Echoes and Walking Through Walls
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch draws on both mythology and scientific theory to craft its intense ride of a story. Looking into both of these elements leads to a deeper understanding of the novel.
Vardøger
Throughout the story the Vardogger comes up, a white, burnt tree described in detail on page 228. It’s a thin space in the multiverse. The name Vardogger seems to be an anglicized version of the Norwegian word vardøger, pronounced vard-deh-ay’-grr (L. David Leiter PDF). The word means ‘‘premonitory sound or sight of a person before he arrives,” according to L. David Leiter. It’s like a doppelgänger without the evil connotations. Wikipedia says, “The word vardøger is probably from Old Norse varðhygi, consisting of the elements vǫrð, ‘guard, watchman’ (akin to ‘warden’) and hugr, ‘mind’ or ‘soul’. Originally, vardøger was considered a fylgja, a sort of guardian spirit” (Wikipedia’s citation for this is also Leiter, but I can’t find this in his writing, so I’m not sure the source of this info, but I thought it interesting).
It seems that Hyldekrugger named the tree after this Norse concept because of the echoes it produces. While the echoes aren’t actually vardøgers in the sense that they go before a person, they do produce strange effects, like the wrong Moss being rescued from Terminus in the Prologue. The name makes sense given Hyldekrugger’s affinity for Norse mythology.
Quantum Tunneling
Obviously, the quantum-tunneling nanoparticles (QTNs) are a huge part of this story, the cause of Terminus. I correctly guessed that the “nanoparticle” part meant a really small particle: a “ultrafine unit with dimensions measured in nanometres (1 nm = 10−9 metre)” (Britannica nanoparticle). What I wasn’t sure about was the “quantum tunneling” part of the name.
I tried finding a YouTube video to explain it. One I watched (What is Quantum Tunneling?) gave an illustration of someone rolling a particle down a hill in valley. On the other side of the valley is an even deeper valley. One would not expect the particle to make it over the mountain between the two valleys without a lot of force behind the roll. But, quantum tunneling means that some particles could go through the mountain to get to the deeper valley.
I still don’t fully understand what this means, but I understand how the QTNs could get inside of people. If they can go through a mountain, I’m sure a spacesuit or skin is no problem. This makes them especially terrifying, an invisible enemy that infiltrates one’s very body.
Were there other Norse mythology elements, like the ship of nails, in The Gone World? Do you know of any sources on quantum tunneling that explain it better? Leave a comment below and let me know!
