>In the abundant rougher lands this just doesn't make sense to me.
>When you only have pockets of arable land, with more dependance on
>herding and hunting, the lands needed to support a clan get a lot
>bigger, but can a wyter really keep as good an eye on an area five
>times as big, with many parts where your clan may not go from one
>year to the next? I could almost see the tula, in magical terms,
>becoming a series of dots, with the various steads centering larger
>dots, and certain critical other areas (shrines, mines, upland
>pastures) forming smaller dots....simply because the clan doesn't
>have the time to undertake the necessary activities to bind the wyter
>to all the land in between. They may claim the rest of the land, but
>there is little that they can do to enforce that claim.
I read something years ago that contrasted cat-territoriality and dog-territoriality. Dogs, as we know, seem to image their territory as humans mostly do -- irregular boxes with boundries. Everything inside of the box is the dog's territory. Cats, on the other hand, establish spots -- a section of stair, a rock, your favorite chair, and the paths between them. Dogs form packs that claim the same territory, while cats overlay many territories in the same space.
Your description sounds kind of like a cross between dog (and human) territoriality and cat territoriality. Maybe Heortlings, with all their alynxes, have a somewhat cat-like attitude. "The fields are ours, the buildings are ours, the close pastures are ours. The hills, far pastures, and hunting areas are mostly ours. The shrine is ours, but it's also the clans and the People of Ernalda's -- we get the most blessings, but our kin are always welcome, and other Heortlings who say the Greeting and ask for the blessings in the Old Way are tolerated if they have not proven themselves enemies."
Peter Larsen
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