The Cairn on the Headland

"The Cairn on the Headland" is a short story by Robert E. Howard, a Mythos-adjacent tale in which a struggle between Norse paganism and Celtic Christianity is given a Lovecraftian twist. It was first published in the January 1933 issue of Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror.
== Synopsis ==
Two American academics, James O'Brien and Ortali, visit Grimmin’s Cairn, a centuries-old monument at Clontarf, near Dublin, Ireland--raised at the time of King Brian Boru's defeat of the pagan Viking invaders in 1014 A.D. Ortali, who holds a deadly secret over O'Brien, coerces him into a plan to loot the historical site for treasure. O'Brien agrees to the plan, though he is tempted to murder his blackmailer, though it would mean the gallows for him. 
O'Brien is met by an Irish woman wearing oddly dated clothing and speaking archaic Gaelic, who calls herself Meve MacDonnal. She warns him against his oppressor's plan, and offers him a priceless relic for protection: the crucifix of Saint Brandon the Blessed, believed lost since 1595.
Returning to his hotel, O'Brien has a vision of the Battle of Clontarf, apparently through the eyes of an ancestor, Red Cumal, an Irish fighter. After donning the armor and helmet of a slain enemy, he witnesses the death of a strange Norse warrior, a massive figure in grey armor with skin smooth as ivory. Mistaking Red Cumal for a comrade, the warrior reveals that he is a god trapped in a dying human body, and urges him to touch him with holly to liberate him. The Irishman recognizes the god as Odin, and instead of restoring him with holly, imprisons his corpse with the stones of the cairn.
Realizing that Ortali has decided to ransack the cairn without him, a night earlier than planned, O'Brien rushes to head him off--running across as he does so Meve McDonnal's gravestone, which reads "1565–1640." When he arrives at Grimmin's Cairn, he finds Ortali in the process of exposing Odin's uncorrupted body--and sees a sprig of holly that had been tucked into Ortali's lapel fall upon the corpse, liberating the god. Far from grateful to his rescuer, Odin slays Ortali with a bolt of lightning. O'Brien, meanwhile, confronts Odin with the cross of Saint Brandon--which sends the god back to the stars from which he came.
== Behind the Mythos ==
"The Cairn on the Headland" originally began life as "Spears of Clontarf," a historical fiction story that was rejected by Soldiers of Fortune magazine. (It was not published in this form until 1978.) He rewrote it with fantasy elements and submitted it to Weird Tales as "The Grey God Passes"--which was also rejected, eventually seeing print in the anthology Dark Mind, Dark Heart (Arkham House, 1962) as "The Twilight of the Grey Gods."Wikipedia, "The Twilight of the Grey Gods." Howard reworked it a second time by adding horror elements, and that substantially revised version was published by Strange Tales as "The Cairn on the Headlands."
In the Strange Tales version, Odin takes on decidedly Lovecraftian qualities--even though he is defeated by the very un-Lovecraftian device of a holy crucifix. "An ancient evil stirs in its prison," Meve McDonnal notes--adding that it's been "long ages since that forgotten evil fell to the earth.” When the god is released, he appears as a "fiendish spirit of ice and frost and darkness that...stood up nakedly and terribly in the stars.... His towering anthropomorphic form was dark as shadow and gleaming as ice." When he turns toward O'Brien, he is a "slavering monster" with "shadowy tentacle-like arms outspread." And when he is dispelled by the power of Saint Brandon, his departure is worthy of a Great Old One: Then with a great rush of vulturelike wings, he soared into the stars, dwindling, dwindling among the play of the flaming fires and the lights of the haunted skies, fleeing back into the dark limbo which gave him birth, God only knows how many grisly eons ago.
== Publication History ==
After its initial appearance, "The Cairn on the Headland" was first reprinted in an Arkham House collection of Howard's fiction, Skull-Face and Others (1962). It has appeared frequently when Howard's work has been collected, including in Wolfshead (Lancer Books, 1968), Beyond the Borders (Baen, 1996), Wings in the Night (Wildside Press, 2005), Robert E. Howard's Strange Tales (Dennis McHaney, 2005), The Robert E. Howard Omnibus (Renaissance E Books, 2006), The Exotic Writings of Robert E. Howard (Girasol Collectables, 2006), The Haunter of the Ring & Other Tales (Wordsworth Editions, 2007), People of the Dark (Cosmos Books / Dorchester Publishing, 2007), The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (Del Rey / Ballantine, 2008), The Fearsome Touch of Death and Other Short Stories of Horror and Fantasy (Ulwencreutz Media, 2014), and Swords of the North (Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2014).Internet Science Fiction Database, "Title: The Cairn on the Headland." It's also appeared in multi-author anthologies like The Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 (Avon Publishing, 1948), The Macabre Reader (Ace Books, 1959), and Rivals of Weird Tales (Bonanza Books / Crown Publishers, 1990).
The story has been translated into German, French, Italian, Czech, and Hungarian.
== References ==
Category:Robert E. Howard works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works