Hialmar: as I noted above, is the name Glenn Lord chose from James Allison's list of previous incarnations in The Valley of the Worm. I never asked Glenn why "Hialmar" made the cut when I talked to him (I was fairly speechless). Maybe it just sounded right (which it does). However, maybe Glenn knew that Hjalmar (or "Hialmar") is a famous "Viking" hero from Swedish legend. Historically, he appears to have flourished (if he ever existed) around the early 400's AD. While a true bad-a$$, Hjalmar was also a romantic hero. He pined after the golden-tressed Princess Ingeborg for years before staking his claim and causing some serious blood-shed (and dying a tragic death). REH's "Hialmar" also lusted after an "off-limits" blonde hottie, made blood run in torrents when he was denied and then died a tragic death. Just a thought.
Ishtar: She "was unbelievably beautiful. She was neither short nor tall; slender and yet splendidly shaped." Her face had a "strange beauty" which was "framed in the dark rippling glory of her hair." James Allison says that her eyes "were dark and luminous, lighted as no eyes I ever saw were lighted." Hmmm. Ishtar has "luminous, lighted" eyes. I guess she must be a daughter of the "monster-kings" as well.
Allison admits that, "I do not remember her dress". (p.77)
Sounds like she was hot enough to make me forget my own name! James Allison: He says to Ishtar: "As you see, I have but one leg". "I was only fourteen when a mustang fell on me and crushed my leg so badly it had to be amputated." (...) "What have I to do except sit and wait for the death which is slowly creeping on me from an incurable malady?" (p.78) Howard told Lovecraft in a letter that he barely escaped death when a horse he was riding turned a somersault and almost crushed him. I have to wonder if the "incurable malady" JA suffers from is tuberculosis, which Howard's mother died of.
Allison's dream: Ishtar asks JA, "(M)an, do you never dream of drowning?" Allison, startled, asks, "How could you know that? Time and again I have felt the churning, seething waters rise like a green mountain over me, and have wakened, gasping and strangling -- but how could you know?" This passage describes an experience/dream eerily similar to that which JRR Tolkien recounted more than once (see The Letters of JRR Tolkien, et al). Tolkien called it his "Atlantis haunting/complex". He, too, awoke "gasping" after having this recurring dream of a "Green" (or 'Great') Wave" overwhelming the land... Later, he discovered his son, Michael, had experienced this same dream since childhood. Did Robert E. Howard perhaps experience a similar dream himself? I wouldn't place it outside the bounds of possibility.
Ishtar: She tells Allison, "The bodies change, the soul remains slumbering and untouched. Even the world changes." (p.79)
Texas: When asked "What is the peculiarity of the state as a whole?", Allison replies:"If you mean geographically, the peculiarity that has struck me is the fact that the land is but a succession of broad tablelands, or shelves, sloping upward from sea-level to over four thousand feet elevation, like the steps of a giant stair, with breaks of timbered hills between. The last break is the Caprock, and above that begins the Great Plains." (p.79) The Caprock is located in n-w Texas, in the Panhandle. Howard once lived in that region as a child. Here's a link:
http://www.tpwd.stat...aprock_canyons/
Ishtar tells JA that "Once the Great Plains stretched to the Gulf. Long, long ago what is now the state of Texas was a vast upland plateau, sloping gently to the coast, but without the breaks and shelvings of today. A mighty cataclysm broke off the land at the Caprock, the ocean roared over it, and the Caprock became the new shoreline. Then, age-by-age, the waters slowly receded, leaving the steppes as they are today." (p.79-80)
JA's "remembering": Ishtar threw her hands before his eyes "with a strange gesture" and cried sharply, "You shall see!" For Allison, there "was a sense of fading time and space -- a sensation of being whirled over illimitable gulfs, with cosmic winds blowing against me -- then I looked upon churning clouds, unreal and luminous, which crystallized into a strange landscape". (p.80)
Hialmar: Allison says that, "I dare not repeat what slaughters, rapine and massacres lay behind us." (p.83) This, as was noted long ago by "theGrayMan", was a favorite device of Howard's in his Conan yarns. Dark, sordid atrocities are alluded to, but never revealed in detail, giving the protagonist the cachet of utter bad-a$$edness, without alienating the reader.
Hialmar's horde: "They were big men, with yellow hair and cold blue eyes, clad in scale-mail corselets and horned helmets, and they bore shields and swords." They had fared out when "the yellow-haired folk still dwelt in Nordheim". Hialmar states that, "It was before the great drifts of my race had peopled the world, yet lesser, nameless drifts, had already begun." Their long, strange trek had led them around the world "-- down from the snowy north into rolling plains, and mountain valleys tilled by peaceful brown folk -- into hot breathless jungles, reeking with rot and teeming with spawning life -- through eastern lands flaming with raw primitive colors under the waving palm-trees, where ancient races lived in cities of carven stone -- up again into the ice and snow and across a frozen arm of the sea -- then down through the snow-clad wastes, where squat blubber-eating men fled squalling from our swords". From there, the AEsir headed south and east, through "lonely", unpopulated lands, eventually reaching the plains and finally, the Gulf. These AEsir had within them "the very spirit of the wild". Even the ways of their "wandering, warlike" folk back in Asgard "were too tame." Hialmar's posse were driven only by their "paranoidal drive to see beyond the horizon." Of the AEsir band, "there had been more than a thousand at the beginning". By the time they had reached the Gulf, they'd traversed at least 270 degrees of longitude and had lost over half their number. (p.80-82) Evidently, there were already some "nameless drifts" of the AEsir before Hialmar's war-band left Nordheim. One possible route for Hialmar was south through the "brown folk" regions, into the "jungles" of the "Med-basin", then through the "palm-tree" lands of northern Shem and Iranistan. From there, since no more jungles are mentioned, up through Hyrkania to "Siberia" and then across a frozen Bering Strait into "Alaska". Seemingly, REH places the advent of the Inuit peoples in North America before that of the actual "Amerindian" peoples (there is a difference).
Asgrimm: He had "grown old on that endless wandering -- a gaunt, bitter fighter, one-eyed and wolfish, who forever gnawed his graying beard." (p.82) His name means "Grim God", and he appears to be the "Odin stand-in" for this yarn. His one eye, grey beard and insatiable lust for wandering, human hearts and battle certainly suggest (REH's versions of) Odin and Ymir.
Kelka: Hialmar's "blood brother and a Pict." Kelka had joined Hialmar's band "among the jungle-clad hills of a far land that marked the eastern-most drift of his race". "He was short, thick-limbed, deadly as a jungle-cat." (...) "The pad of the tiger was in his stealthy tread, the grip of the gorilla in his black-nailed hands; the fire that burns in a leopard's eyes burns in his." (p.82-83) Since Grom's Picts were the "eastern-most drift" of Picts (in "TVotW") then one might think that Kelka's Picts were from the same area. Howard's description of Kelka is eerily close to that of Gorm in The Hyborian Age essay.
Khemu: It was "a great black cyclopean city", with "black towers" and "spires", massive turrets and abutments. It had "orchards, fields and vineyards outside the walls". The walls were built of "gigantic blocks of basaltic stone." The Khemuri used "war-drums". (p.81, 83)
So, we have a "black-walled Khemu" populated by the Stygianesque Khemuri, to go with a "black-walled Khemi" that lies across the "Western Ocean", populated by Stygians. I don't think this is a coincidence.
Hialmar's AEsir: They wore "girdles". Their weapons were "not of copper and bronze as our people in far Nordheim still worked in, but of keen steel, fashioned by a conquered, cunning people in the land of palm-trees and elephants". (p.83)
All for now...
