Movenna

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Movenna is a fantasy novel cycle by the author Petra Hartmann and at the same time the name of a country within the fantasy world in which the stories take place. The books are published by Wurdack-Verlag , individual short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines. The first volume, “Stories from Movenna”, is both the author's first work and the first book by the publisher, founded in 2004.

History of origin

“King Surbold's Grave”, the first story from Movenna, was created in 1999 as a contribution to the Story Olympiad and took third place in the competition. In the two years that followed, the author took part in the Story Olympiad with two other short stories from this world - "The Crown of Eirikir" and "Flarics Witches" - and was again third on both occasions. Thereupon the publisher Ernst Wurdack suggested to her to write an entire book about the country Movenna. This was published in 2004 under the title "Stories from Movenna". The story collection "A Prince for Movenna" followed in 2007 and the novel "The Rock of the Black Gods" in 2010.

The Movenna Books

Stories from Movenna

The book is less a novel than a collection of short and long stories. The texts "Die Krone Eirikir" and "Flarics Hexen" had already appeared in the anthologies of the Story Olympiad, "Föj smiles" appeared in the "Legendensänger Edition", a fanzine by Christel Scheja . The story "Der Kranich" is a prose retelling of the first half of the medieval verse epic "Crane" by the poet Berthold von Holle , which was published as a brochure for the 850th anniversary of the village of Holle in 1996. "The Return of the Crane" appeared two years later, also as a brochure, and tells the second part of the epic. For the "Movenna" version, the text has been adapted to the fantasy genre, e.g. B. the Christian church became a temple, the German emperor became king of Movenna, a witch was introduced etc.

The volume "Stories from Movenna" is divided into three parts: "The Book of Kings", "The Book of Nearith" and "The Book of the Gods". Some of the stories are directly related and continue one another, but some of them also show large leaps in time. The witch Lournu, who appears as a small child in the first story, is already an old woman in the story, but in the middle of the book there is also an episode in which she is a young girl.

A central theme is the legitimacy of the rule of King Jurtak, who came as a conqueror from the neighboring country of Mogàl, and Jurtak's attempt to establish his son Ardua as heir and successor. For this purpose, Ardua is brought up consistently according to the old Movennian tradition, which means, among other things, that he is trained by a witch and has to get to know certain legends and historical events of the country.

A prince for Movenna

This volume also contains some stories that were previously published. The story "Raubwürger" appeared in the Legendensänger Edition and in the "Kurzgeschichten" magazine. The fairytale-like texts "Furunkula Warzenskraish" and "The Lighthouse on the Edge of the World" could be read in the magazine "Elfenschrift", and the final chapter "Gewitternacht" appeared in the anthology "Im Banne des Nachtwalds", which was inspired by the music of the group Elane .

This book also consists of three parts. The first third, "The Book of Orh Jonoth", is a seafaring story and takes place on board the ship "Black-headed Gull": Orh Jonoth, who was introduced in the previous volume as the bodyguard and nanny of the last movennian crown prince, has to take the baby out of the country bring the gravel island to save him from the usurpers from Mogàl. On the way they encounter sea monsters, pirates and the angry sea goddess Reene.

Part two, "The Diamond Book", loosely connected to this, tells how the now 14-year-old Varelian finds a message in a bottle on the beach. The bottle contains a knight's story about the deeds of King Demantin, a parallel story written by the singer Fandir to the knight's play about King "Crane" from the first book.

The third part, "The Book of the Bernlanders", is a collection of stories: Fandir is visiting an old friend in Bernland and tells five stories from Movenna, from the land of the Nearith, from the desert, for his children in one evening the ice land and finally of the return of Orh Jonoth after his successful trip to the gravel island. A kind of epilogue suggests that Prince Varelian, about whom the whole book revolves, was in reality not the son of the last legitimate movennian king, but came from an affair of the queen.

The rock of the black gods

The third book from Movenna is not a collection of stories, but a novel. Nevertheless, numerous shorter sagas and legends of the various peoples are interspersed. Similar to the story collections, the novel is also divided into "books". They are titled "The Nose", "The Eyes", "The Skull" and "The Black Tower".

The novel is based on an episode from the first Movenna book “Stories from Movenna”: The events described by King Jurtak in “The Tower of Ira” are now viewed from the perspective of the forest dwellers (“Jaran-Dem”) and mountain dwellers (“Haran -Dem “) told. King Jurtak, a usurper from Mogàl, wants to give his rule a legitimate look and marry a local princess. But Ziris, the king's daughter from the Nearith tribe, is already taken. Only the murder of her lover Zosric makes it possible to marry the king. Ziris wants to create a huge tomb for the dead. She chooses black demon stone from the movennian mountains as building material. But the black cliffs are a sanctuary for the mountain people. A bloody war for the rocks begins, at the end of which stand the almost complete extinction of the forest dwellers and mountain dwellers, the destruction of the mountain front, the deforestation of the forests and the death of the royal couple.

A special focus is on the representation of the religious and shamanistic worldview of the forest and mountain tribes, which is contrasted with atheism or the almost religious cult around horses among the steppe people of the Nearith.

On my horse's front hoof

This is a pure e-book publication that was launched when the electronic editions of the three Movenna books went on sale. The e-book contains three stories from the world of the Nearith, the steppe nomads. These are side pieces to the "Rock of the Black Gods". The book is especially dedicated to the close relationship between the Nearith and their horses.

The first story is entitled "All horses go to heaven". It is a childhood story of the steppe princess Ziris, who loses a horse for the first time in her life. “The rider on the black horse” tells the story of a youthful adventure of the later steppe hero and lover of the Ziris, Zosric, who embarks on a dangerous errand to a hostile neighboring people and masters his task with flying colors. For this he receives the legendary black stallion, who plays a role in the Movenna books, as a reward. Finally, "A Fleeing Horse" describes the death of Meric in a duel against the movennian king Jurtak. Meric was Zosric's cousin and had the task of avenging his death on Jurtak.

Important persons

  • Lournu is a witch. In the books she mostly appears as an ancient woman, but there are also some episodes that show her as a child or adolescent. Lournu can really do magic, but she prefers to use the placebo effect, especially when it comes to healing, like many movennian witches.
  • Ardua is the Crown Prince Movennas. He is the son of the conqueror Jurtak and the steppe princess Ziris. According to his father's will, he should one day inherit the crown. In order to be recognized by the people, he traditionally completed an apprenticeship with the witch Lournu, but was not very successful as a sorcerer's apprentice. Ardua is shown as a very likeable boy, but all the locals are convinced that he will never become king.
  • Jurtak is a conqueror from neighboring Mogàl. After subjugating the country of Movenna, he wants to give his rule a certain legitimacy and to found a new dynasty. To this end, he married the movennian steppe princess Ziris and tried to establish the son Ardua, who came from this connection, as heir to the throne. Jurtak is shown as an ambivalent character. At the beginning of his rule he is cruel, waging wars and exterminating supporters of the old royal family. He is later shown as a thoughtful and far-sighted statesman who even achieved a certain popularity with the people through his generosity. As a lover who woos Princess Ziris, he is at the same time the helpless servant of a woman who does not want him, a weak tool in the hands of his advisor and unscrupulous commissioner of murder.
  • Ziris is the daughter of the steppe king Swadilfari, a princess of the equestrian people of the Nearith, beautiful, independent and warlike. Her lover Zosric is murdered on Jurtak's orders, whereupon she is tricked into marrying Jurtak. A year later, she becomes Ardua's mother. After Zosric's death, Ziris becomes more and more insane. She developed the obsession to first erect a huge tomb for her lover, then his horse, and thereby triggers a terrible war over the black cliffs that are to serve as building material. She dies by suicide.
  • Orh Jonoth is a gigantic warrior from the life guard of the old movennian king. He has a rather simple disposition, his ethos can be summed up in the sentence “On the shield or with the shield”: From a battle one should either return home dead or victorious. After the lost war against the conquerors from neighboring Mogàl, he actually wants to throw himself at his sword. But he receives an order from his king to flee and to take his son, the infant Varelian, out of the country. Orh Jonoth is portrayed as a silent, dull, brooding colossus, but also quite kind-hearted and rather helpless as a nanny. As a master of all martial arts, he can even kill an opponent with a fork in a posh restaurant if necessary.
  • Ask is a member of a tribe of forest people who are nearly exterminated by the war over the black cliffs. He is a naive, average boy of a native people who wants to become a good hunter one day. For a test of courage he breaks a stone out of the black cliff wall and thus indirectly triggers a war over these rocks.
  • Roc is a young hill tribe shaman. Next to Ask he is the second perspective figure in the novel "The Rock of the Black Gods". Roc is a devout zealot who follows the ways of the gods. He tries to bring the stolen gods back from the land of the Nearith, but fails because of a failed conjuration.

Geography of Movennas

Movenna is a country in the temperate climate zone, comparable to Central Europe. It is divided into two parts by a ridge running in a north-south direction. To the west of the mountains there is a flat plain to which the sea connects. A special landscape is the "Sea of ​​Lilies" in the west, a plain overgrown with white lilies. The "Schottergebirge" are located in the south-east of the mountains.

In the north of the mountains there is a huge stone wall made of black rock with numerous faces and grimaces carved into it. These face north and, according to a movennian legend, had the function of frightening the ice demons and thereby ending the ice age. To the north of the rock face are the "Icy Desert".

To the east of the mountain range, the Trifta River flows parallel to the mountains. It meanders strongly, has a ford at the level of the gravel mountains and flows into the sea in the form of a river delta in the south. The eastern areas are flat, and with increasing distance from the mountains they gradually merge into steppe land.

Movennian coastal cities are Ura, Urasport and Dichtaby in the west, and Pisca in the southwest. Pisca is located on a bay with seven islands and island cities in front of it: Babla, Tarsa, Sadna, Bruta, Rewad, Gadra and Gena. To the east of the mountains are the capital Pol Movenn, the two university towns of Svatta and Vitta and the craft town of Kathlynas Park. In the far east, on the border with Mogàl, lies the border fortress of Ira.

To the north of Movenna lies the more Scandinavian Bernland (capital: Akkatossa). It is largely mountainous with fjords and a cooler climate. In the north of Bernland lies the land of the Plukku, small, flat-faced hunters who go hunting in sealskin boats. To the east of Movenna lies the country of Mogàl, a steppe kingdom.

South of Movenna is the continent of Ssuria. It has a dune-rich sand desert called Xenemy. The oases Aristamí and K'Chima are located in it. The capital Chadashqarth is located on the northern coast of Ssuria. There is also the southern continent Anthula south of Ssuria.

Religion / deities

In Movenna and the surrounding countries there are several polytheistic religions, some of which are in conflict with one another. The two most widespread beliefs are the belief in the four gods (Weor, Nödir, Reene and Ekke) and the cult of Ligur. The "Witte", in whose service the four winds are, is considered the oldest and now almost forgotten deity.

The wite and the four winds

In "The Downfall of the City of Venta" ("Stories from Movenna"), the singer Fandir tells of a nameless coastal god who was only called "The Witte". This god is said to have had four faces and to have ridden along the coast on a horse. The wind deities Borh (north wind), Arjol (east wind), Limana (south wind) and Ventis (west wind) functioned as his servants. The departure of the "Witten" is explained with the dawn of a new era. His parting present was the amber that the west wind Ventis wafted from the sea onto the beach. During the narrative time of the three Movenna books, the "Witte" is no longer venerated and is largely forgotten. Only in the name of the submerged island town of Venta, which is reminiscent of Vineta and Atlantis , is a memory of the Westwindin Ventis still preserved.

The four gods

Belief in the four gods is predominant on the coast and in the northern neighboring country of Bernland. The four gods are

  • Weor, god of thunder and weather in general. He is portrayed as a giant who drives across the sky in a chariot pulled by thunder horses, swinging a copper ax
  • Nödir, the god of seafaring and merchants
  • Ekke, the god of the sea and the coast
  • Reene, the capricious mother of the sea, Eckes' wife, who collects the souls of the drowned. The icy Reenestrom, a phenomenon in the northern sea, is named after her

In addition, a son of Weors is venerated, who is called Föj in Movenna and Fiu in Bernland. He is the god of love and justice, furthermore he is the city god of Dichtaby. The gravel island is dedicated to him.

Ligur

Ligur is a god originally from the southern continent of Ssuria. He was the son of the world creator Datuvel-vola and the goddess of love Caftoris. Ligur was quartered and has risen again, which is why small mobilés made of sheet gold hang in its temples. Missionaries brought the Ligurian religion to Movenna, where it soon became strong and began to replace the belief in the four gods. Although Ligur is revered as a god of love, he often has aggressive features and his missionaries were often brutal. The legend of the fall of the city of Venta tells how Ligur destroyed the city ("Stories from Movenna"). In Karan-Nur on the southern continent of Ssuria, human sacrifices are made to Ligur ("A Prince for Movenna").

Religion of the Nearith

The Nearith are a people of horse nomads from the western steppe who are actually considered atheist. Sometimes members of other peoples say that the Nearith only believe in their horses. The Nearith's most sacred oath is: "By the front hoof of my horse." A deity that is occasionally invoked, however, is Bonwarnon, the morning star, sometimes also as the evening star, which leads the star horses across the sky. Among other things, the riders recommend the souls of their deceased horses to Bonwarnon.

The hundred black gods and a thousand black demons

The mountain people (their own name: Haran-Dem) adore a black rock face in which numerous faces and grimaces are carved. According to the genesis of the novel "The Rock of the Black Gods", there are a hundred black gods and a thousand black demons. According to legend, their faces threateningly looking north are said to have ended the ice age and deterred the glaciers approaching from the north. The mountain residents believe that the destruction of the wall will trigger a new ice age. At the top of the black pantheon are "the three nameless", although it is not clearly stated in the novel whether they are part of the 100 black gods (i.e. rule over 97 gods) or as 101st to 103rd beings are still above this hundred. Bimms, a kind of vicious goblin , who reacts extremely irritably to disregard, is considered to be the weakest of the entities revered in the black wall . The old shaman of the mountain dwellers therefore admonishes his pupil Roc to especially venerate Bimms, it is precisely dangerous to anger the little spirits. So it is also the sacrilege in the portrait of Bimms that triggers the war described in the "Rock of the Black Gods", and it is Bimms who is ultimately responsible for the death of the shaman Roc.

The following gods or demons are known by name

  • the three nameless, rulers of the gods
  • Lithuriel ("with the stone forehead")
  • Petromel ("with the evil eye")
  • Al-Cefah ("the smasher of his enemies")
  • Ruodosax ("with the deadly claws")
  • Tokeimoth ("horned lord of the deadly rockfall")
  • Sikaritho ("devastating lightning", "lord of death lightning")
  • Sapanoir ("the cruel")
  • Montan ("the sublime")
  • Bimms ("the little mean one who hides arrowheads and lets feet stumble")

The old forest

The people of the forest inhabitants (their own name: Jaran-Dem) worships a kind of creator god or cultural hero in the form of the forest elder . The forest elder, who was originally called the mountain prince, is said to have created the forest. The background is a devil's pact with a being who was only called the bad one and with whose help the forest elder campaigned for his wife, the sun daughter Jadathea. The pact read: The wicked one was allowed to fetch him and his wife, the daughter of the sun, provided he gave them time for a seed and a harvest after the wedding. In order to outsmart the evil one, the forest elder did not sow corn, but acorns and has watched over his forest ever since. Besides the respect for the forest elder and the worship of the sun daughter, the forest dwellers have a more animistic-shamanistic worldview, shamans conjure up the spirits of animals before the hunt, there is a bear cult and legends about the cunning fox. The badger enjoys a special admiration , which has a large share in the work of world creation and is considered to be the ancestor of one of the forest dweller tribes.

Awards

  • Third place for “King Surbold's Grave” at the 1999 Story Olympiad
  • Third place for "The Crown of Eirikir" at the Story Olympiad 2000
  • Third place for "Flarics Witches" at the 2001 Story Olympiad
  • "Book of the Month", November 2010, on the fantastic couch for "The Rock of the Black Gods"

Trivia

  • The story “Pfefferkuchen” was created for a gift book (“This is serious!”) For Ernst Wurdack, in which former participants of the Story Olympiad and other Wurdack authors built the publisher as a figure into their respective worlds. Hartmann's story is a prehistory to her competition story “Die Krone Eirikir” and describes how Wurdack appears in the witch's kitchen while baking gingerbread and thereby causes a stain in the magic book, which is responsible for the failure of a spell in the history of the competition.
  • The author published all Movenna books in the old German spelling. In an interview she said it was a problem, "[d] that the word" that "just looks much uglier than" that ", but only a few publishers understand it." ( Http://wasmitbuechern.de/index .php / 2010/06/01 / petra-hartmann-started-with-writing-books-before-I-could-write / )
  • In an essay entitled “How can you be called Varelian?”, The author deals with the “discomfort” that non-fantasy fans have with naming in fantasy, including the movennian names Orh, Lournu and Varelian . She explains that nowadays there are more bizarre names in every kindergarten.

literature

Books

E-books

Audio book

Stories in anthologies and magazines

  • Eirikir's crown. In: Traumpfade (Anthology of the Story Olympiad 2000). Edited by Stefanie Pappon and Ernst Wurdack. Dresden, 2001. pp. 18-25.
  • Flarics witches. In: Creatures of Darkness (anthology for the 2001 Story Olympiad). Edited by Stefanie Pappon and Ernst Wurdack. Dresden, 2002. pp. 22-28. ISSN  1619-9647
  • Gray shrike. In: Short Stories, September 2004, pp. 20f. ISSN  1613-432X
  • Föj smiles. In: Mandrake root. Legendensänger Edition Volume 118 November 2004. Ed. Christel Scheja . P. 23. ISSN  0944-5714
  • Furuncula wart craish. Elfenschrift, third volume, issue 2, June 2006. pp. 10–14. ISSN  1613-3293
  • Gray shrike. In: Dragon Elves. Legendensänger Edition Volume January 130, 2006. Ed. Christel Scheja. Pp. 3-5. ISSN  0944-5714
  • The lighthouse on the edge of the world. In: Elfenschrift, fourth volume, March 2007 issue, pp. 18–21. ISSN  1613-3293
  • Gold eye. In Fantastic Stories with the Fantastic Girls. (Brochure from the authors' association Phantastik Girls for MarburgCon 2007)
  • Thunder storm night. In: Under the spell of the night forest. Edited by Felix Woitkowski. Lerato-Verlag, 2007. pp. 57-60. ISBN 978-3-938882-43-6
  • Gingerbread. In: We are serious! Edited by Martin Witzgall. Munich: WortKuss Verlag, 2010. pp. 77–79. ISBN 978-3-942026-02-4 (softcover), ISBN 978-3-942026-03-1 (hardcover)
  • Winter solstice. In: With blade and pen. Edited by Petra Hartmann and Andrea Tillmanns . Homburg / Saar: UlrichBurger-Verlag, 2013. pp. 51–59. ISBN 978-3-943378-07-8
  • The rider on the black horse. In: With blade and pen. Edited by Petra Hartmann and Andrea Tillmanns. Homburg / Saar: UlrichBurger-Verlag, 2013. pp. 60–68. ISBN 978-3-943378-07-8

items

Web links

Print

  • Ulrike Stegemann: Stories from Movenna. In: Elfenschrift. Edition September 3, 2004. p. 25. ISSN  1613-3293
  • Ulrike Stegemann: The rock of the black gods. In: Elfenschrift. Edition December 28, 2010. p. 32.
  • Klaus-Peter Walter: Hartmann, Petra: The rock of the black gods. In: Factory guide through the utopian-fantastic literature. Edited by Franz Rottensteiner and Michael Koseler. Meitingen: Corian-Verlag Heinrich Wimmer, 1988ff. ISBN 978-3-89048-800-4