Norse and Viking Ramblings

Runic Valentine

2012-02-14T08:58:00.002Z

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...

Norway's Documentary Heritage

2012-02-09T20:10:00.001Z

Here's a nice thing: Under the aegis of the UNESCO Memory of the World Program, the Norwegians have selected 60 documents or archives which are unique, irreplaceable and authentic documents of their time. It's a pretty mixed bunch, including delights such as the Leprosy Archive in Bergen (especially for my colleague CL), Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's autograph copy of the words to the national anthem ('Ja, vi elsker dette landet, som det stiger frem, furet, værbitt over vannet, med de tusen hjem...' - stirring stuff!), Norway's first two printed books (both for the Catholic liturgy) from 1519, Bjørge Lillelien's amazing commentary when Norway beat England 2-1 in 1981 (have a listen, it's fab), Swedish King Carl Johan's imprimatur for the new Norwegian flag design from 1821, Edvard Munch's will, etc. etc. But most wonderful of all the rune stone from Kuli, erected when 'Christianity had been twelve winters in Norway' - whenever that was...

Thanks to Åge Hojem / NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet for the photo, and to www.middelaldernett.com for the tip!

A Thor Head

2012-02-03T21:15:00.000Z

Norse and Viking ramblers will be pleased to hear that Orkney's Highland Park distillery has just launched a new 'Valhalla Collection' of fine whiskies with the single malt Thor - 16 years old and 52.1%. 'Not for the faint-hearted', they say - I should think not! - 'a whisky of divine power'. Well, I won't be indulging just yet (have you seen the price?). But I like looking at the picture. If you want to get a Thor head, you can read his blog on the Whisky of the Gods website.

Ljóðhúsiana

2012-01-20T18:32:00.000Z

All things seem to be Lewis this week. I have just read the second volume of Peter May's Lewis Trilogy, The Lewis Man, which I think I enjoyed even more than The Blackhouse, about which I blogged last year. And I was delighted to see that the third volume will be called The Chess Men - I wonder if that will be about those delightful little people of walrus ivory? Speaking of which, the Comann Eachdraidh Uig (or Uig Historical Society to you Sassenachs) has just produced a map of Lewis with the place names given in their Old Norse form. Well, it's really only the area around Uig, not even the whole of Lewis, let alone Harris, and I have to say that some of the spellings are more than a little wonky but, hey, Vikingologists can have fun correcting them. It might even be a good test one day of my students' Old Norse to see what they can do...students be warned!

Kick-starting 2012

2011-12-23T14:22:00.001Z

What with the weather wet and temperatures into double figures, we won't be doing winter sports here in Britain, that's for sure. This time of year always brings back happy memories of snowy times in Norway. Being a bit of a retromaniac in many things, I have a small collection of old-fashioned seasonal greetings cards. Not sure about the date of this one, probably early 1960s? Anyway, I append it here by way of seasonal greetings to all my loyal readers!

Thinking of Norwegian winters reminds me there was an article in the Guardian a week or so ago, on that most excellent means of locomotion, the 'sparkstøtting', or 'spark' for short. Apparently, the official English term is 'kicksled(ge)', though that's the first time I've heard it. I've seen a lot of them in Norway, and I suppose they must be used in other Scandinavian countries, as suggested by the 1890 Swedish drawing below, but I've never seen them anywhere else. But then where else has enough snow? I wonder if they were ever exported to Minnesota?

Hardy Hoards

2011-12-15T17:20:00.000Z

The Viking Age hoards that keep being discovered in northern, especially north-western, England, are coming in so thick and fast in recent years that I can't be bother to log every one in this blog. But I thought I'd give a quick mention to the latest, found at Silverdale in north Lancashire, and reported today in the Guardian and on the BBC in connection with the publication of the annual reports for treasure and portable antiquities (though found in September). The PAS website also has a detailed article on the hoard.

I find this one particularly interesting because there is one previously unknown coin type in it (pictured above), apparently issued by an unknown king called AIRDECONUT. The jury is still out on whether or not this really represents the name 'Harthacnut', as currently suggested, but it will keep numismatists and onomasts happy for some time to come. In case you were wondering, the date of the hoard (c. 900-910) precludes that well-known Harthacnut, son of Cnut.

Look North More Often

2011-11-26T09:30:00.001Z

A sentiment with which all readers of this blog will concur, I hope. It comes from a piece by Kevin Crossley-Holland in 'The Week in Books' column in the Guardian (it's apparently not on their website, so you'll just have to go out and buy the paper!). He is a spokesperson for the Norwegian Christmas tree project in Trafalgar Square ('Look North More Often' being their motto), and writes evocatively of going deep into the forest to select and remove the big tree, and the 'death-in-life, life-in-death' feeling you get at such a moment, when the tree of life is felled but comes to a kind of new life with its lights for the festive season. At such moments, we think of the dreadful year the Norwegians have had, and how bravely they have borne it.

And just to cheer things up, though it is a bit early for the festive season, I append a photo of a delightful tree-bearer I picked up in the Sally Army shop in Majorstua, on my most recent visit to Oslo.

Vatnsdœla Saga

2011-11-11T21:40:00.001Z

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 Vikings are Coming!

2011-10-23T09:52:00.000+01:00

That was the headline in my copy of this morning's Observer which has quite a large feature on the cultural invasion of Britain by a number of forthcoming 'TV sagas, epic novels and a major exhibition' which 'testify to a fascination with all things Norse'. All of that is excellent news. But OK, dear Observer, if only you'd been reading this blog, you'd have known that they never really went away!

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme Dat Ding

2011-10-20T22:16:00.000+01:00

Some years ago, on one of my rambles to Orkney, I stopped off in Dingwall, Ross-shire. As all Viking aficionados know, the place-name comes from an Old Norse word for an assembly site, found most notably at Þingvellir in Iceland, but also at several places in these islands, the two Thingwalls on either side of the Mersey, or Tynwald on the Isle of Man, plus a few scattered about the Scottish islands. On that brief visit to Dingwall, I wandered into the museum, and saw a few signs of Viking awareness, but not many. Otherwise, it was a charming place.

Now I read in The North Star that the very town centre car park in which I parked my car on that day is reported to be the site of the Viking Age assembly mound, according to some rather vaguely unspecified archaeological investigations (though not yet excavations) carried out last month. The various worthy persons interviewed in the article all foresee a great future for Dingwall as a Viking tourist hotspot. How things change in a few years...

While searching for a suitable image for this post, I came across the above golden bull on a handsome black plinth. If you look carefully, there is an attempt to render the name Dingwall in both Old Norse and runes, but, oh so sadly, such a dismal attempt, especially the runes. They are really neither one thing nor tother, and I'm not even that sure what exactly they are meant to spell. I predict a rash of dodgy 'runic' inscriptions in Viking tourist spots around the country, each one feebler than the last. Please, please, please guys, if you want to do something like that, get in touch with a real runologist, like those splendid chaps at Hotell Svava and Kirkwall Airport did.

Ships and Men

2011-10-19T18:35:00.000+01:00

The exciting recent discovery of an intact Viking Age male weapon burial in a 5m. boat on the Ardnamurchan peninsula has been widely reported in the media today, for instance The Guardian. Apparently, the artefacts are fantastic - the electronic version of the Guardian article has a nice short film of an axehead being dug up. We all await further details. And luckily, a few of the guy's teeth have been preserved, so we will soon know what he ate and where he grew up, once Janet Montgomery has done her work of stable isotope analysis. Ardnamurchan, though isolated today, is of course on the main seaway from Norway, through the Northern and Western Isles, and down to the Irish Sea, so it is not at all surprising to find such a burial there, rather than on the islands, which is where all previous ones have been found.

The excitement is tinged with sadness at the almost simultaneous announcement of the death of Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, the nestor of Viking boat and ship studies. He's the third eminent Viking to die (all of them far too young) within the last six weeks or so, following hard on the heels of Mark Blackburn and Richard Hall. May they all have a splendid feast in Valhalla together, while the surf pounds outside, as Ormr Barreyjarskáld might have said at the Ardnamurchan funeral:

Útan gnýr á eyri
Ymis blóð fara góðra.

Ymir's blood [the sea] crashes out there on to the sand-bank of good vessels.

The Wasdale Web

2011-10-10T21:23:00.000+01:00

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).

Runic Tourism

2011-09-26T19:41:00.001+01:00

Your intrepid Norse and Viking rambler has just returned from a runic ramble in Sweden, where perfect weather and congenial and learned company enhanced the already delightful process of the close study of runic inscriptions in a variety of media and with a variety of more or less comprehensible texts. Among many other delights, I offer you (left) a photo of what might be the only memorial inscription on a rune stone commemorating the commissioner's aunt. Fathers and sons, yes frequently; mothers and daughters, not so common but still quite a few; sisters and uncles are rare but there. But I think this is the only auntie, or father's sister in this case (if indeed that is what the text says - half the fun of runic inscriptions is that we are not always 100% sure), in the Swedish Viking Age corpus. Hurrah for aunties everywhere!

The runic theme of this short trip was enhanced by the only partially deliberate decision to stay in the Hotel Svava in Uppsala, possibly the world's only runic-themed hotel. As you can see from the photo to the right, every bedstead in the place is enhanced by a runic inscription - the runes are proper, but the message is in modern Swedish (I leave you to spell out the advertising message for yourself). A very distinguished runologist on the ramble admitted to me that she had devised the inscription many years ago when the hotel opened - despite the occasional ribbing she has received, I think it's splendid. It did make me wonder about other runic hotels. I do remember seeing a splendid runic banner at the Kettletoft Hotel in Sanday, Orkney, when I was there in I think 2000. I wonder if it's still there?

But the best bit of runic tourism is surely the airport at Kirkwall. Not only are the runes proper Viking Age ones, the spelling is pretty good (the place was called Grimsetter when the RAF built an airfield there in 1940), written in pretty good runic orthography as krimsitir (though in Old Norse it would ideally be krimsitr, or setr with a dotted i-rune). I haven't found out which runologist, if any, was responsible for this one, though. Now why can't the baggage tags be in runes when you fly to KOI-Kirkwall?

Digging for Vikings

2011-09-17T20:43:00.002+01:00

At last, a TV programme on the Vikings that was coherent, and had both interesting and new information. Well done, BBC2 and Alice Roberts, and the Digging for Britain series. The only downside is the title - 'Invaders' - but otherwise the programme is highly recommended and can be viewed by readers in the UK for another 22 days on BBC iPlayer, if you haven't seen it already.

Dedicated readers of this blog will recognise many of my favourite Norse and Viking things on the programme. It managed to pack in many of several places (Lewis/Harris, Orkney), things (the Lewis chessmen) and finds (the St John's College skeletons) already mentioned here, some of them more than once. Place-names got a very brief mention (well, only Horgabost, really), as did runes.

There were in fact glimpses of two recent runic finds, one from the Brough of Deerness which has, alas, not yet revealed its linguistic meaning, and (unacknowledged, but clearly visible for a brief moment) a spindle-whorl from Lincolnshire. The latter could have deserved some more discussion for, as John Hines has noted, while 'there's quite an essay to be written over the uncertainties of translation and identification here; what are clear, and very important, are the names of two of the Norse gods on the side, Odin and Heimdallr...' Unusual enough in an Anglo-Scandinavian context, but especially so given the object seems to be from the eleventh century and made locally.

All in all, an excellent programme, though I do think these recent finds have some way to go before they match up to some of those from earlier years. Some grubby steatite from Horgabost, or a wonky gaming-board from Deerness, despite the cooings of Alice Roberts, don't quite set the pulse racing as do the fabulous finds from Scar (excavated in 1991) or even the delicate bone pins found at the Udal on North Uist, some made from bird-bones. The Udal was excavated between 1963 and 1995 and now looks like it will get a proper publication. So it's not surprising that the programme ended with these blasts from the past.

Effusions

2011-09-09T17:03:00.001+01:00

Björk is back! I heard the Icelandic songstress this morning on Radio 4, of all things, plugging her new album. The thing that struck me most about the interview was when she said that 'the Icelandic people LOVE volcanoes, that's the most beautiful thing they can think of'. This coincided with my coming across another form of montanic effusion today, a 'poetry-spouting mountain' (thanks to MCR for putting me on the right track!). It occurs in ch. 6 of Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka - the plot is far too complicated to explain here, suffice to say that a Norwegian king sailing in the Jutland Sea suddenly sees a mountain rise up in the north and speak a verse prophesying various deaths arising out of the death of a Danish king's daughter he has just married. Is this the only mountain in world literature that speaks poetry? If so, it's no wonder the Icelanders loved it so much, just like their volcanoes....(the saga goes on to tell us that the Reyknesingar, of south-west Iceland, are descended from that Norwegian king, and there are further connections later on in the saga). Or is it just a load of hot air?

Viking Cats and Kittens II

2011-09-03T11:14:00.003+01:00

Two of the most famous references to cats in Old Norse literature are to the fact that the goddess Freyja drove a chariot drawn by two cats, and to the catskin trim of the hood and gloves of the travelling Greenland prophetess in Eiríks saga rauða. At first glance, these seem fairly straightforward. As the expression 'it's like herding cats' reveals, it's pretty hard to get cats to do anything at all, let alone pull a chariot containing a well-upholstered goddess, so the implication is that only someone with supernatural abilities could possibly have a cat-powered wagon. And as for the Greenland prophetess, it's obvious she is just weird, and you would be well-advised to keep your pet kitties away from her for their own safety. But there may be more to both of these references than meets the eye. And yes, the photo is of a stoat, not a cat.

In that still-indispensible reference work Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, Johan Bernström argued that, in both of these instances, the word köttr refers not to the domestic cat, felis catus, but rather to the stoat, mustela erminea, and I think this suggestion has much to recommend it, though I do not often see it cited. The white coat of the stoat in winter (pictured below) is the source of that highly-desirable fur known as ermine, and the Eiríks saga reference explicitly states that the prophetess's kattskinnsglófar were hvítir innan ok loðnir 'white and furry on the inside'. She also had a hood lined with kattskinn hvít 'white catskin'. White cats are not that common, and it seems to me much more likely that the extraordinary outfit of the prophetess was made even more spectacular by the addition of ermine.

Similarly, though the other case is much less clear, it seems to me more likely, given the status of ermine, that Freyja's wagon would be said to be pulled by the animals that provide such a noble fur.

The archaeological evidence for when exactly cats were introduced into Norway and Iceland is not very clear, and a recent MA dissertation on the subject has not to my mind fully clarified the matter (it's also pretty wonky on the literary sources). There is plenty of scope here for further study. But it seems clear enough that cats were introduced to Norway before the Viking Age, and that they followed the migrants to Iceland in due course - as confirmed by the recent discovery of a cat's jaw in a burial at Ingiríðarstaðir - and presumably to Greenland. Stoats, however, did not cross the Atlantic, at least not alive, though their furs must have done.

The odd thing is that the modern Norwegian for stoat is 'røyskatt', ON hreysiköttr, a secondary formation based on the comparison with a cat. This doesn't necessarily mean cats came first, just that stoats must also have had another, earlier name which we now don't know. But there is an interesting reference in Orkneyinga saga, when Earl Þorfinnr persuades Kálfr Árnason to fight on his side against Rögnvaldr Brúsason by saying that he doesn't want to be skulking sem köttr í hreysi while Þorfinnr fights for their freedom. What does this mean? A hreysi is either a 'cairn, heap of stones' or a 'cave' of some sort, in general a rocky place. And stoats are known to live in rocky clefts and crevices (though they have a whole range of habitats). Stoats are not native to Orkney, indeed the first intruders had to be forcibly removed from there only last year, but the expression could derive from Norway and be proverbial. So I do think there is a stoat allusion there, even though the Penguin translation of Orkneyinga saga gives 'like a cat in a cave'. Have you ever seen a cat in a cave?

Finally, on stoats, it is sometimes claimed that the animals pictured left, carved on the processional wagon from the Oseberg ship burial, are cats. It seems to me they could equally be stoats.

Vikings in Canterbury

2011-08-22T14:51:00.001+01:00

I see from a BBC report that the city of Canterbury will be commemorating the Viking attacks of 1000 years ago, with services in the Cathedral (pictured), presumably to 'honour those that were killed trying to defend the city', as the city's head of culture has it.

No doubt the Vikings were 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', and committed all kinds of atrocities, although recent archaeological discoveries have shown that it didn't all go one way. Without wishing to defend any atrocities, I sometimes wish that, at this distance of 1000 years, we could be magnanimous enough to look at the evidence from both sides. Which is of course just my way of plugging the forthcoming editions, by myself and my esteemed colleague Matthew Townend, of the skaldic poems that record these events (both out next year in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages I). Skaldic poetry is much ignored, but it is just as contemporary, and just as biased, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Viking Cats and Kittens I

2011-08-17T23:21:00.001+01:00

As the proud slave of two Siamese (one pictured left), and general lover of all moggies, I have often wondered about the Vikings and their relationship (if any) with felis catus, the domestic cat. This is a complex topic which will involve archaeology and art history, as well as texts, and I'll leave the difficult bits, as well as some of the more obvious references, to another post. In fact, I'm thinking of making this an occasional series. But today I'll start gently with two very minor, but I think illuminating, feline felicities.

The Old Norse translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus compares Satan, crushed by the falling cross, to a mouse in a mousetrap, except that it doesn't say that, it says mús undir tréketti, literally 'mouse underneath a wooden cat'. There has been much learned discussion of whether this interpolation is native or patristic in origin, and Thor, the World Serpent, Leviathan and much else get dragged in. But who cares about all that - it's the word itself that I like, for 'wooden cat' is of course a simple kenning. Trust those Vikings to make poetry out of an everyday object.

My other reference concerns an anecdote about Sigurðr slembidjákn Magnússon, an early 12th-century king of Norway who, according to an anecdote in Morkinskinna, was spending time on a farm in Iceland (eh?), when he helps a fellow-Norwegian beat an Icelandic farmhand at a board game with the following trick (quoted from Andersson and Gade's translation, pp. 369-70):

The man who was playing with the Norwegian had a sore foot, with a toe that was swollen and oozing matter. Sigurðr sat down on a bench and drew a straw along the floor. There were kittens scampering about the floor, and he kept drawing the straw ahead of them until it got to the man's foot. Then the kittens ran up and took ahold of the foot. He jumped up with an exclamation, and the board was upset.

Really quite a pointless anecdote, as the learned translators note, but at least it shows that kitten behaviour is as it ever was. (Funny thing about sore toes, too, remember Hrafnkels saga?).

But enough serious textual analysis. If you want to laugh (or at least smile) at something even more frivolous, I suggest you google 'viking kittens led zeppelin' and enjoy the video.

Tales From the Elder Days

2011-08-16T12:13:00.002+01:00

I finally got around to reading Justin Hill's Shieldwall, as previously reported. I can't say it has converted me to historical novels set in the Early Middle Ages (but that's my problem and not the author's, since there is clearly a huge market for this sort of thing). Hill loves writing about battles and politics, and that's pretty much what the book boils down to. He also has the Anglo-Saxon(ist)'s somewhat stereotypical but also ambivalent view of the Vikings:

Someone - a red-haired Dane with three fingers missing on his sword hand - thrust a beer at Godwin and Godwin took it and found himself rather enjoying this Danish way of doing things (p. 390, the occasion is a hanging...).

This doesn't of course prevent Hill from frequently using Old Norse names and stories derived from Old Norse texts in purely Anglo-Saxon contexts, not unlike the ways in which many academic Anglo-Saxonists appropriate Old Norse material when it suits them, without ever really having a broader understanding of the subject. So in many ways it is the usual early medieval mishmosh. But I can forgive Hill a lot for his exciting use of the English language. Without descending into pastiche, Hill manages a plain but highly effective style that successfully evokes the past without parodying it. You can open the book at random and find gems like

His eyes gleamed as he lifted the blade and laughed. That laughter came from long ago and it brought back a lightness and a joy that he had not felt for many winters (p. 153).

He also has a bit of a skaldic go with this 'quick poem' by Ottar the Black (though I don't think King Knut would have paid very much for just half a stanza):

Great king you grappled
On the green Sorestone fields
Bloodshedder of Swedes,
You laid waste the English (p. 293).

You can read more about the book, and about Justin Hill's recent book tour in England (including his visit to Nottingham) on his blog.

Ragnarök Revisited

2011-08-06T08:42:00.001+01:00

There were hints of an interest in Norse mythology already in her 1990 novel Possession. Now the distinguished novelist Dame A.S. Byatt is giving it her full attention, in Ragnarök: The End of the Gods, apparently already available as an e-book (what they?), but to be published as a real book on 1 September. In a long article in today's Guardian Review, she explains why she chose this myth when asked by publisher Canongate to contribute to their myth series. She sees it as 'a myth of destruction for our times', which shows how 'the world ends because neither the all-too-human gods, with their armies and quarrels, nor the fiery thinker [that's Loki!] know how to save it.' I particularly like the bit where she refers to her childhood experience of reading the Norse myths: 'I didn't "believe in" the Norse gods, and indeed used my sense of their world to come to the conclusion that the Christian story was another myth, the same kind of story about the nature of things, but less interesting and less exciting.' Sounds like a book to look forward to, then.

Rerunning the Real Vikings

2011-07-31T19:53:00.001+01:00

In case you missed it when it was first on last autumn, the Time Team Special slightly archly named 'The Real Vikings' was shown again last Wednesday on More4, and readers in the United Kingdom therefore still have nearly four weeks to watch it again on 4oD on the web. Despite the title (note the absence of a question mark!), it is not really the last word on the Vikings. Your blogstress, dear reader, plays a very small part in the show, so had better not comment further.... But I can assure you it has some interesting stuff (including my favourite chessmen...), and at least one blogger colleague (another 'rambler'), seems to have liked it, back when it was first shown.

Barrett's Back on the Brough

2011-07-06T13:39:00.002+01:00

My favourite archaeological excavation, led by Dr James Barrett, on the Brough of Deerness in Orkney, has started up again, after a break in 2010. The site is still a bit mysterious and interpretations have changed, from an early Christian site, to a Viking Age chieftain's site, with the latter the current favoured one, but extending into later times when there is a Norse-period church, the remains of which can still be seen above ground (and you can just make it out in the picture).
The site now has a blog, which it is promised will be updated weekly. There, you can read about the most recent finds, including, very excitingly, a stone gaming board. Readers who know of my love for the Lewis playing-pieces (and who doesn't love them?), will know that this sets the imagination racing!

Walls and Houses

2011-06-18T10:11:00.000+01:00

The march of historical novelists continues. Back in March, I reported on a visit by Kevin Crossley-Holland, promoting his new children's novel, Bracelet of Bones. On the same occasion, one of the panellists had been Ian Mortimer (the time-traveller's guide), who has just reviewed the latest novel by another of our recent visitors, Shieldwall by Justin Hill, which is set in England at the time of Svein Forkbeard and King Knut. I have to confess I am not a huge fan of historical novels, but it is interesting to find out what draws novelists to the period I, in a rather different way, am interested in. It is, paradoxically, often the very same things. A review of Bracelet of Bones in the Guardian a few weeks ago noted that its author 'brought a poet's love of words to this Viking adventure'. Something of the same came across in Justin Hill's talk, and is also evident in Ian Mortimer's review, in which he picks out some historical inaccuracies, notes the relentless preoccupation with blood and gore, but praises the 'wonderful, poetic passages'. So it all comes down to poetry in the end. Hurrah. I look forward to reading it, and possibly the rest of the trilogy too.

Speaking of trilogies, I have just discovered the first volume of a projected Lewis Trilogy, The Blackhouse, by Peter May. Its only Viking connection is that it is set in Lewis (the author revelling in the Norse place-names, possibly unbeknown to himself), but readers will know of my addiction to 'Viking crime', which I define as any murder mystery set in a part of the world that us true Norse and Viking ramblers like to visit, whether or not it has a Viking theme. It's a very dark, psychological thriller, and I'm not sure what island reactions to it would be (the Stornoway Gazette has not reviewed it yet), but the descriptions of Lewis are well done, even if the plot is a bit lurid.

More Flying Vikings

2011-05-28T23:10:00.001+01:00

Many years ago, I read the novels A Town Like Alice and On the Beach by Nevil Shute - not that I remember much about them. He was very popular in the middle of the last century, but is not widely read now. For some reason, he came to my attention again recently, because of his interest in Vikings, and I have caught up with his 1940 novel An Old Captivity. I enjoyed it because it is partly set in Greenland, especially in Qaqortoq and Qassiarsuq (or Brattahlíð), places of which I have fond memories from my one and only visit to Greenland in 2008 (though I singularly failed to blog about them then). The story concerns an implausible attempt to do aerial photography in Greenland to demonstrate the existence of a Celtic (i.e. pre-Norse) monastery there, but involves some runic discoveries and a rather closer encounter with Leifr Eiríksson than one might expect.

Apart from the Greenland episodes, which are brief and awfully slow in coming, the novel is mainly of interest if you like aviation history and are particularly keen to know the mechanics of flying in difficult climates in the 1930s. There are certainly a lot of valves that need cleaning and complicated calculations involving the fuel mixture to ensure the flight will reach its destination, not to mention hooking the seaplane onto its buoy, which the girl gets to do. And the author never explains how people could sit in an aeroplane for 12 hours, dressed in a one-piece flying suit, without going to the loo. The author's views of women, or indeed anyone not a white European male, are also pretty antediluvian, even for 1940. But it's a rollicking enough tale, and passes the time nicely if you like that sort of thing. I am now ploughing through Shute's screenplay Vinland the Good (1946), on a similar theme, but even less exciting. I'm not surprised Hollywood never took it up.
Well, I don't exactly seem to be recommending the book, but at least it gives me an excuse to show you a photo of what many of us on that 2008 trip eventually began to call an 'AFI' ('another effing iceberg'; that's how blasé we got after several days of sailing up and down the fjords). And at least I discovered that Nevil Shute was really called Nevil Shute Norway, which seems appropriate somehow.

Viking Week

2011-05-13T20:31:00.006+01:00

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

2011-05-07T09:26:00.002+01:00

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.

'Seekan Back Tae Rackwick'

2011-05-04T19:41:00.001+01:00

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...'

2011-04-20T20:03:00.001+01:00

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

2011-04-03T13:50:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-13T20:11:00.000Z

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

2011-03-12T10:44:00.000Z

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

2011-03-09T21:45:00.000Z

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

2011-03-04T19:19:00.000Z

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.

Scandi Woollies

2011-02-28T22:13:00.000Z

Those of us who know and love the Norse and Viking world also love their woollies. The most recent high-profile item of such clothing is the jumper (or jumpers, I think there are at least two), worn by cool detective Sarah Lund in The Killing (currently on BBC4). The programme is, of course, utterly absorbing, not just for those who love stretched-out Scandinavian crime over 20 episodes (Saturday evenings are cancelled for the foreseeable future), but for all who love fabulous camerawork, subtle acting and an amazing, deeply dark atmosphere. The programme has been receiving high praise in the papers for all of these things (just Google BBC4 The Killing and see). UK readers who have missed out so far can catch up on the BBC4 website. One thing I don't quite understand, however, is the English translation of the title. The original Danish is Forbrydelsen, which in my understanding means 'The Crime' (or 'The Felony'), which seems to open up all kinds of interpretative options not available from the English version of the title.
But the real burning question is where Sarah gets her jumpers from. Diligent research on my part has revealed that they can be purchased from Faroese firm Guðrun & Guðrun, though for a little more money than I would currently want to give for such an item (given that the poor old UK is just not cold enough to wear it that often). Still, I thought I'd give them a little plug, since the Faroes in general haven't had much of a look-in on this blog yet, even though I love the place. I found the islands fascinating and wonderful both times I visited, but it's now been a decade since the last time - I'm feeling the urge...

Woods and Trees in the North?

2011-02-19T11:47:00.002Z

I just caught the last few minutes of a programme on Radio 4 which sounded interesting, Woods and Trees - Iceland and the Scottish Islands. I went to Listen Again, to find out what they could say about trees in the largely treeless landscapes of Iceland and the Scottish islands! It turned out to be a composite programme, one bit about woods and trees and the other bit about Iceland and the Scottish Islands. Pity, it would have been interesting to hear a bit more about trees in these landscapes.
The second part of the programme was an interview with Sarah Moss, whose book Cold Earth I read a while ago. It's a thriller set in an archaeological dig in Greenland, with lots of strange happenings, in many ways not unlike the atmosphere conjured up by the Icelandic sagas that are set in Greenland. The archaeology bits are not especially credible, but it's an effective story all the same.
It turns out that Sarah Moss has lived in Iceland (which was what she was being interviewed about) and is currently writing a book about it. On following her up I see she just has a new novel out, Night Waking, set in the Hebrides, and on the programme she recalled her childhood holidays in Orkney. She is clearly a lady who likes all the right places! I shall check out this new novel and see what I think.

Myths of the Pagan North

2011-02-13T17:29:00.001Z

The title is a bit lurid (the publisher's idea, perhaps?) and the subtitle (The gods of the Norsemen) not much better (didn't Norsewomen have gods?). But one can ignore all that and appreciate Christopher Abram's new book. There is no shortage out there of books on Norse mythology, from the high academic, to the execrable popularisers, and everything in between. But this one is a bit different, it takes an interesting historical approach to the topic and has lots of stimulating ideas which, while they might not always be right, are well worth thinking about. And it has a welcome focus on skaldic poetry. There's a review of it in the February BBC History Magazine.

Flying Vikings

2011-01-19T19:47:00.000Z

That wonderful compendium of the informative and the bizarre, the Guardian's 'Notes and Queries' section, today raised the curious question 'Why didn't the Vikings learn to fly?', in view of their undoubted skills in the sailing department. While it's true that they didn't actually come up with 'sail planes or hang gliders', the Vikings certainly spent a lot of time imagining flight, and indeed imagining the devices that might make it possible - their mythology is full of flight.
Freyja's feather suit (fjaðrhamr), is mentioned in Þrymskviða as a device which is borrowed by Loki in order to search among the giants for Thor's missing hammer. A similar falcon suit (valshamr), also owned by Freyja, is mentioned by Snorri in his Edda. This time Loki (again) is searching for the goddess Idunn of the golden apples, who has been abducted by the giant Thjassi. But things get complicated, because Thjassi, too, has his own flying suit, this time in the form of an eagle (arnarhamr).
Similarly, the maidens at the beginning of Völundarkviða flew in from the south wearing swan-feathers (svanfjaðrar). Later in the poem, Völundr himself rises into the air using something called fitjar, perhaps best imagined as flippers of some sort. He is however not really flying, just trying to raise himself up after the evil King Nidud had hamstrung him.
Others, too, have wanted the sailing Vikings to fly. A wonderful children's book, The Ship that Flew, by Nottingham author Hilda Lewis (1939), derives its central conceit from the god Freyr's magic ship Skidbladnir. According to Snorri's account, this ship can accommodate all the Æsir fully armed, and immediately raise a wind whenever the sail is hoisted, but can also be folded up into one's pocket when not required. In Snorri, the ship only sails, but Hilda Lewis imagined it flying and taking the children of her book on all sorts of magical adventures. I vaguely remember a TV adaptation of this some 15 or 20 years ago (has anyone got the details?) which rather boringly turned the central conveyance into a flying carpet, so much so that the story was hardly recognisable, yet I am sure it was the same story.

Inspiration

2011-01-15T10:54:00.001Z

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.

Happy Thor Year

2011-01-02T11:38:00.000Z

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).

Fair Islanders

2010-12-31T10:43:00.000Z

I have to confess I am not terribly fond of twentieth-century novels that are set in the Viking and Norse periods. I'm not sure why, but I think mainly because they are so predictable. I'll refrain from naming and shaming any of those that I have begun but been quite unable to finish. But there was one exception: a few years ago, soon after it came out, I read Margaret Elphinstone's The Sea Road, and found it enjoyable, both as a novel, and as a believable depiction of the world at that time.
I've now been using the Christmas break to catch up on the first novel she ever wrote, Islanders, derived from her own experiences of living in Shetland, which included bird-watching on Fair Isle and doing archaeology at Barbara Crawford's Papa Stour dig. Both of these islands feature in the novel, which is mostly set on Fair Isle in the twelfth century. It's an accomplished novel, introducing a range of likeable and (from a modern point of view) believable characters, and has some good ethnographic descriptions of the daily life and grind on a small island where the diet is definitely not for vegetarians. There is some violence, but much less than you would expect, and overall the picture is rather cosy, despite the harsh living conditions. It's very much a woman's view of the late Viking Age. There is little or no saga pastiche (the downfall of many other 'Viking' novelists), but the author rather skilfully weaves in lots of allusions to both sagas and poetry, some obvious, some less so, showing that she has done her homework, both in reading the literature, and in understanding how it might have worked in that period. It's a satisfyingly, but not excessively, long book, and the end leaves you wanting to know more - unfortunately Elphinstone never wrote the sequel.
So, the overall verdict is a good read with which to while away the long winter evenings, even if you are allergic to 'Viking' novels.

'Old Norse ... Makes Our Country Civilised'

2010-12-28T09:51:00.001Z

The quotation above comes from an interview with David Willetts, the Universities Minister, on the Guardian website back in October, which I've only just caught up with. The minister claims to 'care' about Old Norse, but in effect says it will be cut (for a good analysis of what he is really saying, see this recent entry in Seph Brown's blog).
My own blog concentrates on the lighter side of Norse and Viking life, and is an entirely frivolous (though enjoyable to me and, I hope, others) supplement to my day job. But let it never be forgotten that even such frivolities would not be possible without a lifetime spent studying Old Norse, and then all that goes with it. The minister's statement, coupled with the government's unashamed attack on academic subjects that do not bring an instant pecuniary reward (most of them, surely?) demonstrates quite clearly that the government does not actually want the country to be civilised. Tremble, everyone, tremble...

The Waif Woman's Brooch

2010-12-16T17:11:00.004Z

The quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson in my previous post prompted me to read his little story, The Waif Woman, which has been sitting on my shelf for some time waiting for an appropriate moment, though it's not at all long. It was not published during his lifetime, but our library has a nice little edition from 1916 (if you haven't got such a good library, you can read it online from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere). The story begins 'This is a tale of Iceland, the isle of stories' and it is a fine example of Viking Victoriana, with lots of 'goodmen', 'goodwives' and 'fiddlesticks', and a few gratuitous alliterations and archaisms ('It was a wild night for summer, and the wind sang about the eaves and clouds covered the moon, when the dark woman wended'). The plot is quite closely based on the well-known and colourful story of the Hebridean woman Thorgunna in Eyrbyggja saga - RLS has a Thorgunna, too, a strapping lady of a certain age, like her literary predecessor (not quite how we imagine a 'waif' these days, though she is indeed a wandering, homeless person). But the other characters have different names, and some aspects of the story are different. In particular, a silver brooch plays a part in the plot:

Here was a cloak of the rare scarlet laid upon with silver, beautiful beyond belief; hard by was a silver brooch of basket work that was wrought as fine as any shell and was as broad as the face of the full moon; and Aud saw the clothes lying folded in the chest, of all the colours of the day, and fire, and precious gems; and her heart burned with envy.

There is no brooch in Eyrbyggja saga but clearly RLS knew how important they were in the Viking Age, and liked brooches too - the comparison here with the moon is not unlike his fancy that brooches were made 'of star-shine at night', quoted in my last post. I don't know how much RLS really knew about Viking brooches, but I have used a picture of a tenth-century Borre-style disc brooch from Gotland, which I found on the British Museum website, and which would surely have amazed Aud if she had seen it.

'I Will Make You Brooches and Toys for Your Delight ... '

2010-12-10T17:13:00.005Z

... wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in his posthumously published Songs of Travel (1895). While Stevenson promised to make them 'Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night', those vagabond Vikings also appreciated the delight of brooches, but made them more prosaically from shiny metals. I have for some time been interested in the work of Jane Kershaw who has studied metal-detectorist finds from recent years, particularly those in a Scandinavian style and those which which were most characteristically worn by women. Jane has recently received her doctorate for this work, and published a solid, academic summary of her results in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5 (2009). A shorter and more accessible version can now be read online, in the November/December 2010 issue of British Archaeology. As Jane points out, the bulk of finds come from Lincolnshire and Norfolk. While this partly reflects possible find-spots in these predominantly agricultural regions, the East Anglian finds in particular shed new light on Viking activities in that area, where there is comparatively little other type of evidence in the form of place-names or sculpture. But such items are also found elsewhere in the Danelaw, and the picture shows my nearest example, a late 9th- / early 10th-century copper alloy trefoil brooch found in Nottinghamshire. It has suffered in the last thousand years or so - you have to imagine it when it was new!

Skaldic Wordle

2010-12-04T21:10:00.004Z

I've just discovered a fun new website called Wordle, which makes fabulous 'word clouds' out of any text that you put into it. I put the text of a forthcoming article of mine in, and got this splendid cloud. You can click on it and get a bigger image if you like, to get a preview of what the article will be about.
Enjoy!

Snordic

2010-12-01T21:51:00.000Z

After all my recent ramblings, jolly though they were, it is in fact a relief to stay at home for a bit and get down to some real work. But now I find the North is coming to me! At least, if you believe the papers. They are full of how 'Scandinavian' this weather we have been having recently is. The snow is not copious (at least not here in the dry East Midlands), but it is hanging around and looks quite pretty. And of course very Nordic. So here's a picture.

More Ramblings

2010-11-19T22:52:00.000Z

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.

Vankings

2010-10-28T21:28:00.003+01:00

Once upon a time they came in longships, now they come in lorries. You can't escape those Vikings. Forget those continental types Norbert Dentressangle and Willi Betz, or Cumbrian lad Eddie Stobart with all his girls. The coolest lorries on the road are -- wait for it -- PTSUKLtd! A Viking on every van. You can't see the Vikings on the lorries depicted on the PTSUKLtd website, so I append a photo kindly taken for me by my other half, on Nottingham's great cosmopolitan road network, at great risk I have to say to the safety of both himself and other road users. Enjoy. A safer method is to visit Biglorryblog, where it is revealed that it is all done with decals. Hmm, I wonder if they need a specialist consultant? Those horns, you know.

St Brice's Day Victims Found?

2010-09-26T11:57:00.000+01:00

An article by David Keys, the archaeology correspondent of the Independent, in the Smithsonian's magazine, suggests that some old bones found when building a new student residence for St John's College, Oxford, are those of victims of the St Brice's Day massacre in November 1002. They are from between 34 and 38 individuals, 'all of them victims of violence'. They have been dated to between 960 and 1020, and had a marine diet. Ergo, they were Vikings. Keys links this new evidence with the Weymouth massacre, which I mentioned here in March. What I hadn't noticed back then was that Keys had published an article in the Independent, linking the Weymouth massacre with St Brice's day, a link not I think made explicitly by other reports of the finds. Oxford is of course the only specific place for which there is historical evidence for the massacre.
Back in 2002, we marked the millennium of the massacre with a small conference here at Nottingham. Although the papers were not published then, three of them were given again, in revised form, at a conference in Copenhagen, and then published in the proceedings of the Seksogtyvende tværfaglige vikingesymposium (2007). For those who are interested, I'd particularly recommend Julia Barrow's paper on 'Bishop Brictius - Saint Brice', which links the massacre to the autumn slaughter of livestock, and concludes:

Therefore, if we picture ourselves in Oxford in November 1002 we can imagine the Cornmarket and the High full of animals brought in from the surrounding countryside waiting to be sold to butchers and killed. ... The animal slaughter would probably still have been continuing two days later on St Brice's day, and Æthelred would probably have viewed this day as more appropriate for a massacre of Danes than St Martin's day, Brice being a much less popular, and much less significant, saint than St Martin.

Fingerposts to the Past

2010-09-19T18:44:00.000+01:00

Here's a nice article in The Northern Echo, 'Skuttering and going to Potto', all about the influence of the Vikings on place-names in the Cleveland area of (historical) North Yorkshire, which all enthusiasts know is well-supplied with names of Scandinavian origin, including my favourite, Roseberry Topping (pictured). Anyone who has driven on the motorways of England will know the lorries of Prestons of Potto, though Skutterskelfe is a bit more obscure. The author of the article is clearly as enamoured of the old cast-iron road signs as I am, and picks out some interesting examples, as well as giving a nice plug to our Institute for Name-Studies.

Norn But Not Forgotten

2010-08-29T17:12:00.000+01:00

I drew attention to Shetland Forwirds, the group that is encouraging the use of the dialect in a post last April - and repeat that their website is well worth a visit if you're interested. Now I'm writing this while listening to a programme about Shetlandic on Radio 4, and particularly about poets and their use of the Shetland dialect (which is of course a form of English, or rather Scots). The 'Norn' element of this dialect consists mainly of lexical items (or 'words') which have survived from the old Norn language, which died out in about the eighteenth century. Much of this lexicon is to do with the landscape, weather, animals and so on, and such words are perhaps mostly of interest to either farmers or poets. It's interesting that several of the contributors describe finding words that have effectively died out but are, or were, still known to the older generation. Of course quite a lot of words that are strange to South Britons, even in Shetlandic, are just standard Scots words, this is hinted at in the programme, but no real distinction is made between the Scandinavian element and the Scots element. And I feel the programme misses an opportunity to explain the history of language in Shetland in a bit more detail, there is a tendency to present it as just another weird dialect, strange because it is so remote from the centres of culture, even Edinburgh.
But the poems sound great, so well worth listening again on the BBC website if you're in this country. I am pleased to note that the native Shetlanders, in particular, don't yet suffer from that ghastly falling intonation that affects so many modern poets in English when reading their work - that is enough to put you to sleep, or even worse, and certainly would put you off poetry entirely.

Miscellanea Norvegica

2010-08-18T20:26:00.002+01:00

This blog, dear reader, as you know, does not shy away from the lighter side of Norse and Viking life. So I shall not tell you about the excellent papers, or the intellectual stimulation, of the 7th International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions which I attended recently in Oslo, but rather about the very fine post-conference excursion to runic sites in Valdres, Sogn and Hadeland. This was a repeat of the excursion we made at the 3rd Symposium, held twenty years ago, with the absolute high point being Borgund (pictured above), a wonderful stave church in its own right, but also runically the richest. And, as you can see from the photo, we had exactly the same fabulous weather as we did twenty years ago.
The runes were marvellous, as one would expect, but the trip was further livened by some of the quirky things that caught my eye. For instance, the rune stone (in excellent Old Norse and good Viking Age runes) put up outside Høre stave church by two brothers, to commemorate Gyða who refused to marry Harald Finehair until he was king of all Norway (we're talking ninth century or so, here). The brothers, Hallvard and Thomas Bergh, thus credited her with inventing the country of Norway - a topic foremost in everyone's minds in 1905, when the stone was put up. Or as the stone puts it, in normalised Old Norse, hon hafði fyrst í hug eitt Nóregs ríki.

In Lærdal, where we spent the night, I was able to indulge in my passion for old buses, tractors and the like, with this very fine specimen (pictured left), which seems still to be usable (and, I take it, used), and was certainly spick and span. I have not yet troubled this blog with my numerous photos of rotting old buses in Orkney and Iceland, though I did present a very nice but elderly tractor in a recent blog about the Hebrides. So here is my first bus for you. Some rotting ones may follow another time.

Still on the transport theme, Lærdal also offered a blue plaque (pictured right) commemorating 'Norway's first motor-tourist', a Dutchman who tootled that way in 1901. The day was rounded off with a most fabulous sunset (pictured below).

On the way back to Oslo, we stopped off at Granavollen, to see the 'Sister Churches', a rune stone, and to have dinner at the excellent gjestgiveri there. Delightful though all these were, I was especially happy to rediscover (and now photograph) a grave stone (pictured below) I remembered from twenty years ago, commemorating a certain Astrid Sofie Dynna, who had then only recently passed away. It's nice to see that her family are still bringing flowers to the grave, but I noticed it because she shares her first name with, and ultimately comes from the same farm as, the young woman commemorated by her mother on what is one of my favourite rune stones, the Dynna stone, which I had visited once again in the Historical Museum in Oslo, only days before.

American Vikings

2010-08-08T10:27:00.006+01:00

Lured by the intriguing headline 'The ruins of Viking Boston' (Massachusetts, not Lincolnshire, where it might have been more plausible), I went to the Boston Globe website to see what that was all about. It turned out to be yet another fascinating example of the 19th-century obsession with Vikings, as chronicled for Britain in Andrew Wawn's splendid book Vikings and Victorians. This particular Victorian was one Ebenezer Norton Horsford, described as a chemist, entrepreneur, and amateur archeologist, who was responsible for many of the Viking memorabilia still visible in Boston today. I followed him up in Geraldine Barnes's Viking America: The First Millennium, which puts him in the context of other Vinland-obsessed Americans of the time. I don't think that any of these mention the fine runic inscription on the statue, which says Leifr hinn hepni Eirikssonr in quite acceptable runes (see photo, above left).

This obsession extended well beyond the 19th century. I am reminded of a statue I had ignored all through my childhood, when playing in Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, little knowing how interested I would be in such things later in life. It is a statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni, by the well-known Icelandic sculptor Einar Jónsson, and is one of a series of historical statues from throughout a century and a half in the parkland along the Schuylkill River. The history of the Thorfinn statue is explained in a book I picked up in a secondhand shop some years ago, printed in Philadelphia (no date, but not earlier than 1920) 'for private distribution by J. Bunford Samuel': The Icelander Thorfinn Karlsefni Who Visited the Western Hemisphere in 1007. Mr Samuel was carrying out the wishes of his late wife Ellen Phillips Samuel, who left money for the erection of 'statuary emblematic of the History of America'. The whole family was clearly fascinated by this kind of stuff, as the book includes a 'Story of a supposed runic inscription found at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia', by Ellen's brother Henry, and it was on Henry's suggestion that Mr Samuel chose a statue of Thorfinn to be the first in the series. The book contains all kinds of gems, including correspondence with the sculptor, with the Park Commissioners who were apparently not always as helpful as they could be in getting the statuary up and going, a detailed account of the dedication ceremony in 1920, and further ruminations on the non-runic stone from Nova Scotia. There's also a splendid (signed) photograph (above right) of Einar Jónsson working on the statue.

Vikings and Sausage Rolls

2010-07-12T10:32:00.000+01:00

There's no stopping the march of Vikings into the world of advertising. The latest one I have just caught is an advert for Walls' sausage rolls, showing one of the Vikings of Middle England tucking into one just after he becomes 'dead' on the battlefield. I reckon the ad company got the demographic, of both sausage rolls and Viking re-enactors, just about right. What's a bit odd is that it is all part of a 'Bring it on Britain' campaign. But then Vikings have been an essential part of Britishness since at least Victorian times.
Re-enactors obviously have a lot of fun and good luck to them. I find the whole phenomenon fascinating though, as a 'proper academic' I can't help shuddering at their ideas of 'authenticity' which some groups, like the VME, make a great song and dance about. It's not that difficult to find out about Viking runes (a topic on which I have moaned before), but they never seem to bother, thus the VME website has both a slightly dodgy runic logo, and some curious misinformation about rune stones.
Ah well, it's all part of the fun. And it provides a raison d'etre for degrees in Viking Studies which some people see as somewhat Mickey Mouse, but someone has got to teach people 'proper' Viking stuff.

Jinxed Lava

2010-07-05T22:57:00.005+01:00

I almost never watch Top Gear, except over the shoulder of my other half, considering it to be a programme For The Lads Only, and not being very fond (to put it mildly) of Mr J. Clarkson. However, I was tempted the other night, because the programme guide promised James May driving up an Icelandic volcano. And, indeed, it was our old friend Eyjafjallajökull, spouting fiery bits onto Mr May as he drove right up to its rim, 'still with no idea how big this eruption would become'. A clip of this can now be seen on YouTube. The vehicle was a specially adapted Toyota Hilux with some corrugated iron on top (to keep off the dropping fiery bits) and a water-cooling system for the tyres (to stop them burning, though they did). James May got amazingly close to the active crater and even managed to scoop up a bit of newly-spewed out lava.
I wonder though if this last bit was wise. Iceland Review Online reports that a British tourist, who stole a piece of lava from the volcano, has now sent it back to Iceland on the grounds that his life has been jinxed ever since. The University, who received the piece of lava, arranged for it to be flown out to the volcano and dropped back in, on the grounds that one does not trifle with the rocky powers that be, and referring specifically to the folklore associated with natural phenomena (see this longer Icelandic version of the story).
If you search the Iceland Review website, you will see that the whole Top Gear exploit was considered pretty controversial at the time, though clearly overshadowed by later ash-cloud related events!

Something To Look Forward To

2010-06-29T19:14:00.002+01:00

Viking aficionados have known for a while that the British Museum was planning another big Viking exhibition. It's now been more than three decades since their last big one in 1980, which I remember well even though I was a mere cradolcild of a PhD student in London at the time. Now, more news is emerging about the new exhibition, which will be in 2013, and organised in cooperation with Copenhagen and Berlin.
The website of the National Museum of Denmark is promising the world's longest Viking ship (pictured above), affectionately known as Roskilde Wreck 6, one of several ships found in 1997 when the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde was being expanded. The ship was made of oak, built probably in Norway around 1025, and was 36 m. long and 3.5 m. wide, with up to 78 oars and a crew therefore of around 100.
We are promised 'a new perspective on the world of the Vikings', with a concentration on four themes: (1) expansion and warfare; (2) power and aristocracy; (3) rituals and belief; and (4) cultural contacts and exchange. I'm already clearing my diary for 2013.

The Gods Live On

2010-06-19T17:56:00.002+01:00

Two new craters resulting from the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland have now been named, according to a report in Morgunblaðið. They're going to be called Magni and Móði after the two sons of Þórr who survived Ragnarök. Moreover, the new lava field is going to be called after the gods in general, Goðahraun. While I'm not aware of Móði having been used before (do correct me if I'm wrong), Magni is not new in modern nomenclature: the Icelandic for Mighty Mouse is Magni Mús! The original Magni plays a small part in the story of his father's duel with the giant Hrungnir. Þórr kills Hrungnir, who however falls on top of him, with his leg across Þórr's neck. The gods are unable to move Hrungnir's leg to rescue Þórr until the three year-old Magni comes along and does it. Snorri tells us that Þórr 'welcomed his son warmly and said he would grow up to be a powerful person'. Not unlike Mighty Mouse.

Volcanic Cows

2010-06-19T09:04:00.003+01:00

I've heard a couple of versions of this story, this is the more plausible one. At around the time of the recent volcanic eruptions, a cow in Iceland gave birth to triplets, a rare enough occurrence in itself. As the calves happened to be two female and one male, they were immediately named Eyja, Fjalla and Jökull. Eyja and Fjalla, at least, will produce more milk for having names, as a study at the University of Newcastle, reported in The Times, has shown that cows with names give more milk. So no more Cow 214. If you are interested in Icelandic cows, there is a webpage devoted to them.

And if you are travelling in Iceland, I recommend a stop at the Cowshed Café, near Mývatn, where you can look at the cows through a window while you drink your coffee, as you can see from my photo, taken last summer.

Are You Inspired by Iceland?

2010-06-03T21:23:00.002+01:00

Doubtless, dear reader, if you have the slightest interest in these things, you willl already have become aware of the new campaign to promote Iceland, now at http://www.inspiredbyiceland.com/. It is described as 'the biggest campaign ever made to promote Iceland abroad' and is a cooperation of the government and the tourist industry, to counter the effects of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, since many people abroad now apparently labour under the misconceptions that 'the whole land is covered with ash and that Iceland is in a state of emergency'. The website uses stories from people who have visited Iceland (including one who only spent four hours at the airport, but fell in love with the language!). But the best thing on it is the video, in which you see lots of people dancing in lots of scenic Icelandic places, including two Vikings, and some very wacky folkloric ladies. Well worth a look.

The Islands to the South

2010-05-18T10:06:00.002+01:00

The current bureaucratic, Scotocentric appellation for them is 'The Western Isles', while the more geographical, but still mainland-focused term is 'The Inner/Outer Hebrides', but I prefer the Old Norse term Suðreyjar, the Islands to the South. It all depends on your point of view, of course! In Gaelic they are the Innse Gall, the 'Islands of the Foreigners', i.e. the Vikings, I suppose. What other part of Britain has so many names? As the Norwegians say, 'kjært barn har mange navn', or 'a beloved child has many names'. But I couldn't claim to love the Hebrides until now, never having been there - they were one of the most obvious gaps in my gradually-being-ticked-off list of visited Viking-places. Now, at last, that lack has been remedied - your blogstress, dear reader, has just come back (a little later than expected, courtesy of that Icelandic ash-cloud, again) from a short but amazing break on the island of Lewis and Harris.

Even in only five days, I saw far too much to tell you about at length here. Suffice to say I was fair smitten! Three things stand out for me, though: (a) the stone circles and standing stones, (b) the sandy beaches and (c) the Norse place-names. The stones are amazing enough as arrangements, in themselves and in relation to other stones in what archaeologists like to call 'the ritual landscape'. But what distinguishes Callanish from, say, Stonehenge is not only the much smaller number of tourists visiting, but in particular the beauty of the stones themselves. They were clearly chosen for their amazing shapes and patterns (showing up nicely in the Lewisian gneiss), and every one is different, even in the same stone setting (see the picture, left, of one from Callanish).
As to the sandy beaches, they are every bit as lovely as they have appeared in all the photographs I have previously seen: golden sands, turquoise sea, mountains on the horizon, and hardly anyone else in sight. The guidebooks go on about the beaches of South Harris, which are indeed lovely, but my two favourite ones are in Lewis, Bostadh on Great Bernera (pictured above), which has great views of some offshore islands, and Tolsta on the north-east coast, which is particularly sandy.

The Norse place-names are sometimes hard to recognise for Gaelicless people like me, though you only need a smattering of linguistic nous to decode the elements -bost as -bólstaðr and -siadar as -setr or -sætr, or indeed Uig as -vík and -bhagh as -vágr. I've been mugging up some of the articles by Magne Oftedal and Ian Fraser, both of whom suggest that the majority of not only village-names, but place-names in general, in Lewis are of Norse origin. You will find plenty of Norse place-names throughout the Hebrides, but they are really thick on the ground here. It's also clear from what I've read so far that there is still a huge amount of work to be done there on these place-names, so if there are any aspiring PhD students out there, my advice is to go away, learn both Old Norse and Gaelic, and get to work!

Among the many photographs I took, an awful lot were of other small obsessions of mine, sheep, cows, post offices and tractors. Here is one of the many lovely little red Massey Fergusons still in use in Lewis. As to the post offices, there seemed to be more of those in Lewis than there are left here in Nottingham, after the most recent cull. All of them are small and multifunctional, but they clearly play an important role in the community.
A final word of recommendation, St Clement's Church in Rodel (Roghadal), South Harris has a fascinating range of sculpture, from an over-the-top sepulchre for Alexander MacLeod, who built the church, to a lovely simple crucifixion, and a tower decorated with both a bishop and two sheela-na-gigs. Now what was that about?

Thor, On the Other Hand...

2010-05-02T10:07:00.001+01:00

...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

2010-04-30T08:58:00.004+01:00

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.

The Web of Handwriting

2010-04-27T20:47:00.001+01:00

The website handrit.is, a beta version of which has been available for a while, was officially launched in Reykjavík a week or so ago, according to this report in Morgunblaðið. The website brings together digital images of manuscripts now held in both the Copenhagen and the Reykjavík Árni Magnússon institutes, as well as Iceland's National and University Library (that splendid institution whose building is a younger, and more colourful, cousin of Nottingham's Hallward Library, at least so I was told by the former librarian, Finnbogi Guðmundsson himself, once. See photos). The website is a joint online public access catalogue of Icelandic manuscripts in the three collections, with, we are told, entries for over 4000 manuscripts and open access to images of 850 of these. Eventually all of the manuscripts will be electronically accessible. There is an interface for searching and browsing in Icelandic, English and Danish. Enjoy.

The Long Way Round

2010-04-22T15:06:00.002+01:00

As stranded travellers all over the world return home, I am happy to report that we too are now back, as of this morning. The various members of the large group that went to Selja (see previous post) all came home in different ways and by different means. Most of the Nottingham group (now known as the Snotlingar) came back to England by a slightly circuitous route which had, however, the benefit of extending the field trip element and giving us all a chance to view some Viking landscapes and, in particular, to visit three important runic sites.
The first leg was the train from Bergen to Oslo, over the beautiful snowy mountains, and a few moments' experience of a real blizzard when the train stopped at Finse for the smokers (though it was not really smoking weather). The next day, a morning in Oslo gave some a chance to visit the Viking Ship Museum, some a chance to observe the modern monumentality of the Vigeland park, and me a chance to photograph the mythological frieze by Dagfinn Werenskiold on the Oslo City Hall, which I have long meant to do. I particularly liked Thor in his goat chariot (see the picture above).

From Oslo we took the train to Sweden, where we picked up our own chariot in the form of a borrowed car (and a very nice one too, with quite a lot of goatpower), and spent the first night at Mjölby. More by accident than by design, it was a brilliant choice in that it enabled us the next morning to visit the nearby rune stones at both Högby and Rök. The drive through the Swedish countryside in the brilliant sunshine was also a highlight. We raced across the bridges to Denmark and then pressed on to our third and fourth rune stones of the day, at Jelling, which we saw in the soft and fading light of the day. It was good to see the stones before they are encased in their protective box (see my earlier post on this subject). I was also delighted with Erik the Red's very splendid modern rune stone outside the museum (see picture left). After a long day, we ended up just over the border in Germany, ready for our last road leg, to the Hook of Holland, where we gave the chariot back to its rightful owner, who had similarly been stranded in England. From the Hook we sailed to Harwich, happily meeting up with some others of the Seljumenn on the boat, and then arrived home at 3 am having first had to go to Gatwick to pick up my car that had been languishing there since we left.
All in all, a memorable trip, thanks to the Icelandic ash cloud!

Volcanic Blues

2010-04-16T15:49:00.000+01:00

I find myself one of the many thousands of people around the world stranded because of the volcanic ash cloud emanating from Iceland. I am in Bergen, having nearly made it out before the ash struck, after a very successful trip to Selje (where we had a postgraduate conference) and the island of Selja, famous for the Seljumenn and St Sunniva, the patron saint of Bergen, and Norway's only female saint. Selja is a very special place, with a medieval monastery down below and up above the cave where Sunniva and the Seljumenn were saved from the murderous locals by being crushed to death by a fall of rocks. In front of the cave is an amazing terrace and a small chapel. The island as a whole was the finding place of at least four runic inscriptions. And, as you can see from the photo, a glorious view over Stadlandet. Highly recommended!

Viking Crime

2010-04-07T20:56:00.003+01:00

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!

Imbu Da Fremd

2010-04-02T20:35:00.000+01:00

Shetland Forwirds, 'a group dedicated to celebrating and promoting Shetland dialect', which, as they say, 'has both Nordic and Scottish roots', has just launched a splendid new website. Here you can both read and listen to examples of dialect texts, look things up in an online version of John Graham's dictionary, and generally wallow in all things Shetlandic. The section on 'Proverbs and Sayings' will explain the title above!

Man of the North

2010-03-28T10:29:00.003+01:00

Yesterday's Guardian has a feature, by Fiona MacCarthy, on William Morris as 'Man of the North', illustrated by a nice sunny picture of Jökulsárlón without the tourists (see right for my cloudier equivalent). The feature is occasioned by a new four-part sequence for chorus and orchestra by composer Ian McQueen, Earthly Paradise, in which apparently 'Morris's Icelandic journeys are a recurring theme' and which premieres at the Barbican on 10 April (and a re-release of MacCarthy's biography of Morris in July). MacCarthy notes that 'his journals ... are precious and unique because they are so simply and beautifully written with the informed sense of wonder of a deeply learned and sophisticated man'. I would certainly second that. Anyone who has been put off by Morris's medievalist poetry and prose should forget those and read the journals instead. Here's an extract in which Morris describes Borg, home of both Egill Skalla-Grímsson and Snorri Sturluson:

I turned away, and mounted the 'Burg' under which the house stands, a straight grey cliff grass-clad at top, sloping gradually down toward the lower land on one side. There are plenty of flowers in the grass at the top, clover and gentian chiefly, and I sat there in excited mood for some time; of all the great historical steads I had seen this seemed to me the most striking after Lithend; yet for some reason or other I find it hard to describe: southward lay the firth, quite calm and bright, those great mountains reflected in it with all detail, and over their shoulders the bright white jokuls are to be seen from here: the great circule of mountains is very awful and mysterious under a beautiful peaceful sky: they come nearly to the firth-side at the mouth of it, but from their outmost buttress a long low spit of land runs out into the sea, and beyond this is a line of skerries, beyond which one can see the surf breaking at the deep sea's end; a creek runs up from the firth toward Borg and a little stream falling through the rock ledge, of which this cliff is the highest end, goes into it. Eastward the country, ending with the low hills broken by Baula, looks little different hence to what it did from horseback, the plain somewhat flatter and the hills somewhat higher, that is all. Burgfirth, I may mention in case you forget it, or are hazy about your saga geography, is one of the great centres of story in Iceland... [William Morris, Icelandic Journals, 1969, pp. 153-4]

This is very much the artist's eye taking everything in, but written in such an engaging way that it is hard to put down. There are lots of little comic details about the travails of camping and riding on horseback to vary the pace, here the intrepid travellers are heading north to Grímstunga:

as we rode now we could not see a rod in front of us, the rain, or hail, or sleet, for it was now one, now the other of these, did not fall, we could see no drops, but it was driven in a level sheet into our faces, so that one had to shut one eye altogether, and flap one's hat over the other. Magnússon and Evans stood it best, working hard at driving the horses; Faulkner, worried by his short sight, and I by my milksopishness, tailed; I was fortunately mounted on Falki, who was very swift and surefooted, and so got on somehow; but I did at last in the early part of the day fairly go to sleep as I rode, and fall to dreaming of people at home: from which I was woke up by a halt, and Magnússon coming to me and telling me that my little haversack was missing: now in the said haversack I had the notes of this present journal; pipe, spare spectacles, drawing materials (if they were any use) and other things I particularly didn't want to lose, so I hope to be forgiven if I confess that I lost my temper, and threatened to kill Eyvindr, to whom I had given it at Búðará: he, poor fellow, answered not, but caught an empty horse, and set off through the storm (we had ridden then some three hours) to look for it and on we went. [p. 87]

It all ends happily when the travellers arrive at Grímstunga, where they dry out, 'began to feel that we had feet and hands again', and get coffee, brandy, and real beds to sleep in. Eyvindr duly appears with the haversack and is forgiven, Morris 'thanked him with effusion', but doesn't appear to have apologised, only 'hope[d] he will forget my threat of this morning'.

Greenlanders' DNA has some Celtic Elements

2010-03-26T10:42:00.000Z

Recent research into some skeletons (dated to c. 1000) from an unnamed churchyard site in Southeast Greenland suggests that their genetic profile is similar to that of the Icelanders, i.e. that they have some 'Celtic' genes. The article unfortunately doesn't give much detail (where the site is, how many skeletons were analysed, and so forth), but the interview with Jette Arneborg stresses that these Greenlanders were Norse in their culture, even if they had some Celtic genes (and she too suggests it was mainly the women who had that heritage). In other words, the Greenlanders came from Iceland. As we knew all along. For more information on research projects in Greenland, read this summary.

Ice and Fire: Eyjafjallajökull Erupts

2010-03-21T09:49:00.000Z

It was my first trip to Iceland, many years ago, that opened my eyes to the wonders of geology. It was a tourist cliché, but when I stood at Þingvellir and was told that I was standing on the faultline between the continents, then plate tectonics suddenly made more sense than from any number of diagrams. On that same trip, we went to Vestmannaeyjar and stood on the still-warm sulphurous volcano that had erupted on Heimaey only a few years earlier, in 1973. There's something about Iceland that brings out the latent geologist in everyone - or at least in me. It certainly makes me like to think I should have had an alternative career as a geologist, though it was already too late then, on that first visit. Icelandic volcanoes, unlike those in some other parts of the world, tend to erupt slowly and rarely cause loss of life. So, despite the destruction of houses and roads, we can marvel at their majesty and wild, ferocious beauty, and understand how a poem like Völuspá came to be composed under their influence. And now it's happening again. Eyjafjallajökull, which last erupted in 1821, is acting up. According the BBC report, some 500-600 people have been evacuated, ash is falling everywhere, and aviation is not currently possible. The picture shows the area on a glorious late summer day last year, when molten lava and ash were the furthest things from anyone's mind.

Sól mun sortna,
søkkr fold í mar.
Hverfa af himni
heiðar stjörnur.
Geisar eimi
ok aldrnari,
leikr hár hiti
við himin sjálfan.

Viking Victims

2010-03-12T19:17:00.000Z

It's all over the news media today: the 51 bodies in the mass grave discovered a few months ago in Dorset are 'Vikings'. Insofar as the media reports are accurate, the bodies are identified as Scandinavian on the basis of isotope analysis of the teeth of 10 of them, while the grave has been radiocarbon-dated to the period 910-1030. The bodies are all of men, in their twenties or thirties, they have been decapitated, and the archaeologists speculate that this was done in front of an audience (not clear why they think this), and that the men were stripped naked before being executed, as there is no evidence of pins or other dress accoutrements. Of course we have always maintained that the Vikings had no monopoly on violence - man's inhumanity to man is well-documented throughout history. For further info, see the BBC's report, or that of The Guardian.

Space Age Protection for the Jelling Stones

2010-03-05T22:50:00.001Z

Yesterday the winner was announced in a competition to design some kind of protection (from wind, weather, tourists?) for the two rune stones at Jelling. The winning design is quite space age and seems to involve two large glass cases with one side of stone or concrete. They do seem to fulfil the function of protecting the stones while leaving them (a) visible and (b) in their original position. One day, there will be those of us who remember when we could go right up to the stones and touch them! But I guess that's not a good idea if everyone does it.... For a good website about Jelling, the church, the mounds and the rune stones, see http://www.jelling.dk/, and http://jelling.natmus.dk/ for a website about the current research going on at Jelling.

Enthusiasm for Viking Studies

2010-02-15T08:20:00.000Z

I am hardly unbiased and this is of course a shameless plug. But it was good to read the enthusiastic comments, unbidden, of one of the students doing the BA in Viking Studies, on her blog 'The Life of a Student of the Viking Age'. A great defence of the subject from one still new to it. Thanks.

The Observer Discovers 'ð'

2010-01-24T09:45:00.002Z

In an otherwise depressing piece, there is one sliver of good news in a report from Iceland in today's Observer: that newspaper has discovered Icelandic orthography. Accented and umlauted vowels appear in both the paper and online versions of the article and there are even two instances of 'ð'. One of the people interviewed is a Herdís Ólöf Kjartansdóttir - all her vowels are intact. Needless to say, not all of the vowels that should have been accented are, and they persist in calling an interviewed professor 'Guðmundsson' as if it were a surname. But it's not a bad effort, is it the first time? It's certainly the first time I've noticed a British newspaper using 'ð's though they have essayed the odd accented vowel before, but if anyone has noticed differently, do let me know. Once the newspapers do it properly, I'll get my students on board as well. Though I have to say that, in recent years, technology has noticeably improved the appearance, orthography-wise, of student essays on Old Norse and Icelandic topics.

Will Kirk Douglas Be Superseded?

2010-01-21T22:19:00.001Z

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.

Shakespeare Was a Lewisman

2010-01-15T09:04:00.002Z

I bet you never knew that Shakespeare spent some of his youth in Stornoway... Neither did I, to tell the truth, but maybe I should take his collected works with me when I go there in May, to see if they resonate with the landscape. And I shall look out for more fragments of his juvenilia there, like his play MacLeod, recently discovered in a fish-box. The play provides a Lewis-eye view of the arrival of the Vikings, as seen by Murdo the hermit. As one would expect from juvenilia, the verse is a bit rocky, though it sometimes rattles along nicely, as in this scene in which Murdo tells Lord Stornoway and his factor what he has seen:

MURDO
My Lord I must impart to you grave tidings of lament

STORNOWAY
Don’t tell me that once again you’re behind with the rent?

MURDO
No my Lord its worse than that. I’ve seen the dragon prow!

FACTOR
You mean to say…?

STORNOWAY
In a roundabout way….

MURDO
That the Norse are coming now!

MURDO
I spotted sails last evens’ time, approaching like a sea beast, a longship with a dragons head and eighty oars at least.

FACTOR
What was their destination, could you perceive their plot?

MURDO
I didn’t feel to tarry, so fast away I got!

STORNOWAY
They could be in this bay by now in full view of this Castle

FACTOR
This pile is falling ’round our ears, they’ll capture it no hassle.

The Viking In All Of Us

2009-12-31T21:57:00.001Z

It seems there is still a bit of the old Viking spirit in the residents of the Wirral, who have successfully fought off local government plans to close most of their libraries. This news report on Channel 4 this evening notes that the library at Irby was one of those scheduled to close, and also shows this fine old signpost of the footpath to Thurstaston. Both Irby and Thurstaston are places that can trace their origins to the Viking settlement of Wirral in the tenth century, as you can read, if you are interested, in Paul Cavill et al., Wirral and its Viking Heritage, 2000.
Today's Guardian editorial is 'In praise of ... British cheeses' - hear, hear! I think we can all assent to that... News to me, however, is that a Scottish cheese called crowdie 'traces its origin to the Viking invasion'. I suppose this is part of the general tendency to ascribe all good things to the Vikings, so I can second that. However, the OED claims its derivation is unknown, merely noting that 'Jamieson conjectured some connexion with GROUT, and Icel. groutr [sic] porridge; this suits the sense, but leaves phonetic conditions unsatisfied'. Quite. Thus do scholarly conjectures turn into newspaper fact... The 'porridge' meaning, by the way, is now obsolete according to the OED, but the second meaning it lists is 'in some parts of the north of Scotland, a peculiar preparation of milk' (eh?). The northern distribution may I suppose reflect Viking influence, and here I must recall one of my earlier posts on this blog, just over a year ago, about Crowdie Vikings, so maybe there is something in it.
Happy New Year to one and all, Viking or no Viking!

New Blog For Runes and Coins

2009-12-22T17:05:00.001Z

The National Museum of Denmark has set up what looks like a very useful new blog in which they will report on new finds of runic inscriptions and coins. The most recent blog, posted by Lisbeth Imer on 15 December, shows a recent find of a bronze runic amulet (from near Ribe) which has not yet been fully interpreted but seems to contain the word þurs ... interesting!

Gleðileg jól!

2009-12-22T16:57:00.001Z

The word of the week at the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum is, most appropriately, jól. Have a good one, one and all!

A Modern Swelkie

2009-12-11T21:38:00.002Z

Among all the devices being tried out in the waters around Orkney to harness the energy of tides and waves, one caught my eye in particular. It's an undersea turbine, described as a 6m wide 'fan', and it is being tried out in the 'Fall of Warness' off the coast of Eday. I caught sight of it in a news item on the BBC the other day. Because the BBC report implied it was being tried out in the Pentland Firth, it reminded me of an Old Norse legend, a version of the widespread aetiological tale in which an undersea salt mill is said to be the reason why the sea is salt. One version of this tale attaches this legend to the Swelkie (sometimes written Swilkie or Swelchie), a fearsome tidal whirlpool in the Pentland Firth (I've discussed this a bit in this paper from the Durham Saga-Conference and also in one from the Uppsala Saga-Conference, which can be downloaded here). This picture of the turbine looks just like how I imagined the salt-mill...

Lewis Chesspersons Again

2009-12-06T12:48:00.002Z

Everyone's favourite Vikings, the Lewis playing pieces, are in the news again. There is an article in Medieval Archaeology (which I haven't fully digested yet) propounding new theories about what kind of board game the pieces were used for (hnefatafl rather than chess), and why they were found on Lewis (belonged to a rich person who lived there, rather than just accidentally shipwrecked there). No doubt the press accounts (e.g. the BBC website) oversimplify a more nuanced academic article, so I am looking forward to reading that (there is also a bit more detail in the press release). The article is in fact available free online, so it will save me a trip to the library! I have a particular interest, because I have recently argued that one of Earl Rögnvaldr's verses contains a reference to chess, and draw the parallel with the roughly contemporary Lewis pieces.

The other bit of news is that a selection of the playing pieces will go on tour around Scotland in 2010-11: full details are available from the National Museums of Scotland website.

Viking Wine

2009-12-04T23:11:00.001Z

I've just been given this splendid present, a Viking wine holder (wine bottles fit perfectly, but in the picture I used some jiggery-pokery to put a more appropriate bottle into the holder). His name is Thorfinn Blast, and he is every inch the Viking warrior. Note his lack of horns, which is pretty good, especially if you compare him to my other two Vikings, Einar Rope-Arms (the brown one) and Brusi Bubble (the rather silly one with a moustache and ears [EARS?]).

Einar is an old Danish Viking, probably from the 1960s when such things were very popular, while Brusi was acquired only a week or two ago from the German Christmas market in The Square in Nottingham. Every year they have a stall with fun wooden figures, and this one was irresistible, though not terribly Viking. He can, however, cleverly move his mouth... As to Thorfinn, well I don't know where he came from, do I, as he was a present!

In case you were wondering, the ladybirds don't have names.

Viking Lakeland

2009-11-21T20:47:00.004Z

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.

Odin Finally Discovered

2009-11-15T10:09:00.004Z

This small figurine, silver-gilt with niello inlay, and less than 2 cm square, has been found in the archaeological excavations at Lejre, and is (perhaps a bit hastily in my opinion) being touted as a representation of the god Odin, sitting on his seat Hlidskjalf. Read more about it (from Roskilde Museum) in Danish here and here. One does wonder, when a find is as 'unique' and 'unprecedented' as this one, whether the excited finders shouldn't have been a bit more cautious in declaring what exactly it is, not least because, as far as I can tell, the figurine has two eyes!

Yet Another History of the Vikings

2009-11-14T13:59:00.008Z

Your blogstress, dear reader, remembers Robert Ferguson from when we were both students at UCL together, many, many years ago. At that time he was only interested in Knut Hamsun. He later moved to Norway and had some success with several books on Hamsun. Now, apparently, his university training has been put to the use of writing about the Vikings. It will be interesting to see if Hamsun gets a mention, but especially to see if Ferguson has anything really new to say, or whether he has just found a new way of putting the period across to the general public. In the meantime, there is a review of The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings on The Times website.

It's Only a Theory...

2009-11-05T11:02:00.004Z

Julian Richards, TV archaeologist, presents the theory 'Vikings were a force for good' to a panel of BBC folk. Horned helmets, slaughter and Kirk Douglas galore - can JR persuade the comedians otherwise? Watch this clip to see whether the theory is approved, or fails the test.

Rognvald for Kids

2009-06-30T13:25:00.007+01:00

Hello anybody who is still out there - apologies for a long absence, during which much has happened on the Viking front and I have been to various interesting places including Norway and (briefly) Iceland. There's too much to catch up on, as I'm still quite busy, so I'll just cut my losses and hope to be a bit more regular with my postings in the future.
Today's post was spurred by my discovery of a charming teaching pack for schools on Earl Rognvald of Orkney, downloadable from the Orkney Library and Archives website (or just go straight to the pack itself). While some of what they say about language, in particular, doesn't bear too close examination by experts, on the whole it will do for children. In fact, I am quite impressed, it is an attractive booklet and draws all kinds of themes out very nicely. Of course, I have a personal interest! Long live Rognvald...

Hlymrekr

2009-02-23T22:40:00.004Z

When I started this blog, I promised some account of my travels, but there has been too little of that (though I have travelled quite a lot in the last year or so) and too much of robbing things from the internet and the media. So I am quite happy to report on a recent lightning visit to Limerick. Apart from the usual things that make it a pleasure to visit Ireland (Guinness, friendly people, fiddle music leaking out of pubs, heathery mountains on the horizon) I was quite taken by the ruined church, round tower and cross at Dysart O'Dea (or however you wish to spell it). Both the splendid romanesque doorway to the church and the cross up on the hill had what seemed, to my inexpert eye, to be late-flowering Irish Urnes-style decoration (see the photo). And of course there were the usual pleasures of Irish sacred sites, with the garishly but lovingly decorated family graves, a tower house in the distance, and the nearest village with the 20 pubs in different colours. Coo....

Viking Life

2009-02-14T19:52:00.003Z

Following up the Jorvik Viking Festival (see previous blog), I found a link to 'Dismorphia: Viking York, coming to a computer near you Spring 2009'. It promises an 'on-line virtual world that features real cities at different eras in time', with York as their first venture. A sort of Second Life for those of us who would like to do it in the year 975. Sounds like fun, I'm looking forward to learning Viking skills, collecting and trading Viking items and joining a ship's crew!

Viking Week

2009-02-14T19:36:00.004Z

Next week sees that venerable institution, the Jorvik Viking Festival, return for the 24th time. The programme promises the usual mix of 'Viking hair-braiding' (how do they know?), a Viking wedding, 'combat through the ages' and storytelling for the kids. I am sorry I'll have to miss Andrew Jones (a great lecturer) talking about 'Viking Poo' next Saturday to a family audience. Andrew of course was the finder of the Great Viking Turd on display at Jorvik, so he knows the subject well!

I confess I'm a little less enamoured with the event (3 times a day, every day) which promises us a recitation of The Wanderer and The Seafarer, 'two ancient poems that evoke the hardships of a Viking life at sea'. Those pesky Anglo-Saxons are always trying to muscle in on Viking fun... There is also a retelling of Beowulf on offer, but at least that doesn't pretend to be 'Viking', though I suppose some kind of a case could be made for that.

Click here for the programme if you want to know more (it's a pdf file).

Runic Rescue

2009-01-26T17:58:00.005Z

A long train journey recently gave me a good excuse to read S.J. Bolton's Sacrifice. It's actually a very readable thriller, and I do recommend it. However, to enjoy it Vikingists will have to forgive the author's rather obvious lack of either knowledge of or love for Shetland, where the book is set. She also needs to do a bit more homework on what she thinks of as 'Viking runes', especially their forms, their names and their functions! I don't particularly mind the New Age-y interest in runes, though I wish those who take an interest would at least inform themselves about the differences between the various alphabets, and find out which ones are 'Viking' and which are something else. Ralph Blum (Bolton's only source) has a lot to answer for...

Tinfoil Thor

2009-01-04T22:07:00.004Z

Yesterday's Guardian reports a curious story in which a party-goer dressed as Thor returned home to terrify a burglar with his tinfoil and red-cape outfit.... There is a small picture of him in the print version of the paper, and quite a glorious one in the online version of The Sun (not a paper I normally read, of course). Both papers (and probably many others, too) indulged in bad puns ('Thor blimey', 'Thief Thor-ght it's hammer time'). The costume may be a bit curious, but it is good to see that the No. 2 god is still doing his job of protecting all and sundry from the depredations of the Other.

Valhalla Rising X 2

2008-12-29T19:40:00.006Z

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.

Northern Joanna

2008-12-29T19:20:00.003Z

I have just caught the repeat of Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights on BBC2. It was really refreshing, immediately after the weather forecast moaning that the temperature was falling to -1C, to hear someone who actually finds romance in cold, snow and northern lights. The northern lights themselves were absolutely fantastic, and well worth watching the programme for on their own, but the rest of it was good fun too. 'We know that the Vikings invaded Britain with Lofoten dried fish in their knapsacks' - I'd love to know where that came from (especially the knapsacks...). It was revealing that the Sami seemed to speak better English than the Lofoteners; of course half of the latter were Poles. Thanks for a great programme, Jo, and especially for showing your passion for all things northern, as well as quite a range of fetching snow-suits.

Caveat Emptor Gladii

2008-12-28T17:05:00.005Z

Yesterday's Guardian reports recent research which shows that not all Viking swords were reliable. While they were sharp enough, some were prone to shattering when used, and it was apparently impossible to tell this just by looking at the sword. The research appears to relate only to the Ulfberht swords and it is not clear how many they have tested, though there is the intriguing suggestion that some of the 'fakes' (as they call them, i.e. the inferior swords) were designed for graves and possibly not for use at all. I look forward to some proper discussion of this research somewhere... Interestingly, a 'proper' Ulfberht sword was auctioned at Christie's in May for over £9,000, though another one without Ulfberht's name (but perhaps in better condition) sold for over £14,000.

Crowdie Vikings

2008-12-20T10:18:00.004Z

I've been reading Finlay Macdonald's Crowdie and Cream (1982) after just catching a bit of the third episode on BBC4. As well as being a good example of Celtic Fringe autobiography, it has some interesting Harris folklore, in particular a story about how Viking invaders are bamboozled by the local fairies:

...long ago, an army of warriors from a foreign land had come ashore on the beach and had set about plundering and pillaging the land as they had done up and down the whole of the rest of our coast. But here, in this very hollow, they had come face to face with a host of little people - fairies who, instead of fighting the foreigners, made them welcome and made them sit down and rest and eat and drink their fairy food. And as the fierce Norsemen nibbled the tid-bits their tiredness and their fierceness left them, and they began to hear the most beautiful music that they had ever heard in their lives and they began to dream dreams of unsurpassed beauty. One by one the warriors fell asleep and when the last of them had nodded off the fairies pulled them down into their own world on top of which we were sitting now. It was a world of music and milk and honey and the wild men had liked it so much that they never came back from it again, and never again troubled the people of Harris.

This all takes place in Scarista, a Norse name if ever there was one...

Viking Romance

2008-12-14T20:18:00.004Z

Not even Harlequin romances are immune from the Vikings! A recent one (published June 2008), by Michelle Styles, is entitled Viking Warrior, Unwilling Wife (pretty much sums up the genre, that!). Styles writes what are known as 'Unusual Historicals' and ranges across a number of periods. The cover of this one is definitely more Harlequin than Viking, but the author has clearly done some research for the story, which is apparently a sequel to an earlier book of hers called Taken by the Viking. In this new book, the heroine Sela is reunited with her ex-husband Vikar Hrutson, who 'knows the truth about Lindisfarne.' Sounds fascinating... Read an excerpt from the book on the author's website and there is an interview with the author here.

There Were Eleven Ravens...

2008-12-10T09:53:00.003Z

In his Guardian Diary today, Hugh Muir records the passing of one of the ravens in the Tower. Apparently the kingdom will not fall yet, as there are still ten left, 'including Baldrick, Gwylum, Thor, Hugin and Munin.' The one that died was called Gundulf. All very pseudo-medievaly, though at least Hugin and Munin are proper raven's names. Calling one of them Thor, though, rather cuts that god down to size, placing him on the same level as his father's ravens... Does anyone know what the rest of the ravens are called and who named them?

Old Norse Invades YouTube

2008-11-24T16:51:00.005Z

Nowhere is safe from Old Norse, not even YouTube. Here are a couple of links, unintentionally a bit funny, but with some educational value too:
Extract from Konungs skuggsjá spoken by two oddly-dressed chaps using the modern Norwegian pronunciation of Old Norse and with subtitles in Nynorsk. I wonder what the background is?
Extract from Atlakviða with interesting sound-effects (and an oddly-dressed chap - btw what is the other chap doing in jeans?). Pronunciation as before, but subtitles in Old Norse (including hooked o!), English and Bokmål.
If you want to practise your Norwegian-Old Norse, there are exercises on this page at the University of Bergen (go to the end of the page and click on 'norrøne øvingar'). If you click on 'norrønt' a bit higher up, you will also get the second extract listed above (this is clearly its source), but without the Old Norse or English text.
And if you suffer from insomnia, I can recommend this rather soporific lecture on the Old Norse language - it will send you off pretty soon!

Viking Women

2008-11-12T12:04:00.002Z

According to the BBC, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland are the top four countries in the league table of nations 'closing the gender gap'. Is it any wonder we like studying the North? But where is Denmark?

Viking Theatre?

2008-10-30T16:22:00.004Z

It's good to see Neil Price's inaugural lecture the other day at Aberdeen get a plug in The Times. It's also been great to see the development and flourishing of Viking and Scandinavian Studies side by side at Aberdeen. But since I never trust what I read in the newspapers, I must look forward to seeing Neil's argument set out in detail in print. Let's have the inaugural lecture pamphlet soon, Neil...