The Inscrutable Muses

Last week I finished a story, known right now as "The Café Françoise". It is set in Nazi-occupied Paris during the second world war and involved a dangerous liaison between a French Resistance operative called Jean-Pierre Renard, and a Gestapo officer whose name was Klaus Nördlingen.

When I was looking for a name for the young German, I had in mind using the name of an old German city, thinking that doing so would lend an aristocratic air to the name, even if I didn't use "von" in the name. I looked at maps quite a bit and didn't see a name that jumped out at me as an obvious choice.

The name Nördlingen drew my attention when I saw it mentioned while reading Night Comes to the Cretaceous : Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology, by James Lawrence Powell, the clearest and most comprehensive book I've read about the Alvarez theory that the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs (among many others) was caused by the consequences following the impact of a large meteorite with the Earth. The book is from the late 1990s when the theory was still much more controversial than it is today.

Anyway, what was a respectable, Medieval, Bavarian town like Nördlingen doing in a book like that? Mass extinctions is your clue.

It turns out that the town of Nördlingen was built entirely within an ancient impact crater from a meteorite that collided with the Earth some 14.5 million years ago and a possible cause of the "Middle Miocene disruption". The crater, known as "Nördlinger Ries", was thought to be volcanic in origin until the 1960s when it was conclusively shown to be an impact crater.

Aerial photographs of the town are popular because its boundaries so clearly show the edges of the ancient crater; here are some examples.

Anyway, the name "Nördlingen" suited my needs perfectly and I rather liked the behind-the-scenes fact about the town of Nördlingen and its impact-crater boundaries. One must be vigilant, never knowing when the muse might speak.

p.s. This note came about because I just uncovered a small note on my desk from some weeks ago now : "Medieval German town (located w/in impact crater) : Nördlingen".

Posted on November 29, 2011 at 01.27 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Personal Notebook, Writing

4 Responses

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  1. Written by BearToast Joe
    on Monday, 5 December 2011 at 21.56
    Permalink

    You know, this is the kind of odd stuff that I get into all the time. And one thing leads to another. My daughter said yesterday (as I spouted off about something rather obscure) , "Daddy, you're such a nerd. But I mean that in a good way."
    And, I remember an article on that town from several years ago, Nat Geo, I think. Guess is saved time in building a city wall.

    Cheers!

  2. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 at 19.51
    Permalink

    My first thought was that Nordlinger is somewhat of an anagram with Nordegren.

  3. Written by jns
    on Friday, 6 January 2012 at 17.24
    Permalink

    I guess I can see the resemblance, Fred, but it would have been a very odd choice for me, I think.

  4. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Monday, 16 January 2012 at 16.27
    Permalink

    My muse speaking, methinks.

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