Viking Remnants

Thorfinn was here.

The Brough of Birsay, Orkney.

"Njal's Saga": "Thief's Eyes"

          On one occasion, Hoskuld was holding a feast for his friends; Hrut was there, sitting next to him.  Hoskuld had a daughter named Hallgerd, who was playing on the floor with some other girls; she was a tall, beautiful child with long silken hair that hung down to her waist.
          Hoskuld called to her, 'Come over her to me.'  She went to him at once.  Her father tilted her chin and kissed her, and she walked away again.
          Then Hoskuld asked Hrut:
          'What do you think of her?  Do you not think she is beautiful?'
          Hrut made no reply.  Hoskuld repeated the question.  Then Hrut said, 'The child is beautiful enough, and many will suffer for her beauty; but I cannot imagine how thief's eyes have come into our kin.'

--the Icelandic classic Njal's Saga -- 
          from the first page of Chapter 1 --

Translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson,
Penguin Books, 1960; 1972 reprint.

Clay and Stone: A Miscellany

Rob.

Sir Patrick Spence: Three ships sailing?  Ballad measures.

The journey of many miles . . . is easier when the Vikings are navigating.

"Dear deer, come here."

Charm: Fare Far, Fare Well

Pathway Charm: sculpture mix; jade green glaze, barely, for relief effect.  (The design is borrowed from an old Norse monument.  I have a metal ornament that I pressed into the clay.)  A blessing piece, as it were: Strength-in-Adversity.

"May you have a good voyage, where'er you fare, here and hereafter."

Heaney's "Bone Dreams"

 BONE DREAMS

I

White bone found
on the grazing: 
the rough, porous 
language of touch

and its yellowing, ribbed 
impression in the grass —
¬a small ship-burial. 
As dead as stone,
flint-find, nugget
of chalk, 
I touch it again, 
I wind it in

the sling of mind
to pitch it at England
and follow its drop
to strange fields.

II

Bone-house:
a skeleton
in the tongue's 
old dungeons.

I push back
through dictions, 
Elizabethan canopies, 
Norman devices,

the erotic mayflowers 
of Provence 
and the ivied Latins
of churchmen

to the scop's 
twang, the iron 
flash of consonants 
cleaving the line.

In the coffered 
riches of grammar 
and declensions 
I found bān-hūs, 

its fire, benches, 
wattle and rafters, 
where the soul 
fluttered a while

in the roofspace.
There was a small crock 
for the brain, 
and a cauldron

of generation
swung at the centre: 
love-den, blood-holt, 
dream-bower.

IV

Come back past 
philology and kennings, 
re-enter memory 
where the bone's lair

is a love-nest
in the grass.
I hold my lady's head
like a crystal

and ossify myself
by gazing: I am screes 
on her escarpments, 
a chalk giant

carved upon her downs.
Soon my hands, on the sunken 
fosse of her spine, 
move towards the passes.

V

And we end up 
cradling each other 
between the lips 
of an earthwork.


As I estimate 
for pleasure 
her knuckles' paving,
the turning stiles

of the elbows,
the vallum of her brow
and the long wicket
of collar-bone,

I have begun to pace
the Hadrian's Wall
of her shoulder, 
dreaming of Maiden Castle.

VI

One morning in Devon
I found a dead mole
with the dew still beading it. 
I had thought the mole

a big-boned coulter
but there it was, 
small and cold
as the thick of a chisel.

I was told, ‘Blow,
blow back the fur on his head.
Those little points 
were the eyes.

And feel the shoulders.’
touched small distant: Pennines, 
a pelt of grass and grain
running south. 

--Seamus Heaney

Poem from Seamus Heaney's North, Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1975.

The clay pieces: Works in progress.  Viking Coin ornament and Ship & Hammer: sculpture mix; green glaze, unfired.  (We shall see how these pieces look after their firing.)

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.

Ragnar, Ethelred, and Robin

Playing with clay.

Viking Wisdom: "Fire Kindles Fire"

Flames from one log leap to another;
      fire kindles fire.
A man learns from the minds of others;
      A fool prefers his own.

--from "Words of the High One"--
one of the many Poetic Edda poems
translated from the Old Norse
by Patricia Terry

There are many reasons why I like this stanza and why I've quoted it to many a class.  I like to discuss with the class the governing concerns and imagery, the communal intelligence and the kindling fire.  And, I like to ask my students what happens if you substitute "tree" in place of "log" in that first line.  This stanza and that juxtaposition of wild vs. domesticated "fire" provides a foundation for worthy discourse in the classroom and out.

A Viking Holiday!

A belated Happy Solstice to you all!

As the days grow longer, may we all strive a bit more to fill our days--and each other's days--with action, reflection, and happiness.

--MD

Heaney's "Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces"

VIKING DUBLIN: TRIAL PIECES

I

It could be a jaw-bone

or a rib or a portion cut

from something sturdier:

anyhow, a smaller outline

was incised, a cage

or trellis to conjure in.

Like a child's tongue

following the toils

of his calligraphy,

like an eel swallowed

in a basket of eels,

the line amazes itself

eluding the hand

that fed it,

a bill in flight,

a swimming nostril.

II

There are trial pieces,

the craft's mystery

improvised on bone:

foliage, bestiaries,

interlacings elaborate

as the netted routes

of ancestry and trade.

That have to be

magnified on display

so that the nostril

is a migrant prow

sniffing the Liffey,

swanning it up to the ford,

dissembling itself

in antler combs, bone pins,

coins, weights, scale-pans.

III

Like a long sword

sheathed in its moisting

burial clays,

the keel stuck fast

in the slip of the bank,

its clinker-built hull

spined and plosive

as Dublin.

And now we reach in

for shards of the vertebrae,

the ribs of hurdle,

the mother-wet caches--

and for this trial piece

incised by a child,

a longship, a buoyant

migrant line.

IV

That enters my longhand,

turns cursive, unscarfing

a zoomorphic wake,

a worm of thought

I follow into the mud.

I am Hamlet the Dane,

skull-handler, parablist,

smeller of rot

in the state, infused

with its poisons,

pinioned by ghosts

and affections,

murders and pieties,

coming to consciousness

by jumping in graves,

dithering, blathering.

V

Come fly with me,

come sniff the wind

with the expertise

of the Vikings--

neighborly, scoretaking

killers, haggers

and hagglers, gombeen-men,

hoarders of grudge and gain.

With a butcher's aplomb

they spread out your lungs

and made you warm wings

for your shoulders.

Old fathers, be with us.

Old cunning assessors

of feuds and of sites

for ambush or town.

VI

'Did you ever hear tell,'

said Jimmy Farrell,

'of the skulls they have

in the city of Dublin?

White skulls and black skulls

and yellow skulls, and some

with full teeth, and some

haven't only but one,'

and compounded history

in the pan of 'an old Dane,

maybe, was drowned

in the Flood.'

My words lick around

cobbled quays, go hunting

lightly as pampooties

over the skull-capped ground.

--Seamus Heaney,

from North, 1975.

Recommendation: New Viking Voyages

I love water adventures, especially the ones involving practical archeology or anthropology.

I grew up with Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki on a bookshelf just above my bed. I recall buying Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage the first day it was available, bringing it home and devouring this nonfiction tale of Irish exploration of the North Pacific in leather boats. Leather boats! (Icebergs! Whales! Adventure! I was--and am--a fairly enthusiastic armchair voyager.)

Severin's book is still a favorite, a book I read yearly, but W. Hodding Carter has also contributed a worthy volume to this adventurous, salty, usually cold water genre.

A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World. So much fun as we move with Carter from his first inspiration, through many trials, dead-ends, pitfalls, tragedies, successes, fellowship, and more, to the voyage's end. My favorite parts, besides the bantering of the crew, involve Hodding Carter's coming to terms with questions of leadership, practical and spiritual in the best senses. Also, just as Severin's Irish replica, Hodding Carter's craft Snorri is authentic; it doesn't have a motor for emergencies. This vessel must be sailed, and sailed well. No escort vessel either (and neither did Severin's craft). These fellows get in a bit of trouble all by themselves. Two tries to get across the sea. And . . . .

Read the book; you'll have fun, no doubt at all.

Secondly, there's an illustrated companion to Hodding Carter's chronicle:

An Illustrated Viking Voyage: Retracing Leif Eriksson's Journey in an Authentic Viking Knarr.

Lovely photos by Russell Kaye; a fine tribute to the men and women who constructed this vessel, the crew who sailed and rowed this vessel, and to the landscape this Viking craft sailed from, through, and to. This book makes me want to voyage too, or at least to break out the kayak and the camera for some Marin Headlands action, even if I'm not heading out across any sea or up the coast on my own epic journey. Armchair travel at its finest.

P.S. I've also written about Hodding Carter's adventures before:

http://mattduckworthunderwater.blogspot.com/2009/05/annotations-w-hodding-carter.html

Frey, the Yule-Stag

An ornament for the winter solstice.

Frey: Sculpture mix, green and blue glazing; copper wire.

Hrothgar's Pawn

Here's another piece from the chess set I never finished. A pawn, I guess.

Another minotaur of sorts. Actually, I think of the piece as a Viking faun, if I may mix my traditions. No horned helmet--an inaccuracy, that, anyway--but a horned head. The fierceness and the shagginess call out "Viking" to my mind.

Bullish and goatish both, though not Mediterranean at all: no Cretan sleekness, no Classical spareness here. The severity is rough and textured. Rough weather; rough water. Cold, kelpy seas; the swift shifting of the seasons; dark forests of oak and pine; harsh frost and snow; wolves and bears and boars (oh my). Bear-shirted berserkers, man-beasts, beast-men. What's his lineage, truly?

If Viking goats seem too far-fetched, recall that Thor the Thunder-god's chariot is pulled by two goats. (At least, until trickster Loki lames one of them.) And the sound of those chariot wheels rumbling across Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, makes the thunder we hear down here on Midgard (or Middle-Earth). I like Thor, defender of gods and men against the frost-giants and all things unhallowed. Thor, whose very name echoes the Norse word for "giant" (thurs), always strikes me as the street-cop of that northern pagan pantheon.

My piece: Beowulf's henchman, perhaps, or Hrothgar's pawn. I haven't named him yet. Perhaps the name of one of Thor's goats would suit?

Hrothgar's Pawn: sculpture mix; deep green glaze.

Passages: Heaney's "North"

I've got Dougie Maclean's "Mo Nighean Donn" playing from the Whitewash CD, and that seems a fitting background as I open up Seamus Heaney's North and share a favorite poem. Heaney is my favorite model of a poet whose symbolism is always grounded, always working concretely and figuratively, gaining strength from that constructive duality. Here, now, I just want to reread a memorable piece, not blather too much about it.

NORTH

I returned to a long strand,

the hammered shod of a bay,

and found only the secular

powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical

invitations of Iceland,

the pathetic colonies

of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,

those lying in Orkney and Dublin

measured against

their long swords rusting,

those in the solid

belly of stone ships,

those hacked and glinting

in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices

warning me, lifted again

in violence and epiphany.

The longship's swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight--

it said 'Thor's hammer swung

to geography and trade,

thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behindbacks

of the althing, lies and women,

exhaustions nominated peace,

memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, 'Lie down

in the word-hoard, burrow

the coil and gleam

of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.

Expect aurora borealis

in the long foray

but not cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear

as the bleb of the icicle,

trust the feel of what nubbed treasure

your hands have known.'

--Seamus Heaney

North. Faber and Faber. London & Boston: 1975.

North is my single favorite volume of Heaney's verse, though Death of a Naturalist, Station Island, and Seeing Things all make claims upon me--as does Heaney's translation of Beowulf, though that's a different beast of mixed lineage and joy. His North pulls together my own preoccupations with the North Atlantic, with Celts and Vikings, with history and autobiography, bog people and ambition, with sagas and cauldrons and the cold salt sea.

(Heaney revises "North," this specific poem, slightly in his collected works of 1996: Opened Ground. He substitutes "curve" for "shod" in the second line; I'd been wondering if "hammered shod of a bay" was an Irishism or a metaphor, and I'd even devised an interpretation for "shod" as a noun, just in case. Isn't that what you do, too?)

Read "Exposure" next.

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."

Annotations: W. Hodding Carter

Carter, W. Hodding. Off the Deep End: The Probably Insane Idea That I Could Swim My Way Through a Midlife Crisis--And Qualify for the Olympics. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2008.

The title really does tell you what you'll get, but Carter isn't quite as insane as his goal may seem. On the one hand, a classic midlife crisis in action, and on the other, a great how-to for training to swim at an Olympic level, this book takes you for a ride. Carter has an engaging (or annoying, for some) lack of embarrassment as he documents some truly stupid behavior. Mostly, he offers a model of crisis, self-assessment, positive response, frailty and partial failure, and finally, actual progress in self-awareness, commitment and performance. (As a 47-year-old male, I like watching someone else go through the rough stuff and emerge at least somewhat victorious, even if chastened.)

P.S. What's the name of the 40-something swimmer who did reach the Olympic Games this past year? Well, not Hodding Carter, but still . . . .

---. A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Voyage to the New World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

The first book by Carter I'd read. Here, he presents a potentially silly obsession that he manages to take from an idle thought (and he has a boatload of those) to serious completion, struggling and straggling all the way. One part how-to-build-a-viking-boat and another part friendships-are-built-on-shared-adversity, the book is a model of having a goal and getting to the goal-line. Very humorous too.