Nicholas van Rijn

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Nicholas van Rijn (2376 to c. 2500 A.D.) is a fictional character, who plays the central role in the first half of Poul Anderson's Technic History. He is a flamboyant capitalist adventurer, and is Dutch, apparently a resident of Djakarta. His speech is bombastic and heavily laced with unconventional constructs, puns, oaths, and words from northern european languages, especially Dutch, German, and possibly Danish. Anderson seems to have enjoyed writing this sort of dialog, and some of his more minor characters have used a similar patois.

He is obviously very well-educated in earth literature and history and also displays considerable cunning, linguistic ability, and capacity for bullying armed aliens into doing his bidding. A formidable individual in a tight spot (his battle cries have included "God send the Right!", "Kristmenn, Krossmenn, Kongsmenn!", and "Heineken Bier!") he prefers indulging in material luxuries to personal heroism, which is why he has employees.

Van Rijn is president of the Solar Spice and Liquors Company - an obvious reference to the spice trade with the East Indies which was a prominent feature of the Netherlands' Golden Age in the Seventeenth Century. Clearly, the character is meant to suggest a kind of throwback to the Dutch merchant adventurers of that time, and is far closer to them than to the more civilised and sedate Twentieth Century Dutch.

He describes commerce as "swindling each other", enjoys watching yacht races, is two metres tall and "globular" in shape, has a goatee beard, dresses in colourful and anachronistic fashions, wears numerous rings, and is known as "Old Nick" by his employees for reasons too obvious to mention. He is apparently impervious to personal abuse but is angered by stupidity, incompetance, prevarication and anything else that slows him down. He is never a viewpoint character. He has at least one natural child, the crown prince of the planet Hermes.

He swears by a number of saints including St Dismas, and has expressed the intention of burning candles in offering (to which another character responded "St Nicholas had best get it in writing"). In times of stress, he has been known to shout "This I have not deserved! Do you hear me!" at the sky, presumably at God. It seems possible he is Catholic.

Anderson may have derived the name from the famous painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Other famous van Rijns, however, have existed. The prefix van, unlike the German von, is not an indicator of minor nobility.