Friday 18 January 2002

Pic of the day: 'Valhalla was a place where dead warriors were resurrected each evening to party, and then next day went off to "Player vs. Player" combat, to be cheerfully slain again.' (Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot.)

PvP in Valhalla

Disclaimer: These speculations are not even meant to be truth, or approximate truth. They are for use only in fiction, and under the clear expression of their fictional nature. They do not reflect the religious belief of the author.

In those parts of the world that experienced a rapid rise into civilization, the belief in small gods was virtually ubiquitous. They may not have been considered "small" gods at the time, but in light of modern cosmology they were clearly much closer to mankind than to whatever created the universe. I have in the past referred to them as "magical supermen". But even this may be too generous.

As we know today, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (And all technology is magic to those who don’t understand it.) In the past I have tended to credit my fictional gods with inherited psionic abilities or some equivalent thereof. But lately I have taken to the thought that small gods could be good literary characters even as spacemen, somewhat akin to Erich von Däniken’s theories. (Except that he at least pretends to believe in it, while I see it as pure entertainment.)

***

As a Norwegian, I am particularly close to the Norse mythology. And it does indeed contain quite a number of powerful artifacts that enhanced the gods. The most famous would be Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. When thrown, it would unerringly hit its target, and then return to Thor’s hand. Or perhaps rather to Thor’s gauntlets: For Thor was also the proud owner of a pair of powerful gauntlets that increased his strength and damage. To top it all, he had a belt or girdle that doubled his strength. It is unclear whether the deadly electrical discharges came from Mjolnir or from Thor’s flying chariot, or both of the above.

But Thor was not alone among the Aesir in having advanced technology. Odin had a spear that he could throw all the way across the battlefield to grant victory. Anyone else think 'guided missile'? There was also a ring that at regular intervals would create new rings like itself, only without the ability to make more rings. (Nanotech?) And of course there was Freya’s beauty-enhancing jewelry, the Brisingamen. And the ship that could fly but could also be folded together after use.

***

Even so, it seems clear that the gods themselves had some superhuman traits. It may be that nanotechnology was combined with advanced genetics, or they could simply be a species developed to a far higher level than humans. The problem with this is that they were humans. From accounts all over the world, the gods could interbreed with humans and sooner or later did so. So by definition they belonged to the same species. (An alien lifeform would probably not even be edible, much less sexually compatible, as they would be far less related to us than a fungus.)

One explanation for this is the same that Al Schroeder gives for the origin of Superman and the Kryptonians: A batch of human stock was abducted somewhere in prehistoric times and tampered with to create superpowered slaves (or workers, depending on your view). The aliens who enhanced them left or went extinct for reasons unknown, leaving the superhumans to build their own civilization (possibly on the ruins of the more advanced alien civilization).

In the fullness of time, a spaceship (or several) returned to Earth, finding the remaining Earthlings still grubbing for food with their stone tools. With various motivations, the "gods" decided to establish civilizations on Earth. Some myths, such as the Greek Prometheus myth, indicate that the gods did not intend to share their technology with the natives. But one renegade brought them the secret of fire, or more exactly the secret of how to use fire to refine metals. The gods were aghast, perhaps because they liked humans as primitive worshippers, perhaps because they realized that at this level of evolution, humanity would not be able to handle the spiral of technology and would create weapons to ultimately destroy their world.

It is virtually a universal law that long-lived species are slow breeders. Otherwise they would swamp their habitat with offspring and would not stay long-lived much longer. Whether evolved or created, the gods were unusually long-lived by human standards - they seemed virtually immortal to the natives. It stands to reason then that they were not particularly fertile. The colonies on Earth therefore were never numerous, only a couple families really in each. Back at their homeworld they were almost certainly much more plentiful. It is no surprise then that they eventually started to appreciate human company.

In some cases, the company was so intimate that human-god crossbreeds resulted. But in most cases, it seems that the gods were content to visit groups of worshippers and help them in exchange for a token payment, a "sacrifice". Or just to party - the Norse tradition of "blot" is nothing like a church service, but more like a great party where the god or gods are implied to be present. Perhaps they originally were.

***

But how did this become a religion? Was it just that people are naturally unable to face the end of their lives, and put their trust in the supermen who had helped them with lesser problems? That might be so. But there is another fascinating possibility. Remember, these guys from the stars are in possession of most of whatever technology we can envision as theoretically possible today. They almost certainly had artifacts similar to computers, only at a level approaching the physical limits for such a device. And they had an advanced medical technology made for their own species, but that would be partially usable on ordinary humans. They might not be able to halt aging or resurrect the dead; but they might be able to scan the brain of the recently deceased and extract a neural map, containing all or at least a good number of the person’s memories at the point of death. This neural map could then be uploaded to a segment of the ship computer and activated in an artificial environment.

In recent days, I can’t help but notice the similarity between the massive multiplayer game Dark Age of Camelot and the Norse concept of Valhalla. Valhalla was a place where dead warriors were resurrected each evening to party, and then next day went off to "Player vs. Player" combat, to be cheerfully slain again. The game attracts an audience of thousands of paying members today; it would almost certainly have been popular with the Norse Vikings or their ancestors from which the legends come.

A more sobering possibility is that the Vikings that were allowed to play Valhalla at the ship’s computer did not see their actual dead ancestors and friends, but computer-controlled characters made in the resemblance of the deceased, incorporating distinctive traits of body and soul based on the logs from when they were playing the game ... Making the new players believe that they too would live forever in Valhalla. For all I know, they may still be found there, if we ever make contact with the space gods again ...

Just wanted to remind y'all that this is just a construction set for SF writers, and in no way implied to hold the smallest pinch of truth. Thank you.