Lomar

For the town in Iran, see Lomar, Iran.

Lomar is a fictional land in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, first mentioned in his short story "Polaris" (1918).

Contents

Location

In "The Mound", one of H. P. Lovecraft's revisions, the land of Lomar is said to be "near the earth's north pole."[1]

History

Lomar "rose from the sea" in the far distant past.[2] The people of Lomar came from Zobna, a land even further to the north, "forced to move southward from Zobna before the advance of the great ice sheet". When they arrived in Lomar, they "valiantly and victoriously swept aside the hairy, long-armed, cannibal Gnophkehs that stood in their way."[3]

Lomar is the source of the Pnakotic Manuscripts.[4] People from the underground realm of K'n-yan brought an image of the deity Tsathoggua to Lomar, where it was worshipped.[5]

The story "Polaris" implies that Lomar was destroyed around 24,000 B.C. by the Inutos--"squat, hellish yellow fiends who...appeared out of the unknown west".[6] (Lovecraft identifies these people with the modern day Inuit, whom he calls "squat, yellow creatures".)[7] In The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, however, he writes that "the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoe and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar."[8]

Olathoë

Lomar was home to the city of Olathoë, described in the story "Polaris":

Still and somnolent did it lie, on a strange plateau in a hollow between strange peaks. Of ghastly marble were its walls and its towers, its columns, domes, and pavements. In the marble streets were marble pillars, the upper parts of which were carven into the images of grave bearded men.[9]

Later in the story the plateau is identified as Sarkia, and the mountains as Noton and Kadiphonek.[10]

The title character of the story "The Quest of Iranon" says he has "dwelt long in Olathoe in the land of Lomar",[11] thus suggesting that the other places named in that story coexist in the same world and era as Lomar.[12]

References

Notes

  1. ^ H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, "The Mound", The Horror in the Museum, p. 141.
  2. ^ H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", At the Mountains of Madness, p. 432.
  3. ^ H. P. Lovecraft, "Polaris", Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, p. 22.
  4. ^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Other Gods", Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, p. 128; H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, At the Mountains of Madness, p. 310.
  5. ^ H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, "The Mound", The Horror in the Museum, p. 221.
  6. ^ Lovecraft, "Polaris", p. 22.
  7. ^ Lovecraft, "Polaris", p. 23.
  8. ^ Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, p. 310.
  9. ^ Lovecraft, "Polaris", p. 21.
  10. ^ Lovecraft, "Polaris", p. 21.
  11. ^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Quest of Iranon", Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, p. 114.
  12. ^ S. T. Joshi, "The Real World and the Dream World in Lovecraft", The Horror of It All, p. 18-31.

"At the Mountains of Madness" H.P. Lovecraft