'Seekan Back Tae Rackwick'

Several weeks ago, now, I promised a second blog inspired by my recent rambling to Orkney. The unfortunate delay has been caused by my indulgence in even more Norse and Viking ramblings in the meantime, on which I may report when (if) I get a moment... But I did want to do a second Orkney blog, this time about poetry, which is, in my view, one of those essential aspects of life which get far too little airing here (care to suggest some others?).

Various things conspired to make me think about Old Norse influence on modern poetry in English. Now there are plenty of books and articles that will tell you about poets from the sixteenth century onwards who have written on Norse and Viking themes of one sort or another. But there is relatively written about those brave poets who have tried to write, in English (or some form of English), in that most demanding of metres known as dróttkvætt or, to the uninitiated, simply as 'skaldic' verse. There aren't that many, here I'd like to present three.

That great 'lover of islands' and fan of Iceland in particular, W.H. Auden, once tried his hand, published in Secondary Worlds (1968):

Hushed is the lake of hawks,
Bright with our excitement,
And all the sky of skulls,
Glows with scarlet roses;

It sounds quite good, and even manages to follow some of the rules, though those who have mugged up on their skaldic metres will straightaway see that the alliteration is not quite perfect. But what does it mean? (The second half stanza is even less comprehensible.) That, by the way, was a rhetorical question, so please spare me your literary analyses; over the years I have quite convinced myself it means nothing at all, and that the great WHA only did it so that he could write the following sentence, a memorable piece of literary criticism:

It is clear that in such verse it would be absolutely impossible to tell a story. Sagas, if composed at all, would have to be written in prose.

My next poet is a much more obscure one, the Kirkwall draper and conchologist, Robert Rendall. An excellent poet, in my view, though you do have to have a taste for the kind of poetry that was already well out of date by the time he wrote. His poems are little known, and I am quite proud of my small but perfectly-formed collection of his works, many of them published in Kirkwall and therefore quite hard to get hold of. When not draping, or collecting shells (on which he was an acknowledged scientific expert), he wrote pious sonnets, or dialect verse. Once, though, he had a go at what he called 'An experiment in Scaldic metre' in the poem 'Shore Tullye', published in Orkney Variants and Other Poems (1951). Rendall doesn't gloss 'tullye', but according to Hugh Marwick's Orkney Norn (1929) a 'tully' is 'a large kind of knife with a blade fixed in the haft; used chiefly for splitting fish or cutting up meat'. It seems appropriate, though I'm not absolutely sure it's right, but then I haven't found anything else it could be. Apart from (or perhaps because of) the dialect words, Rendall's poem at least makes sense:

Stretched the battle beachward;
Bravely back we drave them.

But he too fails in the proper alliteration of the last two lines:

Never kam sea-rovers
Seekan back tae Rackwick.

But of course real poets find their inspiration where they can and don't generally let themselves be trammelled by metrical pedantries. While in Orkney I met the Scottish poet Ian Crockatt, who is currently doing a PhD on how to 'translate' skaldic poetry, from the point of view of a creative writer rather than an academic like me (interesting for me, since we work on the same poet). He has published a chapbook called Skald: Viking Poems (2009) - the title says it all. In this collection he 'tried to keep to original features like the strict syllable count and the patterns of alliteration, internal rhyme and half-rhyme' while making no attempt to reproduce the kennings. Here he is, also on some raiders, from 'His Ring':

Not gold - gilt silver that
glowed like those gleam-haloed
stone-encrusted crosses
grabbed from Christ-cold abbeys

So there you have it, three poets, three approaches, but what they have in common is that their poems foreground the sounds. And good for them.

'The Lover of Islands May See at Last...'

Yours truly is now back from her most recent septentrional excursion, to Orkney this time, a perennial favourite (see my 'About Me' photo). I think I'll devote two blogs to this particular rambling!

The occasion, as so often for me, was another academic conference, the splendid Inaugural St Magnus Conference, organised by the Centre for Nordic Studies in Kirkwall. Another stimulating event, packed with facts and interest, lots of interesting people, and well worth the trip in itself. But it wasn't all hard speaking and listening - it seemed crazy to go all that way for just three days, so I tacked on a few extra days and did some visiting of locations, sites and antiquities.

First stop was Hoy, the High Island, site of the Everlasting Battle between the father and the abductor of Hildr, a valkyrie-like female figure who resurrected the dead each night so they could fight again the next day  - though it's not at all clear why (for the full story, see Snorri Sturluson's Edda). The 'dark hills of Hoy' certainly conjure up macabre thoughts, even on a nice sunny day, and I think that particular story found its ideal location on it. I walked to Rackwick (a lovely south-facing bay much celebrated by Orcadian author George Mackay Brown) and back. That was around 11 miles, I reckon, including my detour (see below), not too bad when you are the Viqueen's age, I can tell you, and fighting against a fierce Orcadian wind for half of the way.

The main goal was, however, the Dwarfie Stane, a Neolithic rock-cut tomb (pictured above) which I have discussed in a recently-completed (but not yet published) article. What, you may ask, has a Neolithic rock-cut tomb to do with Norse and Viking stuff? Those in the know already know, of course, the rest of you can do some research, or await my forthcoming article. But I'll give you a clue - it's all to do with giants...

I have been to Hoy before, but every trip to Orkney I try to make it to another island that I have not yet visited (I think I am still only about halfway through the inhabited islands). This time, the destination was Papa Westray, or Papay as it is known both in Orkneyinga saga (Papey in meiri) and by the locals. Getting there is half the fun (on an eight-seater plane, pictured above), but this small island (roughly four miles long by one mile wide) has many attractions in its own right. How about the oldest standing dwelling in Europe at the Knap of Howar, ca. 5000 years old? Or a clearly-defined, though eroding, Norse naust? Or the delightfully-situated St Boniface Kirk, with its gravestones from many periods but also a late example of a Norse hogback memorial? And right in the middle, a fabulous large Orkney farm, Holland, with buildings going back to the 17th century, and a fine little local museum. Despite all the much older antiquities, I have chosen to illustrate this with something that really caught my eye, a golden version of the Maeshowe dragon painted on one of their large green tanks (containing I know not what, city girl that I am). All in all, a place with plenty to explore and enjoy on a sunny (if windy) day.

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.

Working Towards Vikings

The big Viking exhibition of 2013-14, about which I have blogged before, is now being prepared in earnest. First out will be the National Museum of Denmark, after that it will travel to Berlin and then here to the British Museum in 2014, I believe, from Deep Throat in the British Museum. The group preparing the Copenhagen exhibition now has a blog, where you can follow their work as they travel round getting inspiration from other displays. The blog's in Danish, but no doubt my readers can cope with that, especially after all those episodes of The Killing? There's a nice photo here of Gareth Williams at work among his coins in the British Museum  Your blogstress and a small group of her students had an excellent day in London last Monday looking at various runic objects and coins, with the kind assistance of the very same Gareth.

Burning Ice, Biting Flame, and a Bracelet of Bones

All the b-words above are quotations from the work of Kevin Crossley-Holland. The man himself ventured into Viqueen territory earlier today, to take part in a round table of writers of popular books about the Middle Ages, organised by a most estimable colleague of mine. A good time was had by all, the speakers were all engaging, the audience all engaged, and I'm told that the subsequent workshops fairly zinged with excitement. The day was tinged with some nostalgia for me, since K.C-H. and I have a long-ago connection (strictly professional of course, but hugely important to me) that goes back some twenty years or more - the interested reader can certainly discover it by diligent research - and it was the first time I had seen him since then.
More importantly, Kevin is a prolific and successful poet, prize-winning author of works for children, and skilful interpreter of Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures. For his views on burning ice and biting flame, see this guest blog on Norse mythology for one of his publishers. As for the bracelet of bones, that is in fact the title of Kevin's forthcoming children's novel on a Viking theme, to be published within the next month or so. Definitely something to look forward to.

Runestone Red

There is a danger that this blog is just turning into free advertising for variously more or less vaguely Norse and Viking-related products. I'll try to get more serious next time...promise. But I can't resist providing a link to this article in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, celebrating their local Claiborne and Churchill winery. The Tribune is not my regular rag, I have to confess, but clearly a noteworthy organ in the Californian media landscape.
Claiborne Thompson was once upon a time a runologist in Michigan, but gave it all up 30 years ago to become a vintner in California (quite a choice, eh?). At the Seventh International Runic Symposium in Oslo last year, we all had the pleasure, not only of meeting Clay and Federicka, but of drinking their fine 'Runestone Red' (actually a Pinot Noir) at the final banquet. Many persons younger and more susceptible than I had very sore heads the next day (they know who they are), pretty much as if a rune stone had fallen on them (it's a 13.9% wine).
As for myself, I do hope one day to drink another bottle, and to be able to keep the empty bottle in my special Viking wine holder.