Some Good Books

Dorothy Dunnett's Macbeth, Lymond, and Niccolo books.

Viking Remnants

Thorfinn was here.

The Brough of Birsay, Orkney.

The Thinker(s): Orkney-Style?

My Pict (pit-fired clay; hammered copper) --

with someone else's Thor in the background.

I must say that my own sense of the Orkneys comes, chiefly, from Dorothy Dunnett's treatment of those fabulous northern islands in her King Hereafter, that wonderful historical novel of Thorfinn of Orkney, of Macbeth, and of the Celtic/Pictish/Norse mixture that infused those islands.  Seamus Heaney's brief references in his North, the poetry of Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, Henry Treece's historical novel Splintered Sword, the classic Orkneyinga Saga, and R. E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn have also informed my imagination here.   

Unfortunately, I've yet to experience Orkney for myself, though I expect to visit in the next decade or so.

Thor as thinker?  More than you might think, surely.  Check the Eddas.

Dunnett's Macbeth: Thorfinn of Orkney -- A Favorite Passage

Here's a favorite passage from Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter, a novel about the historical Macbeth: Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, King of Scotia.  Frankly, Dunnett's King Hereafter is one of my Top Ten Novels of All Time, but that's an idiosyncratic list.  Still.

Here, we get a crucial insight into the "secret of [Thorfinn's] success", but even as Dunnett provides Thorkel Fostri's bitter assessment, she also provides Tuathal's reflections on what Thorkel says, making a simple statement complex in the best ways.  I end up appreciating the insight into the main character, even as I feel for Thorkel's frustration year after year.  (And yet Thorkel deserves some of that frustration . . . and if you've read the novel, I'll bet you'd agree.  "Year after year" refers both to Thorkel's relationship over time with Thorfinn and to my yearly rereadings.)  There are worthy ponderings possible here: about leadership, about problem-solving, and about reciprocity and the mysteries of connection and admiration.

I'm putting Dunnett's passage below the photo of knife and novel.  (The point of view, here, is that of Tuathal, Prior of St. Serf's, as the POV shifts throughout the novel, usefully so.)

Did [Earl Siward of York] regret his exile?  Had he envied Kalv, turning his coat so adroitly over and over, and at least buying back some years at Egge?

'Envy?  He despised Kalv.  Kalv was a fool,' Thorkel had said.  'There was only one man he envied.'

'He hated Thorfinn?  Always?  I suppose he must have done,' Tuathal had said, thinking aloud.  'Or the Lady Emma would never have risked making Siward her buffer between the rest of England and Scotia.  But then, what if Siward had tried to take over Scotia?'

'Twelve years ago?  Against Thorfinn's manpower, and his money, and his fleet?  Even with England and Denmark behind him,' had said Thorkel Fostri with scorn, 'I doubt if he would have got a levy over the Forth.  And England wouldn't have backed him.  Magnus had Norway then, remember, and half a foot in Orkney already through Thorfinn's nephew Rognvald.  England would rather have had Thorfinn in Scotia, I can tell you, than Siward or Norway.'

And that, thought Tuathal, was still true.  Despite Thorfinn's present weakness, it was still, thank God, true.  He had said, 'And Thorfinn?  He's used to dealing with princes these days.  Does he resent being forced to barter with someone . . . '

He had paused, having caught Eochaid's eye, to rephrase the question, but Thorkel Fostri's voice, at its most sardonic, had taken him up.  'Someone like me, from the barbarous north?  Haven't you noticed yet that Thorfinn is prouder of being Earl of Orkney than he is of ruling Scotia?  He fought for Orkney and won it, against men just like Siward.  His own kind.  He knows them too well to despise them.'

His own kind?  Thorfinn was three-quarters Celt.  They were not his own kind.  Tuathal had said, 'So it's just another negotiation?  Thorfinn neither likes nor dislikes Kalv's nephew?  I find it hard to believe.'

To which Thorkel Fostri had answered in a way he had not expected.  'When did you ever know whether Thorfinn likes or dislikes a man?  He takes them for what they are, and deals with them accordingly.  It's the secret of his success.  You don't fight the sea by getting angry at it, or persuade it to be kinder by loving it.'

The bitterness was plain to all to hear.  Eochaid had got up and left, and he, Tuathal, had asked only one or two questions more.

He was not embarrassed.  It merely appeared to him a paradox worth someone's attention: how a man such as Thorkel described could inspire what Thorkel undoubtedly felt for him.

Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter: A Descriptive Sample

I love this book, this novel, about the historical Macbeth, Thorfinn of Orkney. Dunnett's lively mind and comprehensive research provide a dense, demanding, rewarding reading experience. I've read and reread this book so many times that I enjoy dipping into it anywhere, which almost always draws me into rereading from the very first page. I always falter at finding the right words to describe this novel of action and intellect, force and cunning, passion and compassion. History as life, as a dynamic force or field, and thinking --mindfulness, thought undivorced from physicality and action--are the two house-pillars upon which this word-hall is built. The book is intelligent, often gorgeous, often brutal. Thorfinn is a Viking, after all.

Anyway, here's just one paragraph, selected almost at random, that I feel catches Dunnett's lively, observant, worldly style in a few sentences. Here, the people of Orkney are awaiting word of the war in Norway and they gather on the strand as the first ship with news approaches. Dorothy Dunnett's day-job, as it were, was as a portrait painter, and I think you can see some of that artistry even here in a minor paragraph from page 62.

"Instead of a clean half-moon of blue pebbles, the beach was thick as a bere-field with heads: the cloth-bound heads of married women and the shining cloak-fall of hair of young girls, as well as the cloth and leather caps, the untrimmed hair and beards of the farmers, and the smooth chins and snake-moustaches of those who had travelled and fought and fancied a foreign style would make them sound wittier. The roar of talk, as the longship's prow, sixty feet high, cut towards them, grew to a storm, pushing back the kindly sound, the surfing lap of the waves."