Some time back, it occurred to me that cycle of the Twin Cities year is pagan, but pagan in a very weird way. In the Norse legends, winter is associated with chaos and danger. In the Minnesotan legends, winter is associated with stability; it's spring that's chaotic.
You can see this in the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The Winter Carnival is presided over by King Boreas and the Queen of the Snows. They are genial, safe, and stable. Partway through the festival, Vulcanis Rex and the Vulcans appear: they are freaky, scary, weird, and chaotic. They dress in red and draw V's on people's foreheads with greasepaint. Of course, ultimately King Boreas is defeated by Vulcanis Rex -- and spring comes.
And with spring, the Mayday Festival also comes. Even more than the St. Paul Winter Carnival, this is [i]incredibly[/i] pagan. It is also [i]incredibly[/i] chaotic. The story of the parade varies, but the pageant usually seems to be roughly the same: "Once upon a time, humanity lived in innocence and freedom; then the evil capitalists came and enslaved everyone, and subdued nature -- Sky, Prairie, Lake, ...uh, whatever the fourth giant puppet is. But the people rose up and broke their chains; they raised up the elements of nature and summoned the SUN, who brought the Tree of Life, and we all lived happily ever after." You can almost read the Mayday Pageant as the sequel to the Winter Carnival. And once again, spring is chaotic and disorderly.
There isn't really a summer festival, but there is a fall festival, the State Fair, which is bizarre in its own special way but doesn't entirely fit with my "Minnesotans are all secretly pagan" theory. (You could probably come up with some interesting interpretation of the stuff-on-a-stick obsession, though...)
The idea that winter = stability while spring = chaos reflects some of the realities of living in Minnesota in the early 21st century, though. Minneapolis and St. Paul avoid some of the big city problems that other comparable cities have simply because they're so cold. As North Dakota supposedly puts it, "40 Below Keeps the Riff-Raff Out." Winter makes it hard to live here. And in the "Murderapolis" summer when we broke records for the number of people dead, it was the arrival of cold weather that eventually quelled things.
Anyway, after coming up with all of this, I thought there [i]had[/i] to be a story in it. And after mulling over it off and on for over a year, I wrote "Gift of the Winter King," which was my first professional sale (to Realms of Fantasy, 4/00). I certainly think the magic inherent in the Minnesotan festivals could encompass a whole lot more fiction, though.
I have some other thoughts about this, but I'm up way past my bedtime so I'll stop here. --Naomi Kritzer
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Minnesotan fantasy
Date: 2002-09-10 10:24 pm (UTC)You can see this in the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The Winter Carnival is presided over by King Boreas and the Queen of the Snows. They are genial, safe, and stable. Partway through the festival, Vulcanis Rex and the Vulcans appear: they are freaky, scary, weird, and chaotic. They dress in red and draw V's on people's foreheads with greasepaint. Of course, ultimately King Boreas is defeated by Vulcanis Rex -- and spring comes.
And with spring, the Mayday Festival also comes. Even more than the St. Paul Winter Carnival, this is [i]incredibly[/i] pagan. It is also [i]incredibly[/i] chaotic. The story of the parade varies, but the pageant usually seems to be roughly the same: "Once upon a time, humanity lived in innocence and freedom; then the evil capitalists came and enslaved everyone, and subdued nature -- Sky, Prairie, Lake, ...uh, whatever the fourth giant puppet is. But the people rose up and broke their chains; they raised up the elements of nature and summoned the SUN, who brought the Tree of Life, and we all lived happily ever after." You can almost read the Mayday Pageant as the sequel to the Winter Carnival. And once again, spring is chaotic and disorderly.
There isn't really a summer festival, but there is a fall festival, the State Fair, which is bizarre in its own special way but doesn't entirely fit with my "Minnesotans are all secretly pagan" theory. (You could probably come up with some interesting interpretation of the stuff-on-a-stick obsession, though...)
The idea that winter = stability while spring = chaos reflects some of the realities of living in Minnesota in the early 21st century, though. Minneapolis and St. Paul avoid some of the big city problems that other comparable cities have simply because they're so cold. As North Dakota supposedly puts it, "40 Below Keeps the Riff-Raff Out." Winter makes it hard to live here. And in the "Murderapolis" summer when we broke records for the number of people dead, it was the arrival of cold weather that eventually quelled things.
Anyway, after coming up with all of this, I thought there [i]had[/i] to be a story in it. And after mulling over it off and on for over a year, I wrote "Gift of the Winter King," which was my first professional sale (to Realms of Fantasy, 4/00). I certainly think the magic inherent in the Minnesotan festivals could encompass a whole lot more fiction, though.
I have some other thoughts about this, but I'm up way past my bedtime so I'll stop here. --Naomi Kritzer