryingt o come up behind me and get it around my neck. I was trying to be quiet, too, so he could not find me. Only pretty often I would stumble over something or knock something over. ... There had been somebody elese down there with us in my deram, somebody that never moved at all or made any noise; but I did not know who it was." (Knight XVII 114)

"The other thing I will never forget is seeing the Isle of Glas. ... The tall, proud trees and the waves lapping a beach of blood covered sand. I looked and looked, and pretty soon I started to cry. If I could tell you why, I would, but I cannot. Tears ran down my face, and I could not breate right. ... And when I looked again, it was gone. I never saw it again until I went into Thiazi's Room of Lost Loves" (Knight XXXI 197).

"In the dream I had that morning, I was myself for a change, but very young, much younger than I had been when I came out of Parka's cave. I was sitting in a little boat and paddling up the Griffin. Bold Berthold stood watching from teh bank, and Setr swam beside me, spouting water and steam like a whale. Up the river, Mother was waiting for me. Pretty soon Bold Berthold was left behind. I saw Mother's face among the leaves of a willow and in a hawthorn, beautiful and smiling, and crowned with hawthorn blossoms; but the Griffin wound on, and when the hawthorn was past I saw he rno more. From time to time I glimpsed a griffin of stone from whose mouth the river issued. I tried to reach it, but came instead to an opening in a tube of thick green glass.
>And emerged at once, mounted on a gray warhourse and gripping a short lance from which a pennat fluttered. The stone griffin stood before me, tall as a mountain and more more stern. I couched the lance and charged, and was swallowed up at once." (Knight XLI 319)


After being beaten by Thope's men, finds himself back in the cable lokcer, wondering if he had ever left. he sees the gobelt form the Isle of Glas and knows it was poisoned. (KNight XXXIII 203) Someone stabs Thope in the back for trying to save Able. (205)

"In my dream Garsecg and I were in the throne room in the Tower of Glas. There was a big blue dragon on the throne, and it hissed at us and opened its mouth just like Setr had down in Muspel, and Garsecg's face was in the dragon's mouth. So I looked over at Garsecg to see if e had seen it too, and it was not Garsecg at all. It was Bold Berthold. (Knight XXXIII 206).

Dream of big red snakes when he awakens to Baki trying to get him to drink. (KNight XXXIII 207.)

"I'm an ancestor" (Knight XXXIV 211).

"I was a woman in a dirty bed in a stuffy little room. An old woman sitting beside my bed kept teling me to push, and I pushed, although I was so tired I could not push hard, no matter how hard I tried. I knew my baby was trying to breathe, and could not breathe and would soon die. ...
"I had tried to save; now I was only trying to get away. He would not let go, climbing on me, pushing me underwater.
The moon shone through pouring rain as I made my way down the muddy track. At its end the ogre loomed black and huge. I was the boy who had gone into Disiri's cave, not the man who had come out. My sword was Disira's grave marker, the short stick tied to the long one with a thong. I pushed the point into the mud to mark my own grave, and went on. When the ogre threw me, it became such a sword as I wished for, with a golden pommel and a gleaming blade. I floated off the ground and started back for it, but I could no longer breathe. (Knight XVI 258)
" (Knight XLI 257)

Duke:
>The first half of the WK, The Knight, is noteworthy for the absence of women. Beel and Garvaon’s wives are dead.  Duke Marder’s is never named, and apparently lives in her own tower. Marder apparently has no children by her, and Ravd was his surrogate son.  Baron Thunrolf of Thortower apparently is unmarried and/or childless, and he offers to adopt Able and make him his heir. Berthold and Able’s mother is missing. Berthold’s love Gerda has been kidnapped by the frost giants. Disira is killed by her husband.  We do meet a few intact families, Scaur and Sha, and Ulfa and Toug’s family.

>Things change for the better after Able returns from Skai and enters the Room of Lost Loves in The Wizard. There is almost an embarrassment of riches:  Svon and Idnn, Pouk and Ulfa, Toug and Etela, Vil and Lynnet, Uns and Galene, and maybe even Hela and Woddet. Berthold and Gerda are reunited, and even restored to their youth.  The book closes with Able finally winning Disiri, and them beginning a relationship on something like equal terms.

>I think these positive outcomes are a consequence of Able’s success in his mission of setting things right in Celidon.  He is faithful to Disiri while in Mythgarthr. He is a model of good conduct, and declines many opportunities with other women.  Able is, in a mystical way, an instrument of reconciliation between the sexes in the WK. The Embassy to Utgard is the vehicle for this reconcilation, which I will explore in some future posts.

Seaxneat outlaw who kills Disira, goddess of the saxons ... equated with Tiw or Tyr, son of Woden.

>Much of what happens in the seven worlds of the WK universe is reflected in the worlds below, but in a different form. Many people of Mythgarthr are named after the gods of Skai, or are reflections of the gods.  I think Woddet is a reflection of the god Frey, for example. The one-eyed Pouk is a wise, human version of the one-eyed Valfather. Idnn is a reflection of Norse goddess Idunn (Both were menaced by a giant named Thiazi).

>The “Real” or first Able, Bold Berthold’s brother, was Mythgarthr’s version/reflection of the Norse god Baldr.  Bold Berthold was a reflection of Baldr’s brother Hodr.  Mag was a version of Baldr’ s wife Nanna (which means “mother”). The name “Able” is a partial anagram for Baldr.  And the second syllable of Berthold’s name is a close match for Hodr; Berthold= Hodr.

>In Norse legends, Loki had Baldr killed out of spite or jealousy. Loki is Lothur in the WK.  Loki tricked Hodr, who was blind, into killing Baldr with a mistletoe projectile.

>Baldr is dead by the time of the events in the WK. Baldr’s death is alluded to in several places in the WK. When Able is talking with Setr in The Wizard, Setr asks if there are bad Overcyns. Able says:

>I explained that there was said to be one at least, and that the rest—though they punished him—did not take his life for his brothers’ sake.

>This is a reference to Loki’s/Lothur’s plan to kill Baldr, and his subsequent punishment by the other gods of Skai/Asgard.   Loki was not killed, but imprisoned until Ragnarok in Norse mythology. Its unclear how the gods of Skai punished Lothur for Baldr’s death.

>Lothur later threatens to kill Gylf when we finally meet him near the end of The Wizard. Lothur says that the Valfather would forgive him, as he has already forgiven him “worse.” Another reference to the death of Baldr.

>I think the generally poor state of affairs in Mythgarthr is cosmic fallout from the death of Baldr. His death has left a spiritual void or upset that has affected the lower worlds. In Norse legend, Baldr’s death began the negative chain of events that eventually culminated in Ragnarok.

>Let me expand on the “Real Able”/Baldr connection in the WK.  First, Baldr has a blind brother in Hodr and, and Able had one in “Blind” Berthold.  Second, Berthold mentions that he and other surviving men of Griffinsford were herded into a pond by the giants after their battle. They were then surrounded and had “brands” thrown at them. This is a good match for the death of Baldr in Norse legend.  The other gods had surrounded him and were throwing sticks, rocks and other objects at him as sort of a joke, since nothing could harm him (except mistletoe).  Berthold mentions that he hid in the pond, but when be got out, he slipped, and his shadow fell back in the pond and stayed there.

>The reference to the “shadow” may be the signal that the Real Able died in the pond.  The Real Able was Berthold’s little brother, and like a “shadow” to him.  …


>One of Able’s dreams may show exactly how the Real Able died. In Chapter 41 of The Knight, Able dreams about trying to save someone who is drowning.  The person he helps won’t let go and is now drowning him. I think the Real Able was trying to save his bigger, stronger brother from drowning in the pond.  The badly injured Berthold accidentally drowned his brother Able in trying to stay alive. An alternative possibility is that the Real Able was struck by one of the brands the giants threw at the men in the pond. A brand would probably be a wooden torch or stick, sort of like the mistletoe arrow that Hodr shot.

>In Norse mythology, Hodr was punished for killing Baldr by being killed in turn.  Berthold is sort of “punished” by being captured and blinded by the giants. After Baldr died, his wife Nanna (“mother”) killed herself.  The Real Able’s mother, Mag, committed suicide on the Isle of Glas around the time of the Real Able’s death.

>Able/Art is also troubled by bad dreams for much of The Knight, and Baldr was troubled by bad dreams before he died.  According to wikipedia, the name Baldr also means “king” or “lord” in Old English, and Mag tells Able that he was a “king” to her, Berthold and her husband.

>Hodr and Baldr’s tale does have a happy ending of sorts. They are freed from Hel and reunited after Ragnarok. In the WK, Able rescues Berthold and heals him and Gerda.


"great grandaughter of king pholsung"
(Knight XLVIII 302)

Volsung and Sigmund/Siegfried

Calls out for Disiri in sky. Alvit asks what it means, but he cannot remember. (Knight XLIX 307)

Mani: Mani tells Idnn about the battle (Knight XL 317)



"In dream I was a boy I had never been, running over the downs with other boys. We caught a rabbit in a sanre, and I wept at his death and for some vast sorrow approaching that I sensed but could not see. We skinned and cleaned the rabbit, and roasted it over a little fire of twigs. I choked on it, fell unconscious into the fire, and so perished. I had wanted to save the bones for my dog, but I was dead and my dog had followed the Wild Hunt, and the rabbit's steaming flesh was burning in my throat." (Knight LXVIII 417)

Svon identifies Gylf as Toug's monster. (Wizard, II 25).

"You're responsible for your own mistakes ... in this life and the others." (Wizard, I 22)

## LIFE, DEATH, AND BEYOND

Another difference between Wolfe and many other fantasy authors is of course the spiritual message which lingers behind all of his writing, treating even mythical and pagan traditions with both respect and a fair amount of credulity. Yet there is a complex cosmology at work in *The Wizard Knight* that belies my straightforward summation so far. While this “war in the womb” which I propose makes sense of Bold’s shadow dropping off, the significance of the Chimaera, the metaphorical weight of accidentally killing the captain for a berth, the constant competition for knightly honor, and the final sacrifice of Able as well as Michael’s insistence that his mother never knew him, it does not entirely explain the memories Able has of America, down to specifics such as having a Mac and an English teacher. Perhaps the asynchronous presence of a ghostly Able visiting his younger self or the strange chain of events where Michael goes to seek Able after leaving him can rationalize the frame narrative as a ghostly memory from Ben’s life or a potential (if he survived, would he have been twisted and disabled like Uns?)

Nastrond: afterlife for those guildy of murder, death, and oathbreaking , chewed by Níðhöggr

Huld- witch, Odin's mistress and Mother of demi goddesses

"Had he who turned that altar devoured me, he would have been as real here as in Muspel." (Knight LXIX 426)

Able fell into the sea. (Wizard, II 27).

"The sender wished to keep his identity secret, and his message as well." (Wizard, VII 74)