| Book Information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Source: | Bethesda Softworks Forums | ||
| Archived Link: | The Imperial Library | ||
| Writer(s): | Michael Kirkbride | ||
| Publication Date: | 23 December 2008 | ||
This was in a thread that Kirkbride posted titled World-Eating 101, where he said "Assume "The Dawn Era was the End of the Previous Kalpa. The new Kalpa begins with the first day of the Merethic Era." Then put on your lore-hats and start looking hard at the ramifications of that."[1] In the thread, he was asked about the Nords' lack of a creation myth, and he posted this text in response.
The original text was untitled, archived under this name by The Imperial Library.
"Creation myth? Hoo boy. First off, that whole phrase smacks of Monkey Talk-- and we thank Talos to this day for their turn at Glenumbria-- or the Wheel-Eyed Wonderment of the east devils-- who at least have the wheel part right, but that's so obvious as to offend your own navel, which is to say, wasting the time of even wasting time-- but I guess that's what you want to hear about, really: time. Our place in it now, our place in it then. Well, you've earned the truth of it then: you've taken your first tusk and been kissed by a Kyne Wife, so fine.
"The Nords you know are the Nords that were, and any formalization beyond that is southern comfort. We came from Skyrim since the end of the beginning of the last end... and so on as sung by the ysgrimskalds of the world. What's that now? We're descended from the gods? So that must mean, what, they went away at some point and then we started? Sure, that's all true, and, yes, there was a war with the gods of Old Mary where Shor died, and, yes, Old Mary's own stories of "how everything started" are just as true as ours. The untangling of it all, though, is where examining the tree nets you nothing for the basket because the fruit is all dead by the time you've reached any sensible conclusion. Which is to say, there is no conclusion, my lad, there is only the telling, and only time will tell the dead, for only by the dead can we tell the time, and so of course it all must fit together, all versions of every last telling, whereso or whensoever it comes from. Yes? Elsewise we'd never have time to tell it again.
"See now why asking the Nords for their creation myth is as unbearable to hear for them as it is for you to hear their never-really-an-answer? We'll never think that way, at least not long enough for what some would consider the "proper" amount of time-- it's just not how our brainpans were built. As a rule, we change our minds a lot, and properly so, which drives the other take on properlarity crazy. It's intrinsic to our nature; to live in the North is to live with a mind that dances near the hearth lest it slow like old Herkel's lot. (That's what happened to the Dwarves, by the way: their minds froze to death by thinking one thing over and over until poof, gone in a belch of a mountain.)
"But I can see by the droop of your shoulders that none of this has met to your satisfaction. Let me show you then, the proper way to ask the Nords their proper place in history: ask them to tell you the oldest story they know that's also the best. That will get you as close to a creation myth as anything else, even if the next telling changes it a bit, but that's beside the point of being the point.
"Just because we hate to waste time in Skyrim, we have lots of it to use with nothing else to do, and there's no better way to use up time without wasting it than by telling a good story. And the best of the oldest stories we still know is [untranslatable], which I guess you'll probably want to hear after you get me another round."
***
Another story for another time, maybe. Cyrus the Resting got tired of listening to the old man go on and on and on.
Merry X-Mas, everyone, the snows a'comin',
MKReferences
- ^ Kirkbride, M. [MK]. (5 December 2008). "World-Eating 101". Bethesda Softworks Forums. Archived from the original on 17 February 2020.