The fiction we now call Fantasy is largely a mid-twentieth century invention with roots in older mythologies. Here I want to look at some novels from the Dark Ages of the genre, the 1960s and early 70s, rooted explicitly in the Dark Ages of Europe. All of them are far too good to forget.
Votan and other novels
John James: Votan, Not for All the Gold in Ireland and Men Went to Cattraeth (1966, 1968, 1969)
These three were James’ first published novels. He went on to write Bridge of Sand (1976), again set in Roman Britain, and half a dozen other historical novels set in the 18th and 19th centuries. I remember enjoying Bridge of Sand soon after it was published but can say little more about it because I haven’t seen it since then. The first three, though, were republished by Gollancz in their Fantasy Masterworks series in 2004, all in one fat volume introduced by Neil Gaiman.
As Gaiman observes there, they are neither fantasy nor strictly historical novels but “novels set in historical periods which people who read fantasy might also appreciate.” All of them will be richer for readers familiar with Celtic and (especially) Norse mythology but they are good strong novels even without that background.
One elegy, two adventures
Men Went to Cattraeth is far darker than the other two. It recounts the gathering of an army of (Celtic) Britons in modern Edinburgh and their journey to battle the invading Germanic settlers (Angles and Saxons) south of Hadrian’s Wall. The date is about 600 CE, and the Celts still call themselves Romans although the legions had pulled out two centuries before. Our narrator, Aneirin, a bard and a member of the king’s family, is well placed to observe the failings which led to the utter destruction of the army. His bleak account is a lament with very few glimmers of sunshine.
Votan and Not for All the Gold in Ireland are the northern adventures of Photinus, scion of a wealthy Greco-Roman merchant family in the second century of our era. He is smart and tough, selfish and unscrupulous, but honest enough about himself to be likeable.
Votan takes him to Asgard, not quite the abode of the gods but the richest trading settlement on the Baltic, where he precipitates a war. Not for All the Gold in Ireland sees him in Roman-occupied England, trying to reach Ireland for its rumoured riches. Both are brutal at times but both are permeated by the divine. As in Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland, the border between reality and the supernatural is not where we expect it to be: real people may simultaneously be gods, and magic is both illusion and miracle.
Grendel
Beowulf, an epic poem from mediaeval northern Europe, is foundational to modern fantasy through its influence on Tolkien and others. It is set in the sixth century CE although the earliest surviving manuscript isn’t quite that old. In it Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel’s mother with a giant’s sword that he found in her lair. Later in life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats. His realm is terrorised by a dragon, which he attacks and finally slays, but he is mortally wounded in the struggle.
In Grendel (1971), John Gardner turns the story inside out, to powerful effect. As the NYT review on publication said:
The Beowulf legend retold from Grendel’s point of view. That one sentence treatment of “Grendel” suggests some unsustainable satire, valid for perhaps three pages of a college humor magazine. But John Gardner’s “Grendel” is myth itself: permeated with revelation, with dark instincts, with swimming, riotous universals. The special profundity of Gardner’s vision or visions is so thought‐fertile that it shunts even his fine poet’s prose to a second importance.
…which is no more than fair. The review is long and overwhelmingly positive, but still missed Gardner’s underlying schema with its source in contemporary philosophy: Grendel is a personification of Jean-Paul Sartre, and his nihilist howls are the howls of existentialism’s great monster. My teenage self missed it too (no surprise!) but sensed and appreciated the unseen depths.
How well do they stand up?
Re-reading these books after a gap approaching fifty years I was delighted to find that they were every bit as good as I had remembered. My biggest surprise was to find them so fresh and energetic. Fifty years of feudal fantasy, I realised, had lowered my expectations of the genre to rock bottom. The fault hadn’t been in the genre, however, but in the increasingly derivative writing which has dominated the market; I may have more to say about that sometime.
Favourite fantasy, elsewhere on this blog, mentions some more old books worth tracking down. Those by Zelazny and Hughart are particularly close in spirit to Votan and the rest.
