Ian Stuart Sharpe > Quotes

“Yggdrasil is balance, is a complex, synergistic, self-regulating system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life across the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil creates the air we breathe, the water we drink, the habitability of the Nine Worlds. It doesn’t just connect the Nine Worlds, it sustains them. That, to me at least, is purpose enough. That is how I would define the great Arboreal civilization, not as mere buildings and monuments, but nine worlds flung across the sky, reshaped in her image and silently cherished for eternities.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“The language of the Vikings may have become subdued over the centuries but make no mistaka about it – from byrðr(birth) until we deyja (die) – the raw energy of the Norse shapes many of our words. Just look at a Viking the rangr way, and he might þrysta a knifr into your skulle. Even the word Kindle comes from the Norse kynda!”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, but song passes not away.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“There are all kinds of forces of attraction in the universe, gravity, magnetism, electricity and so on. We haven’t discovered them all. When we calculated why the universe is structured the way it is, we found there simply isn’t enough of it to keep it all neat and tidy. There must be something that keeps the stars clustered. Keeps it all working. Something that breathes life into the Nine Worlds. A Cosmological Constant, my friend Einnsteinen called it. Perhaps the Norns are that constant.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Much like the parasitic wasp, we are Yggdrasil’s tools, her dull workers. We eliminate her diseases, help her procreate, hunt the animals that plague her, even light the fires that allow her rejuvenation. Once she opened the doors to the Nine Worlds, she sent us through. We spread her seed, and she claimed them as her colonies, bending the climate to her will. For time immemorial, before the advent of recorded history, Yggdrasil has fashioned a joint path through the brambles and the briars. We are inextricably linked to our woody brethren. We were truly born from trees.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“What shame is there in grief? All creation wept for the death of Baldur.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Some names are easy and fun to convert back into Norse. The meaning of the name Darwin in Old English is ‘dear friend’, which arguably becomes Dýrrvin in Norse. Anders Celsius who proposed the Celsius temperature scale which bears his name was born in Uppsala, on the family estate known as Högen. The name Celsius is a Latinization of the estate’s name (Latin Celsus “mound”). Remove the Latin influence and the name reverts easily.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“My men spoke to me of Miklagard, the city of the world’s desire, and home of my enemy. We’ll travel there, hiding in plain sight as they say. I want to see where the Kristin god lives.” “The Kristin god no more lives in Miklagard than Thorr lives in the oaks or the fields.” “I don’t mean literally. You’ve been there?” “I have travelled to many places. But yes, I have seen the brazen domes of their churches, heard the mournful tolling of bells, witnessed the ponderous parades of icons around their endless walls. I followed the Kristins there. I was not tempted.” “So why does it call to men, both in victory and in defeat? Why don’t the Kristins yield or succumb? Perhaps the City itself is their god. Perhaps their god is desire or fear, or both, a greed for glory, wealth or the life eternal. Perhaps that is why the Great City is sieged by Serkir, Bolgarar, Khazar and Húnar. I want to see their talismans, their relics, I want to understand how man may build a replica of Heaven.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Botulfr could almost feel the hand of destiny. If he didn’t strike at the belly of the beast, his world would be swallowed, and its pages overwritten by the Kristin priests. History was written by the victors, and so his people would be penned as ravagers and despoilers, malicious wolves set on destruction. The Valkyrja and the Nornir would be recast as winged angels, and Óðinn thrown down as a son of Shaitan. His world would be eclipsed as surely as the Garm-hound would swallow the sun.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Tanahk, Avesta, Quran, and Bible,” she said. “They all repeat the same stories. A Lord of such celestial majesty and terrifying power there is no question in portraying him as a man. And so you use a book instead. Books, old in years, bearing inscriptions in ancient letters and long dead tongues, written by men, copied by men and used to justify your earthly realms. Meanwhile, you fast, sing psalms and avert your eyes from temptations—and the greed of your kings. But as you sow, so shall you reap. Your petty, punishing God has created a world he teaches you to scorn. You commune with your Lord with song, bread, and wine, yet your God replies only to the few. You pray, and you fear, and you seek to be saved. You maim and murder for a reward of everlasting glory and eternal love.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“In Finnmǫrk, I observed young children sleeping in leather cradles, without any thing like swaddling clothes, enveloped in dried bog-moss and lined with the hair of the reindeer. In this soft and warm nest, they are protected from the most intense cold. For the longest moment, I felt transported into this land of slumber, safe and secured.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“This sessile lifestyle means any given tree must find everything it needs, and must defend itself, while remaining fixed in place. It follows that a highly developed sensory repertoire is required to locate food and identify threats. And so, a tree smells and tastes—they sense and respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies. A tree sees—they react differently to various wavelengths of light as well as to shadow. A tree touches—a vine or a root knows when it encounters a solid object. And trees hear; the sound of a caterpillar chomping a leaf primes the tree’s genetic machinery to produce defence chemicals. Tree roots seek out the water flowing through buried pipes, which suggests that plants somehow hear the sound of flowing water.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Odin remains at the core of staggering. His Óðr, the force that inspires people to perform or to prophesize; to produce scholarly works or to enter a frenzy in battle, is vital for travelling within the trees. Óðr overwhelms and infuses us, blankets our consciousness and brings us ecstasy: Odin, if you will, takes our hand and guides us through the greenways. “Here, on Midgard, Karl found first one, then many candidates for what he called heartwoods, the oldest of groves. Yew trees that were gnarled and twisted when Sumeria was young. Pines as old as the Pyramids. Old trees, like antenna, catching unworldly signals. Trees that resonated and thrummed with Óðr when sung to, songs from the beginning of days. Entities that took your embrace and danced you to somewhere entirely different, continents away—worlds away for those of us who are particularly adept. We have accepted this way of life as we have always embraced Yggdrasil: as a benefactor and a guardian. Those favoured by Odin ride his steed, those blessed by other gods still ride on wagons.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“The Kristins don’t elect their rulers?” “No, they are anointed. Their emperors are chosen by their god and rule by divine right. But there are two of them, each seeking to stand above the other, not to mention the five patriarchs. The West will claim ownership of the gilded cage, the East will scorn his brother as a blasphemer, and all the time, neither will dare to look inside, for fear their god lies dead at the bottom. Imagine if our godsmen debated that nonsense all day long, telling kings how to behave rather than dealing with the harvest or the feasts?”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Ah, I’ll admit, I was never comfortable with the duality. How can two histories sit side by side?” the vicar said, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. “It’s called entanglement, I think,” Michael replied. “Sounds complicated.” “You know the solution to the Gordian knot? I think if I had a problem that complicated, I’d just cut the rope too. You know the greatest irony?” “What’s that?” “Ragnarok was all about renewal. It wasn’t ever meant to be the end of all things, not like the Christian End Times. It was about passing the torch. Giving the younger soldiers a go. I mean, the sun sets each night but still rises the next day, doesn’t it?”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Its inventor was a Thuringian rassragr who used to joke the machine was more intelligent than an infinitude of Odin’s ravens but, thankfully, considerably kinder. Trumba, however, had no use for a humane machine. The inventor killed himself, the High Urdur reported, apparently by eating an apple laced with cyanide when his correctional hormone treatments didn’t take. His continued fondness for jokes somehow lived on in his machine. When MIM spoke, it used his arch voice and clipped vowels.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“We could never find the gods, no matter how much we searched the Nine Worlds. You were always there, hiding in plain sight, dressed up in the guise of a Christian legend. An impossible hidey-hole, kept safe by all the minds beyond our ken. All these strangely intelligent minds that silently surround and interpenetrate us. Call them álfar as beautiful as the sun or call them entangled electrons waltzing on solar rays. Call them Norns controlling our destiny or call them Dark Energy, binding the Gap. They’ve been talking to us, but we don’t know how to listen. Let’s face it, this current history veered off somewhere distasteful. Perhaps the further the wave travels, the weaker it becomes.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Will the gods be found, do you think?” “Not on Asgard, no. The only thing of any size there are giant Waspedrs; otherwise it is just endless trees, mountains, and lakes. It’s a lot like Markland. In all seriousness, the Verðandi have searched for a century and found no traces. Either the gods are in hiding, or they cannot be found. Not as a body and shape. To me, the gods are thoughts and desires, inspiration on a difficult day. That kind of thing. Not warriors with big… hammers. I’m sorry to be so depressing.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“Where did the Kristin God go?” “What?” Askr flashed him an irritated look. “It says here, in Alkuin’s letter. ‘O Lord, spare thy people and do not give the Gentiles thine inheritance, lest the heathen say, Where is the God of the Christians?’” “Who says he went anywhere? Who says he isn’t right there, in your hands? That’s the real power of the Hvíta Kristr. He is inside those pages, in every chapter and verse. Be careful because, from there, he can leap inside your mind. That’s how he works.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox

“I enquired of Keskarrah concerning the food of the beaver and was told it was the bark of trees such as birch and fir. I wonder that no naturalist has classed this animal with the mouse tribe, as its broad depressed form at first sight suggested to me that it was of that family. I confirmed this opinion having examined them further with my lens: the broad naked tail, the short obtuse ears, and the two pair of parallel front teeth, so well formed for cutting.”
― Ian Stuart Sharpe, The All Father Paradox