Viking Minds

Just a quick blog today to draw everyone's attention to a splendid new initiative by a Nottingham student (soon to be ex-, as he has submitted his thesis, well done John!), a company called Viking Minds. They produce gorgeous t-shirts, jewellery and postcards with designs based on Viking art from the north-west of England. Regular readers of this blog who read the Viking Minds website carefully may well notice some similarities between the enthusiasms displayed there and previous blogs here about the annual MA field trip to Cumbria!

Vatnsdœla Saga

After a lightning trip to Oslo on academic business last week, your intrepid blogstress was off on her rambles again, this time the annual postgraduate field trip to the north-west of England with some enthusiastic students. The cultural high point, as ever, was the Gosforth Cross, though all the familiar old hogbacks, runes and place-names we visited were also wonderful. But for a stunning landscape, the undoubted gem was, as ever, our overnight stay in Wasdale.

Although Wasdale in Cumberland is not so very like Vatnsdalr in Iceland (about which I blogged recently), it is after all the same name, and since my return I have amused myself by seeking out some parallels between the two. It had always struck me that the account in ch. 15 of Vatnsdœla saga of Ingimundr's arrival in Vatnsdalr must represent the reactions of many a Viking settler to their new homeland, wherever that may have been. As Ingimundr said:

'... ek sé nú ok land at víðleika með vexti, ok ef þar fylgja kosti, þá má þat vera, at hér sé vel byggjanda.'

'... I now see a land expansive in its spaciousness, and if the conditions are as good as the size, then it may be that this is a good place to settle.'

After a brief interlude in which Ingimundr's wife gives birth to a daughter by the riverside, they proceed in their explorations:

Síðan sótti liðit upp í dalinn ok sá þar góða landakosti at grösum ok skógum; var fagrt um at litask; lypti þá mjök brúnum manna.

Then the party made their way up into the valley and saw good agricultural conditions with respect to pastures and woods; it was beautiful to look at; people's brows unfurrowed.

Driving from Gosforth to Wasdale Head reveals both woods and pastures, the latter populated by large numbers of sheep (pictured above). Ingimundr, too, had lots of sheep, indeed a valley called Sauðadalr is said to have taken its name from some of his sheep which disappeared but were then found later on in the woods having spent the winter out of doors. The Herdwick sheep of Cumbria, too, are famous for their hardiness and for knowing their way around their patch. Ingimundr also had some problematic swine, and the Lake District is awash with Swin(e)dales and Grisedales. Natural resources are good too. In ch. 22 of the saga, we're told that there was veiðr mikil ... í Vatnsdalsá, bæði laxa ok annarra fiska 'much fishing ... in Vatnsdalsá, of both salmon and other kinds of fish'. Near Wasdale is Waberthwaite, the first element of which seems to come from an ON veiði-búð or 'fishing hut'.

When he died, Ingimundr was given a boat burial, presumably with a mound (ON haugr) over it. The EPNS volume for Cumberland lists some 17 minor names with 'how' in Wasdale alone, though, as Diana Whaley points out in A Dictionary of Lake District Place-Names, the element is prolific and can be used for both natural and artificial features, the latter including burial mounds. Disappointingly, the first element in the evocative Boat How was nothing to do with a burial but is from búð 'booth, hut' again.

Not that any of this proves anything at all, only that Viking settlers sought out similar landscapes, and used their well-established vocabulary to name those landscapes. But it's fun, and it's no wonder that those 19th-century antiquarians found themselves inspired by the links between Iceland and Lakeland.

The Wasdale Web

By a happy coincidence, I have just been (re-)reading Vatnsdœla saga today, on the very same day that fellow blogger Emily, over on Saga-steads, is travelling through Vatnsdalur itself (its northern reaches pictured right). Her blog is its usual readable self, with interesting observations about the afterlife of the sagas in present-day Iceland, and some beautiful photos (she seems to have had better weather than I did!). But the best nugget in her blog is that the inhabitants of the valley are currently working on a tapestry version of the saga, à la Bayeux. So far, all they seem to have is a drawing of chapter 26 of the saga, on which they are embroidering away, but it looks really good - you can recognise the events of the chapter quite easily.

Even my favourite bit of chapter 26 is there, though it is hard to represent visually (see if you can find it...). The hero Thorstein sends his shepherd off to find out what is going on at a neighbouring farm he is in dispute with. He tells him to recite poetry while he waits for them to answer his knock. When the shepherd returns and tells Thorstein that he had recited twelve verses before they admitted him, then Thorstein knows for sure that skulduggery is afoot. Presumably, it can be worked out by timing a standard dróttkvætt stanza and multiplying it by twelve - I make it about six minutes. An interesting thought that poetry can be used as a measure of time...

The title of this post, by the way, refers to Vatnsdalur's English namesake, Wasdale in the Lake District, and its WWW presence. Just thought I'd get that in, since I'm going thither again soon - but it also seemed appropriate. W.G. Collingwood thought Vatnsdalur one of the most beautiful valleys in Iceland, and the same could be said of Wasdale. Now they just lack a tapestry (and a saga).

Inspiration

In a philosophical mood today, and reflecting, as I often do, why these Norse and Viking Ramblings are so important to me. Many wonder why I like cold and windswept places rather than the olive groves of, say Crete - not that I don't like those, quite the opposite, I love them. But warm and soft places just don't inspire me. So I'm really pleased to see some of my favourite places mentioned in today's Guardian, in a feature  in which the great and the good (professors, librarians, artists, authors) write about their 'Inspiring Views'. Greenland, North Yorkshire (Ribblehead), the Outer Hebrides (Harris) and the Lake District (Wasdale) all get a mention. Greenland is certainly much in the media these days, what with Stephen Leonard's reports from there in the Guardian, and Bruce Parry's BBC programmes on the Arctic, and I've noticed it's lately become a very popular topic with PhD students in Norse and Viking Studies. Greenland is certainly majestic, awesome and endlessly fascinating. But the wild, but quieter, places are perhaps the ones that really inspire, me at least. As Robert Rowland Smith says of Wasdale, 'there's the Viking church reminding you that you might at some point need mercy from all those towering forces gathered round'. Quite so. He's a philosopher, too, so perhaps excused not realising it isn't really a Viking church.

More Ramblings

Dear readers, as there are more and more of you (33 followers at last count, and who knows how many undeclared), I feel more and more guilty about not keeping up with the blog. No excuses will be offered, except to note that your blogstress has been Norse and Vikingly rambling quite a lot recently. At the end of October, the annual trip to Cumbria with the MA students took place, as fabulous as every year, with a special mention to Burnthwaite B&B for their hospitality, and the kind vicars and rectors who welcomed us at Pennington, Irton, Gosforth, Bridekirk, Aspatria, Lowther and many other places with beautiful and inspiring churches, fascinating sculpture ('is it really the real thing from the 10th century?' asks an American student; how wonderful to be able to say YES!), amazing views and the occasional tidbit that makes the visit special (the little wooden Gosforth cross inside the church, the moving memorial to the foot and mouth crisis at Bridekirk, Calverley's grave at Aspatria, the dusky beauty of Lowther). This year was particularly special, as the autumn foliage reached levels and intensities of colour that were almost North American (see the photo, above, from Lowther in the gloaming, a scene entirely appropriate to one's mood at this time of year). Since the trip, I have been reliving the local glories by finally getting around to reading Matt Townend's The Vikings and Victorian Lakeland that I mentioned in last year's post-Cumbrian blog, but have only just found the time to read.

No sooner was I back from Vatnsland than I was off to Árós, for an excellent PhD course in Viking Studies, accompanied by two of Nottingham's stalwart higher-level Viking Studiers. As well as deep intellectual discussions, we tried to imagine life in a smoky Viking house, and wondered why people might carve rude runes on church walls... But the best bit really was the canteen at Moesgård, with its fabulous collection of (illicitly acquired? surely not...) signs (see photo, above right).

Hardly had I recovered from the Jutlandic experience when it was off to Iceland to ponder what happened to gods and goddesses when they were on, or crossed, the 'edge'. Liminality, in other words. Another excellent conference, well-organised. But the high spot for me was on my last morning. I had eschewed the crack of dawn flight in favour of a later one which would get me home to Nottingham at nearly the crack of dawn the following morning, but at least gave me a few hours to enjoy being in Iceland. And lo, the icy winds that feel like knives being thrown at you (like the poor girl with the axes in the Kirk Douglas film, but not hitting only your plaits) abated, the sun came out (though the temperature remained low), the snow sparkled on Esja, and Tjörnin was frozen over. So much so that people were skating on it, apparently without a Health-and-Safety care in the world. I also paid my respects to Jón Gunnar Árnason's Sólfar, just starting to glint in the sun (see above). Wow.
All of this reminded me of why I love Norse and Viking rambling. But doing it in less than three weeks takes its toll... I am still recovering, dear reader, but hope to be back soon.

Viking Crime

One of the pleasures of liking both Vikings and crime fiction is being able to combine the two. I particularly like thrillers and detective novels set in 'Viking' parts of Britain. They don't necessarily have to have a Viking theme, just being set in Shetland, like Ann Cleeves' excellent Shetland Quartet, is enough (though it wasn't enough for S. J. Bolton's Sacrifice, see my blog of 26 January 2009). But when there is a Viking theme, too, then it is time to wallow, as in Reginald Hill's The Stranger House (pictured), set in Cumbria and featuring a large Viking cross. My heartfelt advice, though, is to read it after you've been to Gosforth, not before. I also like spotting mini-Viking references in other novels where they don't really play a part. Stephen Booth's detective novels, fulfilling the criterion of being set in a picturesque part of the country (the Peak District), often smuggle in some very brief Viking references, probably almost unconsciously.
Funnily enough, the Scandinavians, who do such good detective novels, aren't so good at the Viking genre. I confess I never managed to finish Flateyjargáta by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, despite a promising island setting and the saga-links - I just got bored. Arnaldur Indriðason's Konungsbók was much more readable and quite successfully conjured up the Copenhagen of long ago, but the plot was so implausible as to be risible and in general it was not quite the page-turner of his modern novels. I may of course have missed something - if anyone has a good Scandinavian Viking-themed crime novel to recommend, do let me know!

Viking Lakeland

Every year I take some MA students for a lightning field trip to the Lake District, to look at sculpture, runic inscriptions and place-names. The picture shows this year's group at Aspatria, by the grave of W.S. Calverley, a few weeks ago. Another great name in Viking Lakeland studies is of course W.G. Collingwood, the subject of a book by Matthew Townend (The Vikings and Victorian Lakeland: The Norse Medievalism of W.G. Collingwood and His Contemporaries), out early next month and available from the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. It's sad to hear the current bad news about the devastating floods in Cumbria - I hope they recover soon.