MDDM Ch. 66 Stig's tale

[Doug Millison]

Sounds to me as if the original inhabitants, realizing that it was their
invaders' weapons that gave them the edge (so to speak), wanted to take
them away and defend themselves, an understandable desire.  Agreed that
Pynchon leaves it somewhat ambiguous, but the murder seems to be a European
import.  I suspect the "Magic" is also less metaphorical than suggested
below (in addition to, both/and, not either/or) -- equally likely, it's the
unity of consciousness that links humans and the living Earth, which is
shattered by the invasive entry of the Europeans and what is already
shaping up as the European dispensation of analysis, differentiation
(Norsemen vs. the evil Skraeling Other), control, death.

Just curious, but why "sinister" if Skrællings are using some spell in
self-defense, defending themselves against foreign invaders who are there
to seize their land and establish empire? That sounds like the way later
American colonists would blame the Native Americans for fighting back to
defend themselves, styling them as monsters and murderous deveils and
themselves (teh colonists) as brave freedom fighters battling British
tyrrany?




>634.2 Stig's description to Patience Eggslap of "this first Act of American
>murder" from the sagas does seem to support the idea that his earlier
>mention of "murder, slavery, and the poor fragments of a Magic irreparably
>broken" (612.12) refers to the Norsemen killing and enslaving Native
>Americans, though the story itself is quite ambiguous ("any question who had
>prevail'd come to matter ever less"), and it is noteworthy that it is the
>Skrællings who come seeking weapons, against Thorfinn's strict orders, and
>who seem to use a rather sinister magic to trick Gudrid, and it's the
>Norsemen who end up getting "captur'd and enslav'd" (634.9) after they try
>to return to Greenland. I suspect that "the Magic irreparably broken" in
>fact refers to the promise and hopes for peace which "Vineland the Good" had
>initially held for these Norse settlers: "Thereafter they were men and women
>in Despair ... "
>
>best