Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (63 page)

To understand the mystique, I drew on many sources. Published materials that were particularly inspiring or useful include
The Forge and the Crucible,
by Mircea Eliade,
Craft and the Kingly Ideal,
by Mary W. Helms,
Ukko,
by Unto Salo, and Jane Sibley’s
The Divine Thunderbolt.
For methods, I drew on
The Complete Bladesmith,
by Jim Hrisoulas,
Iron for the Eagles,
by David Sim and Isabel Ridge
,
and the amazing wealth of the Internet, from debates on the properties of meteor iron to a YouTube video of bronze-casting at the experimental archaeology museum at Old Lejre in Denmark (in fact I should put in a word of praise for the burgeoning resources available online, which have added immeasureably to the accuracy of my information). I was delighted to find that other scholars have also speculated that the name “Excalibur” (or “Caliburn” as it is in some of the medieval romances) might come from
chalybe,
the old Greek word for steel, which itself comes from the name of the Anatolian tribe whom legend made the discoverers of ironsmithing. I am even more grateful to my correspondents from the SCA West e-list, to Scott Thomas, the blacksmith at the Ardenwood Historical Farm in Fremont, CA, who spent an afternoon demonstrating techniques, and to Loren Moyer, who let me come and hammer both bronze and iron at his forge.

 

 

 

MANY ELEMENTS OF LATE Bronze Age culture survived into the Iron Age and beyond. Language and mythology were evolving into those we know from history. A reference to a “Lady of the Forge” in Mykenaean documents suggests that the archetype of the goddess who is both the forge fire and the inspiration of the smith goes back a very long way, as does the archetype of the dour smith who strikes lightning with his hammer. We find him in gods from Ilmarinen to Ogun and Wayland Smith. We may find Her in the later relationship between Athena and Hephaistos (see Karl Kerenyi’s monograph), and the identification of Brigid as a goddess of goldsmithing.

And so, in Brigid’s season, I offer this book to Her. May she shape us well!

 

IMBOLC, 2009