Material for a Poem

Here I am back in the Orcades on another busman's holiday. Next week it will be all business (though very pleasurable business, of course), but I came up a few days early to revisit old haunts and discover new ones. First off was Sanday, which was beautiful and fascinating in snow, rain, hail, sleet, wind and sun (or indeed all of those at the same time). But today I'm in a poetical mood and minded to blog about Wyre, which I visited yesterday in the most glorious spring sunshine (the photos show more cloud than I saw for most of the day).

Wyre was something of a pilgrimage for me. Since my last visit in 1989, I have come to know a lot more about its most famous inhabitants Kolbeinn hruga, who built the castle (pictured above), and especially his son, Bishop Bjarni Kolbeinsson. Bjarni was of course the well-travelled bishop who spent a lot of time in Norway (where his father probably came from). He may have built the lovely little chapel next to the castle pictured below. Bjarni is also the author of a fascinating narrative poem about the Jómsvíkingar, of all things, and their heroic defeat at the battle of Hjörungavágr - his literary activity was probably the last gasp of Orkney's twelfth-century renaissance. Having once translated his poem for a general readership, and having also written more academically about both the saga (some time ago), and various poems about the Jómsvíkingar (in a forthcoming article), I couldn't miss an opportunity to visit the place this learned man came from, though perhaps he, too, like his successor Edwin Muir, many centuries later, had to leave it to reach his full literary potential. Still, the castle (probably the oldest stone castle in Scotland) suggests that Wyre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was not then the rather modest place of eighteen inhabitants it is today. But they still appreciate their poets, and the small heritage centre has a display about 'Wyre's Poets', mentioning not only Bjarni Kolbeinsson and Edwin Muir, but also a descendant of Rögnvaldr's called Snækollr Gunnason, who is mentioned in Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar and probably also had a connection with Wyre, though his surviving poetic output is a bit meagre, to say the least.

On returning from Wyre, I went to a lecture in the splendid Pier Arts Centre in Stromness about Margaret Tait, previously known to me as an experimental film maker. She gets a mention here partly because she made a film 'The Driftback' in the 1950s about farmers returning to live in Wyre, against the tide which then was all about leaving small islands, and partly because it turns out she was a poet, too. The lecture (by Sarah Neely of the University of Stirling) was about the importance of poetry to Tait's films, and the development of her films into what could be described as 'film-poems', but she also published quite a few poems on the page. Many of both her films and poems are about Orkney and it turns out that no Orkney poet can avoid turning their hand to Norse and Viking themes now and again. Here's a snippet from what I think is one of her better ones, originally published in the Orkney Herald in 1959 (and now in Sarah Neely, ed., Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, Carcanet 2012, p. 113):

The equinox excited the Vikings out of their winter stupor,
Made other lands seem desirable,
Made the roving sea and the turning world all a prod, a birch upon them, an unknown waiting welcoming motion to receive them,
And in they went
With the prows of their vessels high and proud,
Their weapons clanging against their shields,
With the swift sides of their long ships entering between two lips of water
And at speed rushing -
Yelling off to fight the Irish.

Yesterday was just such a spring day, soon after the equinox, which would have excited the Vikings. Bjarni Kolbeinsson said, slíkt eru yrkisefni 'such matters are material for a poem', and, as a chronicler of similar deeds himself, I'm sure he would have approved.

Viking Week

It's been a good week for Norse and Viking stuff. I've been to see Thor, which was certainly more Marvel comic than Norse myth, but that was predictable. Then, after a very long wait, British television finally gave us a programme on the Icelandic sagas - what took them so long? It was part of a Scandinavian week on BBC 4, involving a very mixed bag of  Jar City, Night Shift, bits of Noggin the Nog, and various other things I didn't see. For those not in the know, Noggin the Nog (that's a picture of him) is a classic series of very simple animated films for children, in which the characters are loosely based on the Lewis chess-pieces, and the stories set in the 'Northlands'. Jar City is a film made some years ago of Arnaldur Indriðason's detective novel Mýrin, and Night Shift is a wonderfully wacky and pretty surreal Icelandic sitcom set in a petrol station (highly recommended).

But back to the sagas. It's great to have a TV programme on sagas, after many many years of waiting, and I am happy to admit that there were several things I liked about The Viking Sagas. The landscapes were great, and beautifully photographed. My esteemed colleague Heather O'Donoghue was earnestly enthusiastic about the literature. I liked the fact that saga-extracts were read out in Modern Icelandic. I also thought it was a good idea to focus on just one saga (Laxdœla saga): that allowed more depth than would otherwise have been possible. But the trouble with watching a programme on a subject about which you are knowledgeable is that it's hard to resist the urge to nitpick... Sorry guys, here goes.

I could just about put up with the title, and the fact that the programme had to end with Tolkien (who may have been influenced by Norse myth, but not so much by the sagas set in Iceland). However I do think neither is worthy of BBC4, though they might have been OK on BBC3. I wasn't impressed by Dr Janina Ramirez (not clear what she is a 'Dr' of) in any way, and was especially irritated by her overdone reaction shots. I didn't like the various errors (the statement that the genetic results showing a large proportion of Icelanders descended from females from the British Isles came from the DNA analysis of old bones, the related misleading statement that 'Aud the Deepminded' was 'British', the strong implication that the days of the week in modern English are derived from the Norse gods, and the strong implication that modern-day practitioners of the Ásatrú are somehow 'remnants'  of the old pre-Christian belief (rather than a modern reinvention). In general there was a bit too much mythology for a programme supposed to be about the sagas and their landscape. And I was completely mystified by the many hanging and revolving names and books... All in all, a curate's egg of a programme which I couldn't help feeling was not fully worthy of BBC4.

The days of the week also cropped up briefly in Thor, in the library scene, and continue to be peddled as evidence for Norse influence on English by the uninformed. The days of the week are complicated and not simply to be reduced in this way, nor do they necessarily all derive from a common Germanic pre-Christian origin. And a programme about Iceland should at the very least mention the fact that Icelandic doesn't have theophoric days of the week... Those who would like to know more are encouraged to read Philip A. Shaw's ‘The Origins of the Theophoric Week in the Germanic Languages’, Early Medieval Europe, 15 (2007), 386-401.

Well, dear reader, forgive me my rant. In the end, though, I feel positive about it all - it's great that there is so much interest.

Here a Thor, There a Thor, Everywhere a Thor

I mentioned in my previous post that I had been on various other Norse and Viking rambles, one was to an academic conference in Copenhagen on molecular views of colonisation which, being a serious academic topic, I'll slide by here in this frivolous blog. The conference took place on the old Carlsberg brewery site where, I'm told, beer is no longer brewed except for a few very special barrels. But it's a glorious place which, I confess, I had never been to before, despite numerous visits to Copenhagen over the years. Among the eclectic architectural marvels there, I spotted Thor in his goat chariot on top of the old brewhouse. So I picture him here since it's his week, with the new film just out.

Happy Mothers' Day from Heimdallr

As the opening of the Kenneth Branagh/Marvel Thor film on the 27 April approaches, the publicity campaign is winding up. Today's Observer Magazine has an interview with Idris Elba, the actor who plays Heimdallr in the film. Once again, his blackness is brought up, though the interviewer has a nice line on this. 'As a black person who was born in Norway, I tell Elba I personally don't see what all the fuss is about', says Afua Hirsch, and quite right too. I merely repeat what I have observed before, that Heimdallr is described as 'the whitest of gods', and that the Vikings would absolutely have understood the casting of a black actor as just the sort of joke they practised in their own nicknames. (By the way, for any budding students out there, Norse and Viking nicknames are very much an underresearched topic...).
Heimdallr is obscure and fascinating. According to Snorri, in his Edda, Heimdallr was 'great and holy', not least because he seems to have had nine mothers (all at once!), who were also sisters (his father was Odin, of course). He has gold teeth (and hence the alias Gullintanni) and a horse called Gulltopp ('Gold-mane'). As appropriate to a watchman, he has excellent sight and hearing, and of course the trumpet called Giallarhorn which will warn of the coming of Ragnarök (see the picture above, from the Gosforth cross). His house is called Himinbjörg (hard to translate but either 'Heaven Rescue' or 'Heaven Sustenance'), and sounds an altogether wonderful place, pleasant, merry and serving good mead. No wonder Heimdallr is such a cheerful chappie. There's even a (mostly) lost poem about him, Heimdalargaldr, about which we had an interesting talk at the Viking Society the other day. About time this interesting god got some wider exposure - I wonder how much will actually get into the film?

Valhalla Bound

A friend sent me a link to this fun animated film, The Saga of Biorn, a few weeks ago - I like it better each time I see it. It is technically accomplished for a student film, which is apparently what it is. It eschews clichés successfully and has some good visual jokes. I would even venture to say that its insights into Viking concepts of death and the afterlife for warriors are not entirely to be sniffed at. Well done to those at Animation Studio in Denmark who made it.

Happy Thor Year

There's a lot of Thor to look forward to in the coming year. Firstly, what today's Observer calls 'Kenneth Branagh's unlikely first foray into Marvel comic book heroics', the film Thor, due in May (and already much hyped, see my previous posts on this topic from April and May last year), or possibly even the 29th of April (will people be queuing for the film to get away from the Royal Wedding?). Never having been a reader of Marvel comics (is this something to do with my gender?), I'm not quite sure what to expect, and whether the film will just be a version of the comic, or whether it will have recourse to older sources. But the recent publicity suggests this is one that will be more for comic fans than Old Norse mythology fans.
What actually looks like much more fun is Legends of Valhalla: Thor, an animated film being produced in Iceland (based on some Icelandic children's books) and to be released in the autumn. The film has a cool website, where among other delights you can see interviews with the splendid Terry Gunnell, explaining about Norse mythology (though I rather wish they hadn't used the term 'Asatru' for this).

Thor, On the Other Hand...

...looks just like we expect him to look, see this picture from Blockbuster Buzz - Times Online - WBLG: Thor revealed!. But where are the goats?

Nightwatchman

There has been some kerfuffle about the choice of a black actor to play Heimdallr in Kenneth Branagh's forthcoming film about Thor (eh? Kenneth Branagh making a film about Thor? What is the world coming to?) - see for instance this article in the Guardian. The kerfuffle is apparently between the politically correct who see this as a laudable example of colour-blind casting and the racists who point out that (a) Norse gods weren't black and (b) Heimdallr is called 'the whitest of gods'.

What no one seems to have taken into account is the fact that the Vikings might have had a sense of humour. It was once pointed out to me by an older gentleman, with extensive experience of  male bonding-groups during the war, that nicknames in such groups often mean the opposite of what they say, thus people called Shorty are usually quite tall. Although Snorri does call Heimdallr 'the white god', I think the only poetic source for this epithet  is Þrymskviða, that joky poem in which nothing is as it seems, which does call Heimdallr hvítastr ása. Given this, I wouldn't be surprised if Heimdallr was black.

Will Kirk Douglas Be Superseded?

There are many execrable films about Vikings, which are good for a laugh at most, but even specialists generally let down their guard to enjoy the wonderful 1958 Viking romp with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Who can forget the haunting horn motif, or the husband cutting his wife's plaits off with a throwing axe? Keen-eyed runologists at least can't help noticing the Swedish rune stone in the opening scene at the Norwegian village, and those who remember Alan Binns can look out for his brief scene as the English bishop. All in all, there is much for the Viking aficionado to savour in The Vikings. Now, over half a century later, we hear that another blue-eyed superstar wants to make a film that is 'more historically accurate' than the Kirk Douglas effort. Huh! We'll see what Mel Gibson can do. He claims (in this article in the Daily Mail) that he once studied Old Norse (at the age of 16...) and that the characters in the film will be speaking in English and Old Norse (though his idea of the latter seems to be 'low guttural German'). Oh, and lots of violence and brutality are promised. No cuddly Vikings here, then.

Valhalla Rising X 2

One of our students has drawn attention to the fact that there is a Danish-produced film called Valhalla Rising in preparation for release in 2009, having filmed in Scotland in 2008. I wonder what that's about? The synopsis on IMDb does not suggest it has any connection with Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt techno-thriller with the same title (2001), though both do seem to involve strange voyages to North America (maybe they've just taken out the techno bits). The film will apparently be about 'One-Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength' who 'discovers his true self'. Sounds riveting. Actually, there's a more normal-sounding synopsis here, though it still sounds a bit overwrought for my taste... Here's some info about it from the Daily Record - for those who know about these things, it will star Mads Mikkelsen.

Thor and Egil - Film Stars!

According to the online version of Iceland Review, various film projects involving Norse and Viking heroes are underway. An Icelandic production company is making 'a computer animated film about Thor's adventures', while another co-production with some Hungarian (!) film producers will be about saga-hero Egill Skallagrímsson. Both are planned for release in 2010. If you can't wait that long, my advice is to read the books!