Kilroy Wasn't Here

One only of several reasons why I haven't been blogging much is that I've been doing too much Norse and Viking rambling. In April, as well as my trips to the Isle of Man, Orkney and Shetland, all recorded here, I went to a fun symposium on that quintessential Viking saga, Jómsvíkinga saga in Uppsala, and in May, I went to a symposium on the Jelling stone. The last has put me in a runic mood again, and an article that plopped on my doormat yesterday has prompted me to put on public record some thoughts that I have been having for years, and have tried to express more than once, but no one seems to take any notice.

Runologists frequently refer to the mythical graffito 'Kilroy was here' when talking about runic graffiti of the type 'X carved these runes'. This seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding based on inadequate research and I wish they would stop. When someone wrote 'X carved these runes', they used their own name and they really were there. Such a graffito is meant to be a proud (or otherwise) record of their presence and their ability to write runes (as evidenced by the fact that such inscriptions can be found on loose objects as well as walls and other fixed places). The Kilroy inscriptions are quite the opposite. There are a lot of stories, some possibly even true, about this phrase on the internet (with quite a sensible article here), while my trusty Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable merely says that 'Its origin is a matter of conjecture', but one thing seems clear. Whether or not a 'Kilroy' once existed, he was certainly not responsible for all the inscriptions with his name that appeared in many places around the world, especially during the high point of this craze in World War II and the 1950s. In runic inscriptions, X appears as many different names. QED.

The Sea Which Surrounds Us is Big

A few 'tweets' from a 'tweep' whom I follow (god, the terminology) reminded me that I failed to add a blog about my trip to Shetland, which followed on from the Orkney visit described in my last blog (shamefully over a month ago). Although I've been to Orkney many times, this was my first visit to Shetland in over a decade, and only my second visit ever (about time too). It's always good to be reminded of both how similar and how different the two island groups are. Visually, they are linked by Fair Isle - I could see it both from North Ronaldsay, and then again from the living-room window of the friends I was staying with on Westside in Shetland. The visit was quite a short one, though I managed to see lots of interesting things. Here, I'll just mention a couple of places well-known to me through sagas and poetry, and then another wee couple of things.

Girlsta Loch (pictured left) is quite a gloomy and forbidding place, and it's easy to imagine the death by drowning there of Geirhildr, daughter of Flóki, the víkingr mikill who, according to Landnámabók, was one of the three main discoverers of Iceland. The name is oddly appropriate, though the 'Girl-' in Girlsta has nothing to do with her maidenhood, as the name seems to be the reflex of an original Geirhildarstaðir. This means then, of course, that the story doesn't quite add up, since Geirhildarstaðir implies that she was there long enough to give her name to the farm and not, as Landnámabók suggests, that she just fell into the loch while her father was anchored in Flókavágr, wherever that is. But then the anecdotes of Landnámabók are generally lapidary, and you get a sense that they convey some fundamental truth, even though they don't know all the details. At any rate, it shows that 13th-century Icelanders knew that there was a place of that name in Shetland.

Especially exciting for me was to see Gullberwick (pictured right), where, according to Orkneyinga saga, Earl Rögnvaldr was shipwrecked, probably in the autumn of 1148, and composed several witty stanzas about it and the aftermath - they lost all their goods, but luckily no lives, so he could laugh about it. I particularly like the stanza in which he complains about the deleterious effect of the shipwreck on his clothing, and his promise to be properly dressed next time he arrives somewhere by ship:

Skekk hér skinnfeld hrokkinn;
skrauts mér afar lítit;
stórr, sás stendr of órum,
stafnvöllr yfirhöfnum.
Nærgis enn af úrgum
álvangs mari göngum
- brim rak hest við hamra
húns - skrautligar búnir.

I shake out here a wrinkled leather garment; it provides me with very little finery; the prow-field [sea] which surrounds our outerwear is big. Some day we'll go more finely dressed from a spray-swept horse of the eel plain [sea = ship]; surf drove the stallion of the mast-head [ship] onto cliffs.

Regular readers of my blog will know I like coming over old buses and tractors on my island voyages. This time round, I not only got to see a lovely old bus (pictured left), but to meet the gentleman (Pat Isbister) who used to drive it and own the company. Pat is the husband of my friend's Cousin Betty, who gave us coffee and cakes and, most wonderful of all, a copy of the calendar depicting many of their old buses through the years - heaven! The calendar was made for a worth cause, the Shetland Stroke Support Group - check them out if you can. And thanks to everyone for their wonderful Shetland hospitality.

One final thing which I hope will raise a smile is this house, built for a well-known fiddler, proclaiming his passion to everyone who passes by:

Lights of the Isles

Like all good teachers (I hope), I don't have any real favourites among my Norse and Viking rambling locations - from Newfoundland to Estonia, I have loved them all. But careful readers of this blog may nevertheless have noticed I have a bit of a soft spot for Orkney. So I am delighted to report that I am here again! The kind folk of the Thing project have invited me to give lectures in both Orkney and Shetland this week. And I wouldn't be me if I didn't tack on a few days extra to make it a proper busman's holiday...

This time I decided the extra in Orkney was to be North Ronaldsay, the northernmost of their isles, a place I visited once before in 2003, and home to some seaweed-eating sheep and the really rather colourful Ragna, about whom Earl Rögnvaldr composed a very strange poem (see ch. 81 of Orkneyinga saga, or my edition in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages vol. 2).

Having arrived in glorious sunshine on Monday evening, my one whole day on North Ron was wiped out by the really rather atrocious weather that pummelled the whole of Orkney pretty much all of Tuesday, necessitating a day spent indoors with some academic work. I cannot complain, since I consider the weather to be an essential part of the authentic Viking experience, but I was disappointed.

Today, I was to leave on the 11 am flight and the weather was of course heart-wrenchingly better. But thanks to two of my fellow-guests at the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory (an excellent place to stay, by the way), my last few hours were saved and I got a little adventure to boot.

It transpired that my two fellow guests were the engineers who maintain the lighthouses of Orkney and Caithness for the Northern Lighthouse Board. They, too, were leaving on the 11 am flight, but had a few things to clear up at the lighthouse before going, and graciously allowed me to accompany them. So I had a special tour of the highest land-based lighthouse in Britain, managing to climb all 176 steps to the top, where there was a splendid view of the whole island, glinting in the sunshine. There is a webcam, if you want to get an idea, and the two keepers' cottages have now been turned into very nice self-catering accommodation.

So what's all this to do with the Vikings, you ask? They who sailed without benefit of lighthouses (and therefore probably got shipwrecked a lot)? Well, it transpired that one of the lighthouse engineers was none other than Hrolf Douglasson, a Viking re-enactor I had met once before, now leader of the Norðreyjar branch of Regia Anglorum, author of several books about Vikings, and now with this really rather cool job of looking after the lighthouses of Orkney and Caithness. So thanks Hrolf, and your colleague Rob, for the tour!

Viking Cats and Kittens III

A little booklet I picked up on the Isle of Man provides five different popular 'myths' about the origins of the tailless, or nearly so, Manx cat, known as a Manxie. One of these is that 'mother cats bit off the tails of their kittens when the Isle of Man was invaded by Scandinavians to stop the invaders taking their tails to decorate their helmets'... Hmm. You'll have spotted this as a tall tale or urban myth (the helmets are the clue) even before learning that the breed is the result of a genetic mutation only 200-300 years ago. But I can't help wondering how old this popular misconception is, it certainly is an odd one.

Runic Ramblings

When the budget allows, as this year it did, the best place to take runology students for a field trip is the Isle of Man. It's been a few years since I've been myself, so I was keen to go too! As we were taking the ferry from Heysham, it seemed appropriate to get in the Viking mood by visiting the antiquities there, in particular the hogback at St Peter's. It really is one of the most extraordinary examples of its type and I was very pleased that we could arrange to see it (thanks to the kind gentleman who made this possible). In pictures and drawings it often looks tacky and naive, but I found it rather beautiful, quite carefully carved and very well-preserved. The images are as enigmatic as they come, and give rise to much speculative interpretation, but I am convinced that serious work would elucidate at least some of its mysteries. Sigurd? Sigmund? Ragnarök? The four dwarves holding up the world? That's just for starters... Heysham has many other attractions of the early medieval variety, so do visit if you can, and lunch at Squirrel's Bistro (especially the chips!) is highly recommended.

After a very smooth crossing (unusual for the Irish Sea!) we arrived at our Viking-themed B&B in Foxdale (Old Norse foss-dalr 'waterfall valley'), and very nice it was too, well supplied with Manxies. A delicious and convivial dinner with some old friends in Castletown set us up very nicely for the following runic day.

It is possible to see all of the accessible rune stones in the Isle of Man in one day if you have a car and are determined, but we took it a bit more slowly, as the aim was to train the students in the skills of field runology - so quality rather than quantity was the name of the game. Still, we saw everything there was to see, runic or non-runic, 'Celtic' or 'Viking' (or even 'Anglo-Saxon') at Braddan, St John's, Kirk Michael, Ballaugh, Jurby, Andreas and Maughold. By the end of the day everyone was quite proficient in distinguishing their Manx bs from their fourth runes, and had learned how to record and interpret these often fragmentary or confused inscriptions. The late Ray Page was constantly in our minds, as we referred constantly to his notes and interpretations; he has done more work than anyone on these inscriptions, and the lucky person who in the end does the definitive scholarly edition (still awaited) will relay heavily on his spadework.

And of course we couldn't ignore the wonderful pictures on so many of the stones, and wondered at the rich mixtures of geometrical and figural ornament, Norse and Celtic names, runes and ogham, and much else. Sigurd, Odin and Christ were obviously the top chaps in tenth-century Man, along with their attendant figures of various kinds, but also so many animals - goats, rams, boars, stags, horses, wolves, dogs ... What does it all mean? By the end of the day, our heads were spinning with ideas and questions.

Man has the advantage of being able to play up both its Viking and its 'Celtic' heritage, depending on which is more fashionable at any given moment. We of course noticed the Viking stuff more, such as this splendid modern stained-glass at Jurby, taking its theme from one of the Andreas crosses. The day ended with a meal at the appropriately-named The Viking hostelry on the outskirts of Castletown, with its most inappropriate collection of smiling Viking heads adorned with horned helmets.

The runic thumbscrew was loosened slightly on our final day and we did a bit of site visiting (Balladoole) and museum study in the fine Viking room of the Manx Museum. We admired the snow on the appropriately-named Snaefell, which had come on the cold (and I mean cold) wind of the night before. This usefully blew the clouds away but also threatened a rough crossing back, as it proved, exacerbated by the fact that we were on the catamaran to Liverpool rather than the ferry. Some indeed suffered. It may not be much consolation, but I always advise those who are seasick that some of the best Vikings were too - in fact the Faroes are said to have been populated entirely by those Vikings who were too seasick to carry on to Iceland!

RIP

Half a year ago, all Vikingologists were mourning the loss of three great scholars in various branches of the subject. Now we have lost two more this month, both with a more literary and linguistic bent, Ursula Dronke and Raymond Ian Page. Neither was young, and both had had full and productive lives, so I hope they are glad to have shuffled off this mortal coil and are likewise carousing in the Valhalla of Norse and Viking studiers (with its 'hearth-encircling benches and delicious ale'). But we shall miss them and it is worth pausing to remember their achievements, which are of course far too many to list here.

Many years ago, I had the honour of having my PhD thesis examined by Ursula Dronke, but I remember her chiefly for her wonderful translations of Eddic poetry. One of the first Eddic poems I ever read was Atlakviða (maybe that's why we're imposing it on our first-years even as I speak...). Ursula's translation was both a delight in itself, and a real incentive to grapple with the difficult but completely spell-binding language of the original.

Ray Page had even more of a beneficial effect on my career - he contributed to my appointment to this job way back when in my youth, and he was both friend and benevolent academic guide ever after. He too had a real way with words, and I still think his Chronicles of the Vikings is a great place for beginners to start thinking about how we really go about studying the Viking Age. He also produced lucid and accessible books for the general reader on both Norse myths and runes. Ray was quite a polymath: an expert in Old English and Anglo-Saxon studies, Old Norse and Viking studies, manuscripts and librarianship, but his greatest influence was as a runologist and that is what I and many others will most of all remember him for.

Runic Valentine

This little weaving sword from Lödöse in Sweden bears the inscription:

mun : þu * mik : man : þik : un : þu : m(e)r : an : þRr

Think of me, I think of you! Love me, I love you!

It's from the first half of the twelfth century, and both the object and the inscription may have been made by a lover for his lass. Seemed appropriate for today...