Avalon, also known as land of the faeries is a location in the Celtic Lands ruled by the faerie King Oberon and his wife Titania. It is also the location that holds the mythical sword Excalibur.
Celtic Mythology
Avalon (/ˈævəlɒn/) is a mythical island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 Historia Regum Britanniae as a place of magic where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was made and later where Arthur was taken to recover from being gravely wounded at the Battle of Camlann. Since then, the island has become a symbol of Arthurian mythology, similar to Arthur's castle of Camelot.
Avalon was associated from an early date with mystical practices and magical figures such as King Arthur's sorceress sister Morgan, cast as the island's ruler by Geoffrey and many of the later authors inspired by him. Certain Briton traditions have maintained that Arthur is an eternal king who had never truly died but would return as the "once and future" king. The particular motif of his rest in Morgan's care in Avalon has become especially popular. It can be found in various versions in many French and other medieval Arthurian and other works written in the wake of Geoffrey, some of them also linking Avalon with the legend of the Holy Grail.
Avalon has often been identified as the former island of Glastonbury Tor. An early and long-standing belief involves the purported discovery of Arthur's remains and their later grand reburial in accordance with the medieval English tradition, in which Arthur did not survive the fatal injuries he suffered in his final battle. Besides Glastonbury, several other alternative locations of Avalon have also been claimed or proposed. Some medieval sources also occasionally described the place as a valley, and Italian folklore connected it with the phenomenon of Fata Morgana in relation to Mount Etna.
Avalon is also the place that holds Puck of The Goodfellows or in some cases referred to as Hobgoblin, in which Hob may substitute for Rob or Robin. This goes back to the character "Robin Goodfellow" and his name. The name Robin is Middle English in origin, deriving from Old French Robin, the pet form for the name Robert. Similar to the use of "the good folk" in describing fairies, it reflected a degree of wishful thinking and an attempt to appease the fairies, recognizing their fondness of flattery despite their mischievous nature.
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudo-chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1136) calls the place Insula Avallonis, meaning the "Isle of Avallon" in Latin. In his later Vita Merlini ("The Life of Merlin", c. 1150), he calls it Insula Pomorum, the "Isle of Fruit Trees" (from Latin pōmus "fruit tree"). The name is generally considered to be of Welsh origin (a Cornish or Breton origin is also possible), from Old Welsh, Old Cornish, or Old Breton aball or avallen(n), "apple tree, fruit tree" (cf. Welsh afal, from Proto-Celtic *abalnā, literally "fruit-bearing (thing)").
The tradition of an "apple" island among the ancient Britons may also be related to Irish legends of the otherworld island home of Manannán mac Lir and Lugh, Emain Ablach (also the Old Irish poetic name for Isle of Man), where Ablach means "Having Apple Trees"— from Old Irish aball ("apple") — and is similar to the Middle Welsh name Afallach, which was used to replace the name Avalon in medieval Welsh translations of French and Latin Arthurian tales. All are related to the Gaulish root *aballo "fruit tree" (found in the place name Aballo/Aballone) and are derived from Proto-Celtic *abal- "apple", which is related at the Indo-European level to English apple, Russian яблоко (jabloko), Latvian ābele, et al.
In the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury claimed the name of Avalon came from a man called Avalloc, who once lived on this isle with his daughters. Gerald of Wales similarly derived the name of Avalon from its purported former ruler, Avallo. The name is also similar to "Avallus", described by Pliny the Elder in his 1st-century Naturalis Historia as a mysterious island where amber could be found.
According to Geoffrey in the Historia, and much subsequent literature which he inspired, King Arthur was taken to Avalon (Avallon) in hope that he could be saved and recover from his mortal wounds following the tragic Battle of Camlann. Geoffrey first mentions Avalon as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur (Caliburn) was forged.
Geoffrey dealt with the subject in more detail in the Vita Merlini, in which he describes for the first time in Arthurian legend the fairy or fae-like enchantress Morgan (Morgen) as the chief of nine sisters (including Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe and Thiten) who rule Avalon. Geoffrey's telling (in the in-story narration by the bard Taliesin) indicates a sea voyage was needed to get there. His description of Avalon here, which is heavily indebted to the early medieval Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville (being mostly derived from the section on famous islands in Isidore's work Etymologiae, XIV.6.8 "Fortunatae Insulae"), shows the magical nature of the island:
The Isle of Fruit Trees which men call the Fortunate Isle (Insula Pomorum quae Fortunata uocatur) gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.
In Layamon's Brut version of the Historia, Arthur is taken to Avalon to be healed there through means of magic water by a distinctively Anglo-Saxon version of Morgan: an elf queen of Avalon named Argante. Geoffrey's Merlin not only never visits Avalon but is not even aware of its existence. This would change to various degrees in the later Arthurian prose romance tradition that expanded on Merlin's association with Arthur as well on Avalon itself.
In many later versions of Arthurian legend, including Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, Morgan the Fairy and several other magical queens (either three, four or "many") arrive after the battle to take the mortally wounded Arthur from the battlefield of Camlann (Salisbury Plain in the romances) to Avalon in a black boat. Besides Morgan, who by this time had already become Arthur's supernatural sibling in the popular romance tradition, they sometimes come with the Lady of the Lake among them; the others may include the Queen of Northgales (North Wales) and the Queen of the Wasteland. In the Vulgate Queste, Morgan first tells Arthur of her intention to relocate to Avalon, "where the ladies who know all the magic in the world are" (où les dames sont qui seiuent tous les enchantemens del monde) before his final battle. Its Welsh version was also claimed, within its text, to be a translation of old Latin books from Avalon, as was the French Perlesvaus.
In Lope Garcia de Salazar's Spanish version of the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, Avalon is conflated with (and explicitly named as) the mythological Island of Brasil, said to be located west of Ireland and afterwards hidden in mist by Morgan's enchantment. Avalon has been occasionally described as a valley. In Le Morte d'Arthur, for instance, Avalon is called an isle twice and a vale once (the latter in the scene of Arthur's final voyage, oddly despite Malory's adoption of the boat travel motif). Notably, the vale of Avalon (vaus d'Avaron) is mentioned twice in Robert de Boron's Arthurian prequel Joseph d'Arimathie [fr] as a place located in western Britannia, to where a fellowship of early Christians started by Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail after its long journey from the Holy Land, finally delivered there by Bron the first Fisher King.
Arthur's fate in Avalon is sometimes left untold or uncertain. Other times, his eventual death is actually confirmed, as it happens in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, where the Archbishop of Canterbury later receives Arthur's dead body and buries it at Glastonbury. In the telling from Alliterative Morte Arthure, relatively devoid of supernatural elements, it is not Morgan but the renowned physicians from Salerno who try, and fail, to save Arthur's life in Avalon. Conversely, the Gesta Regum Britanniae, an early rewrite of Geoffrey's Historia, states (in the present tense) that Morgan "keeps his healed body for her very own and they now live together." In a similar narrative, the chronicle Draco Normannicus contains a fictional letter from King Arthur to Henry II of England, claiming Arthur having been healed of his wounds and made immortal by his "deathless (eternal) nymph" sister Morgan in the holy island of Avalon (Avallonis eas insula sacra) through the island's miraculous herbs. This is similar to the British tradition mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury as having Morgan still healing Arthur's wounds opening annually ever since on the Isle of Avalon (Davalim). In the Vera historia de morte Arthuri, Arthur is taken by four of his men to Avalon in the land of Gwynedd (north-west Wales), where he is about to die but then mysteriously disappears in a mist amongst sudden great storm.
In Erec and Enide, an early Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes, the consort of Morgan early during King Arthur's rule is the Lord of the Isle of Avalon, Arthur's nephew Guinguemar (also appearing in the same or similar role under alike names in other works). The German Diu Crône says the Queen of Avalon is the goddess (göttin) Enfeidas, Arthur's aunt (sister of Uther Pendragon) and one of the guardians of the Grail. The Venician Les Prophéties de Merlin features the character of an enchantress known only as the Lady of Avalon (Dame d'Avalon), a Merlin's apprentice who is a fierce rival of Morgan as well as of Sebile, another of Merlin's female students. In the late Italian Tavola Ritonda, the lady of the island of Avalon (dama dell'isola di Vallone, likely the same as the Lady of Avalon from the Propheties) is a fairy mother of the evil sorceress Elergia. An unnamed Lady of the Isle of Avalon (named as Lady Lyle of Avalon by Malory) also appears indirectly in the Vulgate Cycle story of Sir Balin in which her damsel brings a cursed magic sword to Camelot. The tales of the half-fairy Melusine have her grow up in the isle of Avalon.
Morgan also features as an immortal ruler of a fantastic Avalon, sometimes alongside the still-alive Arthur, in some subsequent and otherwise non-Arthurian chivalric romances such as Tirant lo Blanch, as well as the tales of Huon of Bordeaux, where the faery king Oberon is a son of either Morgan by name or "the Lady of the Secret Isle", and the legend of Ogier the Dane, where Avalon can be described as an enchanted fairy castle (chasteu d'Auallon), as it is also in Floriant et Florete. In his La Faula, Guillem de Torroella claims to have visited the Enchanted Island (Illa Encantada) and met Arthur who has been brought back to life by Morgan and they both of them are now forever young, sustained by the Grail. In the chanson de geste La Bataille Loquifer, Morgan and her sister Marsion bring the hero Renoart to Avalon, where Arthur now prepares his return alongside Morgan, Gawain, Ywain, Perceval and Guinevere. Such stories typically take place centuries after the times of King Arthur.
In his final romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Chrétien also featured the sea fortress of Escavalon, ruled by the unspecified King of Escavalon. The word Escavalon can be literally translated as "Water-Avalon", albeit some scholars proposed various other developments of the name Escavalon from that of Avalon (with Roger Sherman Loomis noting the similarity of the evolution of Geoffrey's Caliburn into the Chrétien's Escalibur in the case of Excalibur), perhaps in connection with the Old French words for either 'Slav' or 'Saracen'. Chretien's Escavalon was renamed as Askalon in Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach who might have been either confused or inspired by the real-life coastal city of Ascalon. It is also possible that the Chrétien-era Escavalon has turned or split into the Grail realm of Escalot in later prose romances. Nevertheless, the kingdoms of Escalot and Escavalon both appear concurrently in the Vulgate Cycle. There, Escavalon is ruled by King Alain, whose daughter Floree gives birth to Gawain's son Guinglain.
In God of War series
God of War (2018)
We first hear about Avalon in God of War 2018 when Mimir begins to speak of his past. He mentions Oberon, King of the Fae from a faraway land. Mimir states that he served under the Fae King for many years as an errand boy and unofficial jester causing mischief among the humans. Also stating this was considered to be a crime worthy of severe punishment by most of the other Fae, but Oberon allowed this behavior because he found Mimir's actions to be entertaining.
Though initially amused by the chaos that Mimir and his kin (The Goodfellows) would cause, Oberon eventually grew bored with their antics, and Mimir, fearing that he might finally decide to punish them for their crimes chose to leave his homeland behind eventually winding up in the Nine Realms.
God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla
The only other time Avalon is remotely hinted to in the series is when we enter the Valhalla DLC. While in Valhalla, Mimir is separated from Kratos and is made to relive memories of when he lived in the forest serving King Oberon, alongside his crew of fairie-folk also known as the Goodfellows, such as Cobweb and Mustardseed. Eventually prompted by this, he shares with Kratos his misadventures and history with Oberon, back when he was known by such names as Puck and Robin of the Goodfellows.
Known Residents
- Oberon
- Titania
- Mimir (formerly)
- Peaseblossom
- Mustardseed
- Cobweb
- Moth