'80s book series - possibly shared universe - where a spaceship crashes on a medieval fantasy world

Question

I remember a series I read from my local library, but I only got to reading two books, I think. The world is medieval fantasy i.e. knights etc., but also viking types. There maybe was low-level magic.

In one book a spaceship crashes into the planet and there's a scrabble to get control of the survivor. The cover was similar to The End-of-Everything Man, showing a bald human-like being with a dark blue sky and something glowing, which lights up his face and silver spacesuit. But there was something about rods?

In the other book, there was something about a bunch of mercenaries who have a series of adventures that lead them to this weird anteroom dimension where they find strange flamingo/heron-like birds. Somehow, they realise these are lost gods. Specifically the thing that sticks in my memory is one of the birds is the god of art and craft, and the main PoV character (young, male, thoughtful mercenary) reflects how the loss of that god of craft is shown by how when looting people always go after the ancient 'primitive' artefacts. I think they found some way to release them.

Answer 1

The first one sounds ever so slightly like Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), as well as some elements of the second novel in the series, A Deepness in the Sky (1999).

A Fire Upon the Deep has a spacecraft crashing into a medieval world and a scrabble to control the survivors/their technology.

Both novels have a young male mercenary-like character.

There is no mention of gods or bird-like gods of arts and crafts though.