HISTORICAL NOTE

A MIGHTY DAWN is not about recreating history. The Scandinavian peoples of the early eighth century were, in the technical sense of the word, pre-historic. They were not recording historical events, as they were elsewhere in Europe and the wider world, where writing and the preservation of written texts had already been going on for centuries.

Thus the only real means available to delve into the shadows of those dark days of northern Europe are the physical traces left behind in the archaeological record, and the echoes of events (which may or may not have happened) in the sagas and poetry passed down the generations by word of mouth, only a small portion of which would ever be captured for posterity in writing, and often centuries after they were first conceived.

Just occasionally those echoes are verifiable.

The Ragnarök was a central concept to the Old Norse mind. Fate was unfolding inexorably towards this cataclysmic event, when the whole cosmos would be rent by chaos and conflict, and fall into eventual destruction – the so-called ‘doom of the gods’ or ‘twilight of the gods’, depending on which translation one favours.

Our knowledge of the Old Norse beliefs about how these events would one day occur comes from two sources. The ‘Völuspá’ (The Vala’s Prophecy) is the oldest known poem in Scandinavian literature, part of which scholars date as far back as the sixth century. The other is the later story of ‘Gylfaginning’, part of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, his compilation of Old Norse stories written in the thirteenth century.

Described in these is the Fimbulvetr – the ‘Great Winter’ – that foretells the beginning of the Ragnarök. In ‘Gylfaginning’, one of the gods describes what he knows of the signs of the coming chaos: ‘There will then be great frosts and keen winds. The sun will do no good. There will be three of these winters together and no summer between.’

The ‘Völuspá’ is more poetical. It says that the children of the wolf Fenrir will carry off the moon, that they will attack the sun and paint the home of the gods red with their blood. The sun’s rays will darken and the stars will no longer be visible in the summers that follow, during which mighty storms will rage.

In other words, they provide quite clear descriptions of specific weather conditions. Norse scholars have suggested that these details might echo an actual event in history – the so-called Dust Veil of AD 536. This was a natural catastrophe, possibly on a global scale, identifiable in the historical sources from other parts of the world. For example, one Roman official in Italy wrote of “something coming at us from the stars” producing a “blue-coloured sun” resulting in “a summer without heat… perpetual frost… unnatural drought.” Crops withered in the fields and all the while “the rays of the stars have been darkened.”

Other sources from around the Mediterranean and the Near East give similar descriptions of prolonged celestial darkness, unseasonal chill and failed harvests, and all relate how the sun was so obscured in that region that it hardly cast a shadow from the beginning of AD 536 to the end of summer AD 537.

Other scientific data backs up these historical sources, supporting the idea that something drastic occurred in the middle of the sixth century to affect the global environment, which had a particularly severe effect on the region of Scandinavia.

The cause of the Dust Veil is not known for certain. Perhaps a series of massive volcanic eruptions, perhaps an extraterrestrial impact (a comet or meteor of some kind), or else a combination of these. Whatever the cause, the existence of extreme weather phenomena in and after AD 536 is unquestionable and may have had knock-on environmental effects for up to two decades afterwards.

The archaeological record, in Scandinavia at least, shows the result was that large areas of land previously supporting agriculture returned to forestland. This in turn probably triggered a reduction in population. In the area around Uppsala in particular, the majority of villages were abandoned in favour of drastically fewer new settlements set on higher ground, away from rising waters. The collapse must have been sudden and severe. Famine was rife, in turn leading to extreme social unrest and violence. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Dust Veil may also have triggered the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian, which wiped out huge numbers of people in southeastern Europe and may have spread as far north as Scandinavia.

The mid-sixth century also saw a large increase in the number of sacrificial gold hoards deposited across the region. It’s easy to imagine that such extreme circumstances might force beleaguered Scandinavians to part with their precious gold in large quantities, in an attempt to appease the gods they believed had brought this devastation upon them.

Whatever the exact explanations, the tumultuous events of the mid-sixth century appear to have left a deep scar on the psyche of the Scandinavian peoples, reflected in the stories they would go on to tell, and preserved in the details of poems like the ‘Völuspá’ and stories like ‘Gylfaginning’.

Out of all of this, the central conceit of A Mighty Dawn arose.

Suppose that amid all the terror and confusion of this meteorological disaster and the resulting social upheaval, a group of people formed a kind of doomsday cult;

Suppose that, in order to escape the disastrous effects of a dying sun, and perhaps interpreting this phenomenon as a signal of the final doom of the gods and the destruction of the world as they knew it, they went underground;

Suppose that there they stayed, surviving at least, but evolving into an increasingly dehumanised community of earth-dwellers – the Nefelung. . .

Of course, my own flights of fancy – that these folk were lured underground under the influence of some kind of demon – spirals these suppositions into the realm of pure fantasy. Archaeologists are unlikely to turn up the remains of one of the shadowy Vandrung, however wide or deep they dig.

On the other hand, I’m tempted to say it’s not as far-fetched as it first might seem. A cursory look at the doomsday cults of more recent times – Waco, Jonestown, Uganda or the Penza Region in Russia – shows that, whether you believe in the existence of demons or not, the inspiration of evil is as much a part of reality as it is of a fictional novel like this one.

The trick, I suppose, is how to overcome it.